Walnut Entry Table

For my final project in my summer furniture class I built an entry table with storage space for shoes. It has a solid walnut frame and maple plywood for the interior. The finish is a semi-gloss polyurethane, but I'm going to strip the front, top, and sides and apply tongue oil instead. Walnut more than most woods looks much nicer with an oil finish.

It measures 36" high, 48" long, and 16" deep. The shoe cubbies are 10 1/2" wide; 15" deep; and they range in height: 4" for flats and sandals, 6", 8", and 10" for winter boots. The concept was to build something that had a sense of permanence. That is, literal heft and construction techniques that would last. If you put a gouge in solid wood it just reveals more wood.

Axonometric drawings.

Exploded axonometric view.

Rendered exploded axon.

Parts list.

I modeled our entryway and made this rendering using Rhino and Maxwell Render.

These are the process photos. It took me two and a half to three weeks (6-7 days a week at roughly 12 hour days) from start to finish. The actual construction was done in the first two weeks. Finishing is mostly just being patient. I've since decided to strip the walnut of the polyurethane finish and instead use tongue oil.

The two 10' long, 9" wide, 1 3/4" thick walnut boards cut into 1/3's to make joining easier.

Jointing - making two perpendicular planes square so that the remaining planes can be squared.

Using the table saw to get the rest square. Walnut is one of the best woods to work with.

This is called a domino machine by Festool. It makes a floating mortise and tenon joint. What's that? Basically a squared dowel. It allows the wood to shrink, swell, and move without damaging itself. It also allows the maker to waste less wood because everything lines up perfectly. The resultant piece is also much stronger.

Creating the mortises for the oak tenons and wood glue.

Gluing.

Once gluing is done it's off to the planar to make everything uniformly thick.

I kept the boards in order so that the grain pattern will follow around the piece. It sounds simple but it was surprisingly difficult to keep it all in order.

This is the interior shelving for the shoes. It's 3/4" maple plywood.

Humidity was a huge problem...

The plywood grew by a 1/16".

This is the jig to make the finger joints. You adjust the width of them by moving the back piece of wood. The difference between perfection and utter failure is within the width of a single line of lead (look at the left side bottom of the photo). All those pieces are tests.

Routing out for the shelves and strips for the walnut within walnut inlays.

This is the walnut routed on three sides for the shelves, the walnut strip to hide the plys, and the walnut inlay on the exterior.

More RH problems... I had to hand file each side of all the fingers, but it's better than fighting it during assembly.

This is the second jig I built to put the frame together. The first one was too weak and this one was too. If I built it again it'd be made of 2x8's and lag bolts.

This is all done to ensure that everything is square. Lots of planning beforehand. If you screw up here you just bought yourself some expensive firewood.

To flatten the finger joints I made a jig (see a pattern here?) that would elevate the router. It was incredibly sensitive. The removal of 1/64" of an inch is very visible and it's easy to just push the jig down a little harder and do just that.

Putting polyurethane on the maple ply. It ended up with 4 or 5 coats.

The inlays.

Japanese sawing off the excess for a flush finish.

Dominoed backing - I used 1/2" maple ply. I hate when you buy something from IKEA or whatever and the backing is 1/8" MDF/cardboard veneer junk.

First coat of the polyurethane. I should have used gloss for the first several coats THEN semi-gloss. Regardless, I'm stripping it soon and replacing it with tongue oil.

Using a micrometer and planar to get the right thickness. I made it five thousands (0.005") over so that it would compress in the joints.

I didn't want to use nails and I also wanted the pieces to be solid so I routed out the furring strips to create an egg-crate joint wherever they intersect.

The butt (back).

Here you can see the egg-crate joint and the dominos. The lack of steel means it will last forever as long as it's not abused too much. Wood on wood joints instead of steel means everything expands and contracts at roughly the same rates as the temperature and humidity changes.

The live-edge corner.

Using a block plane to get everything nice and flat. I also had to tape off the inside so I could apply the finish without disturbing the already applied finish on the maple.

Crown Hall was empty so I used it as a big photo studio.

The view in my large format.

This was the digital test photo...

... and the 4x5 film negative. Shooting in Mies's masterpiece - empty none the less - is quite the perk of going to IIT.

Modern furniture + neo-georgian architecture = kind of awkward. Guess I'll have to design a house to put my furniture in.

Furniture Class

Over the summer I took a woodworking class (at IIT) with Frank Flury. He's been at my school/in the US for about ten years and he runs a design build studio. Here was his last project which he and his class won an AIA award for. It's beautiful. Needless to say he's pretty okay at woodworking and building in general.

This walnut box with maple splines was built in 2 days.

The dimensions are: 7" (17.5 cm) wide, 9.5" (24 cm) long, 6" (15 cm) tall, and the walnut is 1/2" (1.3 cm) thick.

These are just some scraps from wood world. It cost less than $10.

It's hard to overstate how easy it is to screw up in woodworking. One wrong cut and you have to start over and lose money. Marking everything out, taking your time, not cutting corners (no pun intended), and staying organized are the only way to screw up less.

I had to buy one of these. It's a digital angle finder. If only I knew these existed when I was pipe fitting/building concrete plants.

A good glue joint is actually stronger than the natural bond between wood fibers.

This is the spline jig.

In this application the spline doesn't add too much strength - you really need thicker boards to have a big effect. The idea is to add more gluing surface and in another direction.

The maple splines are cut off with a japanese saw and the box was sanded and finished with teak oil. After a few coats of oil I alternated between #0000 steel wool and teak oil. The result is a buttery smooth finish. The lid is a little warped but oddly it acts as a kind of spring to keep the action of the lid semi-tight.

This is actually the first thing we built. It's a somewhat simple chair. It's called an Ulmer-Hocker Stool and was designed by Max Bill. It's red oak with finger jointed tops and sides, dominoed feet, and a polyurethane finish. The original dimensions are 40 cm x 28.5 cm x 45 cm and was made of beech and spruce.

The dimensions are: 15.5" (39 cm) wide, 11.5 (29 cm) deep, 19" (48 cm) tall, and the oak is 5/8" (1.7 cm) thick.

Changes in Hours at Chicago Public Schools

My wife works for CPS and just had her first day back yesterday. Long story short, at some point in the day the head of the CPS teachers union gathered all the psychologists, speech language therapists, etc. into a room, shut the doors, and told everyone that they should be outraged that their workday and number of days worked will be going up while wages will only go up 2%. Never mind the failing schools - people needs to get paid. So let's break that down:

Currently:
Average salary is $68,200 (2009)(starting salaries are nice too)
Days worked per year 170 (176 is required in IL but CPS gets special permission)
The work day is from 8:30-2:45 so 6.25 hours
1062.5 hours/year (53% of a 40 hour a week job with 2 weeks vacation)
$68,200/1062.5 hours = $64.19/hour

Rahm Emanuel's Changes:
The union turned down a 2% increase after they were told they would get a 4% increase, so average salary would be (by 2009 numbers) about $69,600
Days worked is going to 180
Work day will now be 7.75 hours
1395 hours/year (70% of a 40 hour a week job with 2 weeks vacation)
$69,600/1395 hours = $52.77/hour

I understand that working more and not really getting paid much more is frustrating, but my wife always has to clock out, lest she be reprimanded by union workers, at the end of the day then stay and do her work. I don't know... $53 an hour plus benefits and summers off with job security sounds fairly okay to me. It reminds me of a quote by Michelle Rhee at the end of Waiting for Superman where she says something similar to 'the amount of harm we visit on our children so that adults can be civil to one another is astonishing.'

Affordable Healthcare Act Explained

I hesitated to watch this since it ran about 9 minutes long but it was actually very good and informative.

Children at Play

My friend Joe sent this to me. It's easily one of the best articles I've read regarding our current economic, political, and societal morass. It was penned by GMO co-founder Jeremy Grantham.

If you give a damn it's worth reading.

If You Bemoan Federal Debt I Bemoan You

I am not an expert in economics. I have an undergraduate degree in it, but I'm not an expert. None the less the basic tenants of economics are being violated wholesale by our elected officials. This is part one of a basic overview of what is happening in the US right now. This is the simple stuff that if you don't understand you really shouldn't open your mouth about anything economics related. Sounds harsh? So are the consequences for saying stupid things. No one walks into a hospital and requests blood letting just as no one walks into congress and votes for reduced spending during a recession... oh wait.

What is disturbing is that our federal government is literally doing everything wrong that it can. I expect my friends and family who have never looked at an IS/LM curve or Keynesian multipliers to say ignorant things like "oh just let them default or whatever, we need to stop all this deficit spending," but for our government to act in a populist manner in this scenario is nothing short of insanity. It is wrong. It will hurt people. This is not an ethical debate. There are thousands of research papers, billions of data points, and hundreds of relevant historical examples to garner experience and guidance from. If you have a different opinion post the data because your slogan (big government is bad!) does not hold water.

Where to begin? Let's keep it basic. How much money does the US produce every year - or thought of as personal income - what is the US's salary? This is called GDP or GNP. Please read about it. It is important. Well the number is $14.1 trillion per year currently. That's 14,100 billions or 14.1 million millions.

How much is the federal government's revenue? That is, how much money does it collect in taxes? According to the CBO data (congressional budget office) it was about $2.2 trillion in 2010. That's $2,162 billion or 15% of all the money generated during a year in the US. Let's look at some data.

So how much is the deficit? It's there on the far right of 2010 above: $9 trillion. That's a lot of money and it's been growing, but why? Look at revenue on the far left in 1971 and then look at the next year and the next. See that? It goes up every year as the economy grows. Then look at 2001; it dips. Why? In 2001 and 2003 we had the Bush tax cuts. Revenue fell, nothing shocking here. After 2003 revenue continues to go up as usual until 2008 when Bush was still in office and our current mess started. Straight forward right? It usually is...

Aside: if our debt is $9 trillion and we produce over $14 trillion a year that's like the typical American who makes $32,000 (as of 2006) a year having a debt of $20,500 - sounds like a car loan (in 2006 the average cost of a car was $28,400 according the the government). Does having a car loan make you reckless, irresponsible, and broke?

Now let's look at how much the government is spending (outlays), that's the next column over. I made an Excel spreadsheet using the CBO data starting in 1990 because I'm lazy. You can see the formula I use and all the numbers. Look at the percentage change.

In the 90's federal government spending increases at about the rate of inflation. Then in 2000 spending ticks up and in 2002 it surges. Why? Well, wars are expensive. See how it's high in 1991 and 1992 when we blew up Iraq for the first time? Anyways, it jumps in 2008 and 2009 greatly because Obama is a socialist. Oh wait, no. The recession begins in Q2 2008 and lots of people are unemployed and now collect unemployment and depend on other social welfare programs. Which is what they are designed to do. That and there's the stimulus and bank bailouts in there. Then the stimulus mostly goes away in 2010 and outlays actually drops slightly.

So why is debt bad? Well, there is only so much money out there so whenever the government borrows it "crowds out" private investors and raises the cost of borrowing to some degree. Well, that does not matter right now because we are in a liquidity trap. What the hell is that? Basically, everyone is trying to pay down debt, save, and invest money. If everyone is saving then who is borrowing that saved money? When you put money in a bank or pay down a mortgage that money is lent back out again. If more people are saving than spending it makes it cheaper to borrow money because there's less demand for it. A liquidity trap is when common monetary policy (changing the federal funds rate) no longer has an effect. That is, lowering the interest rate does not spur more borrowing/growth. Well, the federal funds rate has been zero for a while.

So why else is debt bad? Because you have to pay interest on debt. What does the government pay in interest? They pay whatever investors are willing to lend them money at. That is, Treasury Bills. So what are the current rates?

Inflation adjusted rates - that is, the money investors receive after inflation, is currently negative on both 5 and 7 year treasury bills. At 10 years the government pays a "real" rate of 0.38% interest. This is not magic. There is almost nothing to invest in right now because there is so little demand and everything is so uncertain, and up until recently it was unthinkable that the US Federal Government would default on its debt. Hence, we are the safest debtors in the world and get the lowest interest rates. Let's see some data...

Look at the second to last column. Every year we pay more and more in interest until 2009. Then it drops and stays pretty low. Why? Because the federal government can pay almost nothing to acquire long term debt as explained above. Hell, people will pay them to acquire short and medium term debt (up to 7 years!).

Do we need to do something about the debt? Absolutely, but not in a depressed and now stagnant economy. So why do we need to reduce the deficit in a depressed economy? We don't. Borrowing is cheap. If I told you that you could take out a 10-year loan for 0.38% above inflation, try to make money with it, and then pay it back do you think you could? If your answer is no then keep your 9 to 5, otherwise welcome to America. Let's borrow more money so investors have something to do with all their cash that's sitting on the sidelines or in gold bars doing nothing. Let's build some bridges, fix some national parks, upgrade our research facilities, double NASA's funding, fix our schools, invest in cleaner energy, help the poor, and provide basic healthcare to all. It's an investment in our basic infrastructure and I bet the returns will be more than 0.38% over inflation.