(upbeat music) marc:now if you're going to embark on the journey of makinga john hall frame, you're going to want to be comfortable with making ebony plugs
fine woodworking magazine pdf, and honestly that could have been a whole 'nother article in and of itself so we thought this would be a great topic to do in the form of video to show you
exactly what you need todo to get them just right. now the ebony that i use typically comes in the form of a turning blank and most of the time it's covered in wax. so when i get it to the shop, i scrape off some of thewax and i joint 2 faces and then i take it over to the band saw and trim it into little strips. those strips are then drum sanded
to the proper thickness and then i can cut them down into these little sticks and each one of these corresponds to one of the pegs of the hall frame. of course, i have someextra material here as well. now the real trick with this, once you have them cut into these sticks, is how to pillow those ends. that's really the hardest part because
if you don't get that right, it's just going to kind of look funny. it's not going to look assmooth and clean as it could. so let me show you what i do. now the method i use is adapted from darrell peart's method. what i decided to do is leave out the first step and he builds a jig to go on a disc sander that allows you
to create the rough shape, basically your very first step. i just use a piece of 120grit sandpaper to do that. i suppose if you make a lot of this stuff and you do a lot of greene & greene, you're going to want to haveone of those jigs on hand. but if not, you know, this seems like a reasonable way to do it if it's a one-off project.
if you get darrell's book, i would really recommend that you do, it's very good, you'll see details on how to build that jig. for now, 120 grit paper on the bench is the way i'm going to do it. i start by basically holding the ebony stick like a pencil and i give sort of back and forth motions,
turn it 90 degrees and do the other end. now if you want, i havethese platin abrasives, mirka makes abrasives like this. it's basically a foam abrasive pad. i use those underneaththe sandpaper sometimes just to kind of give me a little bit of extra cushion and helpwith the rounding over. now what we're looking for, if you look very closely on here
you'll start to see yourscratch marks develop and you'll start tosee that you're leaving little chamfers on the ends. you don't really want that. you want it to be a smooth transition to make a nice littlehump all the way over. so that's what you're looking for, is your scratch pattern to be nice and even all the way across.
you also want to sitethis way along the tip to make sure that that lineis even all the way across so you don't work oneend more than the other. so this needs a little bit more work. so once it looks smooth and even, now we can go into a circular motion. what i'm doing is justbasically figure yourself as drawing a bunch ofcircles on a piece of paper, but notice that the angle is changing
as i draw those circles. so once you're satisfiedwith the overall shape, switch to the next grit. in my case, it's going to be 180 and you can use thecircular motions again. you could go back to the straight motions. whatever you're comfortable with. but always end on that circular motion. okay, now we're on 220.
okay, so now i'm going tomove up to an abrasive pad. this one is 500 grit. these surfaces are very, very helpful for creating that nice, soft,clean, pillowed look. 1000 grit. 2000 grit. and if you have it, 4000. now if you're so inclined, you could even take it over to a grinder
outfitted with a polishing wheel and buff that surface to a mirror shine. smooth as glass. i use this very simple cutting jig. it's a piece of plywood and a back fence that you basically rest the strip on. you could even use a pencil here to draw a line so you can cut them to the same length each and every time
and i've got a little kerf cut here that my saw blade fits into perfectly. and this is how i cut it. and the fine teeth ofthe saw blade are perfect because they won't reallytear out that ebony at all. and i trim it to bejust a little bit short of the depth of the hole. if you're brave, you could trim it so that it's exactly the depth
and that way you could bottom the peg out when you tap it into place. i never quite have thatmuch faith in myself that i'm going to get it perfect so i make it a little short. okay, and there is your ebony plug. now i like to cut my pegsjust a little bit oversized so in both dimensionsit's about a 64th over and that way when i put theactual peg into the hole
it kind of pushes rightup against those edges, wedges its way in there, and gives you a really nice tight fit. now in order to do that, we actually need to create a little bit of a wedge shape on thebottom part of that peg so that it can go in. otherwise, trying to squeeze this in, you'll just damage the wood grain.
so i just use a chisel and i go free hand, just be as careful as possible, and i take some nice little paring strokes on some sort of sacrificialsurface to trim it up. i'm going to show youusing a very large piece as an example so hopefully you'll be able to visualize it better than if i used my 1/4 inch piece, which is the one i'm actually using for this demo.
so with a nice sharp chisel, you just want to pushit up against the side and carefully remove somematerial from each end. okay, work your way around. doesn't take much at all and that will give you thewedge shape that you need to tap it into place andget a nice tight fit. i place a good amountof glue into the hole and insert the plug.
a few taps with a plastic-headed hammer give me a plug that sitsjust proud of the surface. and believe it or not, that's all it takes to make a beautiful greene& greene style ebony plug.