Spray Finishing

Submitted by Clay Dowling on Mon, 08/06/2012 - 21:37

I've been experimenting with spray finishing and joint finishing. The bad news is that trimming up case joinery still sucks. I have to plane end grain immediately surrounding by face grain. And I have to do it without gouging up the face grain or blowing out the grain at the end of the board. So far I suck at it. I need to prevent corners from gouging, and the blade from chattering.

The normal tool for doing these end-grain trimming is a block plane. Unfortunately block planes don't usually have heavy blades, and because it's a bevel-up plane, there's no chip breaker to stiffen the blade. So I'm going to have to build a lot of casework corners (read dovetails, because they're the fastest to cut). I need to try some different blade geometry. I have a Japanese smoothing plane, which is only slightly larger than a block plane, but has a blade about three times as thick, and a slightly curved edge. It's also easier to secure work for use with a Japanese plane, because it works by pulling the plane toward you.

The good news was in my spray finishing. I messed up my flow rate on the first pass with the stain, but after I sanded that out, spray toner (stain and finish mixed) gave a really nice look. I was able to spray a single layer of clear coat as well, and found it to be exceedingly nice. I wish my surface prep underneath it had been up to the quality of the finish.

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Comments

Clay Dowling

Tue, 08/07/2012 - 08:21

I didn't mention that the final product is the laptop stand I meant to make two weeks ago, when I wound up building my football bat. While there are many things about the laptop stand I don't like, it's actualy laptop stand properties are excellent. Now my screen is at eye level. I need to rig up a mechanism underneath to neatly store my USB hub and manage cables.

The downside here is that I've got a raking light at my desk, and coupled with the gloss finish, I can really see how badly the final surfacing was after trimming. The more I think about it the more I think I need to beef up one of the No. 3 planes sitting in my cabinet.

romanweel's picture

romanweel

Sun, 02/03/2013 - 11:57

I'd love to see the stand and process photos, if you have them.

Clay Dowling

Tue, 02/12/2013 - 09:53

I didn't get any pics. Right now the laptop stand is out of commission as well, because the old Macbook Pro bit the dust, and the new Dell needs a bigger stand. I'm going to try a cantilevered design, and to give it a slender look I'll have to make it out of hardwood. Staining hardwood makes me twitch.

I will try to get lots of pictures of the stand construction in process though. The laptop stand will be a prototype for the desk I'm going to build for my daughter. I don't know if it will be a design that the average hobbyist can build though. The cantilevered joints need a lot of long grain to long grain glue surface for strength (screws won't cut it), which means a bridle joint or a finger joint. Bridle joints look easy in principal, but from experience I know that they's actually kind of fussy to cut, and you'll probably need a saw that isn't sold at the home center.