What's a French Cleat?

Don't worry folks, I'm still here! I've been busy the last couple of weeks as I prepared to separate from the military. I've still been working in the garage, focusing on my cutting boards, but today I wanted to talk about a project I'm working on for my neighbors. It's called a floating mantel. And don't worry, it's not magic. 

So what's a floating mantel? Essentially it's just a way of mounting the mantel without externally visible brackets or supports. It looks like the mantel is just a solid beam coming out of the wall or "floating". Now to the question in the title of this post. What is a french cleat? When you look at the picture below you'll see one half of the cleat attached to the top board of the mantel with a Kregg joiner. The cleat itself is just one solid piece of wood, in this case a 1x10 that I cut down the middle lengthwise at a 45 degree angle. One side of that board goes on the mantel, and the other side goes on the wall that you want to mount the mantel too. When you're ready to mount the mantel, you simply slide the cleat on the mantel over the wall mounted side, and you end up with a nice perfectly flush surface! 

I'll admit, I didn't know what a French cleat was until my neighbors asked me to build one for them... As it turns out (thankfully for me) it's a very simple and elegant way of mounting something to a wall. I opted to use a Kregg joiner with wood glue to make sure the mantels I'm building are very strong and can support plenty of weight without fear of bending or breaking. 

The rest of the mantel is essentially a box. Albeit a slightly more complicated version of a box because the idea is to make the mantel look like one solid piece of wood. I do that by cutting 45 degree miters around the edges (you can see that in the above picture). The top of the mantel, the face (the vertical piece on the front) and the end caps all have a 45 degree miter and in theory would line up nice and flush. Here's where I encountered a challenge. I don't have a miter saw. 

I'll digress for a moment. When you're using a table saw it's very difficult to run a long piece of wood across the saw. It's difficult to control and one little slip up means your whole cut is ruined! That's where a miter saw comes into play. Cutting the 45 degree edges into the ends of the wood is immensely easier with a miter saw. You simply set your wood on a stable surface and the saw does the rest! Like I said earlier... I don't have a miter saw (yet). I had to use a couple of extra surfaces to help guide the wood along the table saw and I really had to focus on making as straight a cut as possible. For the most part it worked out pretty well. The seams didn't line up just perfectly, but they were pretty dang close. 

 

The pictures above show various stages of assembly, first putting the face on the board, and then the end caps. I've said it before and I'll say it again. There's a tool for every job! And for this job I got a new tool... an 18 gauge pin nailer. It uses compressed air to drive various sized nails which are very small into the wood. Really it's purpose in this project was just to tack the 45 degree surfaces together and in conjunction with some clamps, make the edges as invisible as possible. I think it turned out pretty well, and with some sanding the edges all but disappeared. 

Sorry for the messy garage in the pictures, but hopefully you can see that after I did the finish sanding with 400 grit sand paper and then putting the first coat of stain on the wood, it really turned into a nice finished product. It looks like a solid piece of semi aged wood! 

Now I just have to finish it's identical twin (you can see the edges of it in the pictures above). Please let me know what you think! This is my first try at making a mantel and I personally think it turned out pretty great! Hopefully my neighbors think so as well! 

Updates from the Shop!

It's been a while since I posted a new blog. I've been pretty busy crafting a new clock and two new cutting boards. The business is going pretty well so far. I've sold 1 clock and (as of today) 8 cutting boards! Now I'll admit that I still have a ways to go before this business is profitable. But it's looking good so far! 

Now onto some updates... 

First, the clock.

 

I think all in all it came out pretty well. I wanted it to look like it had been hanging up on a wall for years. I still need to sand a little bit off of the polyurethane, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out!

Next, my newest cutting boards... 

This one turned out pretty neat looking. The Purple Heart wood is such a cool color and such a unique wood. Especially once I turned it on the end grain. 

Here's the one I finished up today. Another really pretty end product. With this one I used African Mahoganey and African Padouk. Another beautiful end product. Especially with the Padouk. I really loved the way this one turned out too. I also did a few videos explaining how I made it on my Facebook page Nick's Woodworking Designs. 

Well that's all I've got today, sorry it's not fully of my usual details. But I've got more work to do! Until next time! 

My Supplies....

Today's post is going to be about the buisness aspect of my woodworking. As most of you probably know by now, I'm working hard to turn my woodworking into a business. I'm working on a couple of clocks, a shadow box, and (obviously) a lot of end grain cutting boards! I really love working in my garage, but I'm also enjoying the business aspect. Making a sale (I've only had a few, and they've been with people I know...) is an awesome feeling. Knowing that someone out there likes what you're doing, and they are willing to shell out their hard earned dollars to buy it...that's a humbling experience for me. It's also a motivation. Motivation to make the best product I can make. I research better techniques, materials, skills etc. I want my customers to be extremely happy with the product I deliver! 

My only issue now is that my sales are dependent heavily on face to face enteractions. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to make a sale no matter what! But I realize that the long term efficacy of my business relys heavily on reaching an audience out there in the trons! So my issue is this... Tomorros I run out of materials.... And I can't buy more unless I sell at least one more piece of my inventory! SO! Here comes the shameless plug.... I've got four cutting boards for sale, one of which I'll put the finishing touches on tomorrow. 

And here they are....

 This one isn't finished yet! More to come!                             

These can be found on my etsy page, which can be found on my main page. Please feel free to message me. We can discuss pricing, shipping costs, etc. I'm pretty flexible :) Look forward to hearing from you!                                                   

Where did this Come From!?

A lot of people have been asking me lately, why woodworking? How did you get into this? Why cutting boards? Amongst these questions and many others I wanted to give everyone a little insight as to why I'm trying to "monetize" my woodworking.

Without getting into to much detail, I'm on the cusp of leaving the job I've had for most of my adult life (military). And for most of my adult life I've enjoyed doing one thing more than most (besides spending time with my beautiful wife and family); flying! I've been a pilot for the better part of ten years and now you're probably wondering what flying has to do with woodworking? Well as a pilot, I seek out jobs as a pilot, because, like the age old adage, "it's not work if you love what you're doing".

Now that I'm nearing the end of my time in the military I've been working towards getting a job, as we all do! I'm fortunate in that I found a job as a pilot and I'm very excited to start the next chapter of my life. However, this next chapter comes with a some costs...mostly monetary if I'm honest. But in the long run it's going to be a great career that will afford me and my family a lot of wonderful options in the future. But this monetary cut has been weighing on me. And this stress got me to thinking about other ways I could supplement my income, while still doing something I really love, and I'm really passionate about....

Here's where woodworking comes into play! I've been restoring and building things out of wood for a while now, and like I said in one of my earliest posts, I have a passion for it. I enjoy creating something from my mind, imagination, and passion. And I take a lot of pride in what I do. Now this led me to want to learn more about my chosen hobby, which lead me to Facebook pages about woodworking.

One day I'm looking at Facebook and I see a video post from one of the woodworking pages I follow, and it's about CUTTING BOARDS. Yep, I saw someone else make this really cool looking end grain cutting board. I did some more research and I found that these cutting boards were all over the place and seemed to be pretty popular. Well I decided at that point that maybe I could create my own unique designs, and maybe, just maybe, someone would actually want to buy one from me. It's a similar story for clocks as well. Although I haven't made any recently, just today I started two, and I expect to finish them this week. I'll post about those tomorrow, so stay tuned for that!

Back to this post. I set a modest goal for myself, I want to bring in just a little bit of extra money each month, and I want to do it by doing something I really enjoy doing.

So there ya go folks! I've had a couple of sales, and I hope I have many more in the future!

Expanding Operations!

It's been a few days since I posted. So I just wanted to bring everyone up to speed on my most recent projects. I'm sticking with the cutting boards for right now. I broke down and added a jointer to my repertoire, which has really helped improved the speed and quality of my products. I had some exciting news as well, I sold a cutting board! No big deal :). In all seriousness, that sale enabled me to turn around and invest in some new hardwoods to make larger cutting boards. And by larger I mean at least double the size of the next biggest one I had made up to this point. 

The first one I made from Ash and Peruvian Walnut. I kept it pretty simple with this design, slight checkboard or zipper pattern, .25 inch round over on the top, and a couple of finger slots for gripping at the bottom. Simplicity turned out to be a great answer because this cutting board turned out beautiful. 

 After the seasoning process. Underside view.  Before I began the seasoning process. The next one I did featured a little more variety in my wood selection. I used Jatoba, Red Oak, and Poplar. I also went for a little book matched design as well. This one is my largest yet, coming in at 22.25 inches long, 11 inches wide, and 1.5 inches deep. I'll probably cap out at this size because this thing is a beast!!! Unless of course someone wants to custom order a larger one haha. This one was also a pretty simple striped design, which I think turned out well. It's pretty heavy as cutting boards go, that's largely due to the Jatoba, which is a very dense hardwood. Reading up on Jatoba I read that it was hard to glue, so I made sure to focus on covering every edge with my food grade (FDA approved) glue, and I made sure to let it sit for at least 12 hours. The end result turned out really well. I stuck with the .25 inch round over and the finger grooves on the base as well. Sometimes simpler is better! 

 Underside view. Topside, highlighting the book matching.  Another shot of the before and after seasoning. Well that's all I've got for today folks! I hope you like my cutting boards. As always, they are on sale on my Etsy page at: https://www.etsy.com/shop/NicksWoodworkDesigns?ref=hdr. If you're really in love with one, just send me a message on their and we can talk details! I'm also happy to take custom orders, again, just message me and we can talk about what you want! This week I'm going to focus on expanding my handmade wall clocks as well as shadow box. Believe me, I will be making MANY more cutting boards! Keep an eye out for more posts in the near future!