Woodworking Tips from Pop…

 Remember the old days when we had to wait for the glue to dry!

This is great video!
I was introduced to the Kreg jig a couple of years ago by a woodworking friend who builds cabinetry and furniture for a living. I was amazed at the time this little jig was saving him on his face frames and we all know (time is money). So I had to buy one immediately! This little tool has paid for itself many times over, not only in time but quality. If your shop is without one of these tools you’re missing out!

 The mini Kreg jig

Another great video worth watching

This is how we make bar brackets in our shop

First draw the design on a piece of paper or cardboard, this is called the template. Most brackets on a bar are typically around eight inches long x four inches deep x four inches wide. These dimensions will vary depending on the size of lumber available and the overall look you’re going for.
The design is traced on the template using anything with a rounded corner like a coffee can, drinking cup, shoe heel, or whatever! It really doesn’t matter, as long as you’re happy with the layout. This is why a piece of paper or card board is used to make the template, (easy modification). After you’re satisfied with the layout it is typically wiser to transfer your pattern to a piece of ¼” plywood. This will help the template last longer for use on future jobs and stay true to its original layout.
 

These patterns are several years old and have been used in many of our bars.

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Definitely one of the coolest inventions of our time!

Introduced early in the twentieth century, the router has transformed woodworking like no other tool. The router is basically a cutter attached to a vertical shaft of a high speed electric motor. The concept hasn’t change much but the router has evolved significantly over the years, especially with the inception of the plunge, variable speed and a boat load of accessories. 

 This multipurpose tool is unquestionably the most important tool in our shop. It has the flexibility to be hand held or mounted under a table, transforming it into a small shaper and used for making anything from raised panels to decorative moldings to getting perfect glued up bar tops.

Hand held this machine is even more versatile. It can be used for carving, fluting, cutting dados, mortising door hinges. The options are endless! In our years of experience in woodworking we’ve learned that you can never have enough routers and a router dedicated to a certain task can be a time saving, quality assuring and profit making factor for any woodshop.Can you imagine what it was like before the router and doing all those jobs by hand? No way!

There are also plenty of woodworking sites and forums available with a lot of answers to a lot of questions about routers and how to use them.

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Chicken of the sea!

I came across this nifty little back saver the other night.It probably would work well in some shops and definitely on new construction sites. Too bad these weren’t available back in the good ole days when I was toting plywood around muddy jobsites. I would have had one in each hand!
It’s only $49.95 online at gorillagripper.com, and for what it does it’s probably a bargain!

Designing your own classic bar can be an exhilarating experience, and almost as enjoyable as owning a bar itself. Thanks to the internet and the introduction to CNC routers, there is an endless array of design elements available to enhance your bar building experience and all increase the aesthetics of the overall bar. Products like decorative corbels, hand carvings, moldings, and paneling are available in almost any species of wood, ranging from walnut and cherry to exotics like mahogany. These products are not only available in wood, there are plenty of money saving alternatives like resins, composites and plaster that can be faux painted to match just about any wood grain. It doesn’t take the place of real wood, but it does cost a lot less and the effect is there. With a little creativity in your search words and phrases, you can easily find components and pictures to help design a one of a kind bar that’s tailored to your exact fashion. To help limit your search options, I’ve included a list of a few suppliers that have provided us with products and ideas for some of our furniture creations.

Raymond Enkeboll Designs

Pearlworks

Fischer and Jirouch

Decorators Supply

Rockler

Van Dykes Restorers

Buycarving.com

Outwater Plastics

Sarah Rowe carvings

The corbel or bracket is a functional and sometimes cosmetic component that is located under the bar counter top. It’s primarily used to provide support for wood and stone countertops. Now this does not mean all bar tops require a supporting bracket. Wood bar tops with not to much overhang can usually be fastened to the cabinetry underneath providing enough support for the tops. This is an option if you’re concerned about space and knee room.

Pop will tell you that in this business as well as in life, unless you’re a complete dumb ass, you’re always learning.

This is never more evident than in the building of jigs or templates, which are usually created out of necessity rather than enjoyment. Jigs can be built for just about every function in the wood shop, either to increase production or because there’s simply no other way to get the job done. Sometimes building jigs can be equivalent to reinventing the wheel, and there’s only one way to find out if your jig works or not and that’s to build it and try it!

There’s really no right or wrong way to build a jig, it’s just what works best for what you’re doing! Some work better than others, some are to much work to figure out and most are usually more work to make than the furniture components they are helping to create.

The jigs used on the corbels for this mantel were created over the course of several jobs through trial and error. This is my third attempt and hopefully my last, but probably not!

The negatives of building jigs like this out of wood are they have a tendency to wear down with to much use. It’s always best to build a jig like you’re going to keep it forever, glue it, screw it, seal it and if you’re going to slide anything on it, wax it! This will definitely keep Pop smiling in our shop.

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