My First Project

This was the first room box I ever created from scratch. My wife was a fourth grade teacher at the time, and my parents had given her a McGuffey's Eclectic Fourth Reader.

I decided to build a shadow box that held the reader in the top half of the box and created this old fashioned classroom for the lower half of the box.

At the grade school where I attended so many years ago, the walls were all painted with an industrial green paint, similar to what's here. And, yes, I sat in desks fastened in rows to 1 x 4 boards, just like these are in this tiny classroom. We even used the Big Chief tablets for writing in when I was a kid - just like this one I found at a miniature store.

Other than the tablet and the books on the desk, I made everything in the room as well as the cabinet that this is in. If you study the chair in detail, you'll notice that the three spindles in the middle are a bit mismatched. I didn't do that on purpose. It just happened.

I made all of the spindles for the chair using toothpicks for the wood. I "turned" the wood with needle files. Since I didn't have a lathe at that time, I would hold a needle file against the toothpick using my thumb to apply pressure and turned the toothpick around and around with my other hand until I got the approximate "turning" that I wanted. I used the triangular shaped needle files to create sharp lines and the round needle file or the half-round needle file to create more rounded grooves. Depending on where I placed the needle file helped determine how wide the gouge would be. I would then finish the turning with pieces of fine grit sandpaper.

The pencils in the pencil cup were two more toothpicks that I made ever so tiny using the same turning method and an emery board. The apple on the teacher's desk was a wooden bead.

If you look really closely, you'll notice another error I made in building the room. I didn't realize that the wood of my wainscoting would shrink over time. (I made this nearly 30 years ago.) Since it did shrink, there are gaps exposed between the pieces of wood I used for the wainscoting. I wish I had taken a dark felt pen and had colored the wall with a stripe about 1/8" wide behind the area where the wood came together. The shrinkage would have been far less visible as a result.

The truth is, I think most of our best learning occurs from our mistakes, and I made some with this project.

Looking Into The Shop Window

I received a nice note from Brenda that concluded, "I would never dream of having the ability to do what you do..." That makes me feel a little sad when I hear that, because so many folks have the ability, if they have the right tools and/or the right resources. I've just been incredibly lucky in that regard.

Please know this: I got a D in wood shop in the 7th grade! Of course, I wouldn't mind showing that shop teacher a few of my pieces today...

A lot of the stuff I do requires patience, occasionally a steady hand, and a willingness to give new things a try. I'm hopeful that through this blog I can inspire others to try some new things in mini-making. There are always new skills and new approaches to learn. Sometimes the items I work on turn out wonderfully. Other times, well, let's just say the old shop teacher would have smiled and said, "See? I told you so!"

I often talk to myself when I'm working - sometimes out loud and frequently within my head. I coach myself as I go with statements such as: "Careful! Slow down. Steady.... Did you measure that right? Check it again! Looking good. Yes! That's the way to do it." I try to tune out the voice that says, "I could never do that..." Instead, I more often think, "I'd like to try that sometime..." It certainly leaves me with endless projects to do!

All of this said, please understand how much I appreciate your kind comments for this blog. Thank you, Brenda, and thank you also to the many others of you who have left such kind comments!

More Uses for Jeweler's Saws

The sign "GOGANY" and the panels just below the roof line were all cut out using a jeweler's saw. The shop was a miniature club project. We were given the basic box with a front window and sidewalk and room for a front door. What we did with it from there was up to the individuals.

GOGANY stands for George's Oddities, Gimcracks, Antiques and Nicknacks of Yesteryear. In other words, a store full of odds and ends - a great way for me to include "stuff" I've collected or received over the years; although, it hardly made a dent in that collection! The rocking horse in the foreground was my Christmas gift to club members one year. I made a couple extras so that my children would also have one. For the life of me, I don't recall who made the doll. We bought her at a miniature show, and she's a gem!

You may notice that the letters for GOGANY may appear to be rounded on the edges. They are. Once I cut them out with the jeweler's saw, I used one other tool that I most frequently rely on with miniatures - an emery board. I use these tools to sand off any rough edges, smooth any bad cuts and in this case to finish off the letters making them nice and round! I sometimes cut the boards in half lengthwise (or even narrower) as needed to get inside tight areas for sanding purposes.

Another Example...

Here's another example of a multi-layered piece. Again, I used cherry wood (my favorite for carving and furniture making). This piece was very challenging, due to the various angles, shapes and pieces of wood involved. The bonnet in the center posed some particularly difficult problems in how to piece together the top horizontal pieces of wood, which were routed, to the hand-sawn and carved bonnet piece in the center. The carved pieces on the corners (also cut out with the jeweler's saw and then shaped, carved and sanded) were much easier to fit into the scheme of the piece. (If you want to view the piece in larger size to see the detail, I think you can click on the photo.)

Where the Jeweler's Saw Shines

This bookcase is one of my pride and joys. A number of years ago, my wife gave me a book titled Blackie and Sons The Victorian Cabinet Maker's Assistant. It was filled with what I thought were accurate scale drawings. Turns out, not quite.

I followed the drawings to a T only to discover that the top portion of this bookcase could never hold any books on the shelves - they were too short! The two months' worth of carving the side pieces for the top had to be done all over again, only taller. Aargh! Sometimes miniaturing is an exercise in patience!

Everywhere you see fancy filigree on this piece, I used a jeweler's saw to cut it out. The teeth on a jeweler's saw are so tiny on the smallest blades, you can't even see them. You can only feel them when you run your finger up the blade. The blade I currently have in my saw is .48 deep by .2 mm thick. In inches, that's .013" x .007". Tiny! You can drill a hole the size of a pin and thread the blade up through to do your cutting.

The disadvantage to using a jeweler's saw is the delicateness of the blade. If you don't keep the saw perfectly vertical as you saw or if you try to push too hard as you make a downward stroke, the blade snaps. If you're lucky, you may have snapped it at one of the extreme ends of the blade instead of in the middle, which means you can shorten the saw and keep using the same blade! (I LOVE that about the jeweler's saw!)

By the way, there are three layers of wood in the front drawer of this bookcase and on the sides, too. I cut out the outside of the carved design first from 1/32" cherry wood, then glued the piece to another equally thin piece of cherry wood. (I used clothes pins as my clamps to hold the piece in place while it dried.) Then I cut out the inside, giving me a depth of 1/16". Then I glued this piece to another 1/32" piece of wood. So, it's approximately one inch thick in scale.

Power Saw vs. Hand Saw

When friends discover that I like making dollhouse miniatures, one of the first questions they ask me is, "What kind of tools do you use to do that?!" Depending on the object I'm showing them, I might answer, "A very small table saw," or "A table mounted jigsaw," or "A jeweler's saw."

The table saw is great for making straight cuts and cutting down regular wood stock into the more manageable pieces we most often need for making minis. At the left is a picture of the table saw I use.

The two add-on devices are a featherboard (the wooden device on the left near the front) and a micro-adjustable fence for my mini table saw. The featherboard helps me keep the wood against the fence, thus creating a much straighter cut. The fence allows me to make very tiny adjustments in the thickness of my cuts. When doing miniatures, even a thickness variation of only a few hundredths of an inch makes a difference in how something looks!

By the way, I have the pictured table saw attached to a board, and that board is clamped onto the top of, well, an even larger, 10" Dewalt portable table saw. (I use the big saw when I have some heavy-duty cutting to do.) I also have a power miter saw, but it sits in my garage most of the time, since I have a very tiny workshop. (It's slightly less than 10' x 9'. With workbenches along both of the longer walls and a short L at the end, you may have a sense of how tiny the workshop is!) One of these days I'll show you a picture of it. It's a total mess right now - not a scrap of available work space for anything!

The jigsaw is a terrific tool for cutting out larger shapes and stuff with curliques. When I have my table saw set up for a specific cut, and need to cut a piece of wood, and if precise right angles or width of the final cut are not a concern, I'll flip on the jigsaw and cut the piece.

The jigsaw is also a wonderful tool for cutting cabriolet legs. In an upcoming blog, I'll show you how to do that. They are a lot of fun to make, and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that.

For precision cutting, though, there is nothing like the jeweler's saw! In my next post, I'll show you a couple of items that I could not have made without the jeweler's saw! In many ways, it's my most favorite tool. The pieces I create with it frequently cause the most jaw-dropping responses from others who look at my work, and for me, that's the joy of crafting miniatures!

Creating Delicate Spindles

I thoroughly regret that when my kids were little and my budget was tight that I still didn't buy a very special tool. It was a turning duplicator and lathe made by (I think) Anker Rasmussen. He was able to make some very delicate spindles using his duplicating jig.

In lieu of that, I found a way, when building my wife's dollhouse, to create some very delicate spindles for the front porch. I used florist wire and threaded tiny wooden beads onto the wire. Then I added glue to hold each bead exactly where I wanted it. Finally, a coat of paint, and it was ready for the next step.

I cut out the curved sections that hold the spindles using my jigsaw. I then drilled holes into this piece to insert the ends of the wire spindles. I also cut out a smaller curved section for the corners and drilled holes in those to hold the other end. Once it was glued up, we had a lovely set of one-of-a-kind spindles for the front porch!