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Notes -
I finished the chessboard/checkerboard.
To recap, I got some nice cheap walnut and maple at my local lumber yard. I used probably $10 worth of it to get a chessboard going. Milled it as little as possible to preserve the width, so it's maybe 0.9 inches thick down from 4/4 rough.
The first glue up came out great. Lamentably, my meager jobsight tablesaw doesn't have enough infeed table to support my miter gauge cutting a 16" wide piece square, so I had to do it as best I could with a jointing sled I put together and a large square. After squaring up the first panel, I then cross cut it into 2" wide strips, and alternated every other strip to get the typical checkboard pattern.
This second glue up went less well. I think I'm just using too much glue, or too much clamping pressure, because even though I got the strips lined up as best I could, and used calls to keep them from bucking or twisting, some of them still shifted about 1/16th out of square at the ends, meaning I had to cut the edge square again after this glue up. It went ok. Some of the corners were 90.2 degrees, or 89.8, which created a lot of extra work later.
I wanted the border to have a thin strip of walnut, and then primarily be maple. So I took some of the walnut scrap and very carefully ripped some 1/8" strips, which I then laminated to the 1-7/8" maple border pieces. It took a lot of clamps. So many I had to do them one at a time. I should invest in a lot more clamps.
I slowly snuck up on the correct miter angles, repeatedly trying a cut maybe a 1/10th of a degree off 90, and slowly zeroing in on a good miter joint with minimal gaps. It took a lot of trial and error. Then I slowly worked my way up to the correct length of each border piece. This was the extra work I alluded to earlier. In theory with my miter gauge, I could have had all the sides the exact same length and angle. I need to build an infeed table to support it so I can utilize it on these larger projects.
One of miter joints I still somehow messed up, resulting in a rather noticeable gap on one edge. Ah well, c'est la vi.
This final glue up I tried to prepare for as best I could. I got all my clamps ready, tested it dry. Bought more c-clamps just so I had something reliable to keep the border pieces flat relative to the rest of the board. It went pretty OK minus the obscene amounts of glue I had to sand off afterwards. Ran out of the fancy 3M Cubitron sanding discs and had to order more. Was left using shitty Harbor Frieght sanding discs in the meantime. Because I'm impatient.
After that I took it into my finishing room to do the first coat of shellac. It added a nice richness to the walnut, and a slight amber to the maple. The next day I knocked down the grain that raised with some 220 grit sandpaper, and did four more coats. It got super shiny, but it won't stay that way. I gave it another day, smoothed it out with some 400 grit sandpaper, then put on some furniture wax with 0000 steel wool. I love the nice satin sheen that gives it. Between the shellac and the wax, it's smoother than a babies butt. I wish you could feel it yourself.
Naturally my best audience loves it.
I am marginally unhappy with how uneven the shellac went on. I started off using an applicator I'd seen repeatedly in videos, which was just a bunch of cotton balls wrapped in linen. But I think I need to invest in better linen for it, or research something, because it started shedding lint into the finish. Then I switched to a brush that worked pretty well, but the brush strokes were super visible, even after sanding and waxing. I think my primary problem, with both methods, was using too thick a cut of shellac. I should have guessed. I painted Battletech miniatures once upon a time. The first rule is always thin your paints. I think on the next one I'll try thinning it by 50% or even 100%.
That said, I'm super happy with how flat all my glue ups were this time! My workbench has a slight twist, which then imparts a slight twist on everything I assemble on it. But I used some winding sticks on top of the pipe clamps I took out for the glue ups. Turned out all I needed was to put a 1/16" shim under the foot of one clamp, and presto, almost no more twist.
Side note, the one thing I hate about woodworking, is every time I google a problem I'm having, I end up on a forum where someone else asked my exact same question. "Awesome!" you might think, but no. The responses are three pages of people telling them to do something else entirely. Use different tools, use different finish, build the thing completely different, etc, etc. Eventually someone provides the actual, often simple, answer to the question. So it was when I was attempting to figure out my shellac woes. Pages and pages and pages of people saying to use more or less anything but shellac. Lacquer, poly, oil, you name it. Finally one guy saying you need to thin it. Thank you one guy.
That is a really excellent outcome! I like the 1/8" strip idea; it really ads definition to the shape. Good choices all around here. Also mad jealous of your lumber yard; I only have access to good selections and prices on red and white oak or hyper rare weird tropical woods; maple walnut and cherry are way overpriced where I am.
Re. Miter angles:
I made 45 degree vertical and horizontal shooting boards and creep up to the line with a hand plane; results in a prefect, repeatable result every time; and it's very satisfying.
RE. Shellac:
I strongly recommend mixing your own. Shellac flakes have a shelf live much longer than yours, no more bad cans. I like to mix a supper light first coat of shellac, almost treating it like a sealer instead of a finish; then I'll do coats of with increasing amounts of shellac to denat until I'm at the level of coated-in-glass I like.
Yeah, this is the last store bought can I'm going to use. When I need more I'll mix my own. It definitely seems like the superior choice for all the reasons you mentioned.
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The accents and wax coat really added a lot, here. Nice job in general.
People tend to downplay shellac these days for anything deeper than spray-on solutions, but it does give a very distinct character that's hard to get elsewhere. It kinda feels like walnut sapwood, where you can do some fantastic things that everyone ignores because there's a 'standard' options nearby.
I will caution, if you've not heard it already, that shellac is extremely picky about thinners. You don't just want high-purity alcohol, but fairly fresh high-purity alcohols; even small amounts of water can cause splotchiness. I've heard of people going to the extent of buying Everclear or even laboratory-grade alcohols, but I've gotten better (if not great results) from popping open a fresh container of 99%+ isoprophyl alcohol with each project than from the hardware-store grade denatured alcohol unknown purity stuff.
You can run shellac (and almost anything) through a spray system, ranging from an airbrush (at the smallest scale) to a HVLP or airless sprayer (at the largest), if you're having too much of a pain keeping brush strokes down after thinning. Do have to be aggressive with thinner (I've gone >100% thinner) to have it flow well with a lower-psi airbrush. It will dry fast. Do have to clean out the sprayer, but tbh I find it easier cleaning out shellac than enamel paints or any type of stain.
I was just going to use denatured alcohol, as that's what I'd seen or heard of people using. Guess it won't hurt to try a test piece first. Worst case I sand the whole thing down again and start over.
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I see you're brave enough to use c-clamps right on the face of the chessboard with no protection. I always use scrap wood to avoid leaving o-marks on the finished piece.
Not brave, just stupid.
I've actually never had a problem with them leaving a mark. But then again I'm not cranking them. When I'm using them to keep a glue up level, I tighten them as little as I can get away with. Then I take them off after 5-10 minutes when the glue has dried enough.
Probably helps that these are hardwoods, and I've planed them to the exact same thickness.
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