finish carpentry

I've been pushing off this little project for a couple of months. The bedroom renovation began with construction of the closet and the curved plaster corner I absolutely had to have (if for no other reason than I'd never done one before). I knew that was going to create problems with the trim later but, hey, later is later. Six months later, later became today.



There are basically four ways to build a curve using solid lumber. One is to steam it and bend it in a jig. Bending 1" nominal hardwood stock to as shallow a radius as I need is probably impossible, at least with my skills, and since I don't have a wood steamer anyway, it's moot. So let's move on.

The second method also involves a jig but instead of bending solid lumber you build up thin veneer layers like plywood. You can construct a very small radius this way and lots of glue ensures a stable curve. The third way is to saw lots of narrow vertical kerfs in the back of the stock, leaving a thin facing layer to make it bendable. It's tricky but this method wouldn't work for me anyway because the board has a half-lap detail.

I chose Option #4: build up the curve using several narrow pieces of lumber edge-laminated together. It's not really a smooth curve however but a polygon... kinda like the difference between a raster and a vector curve. However, since that's how all the convex curved woodwork was originally built in this house, it's Authentic. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So how do you calculate the miter and width of each piece? Fortunately, dumb luck made this almost a textbook exercise. The corner's circumference is eleven inches. If I were to use one-inch wide pieces how many pieces would I need? You, the kid in the back corner. That's right, eleven pieces. But how do you calculate the miter angle for each piece? If you glue together eleven pieces of lumber you have ten joints. A 90 degree angle divided by 10 equal joints would mean that each joint would have to be 9 degree corner. Since a corner is two equal miters, then the miter is 4.5 degrees.

Am I smarter than a fifth grader or what?

Alright, there's a bit more to it, like the fact that the face of the baseboard will have a larger circumference than the back, but a little guesstimating set the width of each piece to 1-1/8" at the face. Close enough.

Construction was pretty routine except that clamping was a bit of chore once the curve extended past 30 degrees. So I constructed the baseboard as three sets. Then I assembled them around the jig I'd used to make the knife to construct that plaster corner: a plastic bucket. A strap clamp held the pieces snug while the glue dried.

It still needs cap and shoe mouldings and, of course, it would look better actually attached to the wall. More to come.

I completed all the woodwork on the bay window unit today. I won't play conquering hero either. With the weird angles and different depths of the windows, the embedded convection steam radiator, and more than a couple of measure-once goofs, I was very lucky to get through this without a major screwup.

This weekend, I completed and installed that removable grill in the center of the windows. This was also a bit of work. There are seven boards and two store-bought but modified red oak grills in that face panel, all of them biscuited together with waterproof glue. I wanted no chance that heat and steam from a leaky air valve would cause problems with that lamination, as it did in the dining room cabinet. I was going to do some router scroll work between the grills. I caught myself just in time. It would have exposed those embedded biscuits.

I've been looking forward to this day for months. Almost all the trim, the doors, cabinets, etc are done! What's "almost"?

By "almost" I mean that the center of operations moves downstairs to my shop. The remainder of the trim work -- the cabinet doors and drawers, the panels under the bay window, the stained glass window, the overhead closet doors and even the curved baseboard moulding for the closet corner have to be fabricated. I need my stationary power tools for this stuff.

(Or "Why A Duct?", with a tip o' the hat to the Marx Bros)

This house has ancient, single-pipe steam heating. From what I've been able to determine from digging in these walls over the past seven years is that it's always had steam heating. Nothing interesting there.

What's baffling is why the house also has ancient metal air ducting buried inside the walls. I discovered this shortly after I moved here when I ripped down the basement ceiling and found three vertical ducts to nowhere. Over the past hundred years, various plumbers and electricians had used them for service pulls. So did I when I ran 3/4" copper to the second floor bath, the central vac piping and various electrical branches from the basement panel.



I moved the renovation activity into the upstairs hall two weeks ago. After ripping off an old baseboard for replacement, you can see one of those ducts here.



Here's a closer look. The ducts are a fairly heavy gauge steel wrapped in another layer of corrugated steel, which functions as plaster lathing. It's real nasty to work with. It takes quite a bit of effort to knock a hole in this stuff. Because the ducts aren't anchored to anything, you can't use a saw on them. They just flap around, loosening the surrounding plaster. And after you succeed with tin snips you're left with metal edges as lethal as a machete blade.

There used to be an old baseboard outlet here. I hate baseboard outlets. They're inconvenient and a trip hazard when anything is plugged into them. My intent was to move that outlet up the wall. But once I removed the baseboard and saw the ducting (which I'd forgotten about) I decided I liked my unlacerated flesh more than I hated baseboard outlets.