First furniture upholstery project completed

I bought this lounge chair a couple months ago, around my birthday, and have been working on it since. When I got it, the original owner claimed it was leather, but as I suspected, it was vinyl.

I stripped it down and duplicated each piece in brown leather, reusing the existing foam cushions and batting.

Finished just in time for Christmas!

Leatherworking

I have recently gotten into leatherworking as a tangent to upholstery after realizing that my newly acquired sewing machine was good for thicker leather.

After buying a huge cache of scrap leather, I made a few belts and played around with Sheridan carving. I made this pistol case for a Christmas gift:

I'm also going to make some holsters, a rifle strap or two, and maybe some guitar straps .

My birthday present

I found a sweet deal on a like-new Consew 206RB-5 industrial sewing machine to do my upholstery. This machine is a beast! It punched through 4 layers of 3-4oz upholstery leather like it was a single layer of silk. I can't wait to try to make a rifle sling or belt out of 9-10oz.

First attempt at making a motorcycle seat

The stitching on my motorcycle seat recently disintegrated, so I made a new cover out of leather. I'm not completely satisfied with it, but I'm going to ride on it for a while to see how it holds up.

Review: Harbor Freight 1/2" Crown Air Stapler (97572)

I purchased a cheapo crown stapler from HF to use for upholstery.

The build quality is not bad for the price ($20) and hopefully the brick of staples won't outlast the gun. I used it to tack my motorcycle seat cover down and it worked perfectly.

Making Upholstered Furniture

Our house is mostly furnished with Arts-and-Crafts-style pieces, most of which look great but (I am embarrassed to admit) are made of plywood and/or particle board. We really like the Mission influence on Craftsman design, so I have been planning to build some Stickley-style cabinetry, namely an entertainment center for a large flat-screen TV, some bookshelves, serving buffet, and a wine/chine cabinet. My collection of magazines have some great plans in them, which I look forward to building.

However, our couches are getting pretty shabby, so this got me to thinking about an aspect of household decor that I have never considered before--building upholstered furniture and reupholstering some of our less-attractive seating.

I visited my local library to borrow a variety of upholstery books. After browsing through a few of the books, the techniques don't seem too difficult and I already have most of the tools required, so decided to give it a try.

I acquired some scrap leather from a friend in the furniture business and tuned up my grandmother's sewing machine. Luckily, these old gear-driven Singers are good for leather.

I decided to start with a simple project--recover my motorcycle seat. The stitching has deteriorated and welded vinyl seams have separated in the sunlight.

After that, I will try to recover an arm-chair from my daughter's room.

Making marquetry inlay banding for backstrips

I was messing around with some scraps and decided to try making some inlaid marquetry back strips for my guitars, rather than buying them.

I liked this pattern from LMI, so I decided to copy it.

I haven't really done this kind of pattern marquetry before, but based on the instructions for creating wheat patterns from Bogdanovich's book, I figured it out.

You'll need a bandsaw, jointer and thickness sander to use this technique.

1. Laminate some various thicknesses of materials into a uniform, repeating pattern. After the glue dries, square up the stock. The final dimensions are not critical, but you want it to be 2-3 ft long, about 3" wide and 2.5-3" thick.
2. Cut the strip into equal segments at a 45-degree angle
3. Arrange the segments (in order and orientation) horizontally
4. Glue and clamp. After the glue dries, square the stock again if necessary.
5. Resaw the block into strips about 1/2 as wide as you want your final backstrip to be, plus enough extra for sanding to final thickness. I want my backstrip to be about 1/2" wide, so I will cut these strips to 5/16". The strips are now approximately 5/16" x 2.5-3". Surface sand both sides of these strips to final desired thickness (1/4").
6. Take two or more strips. Flip one side and orient it such that the chevrons are symmetrical, then offset the colors by one step. When gluing these up, you may find that it helps to overlap them by 1/2 the length. Sandwich the strips between alternating colors of your choice of veneer strips (same width), glue and clamp.
7. When the glue has dried, rip these strips into 1/8-1/4" thick pieces and sand to desired thickness.

I didn't have any black veneer handy, so I bought a 1.5mm-thick black posterboard from the local craft store. This was a 400# sheet that cost about $6.  I am not positive that paper will work well, but I figured that since paper was made of wood it should. Anyway, so far so good.

Classical Guitar 1 DOA

I've been having hell trying to finish the binding on my first guitar, compounded by the incredibly difficult-to-sand Jatoba and a too-short peghead, so I have decided to shelf it for now.

I have learned some valuable lessons and am ready to start anew.

I chose a parlor-sized plantilla based on an old child's guitar. The scale is just over 23". I will try to build three similar classical guitars at once, one for each of my children:

• All three will use Torres fan bracing.
• Two will have black walnut back and sides with curly maple trim, mahogany or maple neck, with one having spruce and the other having a redwood top.
• The third may have flamed, quarter-sawn sycamore sides with cocobolo trim and spruce soundboard, but I haven't decided for sure.

Review: Harbor Freight Deluxe Airbrush 95810

I picked up a Deluxe Airbrush kit from HF for $15 this weekend. This is my first airbrush, which I bought to do touchups on guitar finishes and possibly artwork. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to try it yet because I can't find a hose locally. Every local HF store was sold out and Hobby Lobby wanted $30 for a hose! The airbrush appears to be a Badger clone, perhaps of the Anthem 155. My initial impression, without having used it yet, is that the quality is excellent. It's quite heavy and the parts are very precisely machined and fit together well. The lowest price I could find the Anthem for was more than $75, so if this works well, it may be a great deal.

After shooting some watercolor through it, my impression still holds. I was able to make very fine lines, albeit not very dark. It may not compete with the higher-end airbrushes, but for $15 I think it's a great buy.

Badger Anthem 155:

Making cheap micro chisels with music wire

I recently came across an article describing how to create your own micro chisels and carving tools using music wire, which is a high-carbon steel often sold in R/C hobby stores as connecting rods. It isn't super high-grade tool steel or even HSS, but it's more than adequate since it's cheap and I don't have any over-heating concerns. I picked up a couple 3-ft sticks for about $1 each.

To start, I cut two 5-6" lengths, ground about 1" of one end square and hardened and tempered the tip with a blow torch. Normally I wouldn't temper the blade, but since these are so small, I was concerned they might chip too easily. Then I ground down the sides on a water wheel until the blade was roughly 2mm wide. Finally, I put a 45-degree bevel on the cutting edge. I happened to have a bunch of hard maple scraps around, so I also made some handles for the chisels.

I use them to clean out the neck slot for the sides, especially the top binding slot where it joins the neck, among other things. Not bad for less than a buck.

Making laminated wood binding

I was thinking about my next guitar, which will have walnut sides, spruce top and spalted sweet gum back. Since I want some bindings that contrast well with walnut, I decided to use curly maple.

I really like the look of wood bindings with thin strips of contrasting woods laminated to the bottom like those pictured below (LMI).

A friend of mine uses the excess strips trimmed from sides to make laminated bindings, one at a time. This seems like an overly difficult/complicated process.

I prefer to make them in bulk, so I decided to laminate a full side that was too thin (for a guitar) to a resawn billet of curly maple. I then ripped it into thin strips and thickness sanded them to 2mm. These are perfect for my needs, and easy to make. I got about 20 from one 4-inch wide side. I used Titebond II so that it will resist heat/moisture while bending.

You will need a bandsaw or tablesaw and thickness sander to use this method. A jointer is also nice, but you can generally perform jointing operations on a thickness sander too. You could use a tablesaw to rip the board, but the blade kerf wastes a lot of material and you can't resaw wide material. I don't recommend it.

The stages below show the general concept.

1. Laminate two pieces of contrasting materials. The thicker piece should be about 1/4" thick x 3"+ x 32"+ with quarter-sawn grain. The thinner piece can be any thickness, but you should try to make it slightly thicker than the desired final thickness. Grain orientation on the thinner piece is less critical, but you can make it quarter-sawn also (or not). If you understand wood movement due to moisture content, feel free to adjust for grain patterns. Glue them together using a water/heat resistant glue like Titebond II or III and clamp with pressure distributed evenly over the glued surface area. 
2. Sand the thin side to desired thickness. If you are using a pre-thicknessed wood or fiber veneer, there is no need to sand further.
3. If desired, add another layer. Repeat steps 1 and 2.
4. On a bandsaw, rip lengthwise strips slightly wider than 1/8". Always rip with thin laminations facing up, so the blade won't tear them from the main substrate.
5. Sand both sides of strips to ~2mm or 0.10". Most thickness sanders will not work well under 1/8". I use a backer board, such as a piece of plywood or MDF.

Guitar progress stalled

When I was cutting the binding channels for the top two weeks ago, the sides began chipping out badly, and I haven't had much time lately to work on it.

I found some interesting luthiery supplies in China/Korea on eBay.

I am getting bone nuts and bridges for about $0.50/ea.

I got some really nice tuning machines for $10 or less. I think these rival the quality of Gotoh and Schaller. Only time will tell. You can order 5 or 6 sets of these for about the cost of one set of quality tuners from StewMac or LMI, and it only takes a week to get them.

Quality rosettes for about $2/ea. This is only a few of more than 20 that I received.

I finally found a metric thickness gauge for about $35 on eBay. This will help me more accurately thickness the plates.

Soundboard and back glued and trimmed

I got the back glued up and used a router with a flush-trim bit to clean up the edges.

Next, I routed the binding channels using my Dremel and mini-router base from StewMac. So far, it's looking pretty good. I'm doing Walnut binding with BW purfling. I'll get some pics up as soon as I finish.

Classical guitar nearly finished

I finally made the hold-down cleats for my workboard. Using a dado blade, I cut a channel in some scrap 1x2" maple. Then, I cut them to length (approx 3") and cut off about 1/4" x 3/4" from the bottom face to allow a recess for the soundboard. Finally, I hit them with the belt sander to remove all the sharp edges and corners. 

I bought a box of 4" bolts with wing nuts from HD and installed them through the bottom of the workboard.

Here I've glued in the sides to the head and tail blocks and also the soundboard kerfing. I didn't have any easy means of clamping the kerfing with this style of building, so I simply held them in place for a minute or so until the glue started to set.

Here I've bent and installed the Basswood linings. I found that it was easier to bend and laminate two 1.5mm strips than one 3mm strip. It's important to bend before gluing because the glue likely won't tolerate the heat of the bending process.

Fitting the back was a challenge. I measured, marked and cut the notches for the braces in the linings and  tapered the sides for the curvature of the back. It fits well but there is a gap between the lower end of the back and the tail block. Unfortunately, I made the back a little thicker than necessary because sanding it was dreadfully difficult. This stuff is so hard that 80-grit sand paper on an orbital sander makes a smooth-as-silk finish. Anyway, because the back plate is so thick, it's a bit difficult to bend into shape and I am concerned about forcing it. Here I have applied light pressure trying to "convince" the back into shape before I glue.

Classical Guitar Update

Wow...I haven't gotten to work on the guitar much for almost a month. I was really sick for a few weeks and now we are crazy busy at work. I did manage to laminate some veneers to the head and shape it. Then I glued the neck and tail block to the sound board and have the whole setup sitting on my assembly workboard waiting for me to glue up the sides.

Neck update

Shaping the neck is coming along nicely, although the Jatoba is proving very difficult to sand. I found that, contrary to what I expected, the garnet paper seems to work better than the silicon carbide.

I also found that I made the sides of the peghead too thin, requiring me to glue some ears to the sides. I think this operation will require adding another veneer, at least to the face.

Roughed neck update

I have the neck mostly complete, with the exception of the holes for the tuning machines. I forgot to drill them before cutting the slots. I'll have to put some backing material in the slots to prevent chipping when I drill them.

New lumber

I forgot to mention that last weekend I got some really great-looking spalted sweet gum for backs, a bit of mesquite and some more walnut from a friend who has his own portable mill. One piece of spalted gum was especially interesting because there was a worm-eaten section the exact size and shape of a back, so I decided to fill it with epoxy and try to make a guitar out of it.

Classical Guitar Update

I got the heel and part of the peg head roughed out:

The heel was fairly easy to carve with a sharp chisel, but the Jatoba is very hard to sand. I wound up buying a flap sander from HD to smooth it out because my spindle sander was too aggressive and sanding by hand was futile.

 

Here's the peghead after I cut the first slot. I did it old-school, instead of with a router. Again, the Jatoba is very difficult to sand. I wish I had used a router. Oh well, next time...

Classical Guitar Update

I finally got the neck blank constructed and the sides bent without ruining them:

Here's the back with braces being glued and after I arched, scalloped and sanded them: