I repainted a large hutch and it looked great. But as always - it's all in the prep.

 

My recommendation? Spend a little bit more and get a sprayer that can better spray unthinned paints. The cheaper ones (<$100) don't do a good job unless you really thin the paint and even then they don't work all that well. I bought the Wagner Flexio 4300 after doing some research and it was $180 so not a ton more but apparently has a lot more power. (disclaimer as I haven't used it yet lol)

For paint, Sherwin Williams Emerald for furniture and cabinets. It's a harder enamel paint more for that purpose. Definitely sand down your project, fill in any defects with wood putty, sand it again, clean up dust, and hit with primer before painting. I just use whatever decent primer from Home Depot, I want to say it's a Killz primer, vs the Sherwin Williams one just due to price. The SW primer was like $97 while the Killz was $25.

 

Hijack away, always down to have people ask questions on whatever.

 

Great tips!

Regarding the sprayer, is there a certain power level to look for so that it can be capable of spraying un-thinned paints?

Also, I assume these sprayers are plugged into the wall, not cordless. Correct?

 

I can't answer the power level question with an exact value but generally the $125+ range will probably be fine. My research led me to the mid range Wagners and Gracos being solid options. Other thing to look for is one that offers multiple tips and configurations for spraying whether you're going to do a chair or a wall. Make sure you also get some paint strainers (required) for filling the sprayer container and some liner bags (optional) for easier cleanup.

Yes, they are wall powered. They do make battery ones but they are $$$.

 

Quick update on office stuff. Still haven't installed those cabinets yet, they are just sitting in my storage area and probably will continue to do so for the time being lol. Instead I got the floating shelves mounted up and the speaker wires run through the wall, you can't see them in the pics but trust me lol. The plan is to have the paper printer in the cabinet and the 3D printer sitting on the counter top.



Peep that grain wrappage. Also I'm just now seeing whatever flaw is in the finish from this picture...I will have to fix that ASAP because it cannot be unseen.

 

New project kickoff. Hoping to wrap this up over my holiday break but we all know how that goes lol. This one is going to be a Parsons style sofa table made out of white oak. Just made the lumber run this afternoon, again thankful for truck life lol, and got a bit of prep work done ahead of tomorrow.

This slab will become the one piece top. I'm going to rip off the live edges and have it be a square. I honestly think the live edge fad is over haha.



These thinner pieces will become the long and short stretchers while the thicker pieces will become the legs. I started the epoxy fill process to fill in some of the defects in the boards. The epoxy will be on the back side of the piece and not visible but I wanted to make sure it all got stabilized properly.



Close up of epoxy fill. I tinted the epoxy with some brown pigment to give it some color.



Did the same with the leg boards. The big knots will get hidden in the glue up so not super concerned with those but, again, wanted to stabilize the board and make sure nothing weird was going to happen during milling.



Plan for tomorrow is to get the pieces rough cut and milled along with getting the leg blanks glued up. If there's time, I'll also final cut and sand the stretcher pieces. I'm still noodling about a small change to the leg design though so won't progress to finishing that until I get that figured out.

 

Looking forward to this project. I really need to build a sofa/console table once the garage is finished. I have been putting off building mine for years.

 

Quick update before I head down to the shop to work on this some more. Got two clean edges (god bless the track saw) and round 1 of epoxy fill done on the slab top. There were a number of cracks and bug holes that needed to be filled. If any of you do something like this, just take the advice to make sure none of the holes go all the way through before you fill them with epoxy...don't ask how I know. Since this pic was taken I also did round 2 of the fill on the other side of the slab but both sides will need a top off before finishing. This white oak is heavy AF though, definitely a workout moving it around.



While the epoxy was drying, I cut all the table base components to final length and width as well as getting a rough sanding with 80 grit and the domino mortises (that I did after I took this picture) cut in. I'm dreading the amount of sanding I have to do to get these things ready to glue up which is what I'm planning on doing this morning lol.



Here's a dry fit of the table base. I need to sand all the parts to final grit (220) before I can start gluing this thing together and getting the top fit up properly...which will be the hardest part of this whole thing.

 

Looking good. Love the grain pattern of the legs.

Did you glue the top to your work table

 

Lol, thankfully not. I had the piece propped up on some pucks so I saw that it was dripping. Got it all wiped up quick and slid in a drop cloth before anything dried so all good.

 

Base is done and glued up. Here's the final assembly in clamps. The middle stretcher isn't there in this pic but added shortly after.



This is the bottom of the slab after the second round of epoxy fill and sanded smooth. This is still 80 grit so pretty rough, it'll clean up more as I go higher in grit. There are a few micro pits to fill in with some CA glue but that will happen later on.



And here's the middle stretcher installed. That's a tight fit (that's what she said).



Next up is to fit the top to the base, I'll start working on that this evening once the glue on the base dries. Once that's done, I have a metric fuck ton of sanding to do on the top before going to finishing. I'll get to bust out the big boi sander for that, don't get to use it all that often. At least the base is fully sanded, will just need some small cleanup before finish.

 

I love those pipe clamps. Still, the only large size clamps I currently own. Great idea with the couplers. Never thought of that to make them even larger and not have to store the pipe sections.

 

Yup, love pipe clamps lol. I keep these at 2ft lengths most of the time and then just have a few 6ft extensions sitting in storage when I need them. I don't have frequent need for 8ft clamps so no reason to keep them that way all the time. Only thing I hate about pipe clamps are the black marks they always leave on wood when using them.

I did snag some parallel clamps from Harbor Freight over xmas that will start going into my rotation soon, excited to use those.

 

I made my one and only set at 4ft when I first got them to build my outdoor TV cabinet side panels. I really should get some shorter pipe sections as I have used them on things only 2ft in size and it is a bit unwieldy.

I should eventually get some parallel clamps. Didn't know Harbor Freight makes some now.

 

Yup, the HF ones are actually pretty good from what I can tell. Definitely so for the price, would recommend. I have pretty much all HF clamps at this point. They work well, are cheap, and have the warranty in case something breaks so there's really nothing to lose with it. The real brand name ones are big money that I'm not going to spend for some clamps.

 

I usually use packing tape on the wood faces where ever the pipe clamps touch. It also mades glue cleanup way easier if any drips/runs.

 

^ I'd use painting tape, not packing tape...

I recently got (like over the weekend) a set of pipe clamp protectors that prevent it from happening. Easy to use and I don't have to tape stuff. I'll post a pic later on. I bought these but it would be pretty easy to 3D print them too.

 

Packing tape usually peels off better than painters tape in my experience. The glue also wipes right off vs soaking in.

Def interested in the protectors though.

 

Ah shit, I forgot to take a pic of these, will do that tonight.

Quick progress update, we're nearing the end! First step was to cut the notches into the top for accepting the legs. I definitely forgot to take pics of this, furthering the fact that I'd be a terrible influencer, but you can see the notches in the second pic below. I put the top upside down on the bench and then the base upside down on top to position it where I wanted. Then I used a 1/8" shim to mark some clearance lines around all the legs in the exact spot they needed to go. These shims are cheap and invaluable, I'll grab a pic of these tonight too as you should all grab a set from Bezos. I then rough cut all the notches using a jig saw and then stuck down some straight pieces of plywood with double sided tape aligning with my marks to use as a template before finish cutting them with a router and template bit. Turned out awesome, wish I would have grabbed pics.

Next step was to get the legs to sit flush with the top. I intentionally left these long so I could line it up perfectly after fitting the top in place. I made a quick router jig to do this with a piece of scrap pine with a hole drilled in it, cut the hole in half for where the bit would go through and then stuck my router to it with some double sided tape. This is what the jig looked like.



I then set the jig on the table top and plunged the bit to be ever so slightly above the surface of the table top and then pushed it into the part of the leg that was extending upwards for the bit to clear it flush with the table top. This worked shockingly well...though it made a YUUUUGE mess. Did this on all 4 corners, here's a pic in progress to see what I mean.



Then it was back on the bench for final cleanup and finishing for the base!



I used Osmo Polyx again, as always, but with a small white tint in it to avoid yellowing the wood as oil based finishes do. I use this all the time for oak, ash, elm, maple, etc anything I don't want to change color. I use the normal oil on things like walnut and cherry where the warmth needs to come through.



And first coat applied! I finished this pretty late last night so will come back tonight and give it a second coat before moving on to doing the top.



This is what the epoxy fill looks like with the sanding complete and finish applied.



And lastly, completely unrelated, but I took a few mins to organize my media center. 3D printed a bunch of brackets (which are $$$$$$ to buy) to attach zip ties too and also a wall mount for my router to sit in. I love having a printer around, it's so fucking useful all the time. I know this is no @CCColtsicehockey work but it'll do for me.

 

A 3D printer is near the top of my wishlist.

 

Do it, they are beyond useful. Especially so if you get one of the fast ones. Don't buy a slow one, you'll never use it.

 

I see the Creality Ender & I think Bambu recommended a lot.
Analysis paralysis sometimes.
That & having a suitable place to put it, have read some filament puts out some pretty noxious fumes.

 

The table is coming along great. Can't wait to see it finished. Never knew about using something with a tint of white to prevent the yellowing. Good to know.

Did you used to have fiber and then switched to cable? We need to get you over to some Ubiquiti equipment

 

This is at the top of my list of next purchases with the primary initial focus on tool organization.

 

We're swapping our older Ubiquiti APs for Sonicwall. Might try to snag the old ones to mesh my house better.

 

I had a Creality Ender, it's a slow one and one that requires a lot of tinkering to get it to work well, do not recommend. I sold it and bought a Bambu Labs and absolutely love it, would recommend.

No, our house is wired for fiber from the outside to this center but we don't actually have it hooked up as we still use cable. I tried to get on the fiber network but the provider was really shitty to work with, even more so than Xfinity that we have now, so I just let it go. We get plenty of speed out of cable so we're leaving it.

I don't even know what Ubiquiti is... This sort of thing is so far beyond my expertise, I just learn from you guys.

I use it a lot for that but also for general household stuff. For example, printed a bunch of soap dishes for our bathrooms and a salt dish for margs.

 

Thanks, I'll have to look at the Bambu options. Which do you have?


They're just now running fiber in our neighborhood. We'll be making the switch as soon as it's turned up.
We have copper right now, but it's got a pretty big disparity between down/up speed. We have 600d/20u and while it's typically stable enough to hold my work VPN connection, it randomly drops for hours at a time.
Fiber should be closer to symmetrical, and more stable/consistent, I hope. And for the same price.

 

Bambu Labs is what everyone on Garage Journal seems to rave about as well. Although, there was a bit of a scare last week where it came out they were going to stop allowing 3d party slicers to be used. They came out with an official release that should stop the concern if they hold true to what they say. If they don't they are creating a closed eco system which would be awful.

Oh ok so the builder was just smart and prewired even for fiber. Nice. Worse that Xfinity is really hard to imagine having grown up in the awful service that was Comast before Xfinity. Download speeds are fine with cable but once you experience accessing any cameras you have live with fiber you can't go back. The upload speeds are really what fiber is all about.

We will have to teach you about Ubiquiti and why you need to spend a couple hundred to a thousand on your home network

 

Sam knows all about J E E P life. This time home networking instead of off-road.

 

I have the P1S but if you just want to get started, you could get the A1 and do just fine. Only thing you couldn't do is printing more exotic materials.

 

Yeah, I was looking at the models.
The A1 handling 4 filaments is a nice bonus over some of the other starter printers.
The P1S looks like a buy once/cry once option. Not sure I'd need 16 filament capability though, but that's a neat perk.

 

I don't have the AMS as I didn't see a ton of value for me to do the multicolor printing thing. I just have a spool on the back of the machine that I manually change if needed. I just use it for basic organization and stuff so I primarily print in gray or black anyway.

 

I want AMS for when I start doing tool organization. The gridfinity bins, black bottom, different color upper, and then another color for the label location. One color label block for metric things and one color label block for standard things.

 

Bambu is the way to go. The quality, time to print, and ease of use is a perfect home use printer. We are looking at adding a couple to pair with our Markforged Onyx printer, here at work. The quality alone is what we need and deem acceptable for sample products to send to customers. I want one for home use to tinker around with, with the kids. Looking at the P1S.

 

The AMS is cool but please note that it wastes an absolute shit ton of material with color changes. Depending on the print it may use more material to purge the nozzle than actually print it. You're better off getting a label maker with different colored label tape instead lol.

I'm doing gridfinity for my junk drawer right now, I'll snag some pics when I get home. Just be aware that it takes a while to build up these parts. You can only print one big grid square at a time and 3-4 bins depending on size at a time.

P1S is solid, that's what I have. I was originally going to get the P1P because I wanted a core XY printer but the cost jump from P to S isn't that much so I just went for it.

We have a few big boi Stratasys printers at work that make the Bambu ones look like toys but they are very expensive to buy, run, and maintain.

 

I'll be watching the Bambu for a sale, I guess.
The upcharge from the P1P to S is so minimal, that I'd likely spring for the S.

 

We had a Nexa3D Xip Pro Resin printer ordered and then our vendor emailed and said Nexa was going out of business and would provide no support after purchase. We pulled out of that deal for $75k worth of printers, washers, ovens. I was really looking forward to using that one.

 

We have the Stratasys Objet and it's awesome, would recommend.

 

I get there is added waste but I honestly can't stand the look of the white lables even in those pictures. I want to do clear lable with white print over a color printed section. I would love to actually do color printed leters on each bit but I don't want to commit that much to not being able to repurpose the bins. Maybe for socket and ratchet holders and such but not for other bin organization. Wouldn't be the first time I overspent on aesthetics.