Marc: The holidays are coming up fast and you've
got no idea what to make your family and friends.
Here's something that's at least one
step above a basket of meat and cheese.
(groovy brass music)
Today I'm going to show you how to make
this simple and elegant magazine rack.
It should only take you about two days to build,
and that means it's the perfect project for the holidays.
This one is made from solid walnut,
has a bit of an Asian flare to it like a lot of my stuff.
Depending on the type of wood that you use,
this little rack could complement just about any dĂŠcor.
The idea here is for these two pieces to
come apart so that you could store it flat,
and that's really convenient if you're planning on
sending these things to friends and family as gifts.
Unfortunately though, when I did mine I didn't
really account for how much the finish was going
to build up the thickness, so my pieces don't
go together quite as easily as they should.
It does take a little coercion to get them apart.
(tapping)
But, we can improve on that on the second go around.
Here's the idea. They store just like this,
which is great if you're going to ship them.
The way they go together is just like that.
The construction of this piece is fairly simple,
it's actually only composed of four parts,
the two outer pieces and then the two inner pieces.
The joinery here is pretty simple, it's just an angled slot,
and I'll show you details on how we make that in just a bit.
Let's take a look at the rough stock that
we're going to use to make this project.
All the material for this project
is three eighths of an inch thick.
You'll need four pieces cut to four and
a quarter inches wide by 16 inches long,
and one piece that's four inches wide and 14 inches long.
All of our middle pieces will be cut from the shorter piece.
The first thing I want to do is cut our four and
a quarter inch pieces into two inch strips,
and I want to be able to keep each one of these together,
I don't want them to get all mixed up,
so I'm going to mark each one with a distinct cabinet
maker's triangle so I'll be able to match them up later.
(buzzing)
Now we need to take one piece from each of our
matched pairs and make a series of angled cuts.
In fact it's 40 degrees at the miter saw,
and you can certainly use the table saw to do the same thing.
These cuts can get really confusing,
really fast if you don't draw it out,
so I will probably include a diagram with this
that you can download and take a look at,
so you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I've drawn everything on this one piece,
so that what I'll do is make one cut,
and I'll make sure I set up a stop block,
and then I'll go to all my other pieces and do those as well.
Then when I'm ready for the next cut I reset the stop block.
This way you're batching everything out and
you don't have to repeat the setup,
it's going to be much more accurate this way.
I do make all of my markings on one piece.
Let's head over to the saw and start making some cuts.
The first cut creates the bottom portion of our legs.
And the second cut removes the extra material
and creates the interlocking joinery.
Now that we've got all of our cut pieces we keep
the two together and then we match it back with
one of its original pieces, and we're going to
glue this back together in to one piece, once again.
It's really as easy as lining it up, making sure it's even
on both sides, applying some glue and clamping it down.
At this stage of the game, with the ends nice and even,
you want to take a piece of scrap and you want to
check and make sure that that slot that you've
created is big enough and gives you that extra
32nd of an inch for the extra finish that's going
to be on the material when it's all said and done.
As long as you have that extra bit of breathing room
in there you're ready to go, just glue it together.
The glue up is pretty straightforward.
A little glue, some clamping pressure and you're good to go.
Just make sure that the joints are nice and even.
Even a simple project like this shows
you exactly why I have so many clamps.
While the glue is drying we can
start to cut our middle pieces.
(sawing)
The only tricky part here is lining up
the bottom middle piece, which is located
a half inch up from the top of the slot.
I measure up, and extend my line.
I do this on both sides, just for reference.
Now lining that piece up is going to be a breeze.
A little glue on all the joining pieces
and we're ready for the clamps.
This part is totally optional, but you can cut another
40 degree angle at the bottom of the legs,
just make sure the piece is oriented properly.
Now at this point in the process it's
really up to you where you want to take this.
Technically we could be done right now,
this could be a working magazine rack.
If you want to start adding curves, this is the time to do it.
If you want to get crazy and make some really wacky shape
out of it, there's no reason why you can't do that.
For me, I'm just going to put some subtle curves
in the sides and in the top that will give it that
little bit of an Asian flare and play a little
trick on the eye when you see it from a distance.
To do that I'm going to use a template that
I made years ago, and I highly recommend any time
you make a good template, keep it, don't throw it
away when you're done with the project, because you
can always use it for something else in the future.
This was for my zebra wood sitting bench
that I made two, three years ago.
It just happens to work perfect for
this and that's what I'm going to do,
is trace those lines right onto the work piece.
Going to rough cut them at the bandsaw and head
over to the router table to do the final trim.
(bouncy synth music)
I use a template to trace the curve on all
sides, including the inside of the legs.
Then I do the rough cuts at the bandsaw.
I then double stick tape our two pieces
together and attach the template on top.
Now I can flush trim them both at the same time.
This will save me time as well as
give me more consistent results.
For the inside curves I feel much more
comfortable using the oscillating spindle sander.
Let's talk about the finish.
For a piece like this, especially if you're making
a bunch of them, spraying is really the best
way to go because you can cover a large amount
in a short amount of time, and usually the
finishes that you spray are going to dry quicker,
so you could turn it over a lot faster.
What I decided to use was a water-based finish,
and like I've said before I really do want to make an
effort to go more in that direction with my stuff.
What I tried using was this stuff,
actually it was on the walnut,
I used Vermont Natural Coatings.
I don't know if you guys heard about this material but it is
a special formulation where they actually use whey protein
as a binder, instead of a really toxic substance.
The VOC rating for, this is General Finish's Poly Acrylic,
is 275 grams per liter.
According to their labeling, the Vermont Natural Coatings
is less than 180 grams per liter.
They even say here on the can that the toughest
US standard right now is 250 grams per liter.
So 275, 180. That's pretty darn good.
They also claim that the whey protein binder
helps the finish to actually be tougher than most
available water-based finishes that we use today.
I used it, it sprayed really well, it went down well,
it sands great and it dried nice and hard.
I really have absolutely no complaints.
Not to mention, this is on walnut,
and traditionally you put a water-based finish on to
a darker wood and you get a blueish cast or haze to it,
and I don't see any trace of that whatsoever.
This is really, really good stuff.
Interestingly enough the finish in the can is a pink color,
most water-based finishes that I've used
in the past have had a milky look to them.
Kind of neat, definitely worth checking out.
Price wise, this was a free sample so I don't know for
sure what it costs, but I'm sure it's probably not cheap.
Bottom line, if you're looking to go green there
are some other great options out there for you.
Since I've run out I'm going to go with poly acrylic
on mine today, but before I do that I'm going
to add a little bit of dye to the surface,
because I've got a figured maple board here and I want to
bring out that grain and try to pop the grain a little bit.
I'm using one of my favorites here,
it's General Finish's Vintage Cherry dye stain.
These dye stains are pre-mixed.
There's no powders, there's no liquids to mix with water,
you can dilute it a little bit if you need to.
These are great.
I don't know whether they sprinkle a little magic dust in
there, but there's just something about the way these dyes
apply that's just better than what I can make on my own.
Until I figure out a better way to make my own dye,
I think I'm going to stick with these.
Let's go through that process real quick.
I pre-wet the surface with a little bit of water.
This helps the dye spread more evenly.
Let the dye soak in and don't
worry about being too neat here.
After about an hour the surface
is dry enough to start sanding.
I start with 150 grit and try to get
most of the dye off of the surface.
All we want to do is leave the die in the deepest pores,
so take your time and sand thoroughly up to 180 grit.
I then spray three coats of poly acrylic
with sanding in between each coat.
Three coats of a water-based poly
gives us a really nice finish.
These water-based finishers are
really starting to grow on me.
They look more and more like lacquer,
which I really like, it's one of my favorite finishes.
You'll notice on this that even though I sanded the dye
off of the faces of these pieces, I left it on the sides,
and I also left it on the inside edges as well.
Why? I don't know, I thought it might look neat.
I took a gamble because I've never done that
before but the finished product looks cool.
I don't know that I would do this on
every project, it's kind of gimmicky,
but it looks pretty neat so I left it as it is.
Fortunately these two will come apart,
much easier than my last rendition,
so you could store them flat or ship them.
I'm really happy with the way it came out so if
you have the time, batch a bunch of these out and
I think they will make great gifts for the holidays.
They still are a little bit tricky to get together,
just to get those angles right, but once it's there, boom.
You've got yourself a magazine rack.
(plucked blues guitar)