The Incidental Woodworker

Class Report - Saw Sharpening at St. Roy's School

2010-06-14T07:19:00.001-04:00

Short version: I took a one-day class on Saturday at the Woodwright's School in Pittsboro, NC. The topic of the class was Saw Sharpening. It was great and I finally figured out what all this fleam and rake and gullets and such really meant. I recommend for anyone who wants to learn.

Much longer version:

Now I hear some of you snickering at the n00b, but it is a skill that while simple in its foundation, is, for me at least, best learned by example rather than trial and error.

The class was taught by one of Roy's local teachers, Bill Andersen, who has been teaching classes in the area for some time now. Bill did a great job introducing us to the various tools and implements used for saw sharpening. We each had a bench with an old saw vise and we brought our own saws, but there were plenty there that needed sharpening.

We were just able to get through doing a rip saw before lunch, and a cross cut after lunch. I finished early enough to then re-tooth one of his back saws which looked like it hadn't been touched in 50 years.

We started on the rip saw because it is much easier to learn on than the crosscut. I had brought two Simmonds, a 6-point rip and an 8-point cross cut. Both had been re-toothed and sharpened quite a while ago when I first came to NC (2003) by a saw sharpening service in Raleigh. I was under the impression that these saws worked fine but only needed a quick touch-up.

We began with jointing the saw, filing with a larger, flat file held perpendicular to the teeth, and run straight down the tops of the saw teeth. Boy, was that an eye-opening experience. This saw was not so beautifully toothed as I thought. I had to take a fair amount to touch most of the teeth. I ended up with about four teeth down the length of the saw that were still just too short for me to reach. Bill said that was fine, you'll get them eventually as you sharpen it, either next time or the time after.

We then re-shaped the teeth to get the right rake. I began at the heel of the saw, down by the handle, and there's a good reason to do so, because when you screw up there, it doesn't really matter too much since you almost never saw with those teeth. Good thing too. I made my first big mistake, and was grateful for having someone there who knew what they were doing. First mistake was thinking I could keep my file at the right angle without a help. I got about six teeth down when Bill came by and gently pointed out my very common mistake, I was filing my teeth with a 30-degree rake because I was following the natural reaction to have the top face of the file become more and more flat as I filed. He suggested I use on of the very simple, but extremely useful, wooden blocks he had made that help give you a reference face for the right angle. Stick the block on the end of the file, and keep the block horizontal and you'll be ok. Big difference. You can see one of these very simple devises on Pete Taran's saw filing page.

This is where a teacher-led class can more than pay for itself. Bill showed me what I was doing wrong before I had ruined all the teeth, and he showed me how to fix it.

I got my money's worth again a short time later when I made my second big mistake. I was getting the angle right, but this time, because I was trying to "fix" the teeth that I had filed at too sharp of an angle, I was getting a bit aggressive with the file. I was trying to shape AND sharpen at the same time (without really knowing that's what I was doing) and as a result every other gullet was way deeper than the one I hadn't done. Again, Bill was able to come to the rescue and help me figure out that I was doing it wrong, and how to fix it before I did too much damage.

After that, things went more smoothly. I ended up having to re-joint the teeth a couple more times before I got them shaped like I wanted. I then did a light jointing, set them, and did a final sharpening. Bill showed us how much to stone the side of the saw to adjust the set and I was done.

We had each tested our saws at the beginning for the "before" cut. We tried cutting to a line and see how far ten strokes took us through the wood. After sharpening, we tested the "after". My saw had too much set at the beginning, which is why, I found out, that it had a tendency to vibrate a lot in the cut. Afterwards, I cut about a third longer in the same number of strokes, the kerf was cleaner and I didn't have nearly the vibration I had before.

The crosscut saw after lunch went much more smoothly, even with the added complexity of also filing the fleam into the teeth. We shaped the teeth like it was a rip saw, except the rake this time was 25-degrees instead of 8-degrees. Then finished shaping with adding the fleam. This time I was a much lighter touch with the file, and kept a rhythm while also watching each tooth carefully. This saw also had way too much set that graduated with almost no set by the heel and way wide set by the toe. It had so much that I actually didn't need to set it at all. The filing had taken off just enough set that it seemed fine.

I finished early enough that I thought I'd try my hand at a backsaw. In the pile of saws that needed sharpening was a nice brass-backed 19th-century British saw that had teeth but they were in a sorry state. By getting good light, and using a light, consistent touch, I was able to get it re-toothed as a rip quite quickly and easily. That was extremely satisfying to see those old, raggedy, nasty teeth turn into shiny, consistent teeth. The saw was so nasty that the teeth were already black with crud and age I didn't need to blacken them. For the other saws, we had used an alcohol based carbon blacking spray which worked like a spray paint. That was really easy to spray and mark each tooth to make sure you knew which one you'd done, and which ones you hadn't. It cleaned up with alcohol.

So, if you're interested in learning how to sharpen, this is a great class. And I'm so glad I've finally gotten a chance to learn how it's done, and had it de-mystified for me. It's now time to make a couple of those jigs to help me keep a good angle, and find my saw vise in the dust and I'm in business.

Mini bench: part 2

2009-12-07T06:40:00.002-05:00

I left off last time having cut the half-lap joints. Now I wanted to glue them together and pin them. I'm still not sure what, if any, benefit I'll get from pinning, but since the floor of the half-lap joint is so rough from the pine lumber's propensity for splintering, it will give me an extra piece of mind.

As I often do, I first made a template to work off of.

I just used the width of my ruler to figure out where to place the holes from the top and bottom edge, and just placed them an inch in from each side. It seemed a good enough placement.

I drilled the holes.

Then I used the template and drilled the holes, glued up the boards and drove 5/16" dowels through. I could have made my own square or octagonal pins, which I've done before, but one of the guiding principles of this project is quick and dirty, so pre-made dowels is it. I tested one before hand and the dowels were actually quite respectable in terms of roundness and fit into the hole, so they were fine for this use. (though I would still love to have a dowel plate)

After the glue dried and I cut off the pins with my new flush-cut saw (Happy Birthday!) I started to plane down the surfaces to get a nice fit and take off some of the marks that had accumulated from the various operations.

This is where the leg vise really showed its stuff. I was able to clamp up the leg assembly and hold it both at the top and bottom of the leg vise.

Once I figured out where to place the pin in the parallel guide, that sucker held the leg assembly like it was an act of God. I could have been chiseling out mortises, or cutting the very end and it would have held it perfectly still. I really like my leg vise.

As it was, I was merely planing down the edges, and then used the wagon vise to do the faces. Edge, face and ends, that's what you need to be able to do, right Mr. Schwarz?

Overall my bench works beautifully. I do need to get my sliding deadman in place for my next project as I'll be making a longer table top, but for this small project, it couldn't have been better.

After finishing the planing I just set the mini bench on top of my own with the top just sitting on the legs. Now the top of the legs will be mortised into the top, so it will sit further down onto the cross piece.

As you can see, the joints are tight, but not terribly pretty. That's what happens when you go fast using cheap wood.

After putting it together like this, I decided that I need to make it a little wider. The proportions weren't quite right, and I think it will be more useful for what he does, which is mainly whacking on wood and storing his (one) tool on his bench. (his hammer) I'm also seriously considering flipping the legs upside down and putting the stretcher across the bottom. We'll see where I go with this next time.

Mini bench

2009-12-02T06:18:00.003-05:00

When my son began to express interest again in coming into my shop and hammering on nails, or, as he did last night, working the wagon vise for me as I showed him how to chop out a half-lap joint, I decided to make him his own scaled down bench.

There were a couple of considerations:

1. It was going to be useful for only a short period of time before he outgrew it.

2. It had to stand up to hammering and nailing, most likely at some point directly into the bench so I had to be sturdy, and cheap so I wouldn't care that it got banged up

3. His woodworking needs are limited, including probably no planing at this point

4. It had to be out of materials I had on hand.

So, I settled on a bunch of 2x6 and 2x4 lumber I had sitting around my shop for years and which were bone dry at this point. It was thick enough to give some solidity, cheap enough to not worry about him trashing it at this point, and easy enough to work with.

The Bench Top

I started with the top. I jointed a couple of 2x6's and glued them together.

Nothing pretty, but solid enough. The boards were also a bit wanky. That's my technical term for slightly cupped, not flat, even a little wavy in places.

I could have flattened them individually before jointing them, but since they were so small, I decided to get them glued and then tackle them together as a single surface.

I first trimmed them to length.

Then I began with my old German scrub plane.

You can see the kinds of shavings I was getting. I didn't set it to be very aggressive because this pine will splinter like anything if you try.

After that, I began the diagonal traversing. You can see what happens when you have no camber on the blade and go across grain.

The last step was to plane down the grain with my #3 to smooth out the marks from the other planes. I also ended up taking some passes with one of my #6 planes as a kind of joiner plane before my #3 but it all seemed flat enough for my purposes so didn't spend much time before jumping right to the smoother.

And here is a little display of the different kinds of shavings that result from the different operations. I dug through my shaving pile and found, from left to right:

Scrub plane chips - Early traversing short shavings - Longer shavings from traversing - Thicker shavings along the grain to take down the high spots left from traversing - Final thinner shavings from smoothing.

The Base

The next time I was in the shop I began the base. Here I'm going back to my supply of dry, cheap construction lumber. I think 2x4's are sufficient for the legs. I figured just half-lap joints to affix the front and back cross pieces, made out of a scrap 1x4, and some simple through M&T joints for the end cross pieces. My design at this point is to mortise and tenon the base into the top so I figured to leave some wood above the half lap for this.

I decided to put the front and back cross pieces up just under the top because I wanted to leave the bottom as open as possible for him to stand, and the size of the bench and the lack of much clamping up at the top made this possible. I figured I can always flip the legs upside down as I get them built and put the cross member at the bottom if I decide to.

This is indicative of another aspect of this project I wanted to explore: improvisation. I'm working pretty rough and pretty imprecise. I'm using the material itself for measurements so I have no idea how big any of this is. If I were to take more care with this, as I certainly will for his next bench when he's old enough to actually do stuff, the proportions would have been different, and I would have taken care to shape and size the various components to look better together. As it is, I have a feeling it will look a bit odd once it's finished, but I'm looking to spend as little time making it while still having it be functional for its limited requirements.

So, I started cutting the legs.

Using one leg to indicate the size of the next

You can see the precise layout tools I'm using reflect the obsessive drive for perfection in this piece.

Using my bench hook I first trim

Then do a quick squaring off just using my bench hook as a quick-and-dirty shooting board rather than get out my dedicated one. This is part of my drive to do this as quickly as possible.

After getting the legs cut and squared, I figured out about how far apart they were by using a scrap of 2x4 as spacer. I need the legs far enough apart so that the bench is stable, but want to leave some room on the ends so I can do through through mortise and tenons to affix the base to the top.

At this point I started to touch up the surfaces of the legs. I don't need them perfect, just better than straight-from-the-borg 2x4. I'm shooting for "flat enough".

Here's a good indication of how the board itself told me I was flat enough. This wood has been in my shop for at least six years, some of it may very well be older. It has a kind of oxidation to the outside of it that is darker than the inside wood. The two pictures below show you what one board looks like as I start to flatten it. Notice in the first picture the contrasting lighter and darker areas. The lighter areas are the high spots, and the darker are the low spots after a pass or two. Once it all looks the same, as in the second picture, I know I'm done. Good enough.

I looked for a short piece of fairly narrow stock for the end cross pieces. I found this wanky piece of very soft wood. I'm not even sure where or when I picked it up. At first I thought it might be maple, but planing it was so easy and it was so soft that I suspect it's basswood. But good enough.

And now I have my material.

Cutting the joints

Layout was simple. I used the top as indicator of how far down I needed to take the half-lap joints I was going to use to join the front and back cross pieces to the legs. I left a little material on the ends assuming I'll trim it flush to the top.

I used the cross piece itself to figure out how wide to make it.

I used the material again to determine how far into the wood to cut. At this point I decided not to go with a half-lap but to take advantage of the thicker legs and just cut the full thickness into the leg. That's one less part of a joint to cut. Quick and dirty, but functional.

I cut to the lines and then started hacking it out with my chisel and mallet. You've got to be careful because this pine will splinter past your line if you just look at it funny.

I used my old router plane to sneak down to the final depth.

You can see the bottom of the cut is still not too pretty, but it got better with subsequent joints. I learned to stop hacking with the chisel sooner and cut with the router plane longer.

Voila! A couple of half-way decent joints for quick and dirty.

I have all four of these joints cut now. Next I will actually put them together and then work on the end pieces.

A good time in the shop is ...

2009-11-17T06:23:00.003-05:00

Getting the chance to introduce your GIT (Galoot in Training) to the joy of pounding nails.

I know it's almost cliche, but for some reason it is a very effective hook. I think it was getting to use a real hammer instead of his little plastic one.

What he really enjoyed was when I showed him how to use the claw to take some finish nails out of the board. Once he figured out how to do that, he was taking them out and putting them back in again over and over.

This gave me a chance to build a four-foot French frame for my second prototype. this frame includes two 1x3's for the sides (poplar) and two of the cleats were ripped from 1x3's.

But the most fun was working with the GIT.

Workshop Crawl and Wood Purchase

2009-11-15T06:14:00.002-05:00

Went on the workshop crawl with the North Carolina Woodworker group. It was a lot of fun meeting in the flesh those with whom I've already met virtually. And we got to see six interesting shops with some very different approaches, work and methods.

My favorite, because it speaks to the way I work, was John's shop. After an episode of Fun With Tablesaw Kickback, John discovered the joy of hand work. He has turned his garage into quite an amazing workshop.

From the very Schwarzian saw bench:

to the massive logs lying around for riving (Peter's name was mentioned a time or two)

to the very nicely executed Roubo

it was definitely a shop after my own heart.

But what was really extraordinary, as you can get a hint from what was on the workbench, is the extra tool he built in order to make the posts of the bed he is building. You see one lying on the workbench,

but another is still in process.

Yes, that's a seven foot spring pole lathe. He did an amazing job of building it and it seemed to work quite well.

Overall, a very fun day.

I did leave the crawl with more than pictures. I picked up a couple of pieces of wood for very reasonable prices.

I don't have a lot of wood beyond some left over pieces of maple from the workbench, and some dimensional borg stuff, so there's not much of a wood cache to pick from. Which is ok since I'm not able to do much work anyway. But I couldn't resist these two pieces.

One is Sapele. It is 4/4 rough sawn, a little over 10" across and almost exactly 6' long. What really attracted me to it was the figure and the price.

Even with the lousy light in my shop last night and with it still being pretty rough sawn (I took the top most fuzz off with a few passes of a plane, but it's still pretty rough) you can still see the grain popping out.

One for scale on my five-foot bench (didn't even try to correct the horrible light)

And one with a flash.

This one I'm going to have to think long and hard how I want to use it.

The other board I picked up (with great difficulty, if truth be told) is a rather large piece of quarter-sawn red oak. It's about 17 inches wide, by 90 inches long. It's 5/4 rough sawn, and like the sapele, even rough sawn the grain pattern pops right through.

Here's one side:

And for a real close-up

And the other side:

And to get an idea of scale in my shop:

And here with a one-foot ruler:

The rays and flakes are more pronounced along one edge of the board and extend about half-way in. I'll have to think about how to use this. I didn't get a pair of bookmatched boards from the same tree as this piece and about the same size. I may regret not having the option of making a two-board, quarter-sawn oak table.

Regardless, it's fun to have some wood around for inspiration. Another step further along in my evolution.

French Frames: Part 2

2009-11-14T06:02:00.004-05:00

I got some time yesterday in the shop and was able to put together the first prototype frame and make a couple of holders for it. I learned some drawbacks from the design and I learned some of what I need to keep in mind when designing holders.

Overall, I think this might work, but I can see that I may need longer frames. Three feet may not be long enough to hold everything since a lot of tools hang down and so you're not able to use every rail on the frame.

Ok, so here is what the frame looks like when it's built.

I had a small cabinet hanging on this wall over my over-stuffed book case so I took it down and hung a cleat on the wall for my testing area.

As you can see, it's nothing much to look at in southern yellow pine. God, that stuff is ugly. Anyway, here's how it looked going together.

As I wrote last time, I first made a jig to standardize the cleats going across.

I merely have to put the board in the slot, run my circular saw up against the fence, and voila! I have a cleat for the frame, and a matching cleat for a holder.

So, after I did my first board to show that the jig worked, and it works great except if the board is particularly warped, I started cranking out two-foot sections for all the cleats on the frame.

This is faster to do on my bench hook with my disston backsaw. I guess I could set up another jig on the end of my other one to cut two foot sections on my circular saw, but I just don't like the screaming machines and only use it when I absolutely have to.

So, once I got my rails together and cut them into cleats I built my second jig, the one that will help me construct the frames square and consistent. What I needed was a simple board that kept the two sides straight and parallel to each other and I wanted a quick reference to place the cleats for nailing. I used an old piece of woodstalk fiber board for the base, and a couple of 1x2 for the side rails. I ran my gauge up one side of the board to get a reference line then nailed one of the side rails in place. I then measures where I thought the other line should be and drew a line on the board. I then took my cleats and used them as a reference to double check my line, and it was right on. I then nailed the second side rail in place.

I worked out spacing for the cleats and figured that about five inches between the bottom of one cleat and the bottom of the cleat below it would give me enough clearance for whatever holders I might use. The top cleat didn't need to be down so far from the top, so it's just four inches. You can see my spacing on this next picture.

Now, my jig is only twenty-six inches long, so I start with the two side pieces of the frame pushed up against the front of the jig and line up my cleats down to the 24" mark. After I nail them in place with three 1 1/4" bright finish nails on each side, I move the frame so that it lines up at the bottom and because there are two inches left on my board at the bottom, and two inches left on my frame at the bottom, I can use the last two marks, the 19" and 24" marks as the 29" and 34" marks for the last two cleats. This may help with the explanation.

Here you see the 19" mark is also marked as 29"

I turn it over and nail on another cleat to the back that will allow the frame to hang on the wall and Bob's your uncle.

Here you can see the nails and how I put them in to try and minimize splitting.

So, the next step was to try and make some holders. I decided to try a chisel holder first, and somehow got the idea of drilled holes, with slots cut in to go back to the holes which would then hold the chisels.

A couple of problems.

1. It was a really stupid design that didn't work.

2. The wood was really brittle and kept breaking off in between the cuts

3. It was a really stupid design that didn't work.

So, I moved on to something to hold my squares. I settled on a board with slits cut in it to hold the blades of the squares. I ended up pulling out my tiny 1/8" pigsticker mortise chisel and cutting the slits. It worked pretty good, but it's very difficult to get a clean mortise in poplar at 1/8". But it was good enough.

I glued and nailed it to the mounting cleat and hung it up.

I discovered one the shortcomings of this frame design. When you have a weight hanging out away from the frame, you must stabilize it in front or else it tends to tip out of the cleat. I also realized that since there is no back to the center of the frame (remember, the cleat, being merely nailed on, stands 3/4" out from the wall) I also need to either to use only full width cleats so that it touches the side rails in back, or need to add something to give it a back or front when I make something that could tip out like this one. Later in this post I'll show you a kind of holder that doesn't tip out, even if it was short enough to fit between the sides.

To try and counter the tip-out I did a quick and dirty nail-glue some small pieces along the front of the hanging cleat to see if that helped.

It did help, but not by much. I need to have a more substantial front piece. So, I'm in the process of re-doing this holder.

Meanwhile I made another holder, this time for my chisels. I have a bunch of odd chisels and one unified set. I tried to decide if I wanted the set all by itself, or to mix it in and arrange them by all by size. Since my set is just a cheap Czech.-made set (but they're good chisels, just not terribly fancy) I decided to just add them in and keep them all by size for now.

I was not going to go back to the really bad design I started before, so this time I remembered what I had originally thought for a chisel holder way back when I started thinking about this system. I took a 1x4 of "clear pine" and started cutting out grooves. The only measuring I did was to put the chisel down on the board, get it fairly straight with a small square, trace along the edges of the chisel and then cut down a ways with my back saw, then chisel out the groove. When I do this again, I'll set the depth of cut with a reference line, but I was pretty much freehanding this to see if it worked.

The wood was soft enough that I used my mallet to do a controlled cut at each end, but the middle stuff I could take out by just pushing the chisel along. These went very quickly. I only had a couple of pieces between the grooves chip out, but I just put a dab of glue on, pressed it down for a few seconds, and went on. It all got sandwiched in later and is fine.

Here's where I made another mistake. In my desire to keep my bench as clear as possible, as I cut a groove for a chisel I would put it away. The problem I encountered is that by not having all the chisels there as I cut, I ended up not taking full consideration of handle width as blades got narrower and narrower. I kept a fairly consistent distance between blades, but what i really needed to do was keep a fairly consistent distance between centers of the grooves. As the blades got narrower, the total distance between the centers of the grooves got smaller and smaller so in the end I couldn't fit two of my chisels into the holder as I had planned. Lesson learned.

After cutting the grooves, I glued on a wider piece of poplar to the front. I used a wider piece in order to hide some of the sharp edges of the chisels that were longer than the 1x4. This gives a more finished look and helps avoid any accidents as I reach for something on the frame.

You can see towards the end with the small chisels they're pretty crowded. Bummer. Otherwise, it worked out great. Since this picture was taken, I have started to use this blank space on the front. I have hung my sliding bevels on small nails, and cut a rabbet into a small piece of poplar and glued it to the front so I can put my steel rulers up there as well. Pictures on that later.

Here's how it looks hanging on the whole frame, and then with my sub-standard holder for my squares.

And here's the back of the chisel holder to show you the ends of the chisels hanging down out of the 1x4 and why I put the wider piece of poplar in front.

So, with this kind of holder, where the weight is pulling straight down, and there is a piece that is flat against the front of the cleat on the frame, it works perfectly. I can see that for other kinds of holders, such as the shelf holders I'm envisioning for my planes, I will need to makes sure the hanging cleat is enclosed in a way that keeps the whole from tipping out of the angled connection. It's a good lesson to learn now, with my crappy SYP prototype.

I'm getting the hang of just what works and what doesn't and just what goes into making a holder for these frames. The tricky parts will be making hanging boxes or other types of holder for small things I've got in boxes on shelves at the moment. But that will also be some of the fun. And right now I may end up creating a frame for a whole shelf, but in the end I may not want all of that stuff that's currently on one shelf to be together. That's where the flexibility of the system comes into play. Once I have all of the frames together, then I can move the stuff around to fit how I work.

I'm excited to start making some more holders and figure out what works and what doesn't and get this party started. I think, in the end, that if I make the frames longer, and get creative with the holders, this will be quite a fun system for holding and storing tools. It kind of reminds me of the Shaker system of pegs where they could hang coats or whole cabinets off of pegs. It's flexible, easy and cheap to make and allows me to change my mind, add tools and change around my shop. It's not as beautiful as some of the gorgeous furniture the real joiners make, but I think it will work for me and my shop.

Update: Here's a picture of the addition of a ruler holder as well as the sliding bevels hanging from the front. Not sure if I want to keep these two types of tools with my chisels, but I'm just experimenting with different kinds of holders.

French Frames: Part 1

2009-11-12T22:11:00.004-05:00

I mentioned in an earlier post an idea I've been toying with regarding a way to store, display and basically keep organized all of my tools. I've thought about cabinets, about shelves, etc... but I keep coming back to an idea I got from a picture in a magazine, and a commercial shelving system I've seen in several stores.

First basic concept to understand is the French cleat. A French cleat is basically a board with one long edge trimmed at an angle. (I've discovered that 30-degrees seems like a good angle that compromises strength with holding power) The board is screwed into the studs with the angle facing into the wall, so the wider face is outward, and the narrower face against the wall.

The second part of the French cleat is a mating piece that is also cut at the same angle. This is affixed to the cabinet, or shelf or whatever you're hanging from the French cleat on the wall. When you slip this angled piece down into the slot formed by the piece screwed to the studs, the hanging shelf or cabinet is held close against the wall and secure, yet able to be moved quite easily. You just lift it up and move it. This wonderful, and simple, invention is the basis for the whole design.

The basic idea is to make a frame about 24" wide by 36" tall. This frame will have a french cleat in the back and hang off of a cleat running around the perimeter of my shop wall. Each frame will also contain a set of french cleats running across the width of the frame. These will be used to hang various forms of holder and even shelves to store, display and basically keep organized my tools.

In this way, I make a series of interchangeable, flexible, hanging frames that allow me to create all kinds of various solutions for hanging my tools on the wall. And as I add more tools, or change the place where I want to store them, I can easily move the individual holders.

I like the idea of my chisels all hanging together in graduated sizes. But what if I get more chisels? What if I decide to get a new set, or get carving chisels and want to store them in the same place? If I've created a fixed cabinet, then I have to either make a new cabinet, or re-arrainge the old one. Both of which are much more labor intensive than making a new holder for the new chisels and shifting the current tools around to find room for the new hangers.

I've been thinking about this for quite a while but I've had my Roubo bench to finish. Well, now I'm mostly done, at least for this work, and so tonight I had the opportunity to get some shop time in and I began the process.

I'm going to first create a prototype out of a bunch of 1x4 southern yellow pine. It's not pretty wood, but I have a lot of it, and if I screw up this wood, it's not a big deal.

One of the keys to building this system will be standardization. If I had a table saw, I could set it up for 30-degrees, set the fence and go. I don't have a table saw. I did try cutting the boards with my rip saw. I can do it, but it's a real pain because to cut at an angle, I can't use the sawing bench very easily and get a good, consistent angle. I have to put the wood upright in my vise. Again, it's difficult to get a fairly consistent result.

What I do have is a circular saw. So, what I did tonight was to build two jigs. These are my first jigs ever. I've built appliances for hand tool work, but never a jig for power tools. One of the jigs holds the two-foot section of 1x4 and includes a fence for my circular saw. I plop a piece of wood in the jig, fire up the saw and saw right through. I still need to take a pass or two with a hand plane to make the surface nice, but this gets me consistent enough results.

The second jig I created is for construction of the frames. I took a piece of fiber board and nailed some cleats on it exactly parallel and 24 inches apart. I can then place the side stiles of the frame in this jig and it has the locations for the French cleat rails that extend across the frame marked on the side cleats to facilitate affixing them to the sides.

I cut up the wood for the first frame tonight and got it laid out. It works out quite well. My next question I will hopefully answer with this prototype is how exactly I will affix the French cleat rails to the frame. I'm thinking of a dab of glue for luck, and either nails or screws. Nails will look better, I'm thinking screws will hold better. But I could, if I wanted to go to that much effort, do a clenched nail since the frame will stand out from the wall at least the distance of the thickness of the French cleat on the wall. I think I'll have to look up clenched nails again and see if that's what I'd like to do.

Tomorrow I should be able to get this frame put together and work on making some holders. They may not be pretty to begin with, but I've got to start somewhere, and this is only a prototype. Right?

Update: After doing a little research online, I think I'm going to try and clench (aka clinch) nails to hold the cleat rails on. I'm going to have to look for some good nails that are about 1.75" long with a wide head. Nails can be incredibly strong, we usually underestimate them, and this technique supposedly can increase the holding power quite a bit. We'll see tomorrow.

This is a test, this is only a test.

2009-10-30T09:19:00.001-04:00

I'm trying out how well this works by coming directly from Picasa. I'm more interested in how I might be able to get larger pictures into my blog. Can I get more than 400 pixels wide?

This is just a test, it is only a test. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blank space.

AAAndrew

Update: I have discovered that it will link back to the full-sized photo. So I will leave this up for now in case you want to see the bench somewhat up close.

Wagon Vise

2009-10-29T07:16:00.005-04:00

A commenter asked about the wagon vise. Since I think it's a great addition to my bench, I thought I'd share a few thoughts about it.

The general concept is an old one, and I first encountered it from first Chris Schwarz's blog over at Woodworking Magazine (see blog roll on left), and then again in his workbench book. (which you should buy, right now. Go ahead, I'll wait......Back again? good)

The details of execution I came up with myself. I didn't want to do a bench bottom installation, and I thought, since I was designing this from scratch, and could incorporate it any way I wanted, I'd design it to be built-in to the bench itself. This allowed me to keep the design very simple, which is a benefit for an amateur like me.

The essential design is a block of wood (the chop) attached to the end of a small bench screw. The screw is fixed at the end of the bench, and the chop slides along a pair of grooves cut into the faces of the adjoining boards.

My top is made up of a series of 7/8 thick boards glued together. Board 1 is at the front of the bench where I stand, and board 14 is at the back. Board 1 is full length. Board 2 and 3 are short, thus creating the gap for the wagon vise. Board 4 is full length. There is a groove cut into the inside faces of boards 1 and 4 down which the chop moves. At the end of boards 2 and 3 is a block through which the screw passes and into which I inset the nut of the screw. This block is just glued face-t0-face with boards 1 and 4.

Here's a bad copy of the Visio drawing I made of it.

Update: I realized the I forgot to point out that my original drawing had the vise only one board wide, but when I got past measurements, and got to the real objects, I realized that I needed to make it two-boards wide. You must always be ready to change design in the face of reality. At least those of us as bad at design as I am.

Here's a photo of it installed. You can see the groove and the tabs on the chop that slide in the groove. You'll notice that I made the chop so the grain went the opposite direction of the bench top. I did this because I had to laminate the chop together to encase the pad of the bench screw.

Perhaps this is a good time to revisit how I built it. (you can read my account at the time in an earlier post)

First the chop. I had to make this several times as I kept learning and screwing up the layout dimensions. I also started to go down the path of a half-dovetail design for the tabs and groove, but realized what a total pain that was going to be to cut in the hard maple. So I went with square, which works just fine.

First I cut out the three pieces and then ganged them together to cut the tabs.

Now, this is what the screw looks like.

It's a press screw for book presses or cider presses. The pad on the end has no built-in means of affixing it to a chop. I decided I didn't want to drill holes in it since I wasn't sure how all of this would work, and if I'd need to change the screw, and if the holes would weaken the already small pad. So I designed a means to encase the pad in the chop in such a way that i could take it out if necessary.

Here's the back-most layer of the chop. The keyhole shape is to allow the collar of the pad to stick through, and the slot in the bottom allows access to the bolt that holds the pad to the screw.

The middle layer of the chop I cut out a recess to accommodate the pad.

It was at about this point that I decided not to make the pad removable. I still needed access to the bolt to affix the pad to the screw, but I left the recess for the pad in the second layer just big enough for the pad. I then glued it all up.

Here it is all glued up and ready for mounting.

Here it is with the screw installed. The piece of scrap you see shows my initial thoughts on a half-dovetail design for the tabs.

The dog hole in the chop goes towards the end.

After that, it was time for the grooves.

After careful layout, and a lot of trying out prototypes (both of the design, and the technique to make such big stopped grooves), I cut the grooves. The grooves are about 1" wide and about 1/2" deep. All I had was a 1/2" pigsticker mortise chisel, a great big mallet and ear protection.

Here you can see how the chop slides in the grooves.

Making the block at the end that holds the nut for the screw was also a bit of a challenge, mainly because drilling out a large enough hole through end grain of hard maple is not a fun thing. I tried a bunch of different ways with what tools I had and ended up doing the e pluribus unum technique, "out of many holes, one" approach.

You'll notice the final hole is not exactly round, but not as distorted as it appears in the last picture. But it was good enough.

I tested it for length. (I learned, the hard way, to leave the boards all a little too long on one end and cut them off at the end rather than try and cut them all to perfect dimensions. There are no perfect dimensions)

And in the end, after gluing up, screwing up the glue-up and having to reglue (read back a bit in the blog for all the fun), I ended up with a great little wagon vise. It seems small, but it really holds quite well. I could pick up my bench, if I was strong enough, by a handle squeezed in my wagon vise. And I ended up using mainly wooden bench dogs made out of lengths of dowel with a little ball catch inset into the side to make sure the ill-fitting, cheap dowels don't end up on the floor too easily. I was afraid these wooden dogs wouldn't work, wouldn't hold, but even the soft, poplar-like ones from China just end up distorting a little bit to make a flat side, and hold like the dickens.

Even when I stick the dogs up high, it holds like a champ.

And for narrow stock, less than 3 1/4", I can clamp it directly and then nothing is moving when I do that.

I find that sometimes putting a wide piece of scrap in between the dog and the piece I'm working on helps to distribute the load and makes it clamp more securely.

Overall, I really like my wagon vise. It took a lot of fiddling to get it right, mainly because of my lack of skill or design sense, but once I figured out what I wanted to do, and how to do it, it was fairly straight forward. If I had a larger bench, I'd love to use one of the shorter shoulder vise screws used in European workbenches. It would be totally overkill, and would take up a fair amount of your bench, hence you'd need a big top for it to work, but it would be really cool.

And one more comment. When Chris Schwarz talked about his original wagon vise, he mentioned that he was concerned about all that force on just a small block at the end, so he put an end cap on his bench top. I decided to risk it, and I know it's still quite new, but so far it seems like it's doing just fine. It is about 12 square inches of face-to-face glue surface on each side, so that should be pretty strong. And it seems to be working.

Give it a shot on your own bench. Once you get the concept, it's not that difficult.

AAAndrew

Lessons learned thus far

2009-10-26T06:49:00.003-04:00

Some random thoughts and lessons I've learned at this significant milestone in my bench building.

The first thing I've become convinced of is that the chop of the leg vise is most likely a cherry wood of some sort. I was told in an off-hand manner by the guy at the lumber yard that the off-cut I was getting for free was mahogany. Of course, he was not really paying attention, and the wood was very roughly sawn and pretty dark, so I, of course, took it as gospel. I now have a better idea of what cherry looks like and that cherry can be lighter in weight than I thought.

I have to say that I love my wagon vise. I'm so glad I went that direction. It works really well, and makes things so much easier. The leg vise, though I've not gotten a chance to really use it yet, does seem to clamp things so much tighter than my old metal face vise. It's pretty amazing.

Even though I think I've learned some lessons as I go along, sometimes it takes a while for me to REALLY learn the lesson. Here are some I think I've REALLY learned.

1. I'm never using hard maple again. At least until the next time. (it's evil for hand tools)

2. Sharp is really important (see #1)

3. Take your time with layout. Even if you only get, maybe, two hours of shop time a week, take that full two hours, if you need to, to make sure you've got the layout done right. Hot dogging it on a key component doesn't work.

4. Know when good enough, is good enough. (and when it isn't.)

5. Use plenty of glue. This isn't a contest to see how little glue you can use.

6. Titebond yellow glue WILL glue to itself. (the company told me so, and they were right!)

7. My narrow, German, scrub plane is NOT for use on the edges of narrow boards. It really is for the face of a board. (I don't care what the Schwarz says) Maybe it's the extreme camber on the blade, or wooden sole is too slippery, but when I try to use it on a narrow edge, I just end up with bloody fingers.

8. Transverse planing before lengthwise planing really does a great job for flattening large surfaces.

9. It was so very much worth the time I had to take to make sure all the boards in my bench top were facing the same way so that when I plane in one direction down the boards, they all work with no tear-out

10. The longer you can make your bench, the better. Mine is relatively mini because of limitations I thought I had in my workshop. Now that I have it all by itself, I see I probably could have made it a foot longer, and that would make a significant difference. Always make your bench longer than you think you can accommodate. You can make it work, and it's worth it.

And for acknowledgements, I'd like to thank those who helped me with the ball catches, advise and encouragement through this process. And a big thank you to Chris Schwarz for his Workbench book, without which this would be a much different, and inferior, bench.

I still am going to make a sliding deadman, and a planing stop, so I can still claim that I'm working on my bench, but for me, it's now a fully-functioning bench.

Lessons I'm still planning on learning:

1. Do I really want a shelf on the bottom? I've never had one and it's quite convenient to be able to sweep under my bench. I'm afraid, with my habits, it will become just a place to store tools that I really should return to their places.

2. Leather on the vise chop. I got some cheap "chamois" leather pieces last year thinking I'd line the chop with these. I'm still very seriously thinking of doing it. I need to lay it out and thing hard about how much of the surface I want to line with it. I have to think about repair to the leather should it get damaged, and how I'd do that.

3. Do I still want to keep using the hook bolt for my parallel guide? Time will tell.

4. How to clamp up long, narrow boards? My last bench had a skirt along the front so I could clamp the board at the bottom to the bottom of my skirt. But if the board is narrower than the thickness of my bench top, on what do I rest the board as it extends along the bench if it's too narrow to reach my deadman? Hmm.

Overall, there has been so much that I've learned in building this bench. It has been a great experience and has definitely made me a better woodworker for it. And now I have a solid, massive (even in its mini form) bench with which I can work. I'm really excited.

Leg Vise Finished!

2009-10-24T17:14:00.006-04:00

So, I've gotten a couple of weekends of work in and today I was able to finish the leg vise!

Last time I left off with preparing the vise chop. The next step was to cut the mortise for the parallel guide, drill the holes and pin it to the chop.

So, I drilled the holes for the parallel guide, which is made of Southern Yellow Pine. I got some tearout on the back of the holes, but I figure it's just a parallel guide, so who cares? Right?

I decided to pin the parallel guide in with the brass hinge pins I had used before. They seem to work well for a removable pin.

The next step is to layout the hole for the vise screw and mount it. Simple. Uh, huh.

First I had to clean off the screw and get rid of the tons of gooey, orange packing grease that it came with. I'm still not sure the best lubricant, but I ended up coating it with Boeshield T-9 or whatever it's called. It's a little sticky, so I may end up taking it off in the end and using something a little less high-tech. For now, I'm counting on regular wear and tear to get things moving smoothly.

Then it was time for layout. Having had to learn the lesson of what happens when you rush layout many times in the past, hopefully I've actually internalized it, because this time I took it slowly.

I spent a fair amount of time carefully laying out where the hole should go. I wanted it high enough for strength, but far enough down to be able able to hold some deeper boards in the vise. I eventually placed it so that with the vise screw running through the hole, I have 9" of depth for the board.

I had thought about how to drill the 1 1/4" hole through the chop and the leg. I even went so far as to purchase a drill bit for my (please excuse the language) power drill. Now, I only have a hand-held, cordless drill, but it is a good one, but it was not capable of drilling such a big hole in any test wood.

So, came back to what I should have done to begin with. I sharpened up my #20 bit for my brace, and chucked it up.

To drill the hole I put the chop up on blocks on either end so that it was not resting directly on the bench top. This way when the lead screw of the bit started to poke through, I could feel for it, and it didn't go through my bench. I then held it in my wagon vise.

Test out the hole with the vise screw, and mark the holes for the screw's front mounting plate.

When boring through the chop, I very carefully got the lead screw to come through the back, then flipped it over and finished the hole. When I did this, I worked hard to make sure the plug stayed intact. When you bore with a brace and bit and come in from both ends, if you can work to get it thin enough, the side spurs will cut through before the lip and you'll end up with a plug.

If you can keep this, it's a great little helper for figuring out the center of the big hole. I just put the plug back in when I clamped it to my bench leg and it allowed me to find the center of the hole on the chop. Stick my awl in the hole, give it a light tap with my mallet and you've got a great place to start boring.

Put the parallel guide back in, line up the chop on the leg so that it's flush with the top, and the parallel guide works smoothly. It was not that easy, but it can be done. It would be easier with two people.

I used the plug to mark the spot and then very carefully, checking for square every few strokes for the first 1/2 inch, I began to bore through the leg.

Even with a rather long bit, that is still a lot of leg to get through.

So, I get through to the point where the lead screw is just poking out the inside of the leg. Normally, you flip the piece around and begin boring again from the inside to avoid tearing out chunks as the bit comes through. But I have a problem. The brace and bit are too big to fit in between the legs.

If I had one of those fancy 90-degree big conversion things, I could do it, but I don't. So I had to figure out some way of getting at least past the surface so as to avoid tear-out.

I ended up resorting to the only power tool to be used on my bench. I got that bit I had bought for my cordless drill and the drill and started to work on the inside.

What I had to do was to strip out the center hole so that the lead screw on the bit wouldn't bite. Whenever it did, it would pull the bit right into the wood and it would freeze up.

Eventually, by running the bit in reverse and pushing it in and out, I stripped out the center hole enough that it didn't bite anymore. Later I figured I could have also drilled it out, but whatever works at the moment. Once it was no longer biting, I could very slowly and gradually work the bit into the wood so that it wasn't freezing up by biting too deeply, but was eventually able to break the surface enough that I could come in from the original side and not get tear-out.

After that it was a matter of mounting the vise hardware, and putting it all together.

And it clamps! Really tightly!

As you can see in that last picture, my parallel guide is being held with a rather unorthodox pin. I'm using a hook bolt. I like that it has a little hook which I can just grab and pull out. It's what I'm using right now. We'll see if I keep using it.

The final dimensions that I can clamp are 9 1/2" depth of clamping, and 9" tall.

The next step will be to dismantle my old bench and free up room to finally work with my new bench only. After that I'll make the deadman and the planing stop. But I needed the leg vise to make the deadman.

Finally, it really is not just looking more like a bench, it now actually functions like one.

Wooo Hoooo!

First Blood and Mistake # 2,456,722 and counting

2009-09-16T06:47:00.007-04:00

It's been quite a summer with not much shop time, but I'm hoping that will begin to change. I've been able to get in a couple of weekends in the last month and I've been focusing on the chop for my leg vise.

You say, "But Andrew, that chop shouldn't take that long to make!" You're right. It shouldn't. [pause] Yeah. You're right. [sigh]

Ok, here's another story of why working in very short spurts on an irregular basis is a bad idea.

So, when I ordered the wood for the bench, I figured on some of it for the chop on my leg vise. It was some of the same 7/4 hard maple stuff I was using for the bench top. If you go back to my big burst of activity in March, in the famous Bacon Explosion entry, I talk about gluing up the two pieces I had set aside, not getting the clamping right, and leaving a gap where there was supposed to be spring, etc... I then glued up two other pieces I had lying about that were not as nice as the first two, mainly because I was too tired to rip through the original pair, plane down the original joint, and re-glue. At the time, it seemed good enough.

Well, fast forward to this summer since not much happened between the dates. I began to flatten out the chop on my new bench using my wagon vise (which works wonderfully, by the way). A quick note on what I'm using for bench dogs. I ended up using soft poplar-like dowels I got at the Borg for bench dogs. I love them. What ends up happening is that they slightly deform and become a bit flat on one side. That helps with the holding without me having to figure out just how much flatness should be there and doing it myself. It's a more organic method. (LOL)

It's pretty amazing that I can clamp tight enough to deform the wood, but they don't show any signs of breaking or cracking. The wood is much tougher than I thought it would be. And I've also had them sticking up quite high (four inches or so) and even then they were fine. They're not always quite the right diameter so some are a little smaller than the 3/4" hole. To solve that I put a very small ball catch into the side of the dog which gives just enough pressure to keep the dog from slipping through the hole. It all works great. I'll do a short post on that one of these days.

You can see the slight deformation of the dog in the image below. I'm holding a big board tight enough to do some pretty serious transfers planing without having to use my hold fasts. The wagon vise holds it firmly enough.

Back to the chop. So, I've got this big hunk of hard maple for my chop. I flatten and flatten it. I'm really beginning to hate hard maple.

I'm in a hurry when I finally get it flat and I cut it to the tapered shape and start to smooth out the saw marks from the sides. With the glancing light you can really see the low spots. They're not nearly so obvious without the flash.

You can see on the last one that I had already but a slight bevel around the edge to see how that well that might work, and to reduce the amount of surface area I had to flatten. I'm not sure that's a good idea, because it doesn't reduce it that much, but what it does do is throw off the dimensions of your bevel. But that's not quite the problem here, as the more observant who are familiar with the original plans may be able to tell. The shape is wrong.

What I ended up cutting was an elongated trapezoid with the angled sides extending straight all the way from one corner to another. The original design, and I think for very good reason, has a square section at the top for the actual chop, which then tapers down the leg to the parallel guide at the bottom.

At this point I have to make a decision: mistake or design opportunity? I hold the chop up to the leg and try to envision it being used, how well it would hold, the potential drawbacks and advantages(?) of such a shape. It just doesn't look or feel right. To now cut a square top out of this piece would mean it would end up too narrow, so it looks like I'm starting over. This is always the moment to put everything down, step away from the bench and take a break.

As I'm trying to figure out where to go from here (is now the right time to rip apart that original bad glue job, or do I need to take another trip to the lumber store?) I remember a hunk of wood I've been carting around for quite a while. We all have something like that. A piece of unusual or just interesting wood you keep thinking you'll use for something, but never get around to it. For me, it's a (relatively) big hunk of mahogany I picked out of a scrap bin. It's 40" long, 12" wide and just over 8/4. It has a couple of knots and some chips off the edges. It also is still rough sawn, but it was free, and mahogany. Oh, and did I mention the sap wood, etc...? I picked this up when I really didn't know any better, and it was free.

As I'm flattening it, I can definitely tell this is NOT hard maple. It takes some work, as the board is also twisted and cupped. (I'm starting to really understand why it was in the cut-off bin even though it was so large) It's got a big ol' knot in the middle of one side but even that planes pretty easily. Did I mention it was free?

I get it pretty much flattened up, very carefully mark it up and then cut out the basic outlines. I leave a fair amount at the edges because at this point I'm being overly cautious and insecure.

I plane down the excess I left on the board using the cutoff as a wedge underneath the side of the board. This is where I use the wooden dogs set pretty high up the sides.

I tried a few of my planes including a circa 1940's Miller Falls(?), #6C-type, Craftsman plane, and finally ended up with my trusty newer Stanley #6 with a Hock blade. You can see the nice shavings I was eventually getting in the picture above. I have a special fondness for the #6 as they are generally depricated by followers of Mr. Leach since he equated them with the Prince of Darkness and declared them useless. This makes them cheap, but they're still big hunks of iron and do a good job of being a big jack plane for flattening large surfaces like my bench top, and can do duty as a short joiner on smaller edges like my vise chop. And once I put the Hock blade in my crappy Stanley it works beautifully.

Craftsman plane. Notice original sticker on handle.

Stanley with Hock blade.

Once I got the sides down to dimensions, I started putting the bevel on the edges and do a final smoothing of the faces. For the smoothing I pulled out a great old Type 11 Stanley #5 Jack plane with its sweetheart iron. I tried my Miller Falls smoother, but it just didn't do as nearly a nice a job as my jack plane, so that's what I stuck with. As Kent Beck would say, "Do more of works and less of what doesn't."

And here it is propped up where it will eventually go. I've left a little extra at the bottom so when I chop out the mortise for the parallel guide I have some extra heft and hopefully avoid blowing out the bottom.

And speaking of the parallel guide, I needed to make one of those as well. I just used a piece of straight-grained, 1x4, southern yellow pine that's been in my workshop for quite a while. I marked around it to the dimensions that I wanted which I determined by what would fit into the slot I already cut in the bottom of the leg. I planed it down with my Stanley #6 with the Hock iron, this time set a bit more aggressively.

When I attacked the edge, from which I needed to take a good 1/2", I thought I'd try out my German scrub plane on the job for which it was supposedly designed. I'm not so sure I buy that theory. It was really difficult to keep the scrub on the narrow edge. It resulted in me cutting a nice, shallow gouge out of my finger as I slipped off the edge of the board. I ended up going back to the big Stanley with great success. I did notice, though, the bench's first blood.

It's not much, but I hope it's enough to appease the bench gods who always demand a sacrifice for the new bench, just as my kitchen knife gods demand a blood sacrifice for every new knife I get. I tend to only need to give one sacrifice per knife, so hopefully this will mean I will not need to bleed on my bench again.

One more new thing I was able to do with my bench which was use my wagon vise to hold the parallel guide for planing off the end grain markings. The vise holds things really well in this position. I think I'll have to use this for small drawer and box sides. Another plus for the wagon vise.

Next time, whenever that will be, I will start the harrowing process of cutting the mortise for the parallel guide and pinning it in place. And, of course, boring the holes and cutting it to size, first. This time I will take my time and make sure I don't have to do it all over again. A lesson I seem to need to learn several times each project.

But it's getting closer. Once I have the leg vise in place and working, I will finally dismantle my old bench and have a lot more room in my tiny workshop. Then I can make the sliding deadman and the planing stop. (which I should probably make next, but so far I've not missed it with my great wagon vise)

I might get some shop time this coming weekend, but then not for a while. It will be time for fall gardening and we have a bunch of trees and shrubs to move, and we have a two-week vacation in there somewhere to Flagstaff, Arizona, so there may not be much activity for a while. But then once all that is over with, I suspect I'll get a bit more regular shop time as gardening shuts down for the winter.

AAAndrew

Work Sharp Hints and Tips

2009-06-24T06:06:00.004-04:00

I started to write this as a response to a comment but it became too long and involved, so I thought I'd throw it up here as a post by itself. This is my personal experience with my Work Sharp 3000 and how I've learned to use it best for what I do and how I work.

Hmmm. General advice on the Work Sharp...

Up until very recently I was using the Work Sharp (WS) the standard way, by putting my tool on the bed of the port underneath the wheel and moving it up and back, etc... It works pretty good with some caveats.

Small chisels, for example, were hard to keep straight. Even though fence would be tight up against the tool, because not every chisel is perfectly parallel all the way, some taper a slight bit, that means it would be tighter at the bottom of the fence then at at the top. This leads to the problem of grinding the edge at an angle, rather than 90-degrees across. Once you realize this about a particular tool, you just have to learn to compensate by figuring out which way you twist it to counteract the force of the spinning disk that wants to pull your tool off of center.

I also have a little trouble with the port because the abrasive on the base of the port is rougher than what you're using to finish the bevel. So, even if you're using 3600 or even 6000 on the bevel, the scratches on the back will be something like 220 (I think that's the grit of the abrasive).

When I got the wide blade attachment, and began to use it, I realized how much easier it was to use the whole machine like a scary sharp system that moved for me.

The wide blade attachment is an aluminum bed that attaches to the side of the top of the glass disk and makes a theoretically flat, parallel bed off of which you can use their included honing guide with the abrasive on the spinning glass disk.

The trick to the aluminum bed is to make sure for each disk you put on, that you check the level of the bed against the disk. For some reason, thickness of glass disk, thickness of abrasive paper, or whatever, different disks require me to adjust the level of the bed each time. Fortunately, that's a relatively simple and quick operation involving a small allen wrench I have hanging on the pegboard behind my bench.

The operation is a fast as, unscrew the top knob, replace or flip the wheel, screw on the knob, check level and give a quick quarter or half turn with the allen wrench if needed in one or both adjustment holes, turn it on, and sharpen. All together it takes me about 10-15 seconds to change a wheel and adjust. This is more than made up for by how fast I can sharpen a tool because I don't have to move the tool, I just have to focus on keeping it at a consistent angle.

Once I've established an edge, it takes me less than a minute to take a really dull chisel back up from 1000 to 3600 to 6000.

With plane blades, I use the honing guide. The trick with their honing guide, and perhaps using one of the other ones out there would be better, is to make sure the blade's clamped tightly so it stays consistent across wheels. If I have a lot of work to do on a blade, then I'll go all the way back to the 80 grit. Otherwise, I treat it like I do the chisels.

The Work Sharp is great for flattening the back of a plane blade. The trick to this is that you only really have to care about the top of the back, i.e. the part right up against the edge, and when you go apply the plane bade to the wheel, tilt it downwards so that the important part of the blade touches last. If you try and place the blade straight down thinking you're going to be parallel, you won't be. You're instead going to be in danger of dubbing over the back and putting a micro-bevel on the back of the blade. If that's what you're looking for, fine, but otherwise, touch the edge of the wheel first with the middle of the blade (don't worry, you won't carve a groove in it) and bring the edge of blade down last. I've had great luck getting even knarly, corroded old blades to be in great shape using this. It takes much less time than any other method I've used.

Two other accessories you'll need: Sharpies and a Magnet.

The Sharpie marker is great for knowing just when you've worked over a piece of metal and when you're not quite there. Sometimes it's nice and obvious, but for those pieces that require a lot of work, or for tricky tools, like small bevels, I'll draw lines along the surface I'm grinding with the sharpie and then when the lines are all gone, I've taken off the surface I need to and can move to the next grit. It's quick, cheap and invaluable for knowing when enough is enough.

The second accessory I've found invaluable is a magnet. The one great drawback to the WS, which is true for any dry sharpening technique, is the production of lots of iron filings. This is a messy operation. I've found that by having a large magnet around (not a massive one, but something large enough to handle a bunch of filings, but no so large it messes with the electronics in the machine) that cleanup around the top and on my bench is much easier. I'm actually keeping the filings in a small plastic container and will find some use for them later.

This brings up the topic of heat. As you're grinding metal on abrasives you will produce a fair amount of heat. You get too many iron filings around and they can actually catch on fire and create sparks. Be careful where you use your Work Sharp. Mine is in the garage away from any flammables and I'm always keeping an eye out for where the sparks go and try to keep them down to a minimum by wiping my blade on a folded paper shop towel sitting on my bench in order to take off most of the excess filings that can stick to the blade itself.

The advantage of using the designed port for sharpening is that the base of the port is made as a heat sink so that it takes away some of the heat on the blade when you draw it back across the abrasive bed. I use the aluminum base of the wide blade attachment as the same thing as I'm grinding. I keep my fingers close to the edge of the blade, and if it gets too hot for comfort, which it will do fairly quickly at the lower grits, then I'll flip it over and press the back of the blade to the aluminum bed of the attachment, and hold it down tightly using the rubbery abrasive cleaner that comes with your Work Sharp. It only takes a few seconds, generally, for the heat to dissipate enough to resume work.

And speaking of the rubber cleaner, I always run it across a disk as I change or flip it. This makes the disks last a whole lot longer and cut better. I leave the motor running and just start on the inside and draw it outwards to the edge. It works fine.

Hmmm. I'm not thinking of anything else at the moment, but if you have specific questions I'd be glad to answer them. I will say that i've not yet used the slotted wheels for under-wheel sharpening, but plan to try soon. So, I hope this has been useful.

Overall, I like the Work Sharp. It's a solid piece of machinery that I've made to work well for me. It makes the drudgery of sharpening a bit easier and I've gotten better results than other ways I've tried. Others, I'm sure, get better results with other methods, but the important thing is to work with sharp tools, regardless of how you get there.

Cheers!
AAAndrew

Oh, P.S., I have no relationship with Work Sharp, have never spoken to them except to ask customer service a question, and haven't gotten so much as a brass farthing or single sheet of abrasive from them. It's just my opinion.

Where, oh where, has the little woodworker gone?

2009-06-22T06:07:00.005-04:00

Summer is never a good time for woodworking in the Incidental household. Spring and Summer are not the only two seasons this time of year. It's also gardening season and performance season. Mrs. Incidental teaches ballet and so requires a lot of extra time during performance season and that's when I get to watch the Galoot in Training (GIT) who, at four-years-old, is still young enough to need me nearby and paying attention, and I'm still "responsible" enough to not just stick him in front of the TV while I go off and woodwork. (thought I'm sure he'd be fine with that).

Mrs. Incidental is also an avid gardener. Here in North Carolina the growing season is very long (March to October) but there's a hole in the middle where gardening stops and it's just mainly maintenance. That's just beginning about now when it gets just too hot outside to do much more than deadhead and mow the lawn.

So, it will soon be time for me to get back into the shop. As a matter of fact, I did get some shop time this weekend, but it was all taken up with the woodworker's favorite job, sharpening.

Since that seems to be a subject of much debate, interest and religious wars, I'll briefly mention what I do to keep my tools as sharp as possible. (which we all know to be important)

I've tried various means through the few years I've been butchering wood. Scary sharp was my favorite for a while, but I got tired of changing the sandpaper and could never keep it cutting well for very long. But it did teach me to be pretty good at free-hand sharpening, at keeping a fairly consistent position with my hands. But it also seemed to take for ever if I needed to re-grind a blade, especially a plane blade, that had gotten out of square or had a nick in it etc...

I've never seriously tried water stones as I'm too cheap to get into it, and for the ones where you have to keep them soaking, I just don't do it often enough and I'm afraid of the water getting funky before I come back to the stone. I tried a couple of oil stones and a synthetic stone or two. I have an old razor hone that was new-in-box when I picked it up an an antique store that's kind of fun to use for a quick hone of a paring chisel while I'm working, but none of them seemed to find the right balance of cheap, easy, fast and effective.

In the end I decided to meet myself half-way on the cheap part and splurged for a Work Sharp 3000. These are the spinning machines with the horizontal glass plate that uses sandpaper for the abrasive. They look like they're a really cool design and they are pretty well-made, but it's taken me a while to figure out the best way for me to work with mine.

After a couple of years of sharpening on it I've found that for me, I almost never use the sliding port at the bottom that is meant to be the primary point for sharpening. Instead, I bought the wide blade attachment which gives you a wide, flat surface adjacent to the top of the spinning plate. With this and a honing guide, I can sharpen just about anything with minimal fuss and pretty darned good results.

I have a set of glass disks with various grits on them: 80, 120, 220, 400, 600, 1000, 3600 and 6000. I also have a leather disk with green rouge, but have never gotten into using that.

For plane blades I use the honing guide and the wide blade attachment. For chisels I'll use the honing guide the first time to repair a crooked or badly chipped edge. (remember, I'm fairly cheap so I'll buy good chisels in bad shape if they're cheap) Once I get a good edge on a chisel, I can sharpen the edge extremely quickly by hand. Once you have a good technique for hand sharpening, it's really easy on the Work Sharp because you don't have to move your hands, just keep them still. The disk moves for you.

To re-hone a blade, I'll usually start out at the 1000, or maybe 600 if it's seen a lot of use, and then spend a few seconds on each grit back up to 6000 which puts a mirror finish on it. Easy peasy, 30 seconds for a chisel.

The disadvantage of the Work Sharp is that it's harder to put a camber on a plane blade, but I'm working on that skill as well. It's also not as sexy as a set of exotic Japanese, high-tech, water stones. But it works for what I do.

Overall, my goal is "sharp enough" without having to get into the level where you hold the blade edgewise to a stiff breeze for the final honing. It will fall off of that level of sharpness the first moment you even look at the wood. And I've seen some amazing work down by workmen just taking a few swipes on a rock. So, I don't get all too fired up about absolute perfection with my sharpening, and the Work Sharp, which sits on my fix-it bench in the garage is good enough for me, especially as I've found the way that it works best for my skills (or lack thereof).

If anyone's interested I have a few more tips for working this way with a Work Sharp, but I don't want to turn this into a Work Sharp workshop. (say that five times fast!)

So, I will be back working on the bench in the next month or so. I have to finish up sharpening the tools I've been dulling on the maple to this point, and then I'll get another week in July to finish up the bench, so look for more activity at that point. (did I mention that my woodworking was rather incidental, and sporadic?)

Thanks for those who have noticed that I've been a bit absent these last couple of months. In the words of the immortal bard, "I'll be back." (that was Shakespeare, wasn't it? No? Well, his name started with an "S" so close enough)

AAAndrew

It's beginning to look a lot like a bench

2009-04-12T18:16:00.003-04:00

I've been doing the fettling and other stuff readying the bench to be a bench.

In my haste to get the top onto the legs, I noticed that I had neglected a few small gaps that could have been better in the fit of the legs to the top. So, I flipped the bench back onto my old bench and began the fiddling. (or fettling, but there's a fine line between fettling and messing things up, so I prefer to fiddle around and do a little too little than go over the line and do too much.)

I was mainly worrying about trying to get the top to sit more closely to the shoulders of the tenons on the ends of the legs. It's not perfect, but it is better than it was, and the outside lines are better.

While I had the bench turned upside down, I took the base off again and did some final smoothing of the legs that had either been neglected, or at least short changed in my excitement to get it together. I think this is part of the phenomenon of having only a few hours each week in the shop. I am so anxious for it to look like something that I often cut some essential corners to get to a more tangible stage. Well, that was part of what last weekend was all about. I popped out the brass pins, and all but one came out quite easily and smoothly. I then smoothed down the legs and stretchers to make everything as co-planer as possible.

It worked pretty good. I was a little surprised by one piece of wood on one of the short stretchers. It was significantly different than the others. It was more splintery, was less prone to a smooth finish and overall behaved much less well than the rest of the maple. It looks like maple, and may well be maple, but it's from a cursed tree. I'm glad it's only a short stretcher.

While I had the bench top on my old bench, I thought I'd try and do some more smoothing of the top. I got out my big 'ol Knight razee joiner and went to work coming down the top with the grain to take out the scallops from transversing the top.

You can see the scallops along the top of the bench, with the smooth side closest to the photographer. This plane works quite well, and I was both pushing and pulling as I worked across the bench top. I can only imagine what it must be like to do this with an 8-foot bench.

This weekend I started to put holes into my beautiful bench top. I wanted a template of some kind, and decided to use my oh-so-awfully-used bench hook. I made myself a nice maple one from scraps and then took my old pine one and drilled the holes to match the spacing for my bench.

I tried experiments with my jennings #12 and my two Irwin #12's. One of the Irwin bits cut a much smoother hole (I'll have to check the cutters on the others later) and so I used that one. I first positioned the first hole in the chop of my wagon vise and put a brass dog in it since that hole is a little larger than 3/4". (see my earlier posting about making it with a #13). I clamped a piece of scrap under the bench to help avoid tearout. I know it won't be shown, but I've seen some amazingly spectacular tearout before and I didn't want that, even on the bottom of my bench. It worked as well.

The 10" sweep of my brace was absolutely necessary and I made sure my bit was sharp and waxed. Even so, this was hard work.

I bored out the first hole, and as I was getting to the bottom I realized that it was going to come out right into the leg. Not good. I had placed the holes in my old bench hook so that I was not able to get a hole past the leg with my current configuration. Look at the picture above and see that the left-most hole is still not completely past the leg.

I solved this by boring another hole in the bench hook. You can see it to the far right in the picture below. I then put a dog in there and through the wagon vise chop, adjusted the vise to put the hole as close to the leg as I was comfortable, and then bored away.

For each hole I would use two squares to line up the brace and bit as perpendicular as possible. After each hole I would hold up an old candle to the screw, cutters and flutes. The heat of the bit would melt a nice trail of wax down the bit. I would also usually get a nice plug of wood down by the end of the bit every time. You can see this in the picture below along with the rather course screw pitch of the bit. Despite this being so corse, it worked better in this hard maple than the fine pitched Irwin I tried. You can't always take what the old guys say for granted. Sometimes you've got to just try it and see.

I eventually worked my way down my bench. I wondered where to end the holes, and after looking at some pictures, and thinking about it a bit during a rest break, I decided to end them just shy of where my leg vise will come. If I need some holding point after this point along my bench top, I can clamp a planing stop in my leg vise. You can see some drops of sweat on the bench top. That's some honest work there. A lucky 13 3/4" holes through 4 inches of hard maple.

You can see two braces on the bench top. The other one is a smaller, 8" sweep Fray-made Spofford brace that I used a couple of times to come at the hole from the bottom when I stopped too soon, or the bit wouldn't bite anymore once it broke through. I couldn't fit the 10" sweep brace between the bottom and the front stretcher, it was too long. The 8" Fray is my favorite all-around brace anyway. I rarely need ratcheting, and it's as stable as it gets. The sweep was just too small for this big job.

You can see the Spofford chuck in the picture below. I had originally drilled the holes in my bench hook with this brace, I said it was my standard brace, but then I realized that the picture seemed to indicate that was to be boring the holes in the bench with this brace, and I switched the bit to the real brace.

For full tool disclosure I went and checked to make sure of what I used.
Big brace. No markings other than "No. 120". Wooden handle with pewter rings, two-jaw chuck.
Small brace. Marked "Fray No. 110" Don't know if this means a 10" brace. I may be underestimating my brace sizes. It is definitely smaller than the other one.
Bit is a Greenlee, Irwin-style, #12 bit.
Oh, and one square was a cheapy engineers square, the other is a great little 4" Union Tool sliding square I just bought from Bob Rozaieski over at Logan Cabinet Shoppe. It's in perfect condition and well compliments my 12" Union Tool carpenter square, but much cuter.

I've now ordered my holdfasts from Tools for Working Wood and will figure out my hold-fast holes based on the hold fasts. I tried out my cheapy cast holdfast I was using in my thinner bench. It just won't work at all in my new one. Darned, I need new holdfasts. What a tragedy.

Next time I am going to use my wagon vise and dog holes to start to make my leg vise. Once I get that done, then all I have left is to make the plane stop, put a basic oil finish on it, and I'll have a brand new bench!

It's beginning to look a lot like a bench!

AAAndrew

Let the flattening continue!

2009-03-23T06:57:00.003-04:00

Ok, so not the most inspired title.

I got another hour in the shop yesterday morning (nice light in my workshop in the morning). I pulled out my winding sticks (nice little aluminum jobs from Lee Valley) and checked my bench. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that except for a tiny bit of crown in the middle of the bench in one place, it's pretty darned flat and true. Or, I'm just lousy at figuring this stuff out. (always a possibility).

I began the day with the bench looking like this.

Because I use my foreplane for light jointing work, I've never really put a curve in the blade or relieved the corners enough. I think that's something on my list of things to do, next time I sharpen. You can see the places where the edges of the blade dig in on my traversing strokes. It's not a huge deal, as I'm not too worried about finish of the top, I'm more concerned with flat and true. (there's one board in particular where I keep getting tearout going crossways, but it's not really worrying me like it would if this was fine furniture I was building)

The next step was to go down the top again, still traversing, with a more finely set jointer plane. I got out one of my favorites, an old "B" (Birmingham) plane. This is such a nice plane. It's about the size of a #7 and has always done a great job.

I worked my way down the top making sure I overlapped my courses. I found that sometimes I'd get to one area and the plane would hardly bite at all. For those areas I'd either work in from the right (I was going right to left down the bench) more slowly, taking more overlapping passes, or work in from the left going backwards, and eventually I'd be taking the full-width passes I was looking for. Again, this can be a whole lot more work than you want if you don't wax the sole of the plane. I use an old candle. It works.

Here's a picture part way down. You can kind of see how much rougher the surface is below the plane than above it. There are still marks from the jointer plane to be see, but that comes next. Overall, it's a much smoother surface. (and, yes, that's the tearout I'm talking about)

The next step, and the last I was able to do yesterday, was to then start to go down the bench at an angle. I got out my foreplane again and started up at the corner and worked my way down the bench. Again, I made sure I was getting full-width cuts that overlapped. You can see that the shavings are a bit different. You can get longer, ribbon-like shavings at this point. What's interesting is that the raking light really makes the bench look much more textured than you can feel. It feels quite smooth at this point, but the light shows up the texture better.

After this I checked again with my winding sticks and things are looking quite good. Next time I'll start going down the top with my jointer to take out the ripples.

Let the flattening begin!

2009-03-21T19:21:00.004-04:00

So, I've got the basic shape together. It's now time to turn this table into a bench.

The first thing is to get the top flat. No matter how precisely you glue up, (at least no matter how precisely I glue up), there will always be boards slightly out of alignment, or some that are bowed and so stick up higher than ones around it. The first step is take all that down to relatively flat, and the fastest way is to plane across the boards, also called traversing. I got through traversing my bench today.

First thing was to sharpen up the blades of a couple of fore planes I have. I haven't used them in quite a while, so I made sure they were nice and sharp. I ended up choosing my recent stanley #6C with a Hock replacement blade. I like to use my #6 for this as it works like a mondo jack plane with more weight behind it, and more length. It's not quite a jointer, but more than a jack. It's all personal preference. I also like to cut dovetails with a larger tenon saw. Go figure.

I first pulled this plane out the night I got this all together and tried a few swipes across.

<

It was a chore. Now, I don't expect this to be a walk in the park, but it was harder than I thought it should be, which told me I needed to sharpen. That's what I did, and did a bunch of other blades from my long planes (fore and jointer), and my little German scrub plane at the same time.

Next time I tried it, which was this afternoon, it was a whole other story. I was able to take off huge strips of wood, including full-width shavings of cross-grain hard maple that stayed together across several boards. You can see the very specific type of shavings you get from this kind of work.

You can see my little German scrib plane in the background. I tried it out, but it's blade is so small, really meant for taking down the edges of boards, not faces, and I could get much bigger cuts, and thus faster, from my #6 plane.

Here's a closer look at the scrub plane.

And there were a LOT of cuts to be made.

Overall, very satisfying. Next step will be to check for wind with my winding sticks and look for high spots. Then I'll start to transverse again, this time with a finer-set jointer, then I'll start to go down the bench with a even-more-finely-set-jointer, taking out high spots, etc... before finishing with a smoother. I'll probably wait on the smoother until the end. I at least wanted to get the bench pretty flat before fitting the face vise, and yet want to wait on the final smoothing until I've finished everything else. Then I'll do final smooth and decide on any finishing I want to do.

Still a ways to go.

One note, though, that came about during my sharpening, was how impressed I was with the Peugeot Frers. iron in the scrub plane. It is a nice, solid chunk of iron, and that thing sharpened up beautifully, and honed to a mirror finish. You don't need a scrub iron to be that honed sharp, but I put a higher angle on it, 35-degree, and didn't mind spending a tiny bit more time to get it really shining. It's one of the nicest irons I have.

The logo

The blade with the original sharpening profile. I've tried to keep the interesting profile, but I've just sharpened it. This picture is a "before" picture.

AAAndrew

Pictures of the Process, Part 4

2009-03-17T06:39:00.006-04:00

What a way to end a weekend of intense work. Yesterday I ran over to Woodcraft and got some little pinpoint gluers. I also called Titebond (Franklin) and talked to one of their good technical service people. He told me that Titebond III, which I had used for the initial glueup, does glue to itself, so his recommendation was to use the same glue.

I spread the joint a little bit with my beater glueing chisel (a modern, plastic-handled chisel I use for nasty jobs like cleaning up dried glue), drilled a few 3/32" holes into the joint from the back of the bench top, and proceeded to use the pinpoint gluers, which are long, thin metal tips attached to a little accordion-style glue bottle, to apply LOTS more glue. I squirted as much as I could into the drill holes, and then up at the end block for the wagon vise, I just came at it from every angle and was able to get the metal tips all the way into the joint and just flood it with glue.

Here's the split. The far right board on the edge is board 1, then you have board two and then three as you move into the top. The split was between board one and two below the wagon vise, and the between three and four at the end block for the wagon vise.

Arrrgh!

In the end I glued it up and put the clamps on and let it sit for about 12 hours. (yes, I did this first thing in the morning)

I was also very worried about glue squeeze out running into the wagon vise, so I taped over the gap with duct tape, which happens to be red, don't ask. This seems to have worked pretty good. There was squeeze out but the duct tape held it back enough that what little got through was easy enough to scrape off. My main worry was that I'd glue my vise chop into place!

Now that the crisis has been covered, let's go back and see what lead up to it. And you'll see how much work went into the top that morning, which made it all the more heartbreaking when the split happened. But I guess better now than when I went to clamp the first board in the wagon vise.

First thing I did that morning was to cut the ends off of the top. I used my c. 1917-1940 Disston D8 cut to 8tpi. It is a real trooper of a saw.

I had to get up on top of the bench to start the cut. I wanted to see the cut clearly. If I had more than one saw bench (yeah, yeah, I know) then I could have tried to haul the giant slab o' wood onto those, but this worked as well.

Starting the cut

Keeping to the line pretty well, at least from this angle.

You can see up where the cut started, just past the fourth board, and back at the corner where I cut a relieving cut so it didn't splinter out at the end, I actually cut a little out of perpendicular to the top. I'll be focusing on that when I break out my end grain planing operation.

I tried starting the cut from the floor when I did the other side and tried to keep it straighter up and down. I found the first four boards actually made this more difficult in the end. As you can see, I also flipped the bench to be able to saw this side right-handed. You can see the long slot for the sliding deadman down the front of the bench.

The next big operation was to cut the giant mortises into the top to fit the tenons on the ends of the legs. I tried all kinds of things, including a couple of big t-augers I have. I'll tell ya', that hard maple is more than a match for any of that stuff. I ended up, as I mentioned in my earlier post, drilling lots of smaller (1/2") holes around the perimeter of the mortise and then chopping out the rest of it. I did try on one mortise just boring out holes on just one end to give some relief and then chopping out the rest with my big mortise chisel. That ended up being a whole lot of work, which chips flying everywhere in the shop.

loved this little curl spit out by the bit.

Next time (ha!), I will make sure there is sufficient space between the end of the wagon vise and the mortise for the leg. As you can see the wall between the two is very thin and it blue out a little bit. I don't think it really hurts the integrity of the top, but I would have felt better with more wood between the two gaps.

These mortises are two-inches deep, two inches wide and five inches long. That's a lot of wood to take out.

This is when I finally figured out the best way to do this, and of course it was the last one. You can see the big chunk I was able to pop out. You can also see the drip of sweat on the wood. Between sawing and these mortises, I definitely got my workout for the day!

Once I got all the mortises cut, I went to fit the base to the top. I first put a bevel on the tops of the tenons to help ease them into the mortises.

I fiddled a bit and got the tenons in pretty tightly but couldn't quite make them go in all the way. This is when I flipped the bench onto the floor. (that was an adventure!)

And it was while I was trying to pound the tenons into place that the split happened. All of which I covered above. After all that work, you can see why when the top split I just put my tools down and walked away for the rest of the night. I had put in a good 8+ hours in the shop of hard work and I was tired, discouraged, hungry, sore and ready to stop.

While the split was drying (the next day), I glued up the boards for the leg vise chop. I also was reminded why I have a love/hate relationship with my Jorgenson clamps.

I planed out a little spring into the boards, put plenty of glue on and clamped them in. Or at least I thought I had. When I went back to take it out of the clamps I discovered that I hadn't actually tightened the middle clamp or the one on the end. They felt tight because I hadn't tilted the handles correctly and just tightened away until the handle wouldn't move any more. It wasn't tightened, it was just screwed all the way back while still in loose sliding mode. It's hard to describe, but if you have clamps like these you know what I'm talking about. So, I ended up with a nice little gap right down the middle of the boards where the spring was. AAAARRRGGGHH!!

So, after doing this again (I did have spares this time!) I got it right. One of the boards is a 1/16" out of true in the middle, it's a bit bent, but that I can deal with on a 7/4 thick board.

At that point I started to make my dinner. I felt I deserved a bit of a treat for all the hard work so I made myself a Bacon Explosion. (Look it up) It's basically a woven mat of bacon, stuffed with Italian sausage with cooked bacon in the middle. It's then slow cooked and eaten in slices. It's like smokey, spicy meatloaf, and quite good. I used a Caribbean rub instead of the BBQ sauce.

After my late, but very delicious, dinner, I went back up to the shop and very carefully fitted the tenons into the mortises. I never forced anything, and ended up cleaning out one of the mortises a little more, and taking some off of the tenons where it was rubbing, etc... In other words, all the stuff I should have done the first time. This time was a little easier because I had the top down on the floor sitting on four wooden blocks so I could get my fingers underneath it to lift it when I needed to. (Good idea!!) And in the end, Voila!

Here's the underside of the wagon vise. You can see the blow out of the thin wall between the mortise and the wagon vise on the left, and the squeeze out of the glue from the re-glue of the end block on the right. Not so pretty, but damn it, it works!

I couldn't resist getting out my #6 with a Hock iron and taking some cross passes on the bench. Sweet! It is going to flatten out nicely, and will be another source of a good workout.

AAAndrew

The fun for the night

2009-03-16T00:01:00.004-04:00

Today was a long day. I sawed off the ends of the top, and didn't do too badly considering I was using a Disston D8. A lot of work.

I then flipped the top and laid out and cut the massive mortises into the top for the legs. These things are 5"x2" by 2" deep. That's a lot of hard maple to cut out. I tried all kinds of things, and finally figured out the best combination on the last mortise. I bored holes around the edge of the mortise with my brace and bit and then cut out the middle with my, now indispensable, 1/2" Butcher mortise chisel. That was even more work than the sawing!

I got the base, somehow, up on the bench where the top was upside down. I fitted, and fettled the mortises (I thought) so that they fit the tenons in the legs. I then began to pound them in. The legs got stuck and wouldn't go further in, or come out.

Risking my life, I very carefully flipped the bench off of my old bench and onto the floor. That was scary, but it all came down fine. I then began to whack at the top (with suitable sacrificial boards to protect it). It all seemed like I was making very slow progress, which should have told me to stop, and work even harder to separate the two pieces and re-look at the tenons. Instead, through being tired, sore, hungry and anxious to see it together, I kept pounding. Eventually, I had the inevitable tragedy. I started to split the front boards. The split is along the glue line where I believe I had too little glue in the initial set I glued up.

At this point, I put down my tools, turned off the radio, turned off the light and left. I ate dinner, watched a movie and then went back up and very carefully, with a couple of my big vises turned into spreaders, separated the base from the top.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to fix the split. I've written to the old tools list as well as Titebond to ask what they suggest. The split is in two places: one whole face of the vise end block (between 3 and 4) , which is the most serious place to have a separation, and about six inches down from the vise opening along the joint between boards 1 and 2. My concern is that I find a glue that will work with the glue-coated faces of the boards, and that I can inject into the crack. I'm thinking epoxy at the moment, we'll see what we hear from Titebond.

Other than the crack, the bench looked really cool finally put together. I can't wait to fix this and begin making the leg vise.

Oh, yeah, I've already trimmed the tenons a little bit. I won't be doing the same thing again.

AAAndrew

Pictures of the Process, Part 3

2009-03-15T07:49:00.004-04:00

Alright. I have the wagon vise finally worked out! That was a big source of trouble and headache, mainly because I was trying to figure out how to do it on my own. In the end, it's a pretty simple concept, but the execution was a bit more challenging. I'm sure I made it much harder than it needed to be, but it was also a learning experience for me. So glad that's over!

Now onto something a lot more straight forward. I need to cut a groove into the bottom of the first rail to accept the top of the sliding deadman. I decided to cut the groove now, before glueing up the boards since I had already had experience with the fun of cutting a long groove in this wood by hand.

My boards for the top are 7/4 thick. The boards for my sliding deadman are 4/4. So the question becomes, where to put the groove? One consideration is that I'm seriously considering making, in addition to the sliding deadman, a sliding leg vise to go into that slot. I've seen a couple out there on other web sites and to me, it gives me the benefits of an adjustable double screw face vise while also allowing me the flexibility of two independent screws without having to worry about racking, and yet still able to have the deadman for everyday work.

But that's for the future. With this in mind, though, I decide to build the slot deeper into the front board to allow for the pressures that a sliding leg vise exert. I end up putting the groove one-inch in from the front and make it 3/4" wide. I also make it 1 1/2" deep. For my sliding deadman I will attached a piece of 3/4 board to the back of the deadman that will slide in the slot.

So, now for the layout. I get it laid out and start cutting a series of relieving cuts similar to how you cut for half-blind dovetails.

I get all the way to the end and stand up the board. That's when I realize that I've laid out and cut the cuts on the OUTSIDE face of the front board. After a short, therapeutic spell of exclamations and verbal ejaculations, I get out the last spare board I have and carefully, very carefully lay out exactly what I'm going to cut and where. This is where I come up with my daily lessons in the earlier post.

I cut the damned groove one more time, and cut the relieving cuts for the deadman slot again, this time on the inside face of the board. Notice the very explicit markup on the board.

I begin to take out the waste using my wonderful Butcher pigsticker again, as well as some other finer chisels for clean up. There was a reason for this piece to be my final backup. The grain on it goes every which way and there are streaks of discoloration all through it. I don't mind the discoloration, but the wild grain made it an extra pain to cut out this waste.

Finely, I had everything ready and I did a dry run clamp up without glue. Amazingly enough, it all fit together and began to look like a workbench.

I took the leap and glued up the first four rows of boards together. I did these as one piece because of all of the fiddly bits of the wagon vise and the opening for the planing stop at the other end.

At this point I took a break and went next door for a St. Paddy's day open house. I was temperance itself (relatively) and only had one hard cider with my corned beef and cabbage because I was anxious to get back and finish up.

I came back and began adding pieces. You can see that boards 5-14 were purposely left a bit long, as I mentioned in earlier posts. Today I will get to trim that off. In the first picture you can see the opening for the planing stop near the other end. I did trim that just a bit to make sure it was square before continuing the glue up.

In this next picture you see my little glue pot. I'm not sure where I picked it up, but it's got a big ol' brush built into the lid which is perfect for these massive glue up situations. It really lays down the glue thickly enough and yet the brush allows me to spread it round quickly and evenly. I've tried those little acid brushes, which work ok for small parts, and old credit cards (or hotel key cards) for spreading glue, but nothing works as well as this little modest glue pot for large glue jobs.

I worked my way along, sometimes adding two at a time, sometimes just one. I took my time and eventually made it all the way to 14!!

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I've laid out the lines to trim to using a very old carpenter's square I have. It's still square and works perfectly for this operation.

You can see here how I numbered each board. Some eventually got shifted around, as you can see by the cross outs. I wasn't too worried about pencil marks on the top as I'm going to have to flatten the top anyway and will take off the marks then. The numbers actually served a couple of purposes. It helped me keep my boards in some kind of order, and also they indicated grain direction. If I placed the board with the number right-side-up from where I stood, then the grain all runs in the same direction. This way, when I go to smooth the top I can plan from right to left and, as much as possible, the grain will cooperate.

Well, that's it for now. Today I trim the ends of the top, and try to flip it and cut the mortises for the leg tenons. I will then attempt to affix the base to the top, and get my big, strong nephew to come over and help me flip it and put it down on the ground. At that point I'll probably have to shift my workshop around to accommodate two benches while I make the leg vise.

Wish me luck!

AAAndrew

Pictures of the Process, Part 2

2009-03-15T07:23:00.004-04:00

So, at this point I have the boards of the top in shape to glue up. It's time to finish figuring out the wagon vise.

The first thing to do is to finally commit and drill the hole in my vise chop to accept the bench dog. It was a scary thing to do because this little simple piece of wood had caused so much trouble as I figured out how to do it.

Ta da!

Now came the part of drilling the hole in the end block. The vise screw has a collar through which the screw threads and I wanted to inset it into the block of wood at the end of the bench. This involves boring a hole 1 1/4" in diameter into hard maple end grain. I tried every boring tool I have including t-augers and all kinds of bits, but everything is made for face grain boring.

Based on a suggestion from the Porch I tried drilling a series of holes with a normal twist bit and cutting them out.

Maybe my bits aren't the right kind or I needed a chain drill or something, because that was REALLY hard work. And in the end, when I tried cutting out in between the holes I discovered how little straight grain was actually in the block. It tore out past the line something horrible.

So, in the end, I created a new block and this time I cut out the semi-circle on each piece first, using a variety of chisels, sawing down to the line, and my one measly gouge, until it was acceptable. I glued up the block and went to bed.

The next morning it all fit well and so I drilled the holes for the two small bolts that will hold the collar onto the block. I'm using bolts instead of screws because I want the collar to have strength not just for pushing but also for pulling in case I want to use the vise to pull something apart.

On the back of the block, I counter sunk some flat holes for the fender washers and nuts with one of my beloved center bits. The hole is a little raggedy since I was trying to using a center bit around an existing hole so there really wasn't much for the center spike of the bit to grab onto. But it worked well.

And here it all is clamped up and working quite well!!

It helped a huge amount to wax the insides of the groove with an old candle. That helped the action immensely.

You can see that I have almost five inches of vise opening to work with. Not huge, but sufficient for my purposes. I'll just have to make sure and place the corresponding dog holes at appropriate distances apart.

Altogether the opening is 8-inches long. I had the rough measurements based on what I could measure ahead of time, but I cut the groove a little long, and left boards 2 and 3 a little long to account for the reality of the situation. This allowed me to adjust to the reality of the vise once I got it installed to get the maximum opening I could.

Next up, I cut the groove for the sliding deadman.

AAAndrew

Pictures of the Process, Part 1

2009-03-14T21:39:00.005-04:00

I took a whole bunch of pictures so I'll break it up a bit.

First, we'll start at the end. I finally got the top glued up.

As you can see, I left the ends of boards 5-14 long on both ends. After I leave this overnight, I will trim this off along a line I drew with my very old, hand-made carpenter's square. (Believe me, it's straight, it's just the camera lens that makes it look all wanky)

But how did I get here? Let's take a look.

I marked out the grooves for the wagon vise chop to ride in. I then hacked them out with the massive Butcher chisel I mentioned in previous posts. Because the groove needs to be one-inch wide, I used a 1/2" chisel and made two passes down the groove.

You can see that I wasn't caring too much about the edges, but it does leave the bottom pretty smooth for such a major hack. I only need to go down the groove two times, one for each side. The chisel cuts deep enough, about 1/2" the first pass that I don't need to come back along the same route.

I got a chance to have this fun several times too many because of not following the Daily Lessons I posted earlier today. In this picture you get a glimpse of my Persuader. I weighed the mallet and the chisel after hacking around with them so much. The mallet weighs 2 lbs. 6 oz. (1100 grams), and the chisel weighs 14 oz. My hands and arms and back got quite a workout the last couple of days.

After finally getting the grooves right, I double checked my full set of lumber for the top. As you can see, they're all different lengths.

So, I cut everything that wasn't the first four boards down to around 65 inches. That gives a margin of around 2-3 inches on either side since the final length should be 60 inches. To do this, I used by great old Disston D8 and a crappy , plastic Stanley miter box.

Oh, look. After I laid out the boards and got them cut I realized I had laid-out the groove wrong, AGAIN and had to cut it AGAIN.

One of the two techniques I used was the V in the middle technique. The other was to start at one side and work my way all the way down to the other end. Neither seemed faster, but the first pass was always much slower than the second pass. And when you did the second pass, the chisel always wanted to wander off into the existing empty space to the side. This meant that I always had to trim up the side of the second pass.

Next set of images I'll show how I eventually solved the problem of the vise end block where the collar for the vise screw needed to be inset. And I'll show how I cut the groove for the deadman to slide in, how I screwed up yet AGAIN, and had to cut the groove AGAIN in the process of making a whole new front board. And then we'll see the actual glue-up process.

Yipee!

AAAndrew

Lesson for the day, and the first boards get their glue

2009-03-14T13:28:00.004-04:00

For some, Measure twice, cut once is enough. Not me. I obviously have special needs when it comes to woodworking. I have my own saying. It doesn't fit on a t-shirt quite so well, but is more accurate for my own personal "way of working" (read "failings").

1. Plan your layout
2. Mark your layout in pencil on the board
3. Check your layout
4. Double check your layout against adjoining pieces to make sure it makes sense
5. Mark your layout more clearly (marking knife, mortise gauge and/or heavier pencil line, whatever your preferred means)
6. Check your layout one last time
7. Make your cuts

Don't ask me how I've come up with this. It's not a pretty tale.

But I have managed to solve the problems from last night by creating a new end block by cutting the semi-circle on each half-block first, then glueing them together. That kept me up until after midnight last night.

This morning I affixed the collar for the vise screw into the end block with small bolts. I drilled shallow holes with a center bit to fit the small washer and nut so the bolt is below the surface of the end block.

With the whole vise setup worked out I went on to cut the groove under the first board in which the sliding deadman will slide.

After a petite detour (see lesson above) and another chance to show off my mortise chisel work, I finally got everything ready and fettled before lunch.

I had lunch, and then I went up and actually glued some boards together!!! I glued up boards 1-4 which have the most fiddly bits with the wagon vise, and the gap for the planing stop. Phew! That's a relief!

I'm now going next door where my neighbor is having a St. Paddy's day open house party. I will try and resist drinking much as I want to get back in an hour or so and finish glueing up the rest. That should not be terribly difficult, just a matter of juggling glue and fast working.

Later, after all of the top is glued up, I'll take a break and post the pictures I've taken so far.

AAAndrew

Back in the shop again!

2009-03-13T12:07:00.007-04:00

I'm back in the shop again, determined to finish my workbench. My family is out of town and I have the whole house to myself, thus the extended shop time.

Last night I got the lumber for the top mostly ready for glue-up. One question I've had for myself is how to deal with the length of the boards making up the top. I've discovered, the hard way, that cutting them all to final length before glue up is a mistake, because no matter how careful you are in glue up, they never quite line up perfectly. I'm sure this is due to a failing in me, but I'm going to try it a different way this time.

I left each board past the first four boards about 5" too long. The front boards all have some kind of piecing together going on, either from the wagon vise or the plane stop, or both. These I'm going to have to take extra special care in gluing up anyway. I figure (at least now it sounds like a good idea) that once I get these four boards put together, and I glue the rest together roughly equally overhanging on both ends, I will use the front boards as a guide for my sawing the back 10 boards to length.

I'm sure it won't be as easy as it describes, and I may end up with a slanted end, but all I can do is the best that I can.

When I was cutting the boards last night I had fun using my Disston D8 in a plastic crap Stanley miter box. I put a sacrificial board underneath and just cut away. I first started trying to use my new (c. 1870's) Moulson Bros. back saw, but it was way too slow cutting through a 7/4 board of hard maple. The Disston did it like a dream.

This morning I cut the groove for the wagon vise into my board #4. I used my 1/2" Butcher pig-sticker chisel and my "Persuader" mallet. (at least that's my name for it) Just for fun I weighed my mallet because I really began to feel the weight of it after pounding for half-an-hour. It's 2 lbs 6 oz, with the vast majority of the weight in the head, as it should be. It's fantastic!

So, after being so successful with that one, I went to cut the groove in the #1 board. That's when I realized that I had cut the groove incorrectly in the board. You see, the chop that will slide in the groove is not symmetrical on the top and bottom of the tab that slides in the groove. There's more below the groove than above it to help make sure the vise is able to direct the most amount of force in the right place on the chop.

At first I thought I could switch #1 and #4 boards and turn 4 upside down and make it 1. Whoops, this is where my cutting boards to length before I absolutely had to screwed me. #4 is 54 inches long because of the gap for the planing stop. #1 is 60 inches and is the front board. Since my board stretcher doesn't work, I couldn't make a 54-inch board work for a 60-inch space. And the one spare board I had turns out to be twisted enough to enter a dance contest. So, it was off to the lumber store. I made a quick call to the Hardwood Store of North Carolina (good people) who agreed to whip up a couple (I won't be without a good spare this time) pieces of s4s hard maple to my dimensions. I drove out there and was able to pick up the wood right before they closed and get home.

So, after dinner, it was cutting another groove, getting it fettled and working (this time I used an old candle to wax up the groove and that helped immensely). Next was to drill the hole for the dog in the chop. I got that done with the hole being only a little crooked. Good enough. The last thing I need to do before glue up is drill a hole in the end grain of the end block that will hold the collar for the wagon vise screw. It has to be a 1.25" hole 2.75" deep through hard maple end grain. We'll see if I can figure this out, or I'll have to re-make the end block by cutting the hole first, and then glueing up the block afterwards.

Tomorrow I let you know what I figure out and I'll include the pictures I took today.

AAAndrew

Woodwright School First Class - Pictures

2009-03-05T06:40:00.003-05:00

I finally uploaded the pictures from the first class at Roy's. I didn't take too many because I was too busy enjoying myself and doing the work.

1. Each bench was stocked with a selection of new and old tools. This was my bench before we began work.

>

2. A few pictures of the toys just laying around the shop

3. Roy's sharpening station (after the pedal-powered grind wheel)

4. The class began with paperwork and choosing our benches

5. A pre-class orientation

6. An introduction to dovetailed joinery by looking at a 200-year-old tool chest

Kind of hard to see in the photo, but the maker seemed to enjoy violating just about all of the conventional wisdom we have about dovetails. He's got half-tails on top and bottom, the pins are far too steep and the pins and tails are on the wrong boards for a tool chest. (pins on front and back, tails on sides) Yet, here it still is, a couple of centuries later.

7. We cut our own through and half-blind dovetails. I began working with this tiny Sorby dovetail saw. It was interesting to use until it popped out of its handle. I ended up using the tenon saw. I like the bigger saws anyway.

8. Bill Anderson showing us how it's done. Cutting grooves in the drawer parts with a #45. Notice his very nice tool tote in the background. Bill teaches classes himself in the area.

9. As a lead-up to motise and tenon joinery, Roy had us pull out some timbers that were stacked along the side of the room. Here he is remembering how they all go together.

We got a chance to take a turn on a wonderfully boring machine. It was much easier than I thought it was going to be.

When we put the timbers together Roy showed how without pegs or anything beyond the cut joints, the corner timber was quite sturdy and solid. The timbers ended up being two pieces of sill, a corner post and two supports.

10. We got an all-too-short demo of sash making. Here are some of the toys on Roy's mini-Roubo.

11. The class ended with a wonderful look at two very old tool chests in the English tradition. Roy told the story of the two workmen who owned these tools. One of whom had bought the tools of the other. Great stories, great tools, a great time.

AAAndrew

The Woodwright School - First Class

2009-03-02T07:04:00.001-05:00

I had my class yesterday at Roy Underhill's The Woodwright School. This was the second session of the first class taught at his new school, and it covered dovetails and mortise and tenon. Saying that lays out the bare facts, but doesn't come close to describing what actually happened, or all what was taught during the day.

It was a chilly, rainy day in Pittsboro when we all arrived, and it kept raining all day long. Everyone was there by 8:30 when the class wasn't scheduled until 9:00. We filled out our paperwork, inspected the classroom for safety hazards (the most hazardous thing there was my own incompetance), and chose a bench.

Each bench had a compliment of tools, some new, some old, some very old. Down the middle of the room sat Roy's little Roubo-style bench with the splayed legs in back, a treadle-powered scroll saw, his spring-pole lathe, and his "new" 1891 treadle-powered table saw, which Roy explained was the outer limits of the technology we would be using in the school.

There were ten of us of varying degrees of skill. At the bench in front of me was Bill Andersen who himself teaches classes locally, and who had the coolest tool tote and nicest tools (at one point pulling out four 3/8" pigsticker mortise chisels for use of others in the class). In front of him was Peter Ross, formerly the Master of the Shop at Colonial Williamsburg's Anderson Forge for 21 years, and a friend of Roy's. (he also lives locally and was a really nice guy) It was the first time he had tried woodworking. The ten-person class was rounded out by other enthusiastic students from as far away as Tennessee. Overall, a great group.

Roy and his wife welcomed us, provided coffee and doughnuts and we began the class.

The class itself was a mixture of straight-ahead woodworking instruction, history and examination of actual pieces: some Roy had made for his show (and wonderfully recognizable by fans), some were of more historical interest. We got a chance to closely examine a wonderful old tool chest probably from around North Carolina dating to approximately late 18th, early 19th century. We examined the construction, what choices were made, the tools used to make them, what worked, and how it possibly has lasted so long while violating almost all of the rules we thought we knew. (we also got a chance to see two other chests full of tools which would have made anyone here drool as least as much as I did)

At various times Roy interspersed into the class other topics like getting a chance to examine, and watch him demonstrate, the Barnes treadle-powered table saw, or we pulled a set of squared timbers with pre-cut joinery out from the corner and he showed us how they all fit together to form a corner of a timber-framed house and how solid they were without any pegging or anything except the joinery.

We also got a great little intro and description of sash making, including the tools used to make window and door sashes.

It was in these interludes that the real differences between Roy's school and other very good schools of woodworking instruction comes through. Roy's a good teacher, he's had just a little experience explaining woodworking and its related arts for the last 30+ years, but it's his historical perspective, the knowledge he brings of craft and tradition that set his classes apart.

Thinking back on his class, it most reminded me of my graduate school classes in Art History. These were NOT the large, lecture-hall recitations of "Here's a painting of Virgin and Child by BlahBlahBlah, painted in 1672. Notice the fine brushwork...." The graduate-level art history classes that I was reminded of were ones where you meet in the back rooms of the museum and see five different Japanese woodblock prints of the same scene. The professor takes you through, in depth, just what's going on with each picture, including the history of when it was made, the significance of what they were showing in the scene, the technology of the print making including how they modified the blocks based on wear and tear during the printing process (as shown in the different versions, or "states" of the print), etc...

In other words, you're given context, background, explanation and even some well-informed speculation. It's a richer approach to the same information. It's the difference between being told that a house is a common example of a Queen Anne Victorian, and being told that this is a regional example of a Queen Anne Victorian which became popular with certain pattern books that came out of the Northeast at this date, but was modified by local elites in the area by extending the porch for added shade in the heat, and notice the extra roof lines as the attic was changed to allow for greater ventilation. We also see the attention to small ornamentation which became popular and replaced the taste for simple, geometric shapes. How did they turn out that much wooden gingerbread ornaments? Well, small shops sprung up to create nothing but the spindles, ......" You get the idea.

It's obvious that Roy's passionate about the old ways of woodworking, and making sure the hard-won lessons of our predecessors are not lost in a world of MDF jigs, flipping switches, and dust collection systems. He brings us quality woodworking instruction, along with a heaping helping of humor, historical knowledge and truly the spirit of the woodwrights of old.

And, to top it all off, I'm definitely going to cut better dovetails after this class. Wooo Hooo!

AAAndrew

Cross-posted on NC Woodworker http://www.ncwoodworker.net/index.php, and Old Tools.

Played around in the shop last night

2009-02-27T07:05:00.003-05:00

I got a rare, mid-week chance to get in the shop. I've been obsessed with this idea of late for a system of tool holders for my walls. Right now I've got my chisels sitting on a shelf in the wall cabinet I got from my brother-in-law. That is way less-than-ideal. My idea, which I was starting to test out last night, is to make a basic frame that will hang on the wall with french cleats. Attached to this frame will be more french cleats in regular rows down the length of the frame. I could then use these cleats to hang various configurations and sizes of tool holders that would sit on one or more of the cleats depending on how long they were. I could create anything from chisel racks to saw holders.

What I'm shooting for is flexibility in design, and the ability to reconfigure when I need to. I got the idea from a couple of places. I remember seeing a store shelving system years ago where they put in a wall of slotted wooden panels. They used metal pegs of varying lengths to hang displays or shelves from. It looked nice and was very flexible. I also saw a photo from a recent issue of Dwell that showed the interior of some woodworking shop and the wall of hand tools used by this person. A friend gave it to me, so I don't know the details of whose shop it was etc. They used a system of furring strips with horizontal tool holders screwed to these strips running vertically down the wall. It looked cool and easy to access the tools, but anytime you'd want to change things you'd be unscrewing and screwing in these horizontal holders.

So, yesterday afternoon I stopped by a local building supply place and picked up some 1x4 southern yellow pine. I found some nice pieces where the grain ran almost straight up and down between the two faces. Nice and stable and not cupped or warped at all.

Last evening was spent cutting to size, and then working to make the M&T joints for the frame. This is 3/4" stuff and so the joint turns into a wide and thin tenon. I was going to cut them as through tenons but I realized my tenon saw is not quite large enough to cut a 3.75" tenon cheek. I need a bigger tenon saw. :-) I ended up making the tenon smaller, not full depth, so I could cut it with my tenon saw.

I also tried cutting this mortise by hand. I still need work on this skill. I can get it to a certain depth, not quite half-way through, and then can't seem to figure out how to get more depth. Perhaps I get impatient, but most likely I just need more practice. I think I'm going to have to go with drilling the mortises with my brace and bit like I did when I made all the same-sized mortises for my tv table.

It was fun getting back in the shop, and I felt I needed this little refresher since I'm heading over to Roy's new school for a class this Sunday, and M&T joints in on the curriculum! It's also good to experiment to figure out if this is really the way I want to connect the frames together, or if perhaps a half-lap will be better. I still have some playing around to do. Yipee!

Random Thought - Bed construction

2009-02-12T07:27:00.004-05:00

I periodically think about adding a bed to my list of "things to build once I finish my bench" but I've never really like those giant bed bolts, and I'm not sure why.

I had a thought the other day about how to possibly make a bed that's still knock-down without using bed bolts. I wonder if you could fix the tenons from the long stretchers using the brass hinge bolts I used for my bench.

You would construct the headboard and footboard with pinned mortise and tenons so they're fixed. Then make the long m & t joints for the side stretchers and pin them with the brass hinge bolts. I wonder how that would stand up to use? I suspect if your tenon is long enough, the hinge bolt would be enough support to keep it from pulling out.

It's a though, a random thought.

AAAndrew

Visited St. Roy's Shop

2009-02-12T06:57:00.003-05:00

I cross posted this on a couple of forums (Old Tools, NC Woodworker) but wanted to keep a copy of it here for my own records.

I played hookey from work on Monday for a long lunch in the sunshine and
drove the 30 minutes down the road to Pittsboro, NC where Roy
Underhill is opening up a school for Galoot woodworking classes. I've
been hearing rumors and when I ran into him at the Woodworking in
America conference we spoke briefly about it. He was still waiting for
the benches and insurance to begin classes.

Well, he definitely has the benches! It looks all ready to go. It also
looks like a little slice of galoot heaven.

Now, you'll have to forgive the poor quality of photos, but I was
standing outside the windows looking in and taking pictures with my
iPhone on a sunny day.

That said...

Here's a view of the shop from the door.

There are ten benches, a spring pole lathe, a tredal wheel jigsaw and
a bunch of other stuff. Each bench has a carpenter's square lined up
along the corner, a small clamp, a bench hook and an assortment of
galootish tools underneath.

On the left side (facing in) is a saw sharpening bench with a backsaw
in the saw vise. (that giant plane is made of wood, including the
"iron")

Here's the left side again along with a bit of my finger. You can also
see the lathe on the right, and behind it the dark-colored pedal
jigsaw. Behind that is his little Roubo-ette bench.

Not sure what this is, but the window has plenty of odd bits and
pieces of things he's done on this show along with some whats-its and
a big old boring machine.

On the right side is a station with some sharpening things as well as
a couple of microscopes. Notice the picture of FDR up on the wall and
a poster from the WPA advising you to "Wear Your Goggles". You can
also see the reflection of another WPA poster that's in the front
window like they used to do.

Here's a picture of the benches on the right where you can see that
some have wooden planes as the tools you use.

On the left benches I saw some metal planes. It didn't seem like there
was a "wooden" side and the "metal" side, just that the front benches
reflected the diversity of viewpoints available. (nothing with tails)

The school in on the corner, and just around it is an essential
element for any woodworking school, the pub.

For more info this sign is on the door

It was a lot of fun peering into the windows. I can't imagine what it
will be like to actually take classes there. I'm psyched. :-)

Roubu Bench - part 4: Figuring out the Wagon Vise

2009-02-08T07:13:00.005-05:00

So, I've got the boards for the top all sorted out, numbered and aligned for grain direction. Now my job is to do any work to them that I want to do before I glue them up. Cutting a groove for the sliding deadman in the bottom of the first board is a whole lot easier in a single board then trying to do it by flipping and manhandling a 140 lb. top. Yes, the top should weight just about exactly 140 lbs. I weighted one of the 14 boards for the top and it came out to exactly 10.0 pounds on my bathroom scale.

The main problem I need to solve is the wagon vise. After looking at all kinds of tail vises, reading what Chris Schwarz and lots of others have written, I decided that I wanted to try and build this rather simple-looking sliding bench dog. That's the approach I'm taking is to look at it like I'm creating a bench dog that slides.

There's not a whole lot out there on wagon vises. Chris's book shows his retro-fit to his workbench and how he did it. I like the look, but I'd like to see if I can make something a little more integral to the bench itself than the slots screwed to the bottom of the bench.

I also had another major limitation. When I went to buy a screw for my wagon vise, all I could find locally was at the Woodcraft they sold a small veneer or cider press vise screw.

I chose this because I didn't think I needed a massive screw, it looked similar to what Chris had in his bench, and it was cheap and readily available. As I began to work through the problem of how to install this in the bench, I did do another search and figured out that there's a real gap in the bench screw market. We need a solid 1/2" diameter bench screw version of the normally massive 1" one you find all over the place. Even screws for shoulder vises were just too beefy. I saw a place in England selling one that seemed just what I wanted made in the Czech Republic, but it didn't seem to be sold on this side of the Atlantic and looked like too much trouble to get. I'd just make do with what I had.

The two primary problems, at this point, to be solved were: how to make the chop and attach it to the vise, and how to attach the chop to the bench so that it stays fairly stable and yet slides easily. You want a fairly low tolerances of slop, but there will always be some. The first question was made even more interesting in that the end pad of the vise screw did not have holes to fasten it to the chop, and not a whole lot of meat to drill the holes through. I was also concerned about just using screws to hold the pad to the chop, especially if I was able to stabilize the rest of the setup enough to be able to use the vise to pull as well as push, such as disassembling parts.

I began by actually trying to solve the second problem first. How would I attached the chop to the bench, and how to let it slide? Chris had installed runners under his bench and had a free floating chop running through the slot cut into the bench top. I wanted mine to be a bit more integral so I started down the road of a tab in a slot.

My first "brilliant idea" was to get a pre-made dovetailed drawer slide from Rockler and use that as the slide for the chop. I thought about mounting it underneath like Chris, or embedding it in the sides with the male part of the dovetail slide (the pin?) embedded in the chop. I ordered one and it was fine for a drawer, but it didn't seem tight enough or beefy enough.

I then thought of Occam's razor and decided that if I was going to have to cut a groove to embed the slide, why not just use a simple groove in the interior face of the slot, and tabs on the sides of the chop. Voile!

I played around with possibly making the tab a half-dovetail shape so that as the chop tried to move upwards with clamping pressure the chop would become wedged tighter in the triangular space above. BTW, I abandoned the idea of a sliding dovetail at this point for the sides as I thought of the wonderful fun I'd have cleaning chips and dust out of the lower parts of the groove. The bottom of the groove has to be flat for easy clean out.

I ended up going with the simplest solution that works, and no simpler: a simple square groove cut into the sides of the slot in the bench, and tabs on the chop riding in that slot. One problem decided. Sort of.

OK, that whole process took a bit longer than it did to describe it. I actually came to the conclusion over the long process of building the chop with the general idea of tab and groove construction. I actually got to the point of marking out the half-dovetail-shaped tabs on the chop when I tried to actually cut the groove in a test piece of wood. It was significantly harder to do than a straight groove without a good stair saw or equivalent, especially as I wanted this to be a stopped groove. And I wasn't going to stop my bench building in order to finally make the stair saw I've been wanting to make for a while.

So now I had to figure out how to make the chop. The easier thing would be to take a couple of hunks of wood that fit the size of the slot in the bench. OK, how big will the slot be? My original drawings showed it to be the width of one of my boards, 1 3/4" wide. As I looked more closely at the screw, the guide plate, or whatever it's called that holds the screw up by the handle, is just over 1" wide at its widest. That would not leave much room for the screws on either side. I decided to double it and make it beefier. So, my slot is now 3.5" wide.

The next problem to think through was how to make the chop. (wasn't that the problem above? That just illustrates the constant process that in order to solve one problem you've got to solve three others) So, I wanted to think about grain orientation and stress on the tabs. It's much harder to snap off a piece of wood across the grain than it is going with the grain, so it made sense, at least to me, to have the grain orientation of the chop perpendicular to the orientation of the bench top. This way, the upward or downward pressure on the chop would be trying to snap off the tabs across the grain. It also allowed me to laminate the chop in such a way as to capture the pad of the vise within the wood to make a solid connection for either pulling or pushing.

Let me talk about the laminating for a second. I figured there were only a few ways of affixing this pad at the end of the vise screw to a wooden chop: drill holes in it to use screws or small bolts, or encase the pad in the wood and count on the strength of the glue on a large face-to-face glue joint to hold it in. I went with the second approach. I figured if it didn't work, then I could still try the first.

The chop is in three parts. The first part is just a piece of 4/4 maple that will eventually hold the hole for the bench dog. The second, middle piece has a shallow square cut out for the pad so that the pad sits below the level of the face that abuts the third part. The third part is the most complex part in that it must have a hole for the collar that captures the screw itself, and, since I wanted the ability to take the screw out, I needed a slot to access the screw at the bottom of the pad that held the screw into the collar. Perhaps we need some pictures.

I roughly cut to shape the three parts, marked out my final cuts and then glued them together just in the places where I'd eventually cut them out, so just at the corners. This allowed me to cut them all at the same time. And man, do I need a good carcass saw.

Here's the second part with the small square being cut out

Here's a picture of it all glued up. I left it long on the bottom since I was using some scrap 5" wide boards from the legs. After glue up I cut them to the width of the top. You can still see the layout lines on the tabs for my original idea of a half-dovetail shape.

Here's how the whole thing fits together

In the last picture you can see a couple of the reminders of just how painful the whole process was to create the chops. You'd think this was a fairly straight-forward piece of woodworking, and you'd be right, but it's where the piecemeal nature of my shop time can be deadly. I ended up cutting four sets of the chop pieces before I got it right. The end of the screw is sitting on a couple of the victims of my inattention.

The first set I cut out and realized the tabs were too small. The second set I glue up together before hitting myself over my head with my persuader because I hadn't cut any slots or holes or squares and encased the pad. The third set I mis-measured and the dimension to the outside the tabs was equal to the inside dimension of the slot, so too narrow. ("Measure 10 times, cut once. Measure 10 times, cut once...") I even cut two pieces of a fifth set to the dovetail shape before abandoning that idea, so it was almost five sets. Each mistake is almost directly tied to the fact that I had no real plan for the chop and since I was coming into the shop for only a couple of hours a week, I was always rushed and had to catch up to what I had been thinking a week before. Almost. I can also just be plain stupid at times.

Anyway, I have the chop, and now needed to test it out.

I'm all about doing this whole thing at least twice to learn the first time so that when I do it for real I have that much more of a chance of doing it right. So, I took a couple of off-cuts from the lumber for the top and set up a small model of that part of the bench with the slot, and marked out and started to cut the groove.

The groove for the tabs to ride in is approximately 1" wide, at least 1/2" deep and 10" long. I've thought about doing them as stopped only on one end, stopped grooves on both ends, or stopped grooves with The Schwarz's technique of drilling a hole in each end and using a moving fillister to cut them. Unfortunately, I don't have a moving fillister beyond my combo plane, and I didn't relish trying to use that to cut such a large groove. So I tried the chisel technique I learned at Woodworking in America.

It worked, and I now have a full-sized, stopped groove and it worked really well, but it is a lot like work, especially with the quality of my 1" bench chisels. I recently found a galoot who is selling me a 1/2" pigsticker mortise chisel which I hope to try out and use on the final cut. It should make much shorter work of the final groove and can help with cutting the other groove I need to cut for the sliding deadman. That groove will be much longer, closer to 36".

Well. We're finally caught up to where I am on the bench. It's been an adventure so far, and I'm sure I'll have plenty more to learn as I go along. And after all, that's kind of the whole reason to build my own bench, for the experience of it.

See you next time,

AAAndrew

While I'm at it

2009-02-06T06:28:00.003-05:00

Here's another of my favorite photos from Woodworking in America

Frank Klausz and Roy Underhill demonstrating some alcohol-powered woodworking.

I've also uploaded one of my videos from the conference of Frank Klausz demonstrating how to cut a mortise by hand.

I'll get back to my bench next time.

AAAndrew

Interlude

2009-02-05T17:37:00.005-05:00

Inspired by a thread on another blog I ran across, here's a picture of me with a famous person, and a famous bench.

It's me with Chris Schwarz and his famous Roubo bench that started it all for me, and many others.

It was taken at the Woodworking in America Conference. And you're really getting a three-fer as that's Mike Wenzloff of Wenzloff and Sons Saw Makers in the background. I told you it was an amazing conference.

AAAndrew

Roubo Bench - part 3: Planning the top

2009-02-04T05:55:00.004-05:00

Finishing the base was a major milestone and I needed to stop and take stock of where I was and how to proceed going forward. The next obvious step was to make the top, attach it, then move on to the leg vise and sliding deadman, then drill the holes and Robert shall be your mother's brother. But I'm learning, and knew that making the top is going to require a fair bit of planning before I can get to the planing.

When I was cutting the wood to length for the legs, I had also played around and cut a couple of pieces for the top to length as well. I now realized how stupid that was.

One of the lessons I've learned in this project is to not cut to final length until you have to. You can have all the drawings you want with precise a measurements as your tool will give you, but, unless you’re using a CNC machine to cut your parts, you've got to, in the end, use the measurements of the material and the piece to figure out how big or small to make it. The final measurements will become obvious as you build it.

I actually already knew this lesson but had forgotten it. I learned it when building the tv table. For that project I had never used a drawing at all, and almost never used a ruler. Instead, I had used a rough estimate of height marked out on a stick, subtracted the approximate thickness of my top, then built my first leg to that length. I used that leg to make the other legs, then used the size of the top, derived from the size of the tv going on top of it, to determine the length of the side and front. None of this was measured with a tape measure or ruler. I just used the items themselves. I ended up making a story stick, but then blew that lesson by losing it. [sigh]

I should have re-learned that lesson when building the bookcase when I screwed up the last shelf by cutting it too short. But I didn't realize what I had learned. (or re-learned)

So, now I had to begin with the boards for the top. I cleared my bench top (a weekend in itself) and began laying out which boards went where. I then tested each board by planing it to confirm I was reading the grain right and aligned them so that they all were oriented the same way. I made it so that if I planed them from right to left, my natural direction for planing, there should be no tearout (or as little as possible).

I also put the boards in my initial order and marked them 1-14.

I have just one spare board for the top, so my margin of error is shrinking. I still have to determine, finally, where the boards I’ve already cut to length will go. I have a couple I cut to very short length to be the boards where the planing stop will go and the boards where the wagon vise will sit. But I'm beginning to think that I want final-length boards (which is 60") to be at the top and bottom of my bench. my thinking is that then, when I go to cut off the ends, which I'm planning on doing by kneeling on top of the bench and cutting with a handsaw, I have a guide against which to rest the saw at the beginning of the cut for both sides.

So, I'm imagining it as me up on the top, I have a line drawn from the end of the last board all the way down to the end of the first board with the rest of the boards sticking past the line to some degree. Where I start the cut will be on a second board (second from front, or second from back depending on which side I'm cutting). My saw will rest against the end of the first board (first in back, first in front, depending, etc...) and use that to help me get the cut going straight from the start.

To make this work, I'm going to have to do a few things really right. I'm going to have to get the first and last board lined up perfectly, which means I'm probably going to have to glue the last board all by itself to be able to take the care this will entail.

I'm also going to have to line up, at least on the right side of the bench, the boards for the wagon vise just perfectly too. Effectively, I'll have to line up, at least on the right side, boards 1 (front board), 2-5 (wagon vise) and then 14. The rest I want to leave an inch or so proud of the line and then cut 13-6 to final length. That makes 14" to cross cut as close as I can get to the line. I don't think that's too daunting. I'll then touch up the end grain with some alcohol and my block plane. And if I do that to the ends of the first and last board individually, then I won't have to worry about coming in from both sides, or popping out the ends as the plane leaves the board.

What this means is that I'll have to cut the rest of the boards to about 2-3" too long in order to have the margin for error I'm looking for. I could leave them really long, but I'm going to need some of that length for the wagon vise end. (I’ll explain next post)

But before I do that, there's some more prep work and experimenting I'm going to need to do, namely figure out my wagon vise, and then cut the groove in the front board for the deadman to ride in. This has to all be figured out before I put glue to a single board.

This preparation is essential. It's like cooking Chinese, you have to have all the chopping and measuring done ahead of time, because once you start, it's difficult to stop the process and go back to do something over, or prepare each ingredient only as needed. Once I start gluing up the top, I won't have the work surface to do anything big like figure out the wagon vise, or cut the massive groove I'm going to need for the deadman. Figure this out now, make the prep cuts needed that will be next to impossible with my tools once I glue up, and then git 'er done.

Next I'll talk about all the work I've been doing to figure out how I'm going to build the wagon vise. We're approaching my actual place in the process, so once I catch up, the posts should be a bit shorter, more detailed and perhaps a bit sporadic.

AAAndrew

Roubo Bench - part 2: The Base

2009-02-03T06:22:00.005-05:00

In this episode, I describe how I built the base. I decided to begin with the base for a very good reason, unfortunately I can't quite remember what it was, but it was good, I assure you.

Here is the page from my Visio plans for the base.

I wanted to keep the leg dimensions the same, each is made of 5 4/4 boards, each 5" wide. Glued up together they make a true 5x5 leg. I laminated them allowing for the open mortise to go through the leg for the long stretchers. This saved me the trouble of cutting a 2"x3"x5" deep mortise through the leg. That was a lot of trouble saved.

As you can see from the plan, I toyed with making the long stretchers longer and then possibly putting wedged tusks through because from the beginning I wanted to make the bench so I could knock it down for moving. I ended up trying something different to the same effect.

I began by cutting all the leg parts to size.

I determined outside faces and began gluing. At this point I still hadn't learned the very basic lesson of ensuring all boards grain is going in the same direction. Fortunately, it's not as important on the legs. If there's a little tear-out, not such a huge deal.

The glue-up was a little more tricky than I anticipated. For one thing, with only short times in the shop, less than two hours a week, you really can get much glued up in that time. It also didn't help that right after I got the first leg finished I ended up having to have surgery, twice, and then radiation treatment all covering from March through June. When you can't even lift the weight of one leg, it's not so easy to make them. I managed to get some parts glued up and get some of the legs finished.

Once I got the legs put together I then finished them a bit, smoothing down some of the roughness, and beveling the bottom edges to avoid tearing out chunks as you drag it across the floor.

Next it was time to make the stretchers. I began with the short stretchers. I built them to the plan. Then I bothered measuring the wood. Oops. The boards in my drawn plan were 8/4 (2-inches) thick. The boards I ended up getting were 7/4 (1.75" thick). This kind of threw off the measurements of my top. I decided to go with 14 boards wide, thus giving me 24.5" exactly. But I had drawn my design for 12 2" boards thus yielding a 24" wide top. I had just built stretchers just .5" too short. Back to the lumber pile. This is why you buy more lumber than you need!

Because of this blunder, one of my long stretchers has two pieces butted up together to make the inside section of the laminate. (BS1 on the diagram)

It was at this point that I came up with the idea of how I was going to make this a knock-down bench. Instead of through tenons with wedges, I was still going to make them through tenons, but I was going to pin them. I thought about wooden pins that I could then drill out should I wish to move, but then had an idea.

I'm not sure where I got the idea from, whether I came up with it totally on my own or something gave me the idea but I thought about the large pins that hold door hinges together. They're about 1/4" in diameter, 4" long and have a head to give you some leverage when pulling them out. I mused on this idea all during the even slower period of intense end-of-season gardening that cuts into my already meager shop time as I help my wife get the beds ready for the winter.

I went to the Woodworking in America conference in November and absolutely loved it. While there I got to meet Chris Schwarz (and many others) and see the original bench he had built in the book. I ran the idea of the brass pins by him and others and while the reception was generally "sure, I guess you could do that, but not sure why" I got the impression it was something just not thought of before. I wasn't encouraged, nor was I discouraged. But seeing the original bench was very inspirational to get mine done!

I finished the stretchers and began to put the base together. First I began with the (new) short stretchers.

I cut my own pegs from some tough, straight-grained pine I had. I first tested it for shear strength by putting one peg into my vise and whacking it with a mallet. I have two mallets, one round carving mallet that I use for everyday whacking, and then the one you see in the photo, my "Persuader" that I bought at an antique store for $20. The store is one of those that get "antiques" by the container load from Britain. The head is about 2-pounds and very hard. It's wonderfully persuasive, and when it took some really hard whacks with the persuader to break the pin, I was satisfied.

What looks like a crack along the pins is actually just uneven glue-up. This was planed down smooth later.

The brace and bit in the picture represent the wonderful time I had cutting the 1"x3" by 2" deep mortises into the maple legs. The mortises go all the way through to the long stretcher mortise, which helped for figuring out depth, but man, that's a huge mortise to cut out. Taking down the sides to be smooth and straight proved to be a real challenge at times. At least one is not terribly straight and has a small gap where the wall is undercut at the bottom. I could wedge it, but I figured after pinning and once it's all together with the top on, the stress on that particular joint will not be such that the gap will compromise any strength.

This was a really exciting moment. For the first time, this pile of wood began to look like something. It was fun to have a leg. It was more fun to have four legs. This was now even better.

The next step was to begin and fit the huge tenons of the long stretchers into the massive mortises. I had to fare the mortises and sometimes the tenons to get them to fit. The mortises had been created by just gluing shorter pieces and I had used patterns of the tenons to help keep spacing, but it's never perfect.

Then there was the fateful day when I was ready and used my persuader and several sacrificial blocks to protect the ends of the tenons to pound these great suckers into the mortises. Getting one end together was harder than getting the other. Once I had one end on the floor with two long stretchers sticking out, I put the other end on top and saw more evidence (as if I needed it) that wood is a living material. What you couldn't see with casual inspection became obvious at this point, that one of the stretchers had a slight amount of twist to it.

This is where the mass of the whole thing comes into play. I just torqued the base around to get the tenon started, then used the mass of the end piece to help drive the whole thing down onto the tenons. It was much easier with the weight of the two legs helping me.

I now had the whole base put together.

Now that was a moment to celebrate. It is so massive and tightly put together that it is just not coming apart. The mass also overcame any issues with not quite even bottoms on some of the legs. The base does not rock or wobble even a hair's breadth. It is as solid as I could wish it.

So, despite feeling like I didn't really need them, I still wanted to experiment with the brass pins. I justified it by being concerned that racking of the base from planing might begin to work the tenons loose. When looked at dispassionately, I think the odds of that are pretty darned low considering the size of the joints, but we all have our caprices.

I obviously wanted the heads of the pins to sit below the level of the wooden leg to keep any metal off the surface of my bench, even the leg surface. I first marked out where the pins would go and drilled the countersink hole for the head of the pin with some of my wonderful center bits. I picked up a set of these some years ago and every time I use them I wonder why I don't use them more. They work so well.

You can see this picture was taken on the vise leg. The notch in the leg will be where the parallel guide will go. I cut out this notch on each individual board before glue up since cutting it in a 5" leg with a handsaw seemed to be much more fraught with peril than doing it on five 1" boards. And I want as little peril as I can get.

I then cut the ramp that will allow me access into the hole to pry up the head of the hinge pin. I had experimented with this whole setup before starting this on my bench, and I found out a couple of things. One of which was that cutting this ramp with a mortise chisel was really very easy, with a bench chisel, not quite as much. I just used the size of the mortise chisel to determine the ramp size since it was sufficient for the screwdriver I already had marked out as my prying tool.

I drilled the holes for the pin itself. I found in my experiments (I'm big on experimenting before doing anything terribly new, and that has paid off tremendously) that my Jennings bit made a hole that was too perfect and the fit was so tight that it really made it hard to get the pin out. My Irwin bit, on the other hand made a hole just perfect. There was some bite but I could also easily get the pin out.

The tenon in this picture looks worse than it is. That is not a gap you see, but actually the long stretcher is a fraction of an inch proud of the leg.

And voila, using a wooden "nail set" I drove home the pins with my persuader (overkill, but it's so much fun to use) and I have an amazingly stable and exciting (I know, I have a problem) bench base.

It was so satisfying to get to this point that I'm afraid I could easily develop "a bench problem" as Chris Schwarz talks about. And I haven't even built the top yet.

The next steps are figuring out some issues around the wagon vise and getting ready to make the top. But that's for next time.

AAAndrew

Roubo Bench - part 1: the beginning

2009-02-02T06:05:00.004-05:00

So I finally started getting back into woodworking again and one of the first things I wanted to do was to replace my old bench. What I'm using now I built when I was still back up in Michigan and it's worth describing the bench, what's good about it and what just doesn't work. It's not like we ever need an excuse to build a better bench than what we have, but it does take some extra motivation to move from "thinking about" to actually doing.

The first bench I built was actually based on the idea of doing home fix-it work. It's tall, solidly build out of construction lumber with a top made from layered fiberboard with a hard-board top. It's screwed together and has a peg-board back. Typical tinkering kind of bench. It's in the garage is works beautifully for this purpose. It was while I was looking into how to design and build this bench that I discovered the world of woodworking and got hooked.

I then looked into how to build a woodworking bench. In many ways I lucked into doing many things right, while what I got wrong hasn't been a huge handicap.

What I did right.
I built it to a good height, it holds boards well for end and edge planing with the front vise and a series of holes in the broad front skirt for use with wooden pegs to hold boards for edge planing. It's pretty heavy and doesn't rack too badly. I also made the top co-planer with all of the sides which was better than a dining-room-table-like overhang. Believe me, you don't want the overhang.

What I did wrong.
There's no good way to work the faces of boards. I did improvise a planing stop and have a cheap holdfast so I can do some of that work, but it doesn't work that well. The front vise was not the greatest and is limited for dovetailing and is prone to wracking. But the biggest problem comes from its construction, and my skills at the time.

Let's first look at what it's made of.

I went to the local (Ann Arbor, MI) recycling place and found two old solid-core doors. These were small doors probably for a set of built-in supply cabinets. They were about 5 1/2 feet tall, oak core with walnut veneer. They came with door hardware and little brass label holders. I first took off the hardware, cut the doors to 5 feet (a little raggedy as well) and then built a frame for them out of 2-by construction hardware. I found some 4x4 post legs and notched them at the top and then screwed together the top frame, screwed cleats to the inside and dropped in the doors.

I never squared the rounded edges of the construction lumber, I didn't get the dimensions quite right and as a result the doors sit a little proud, about 1/16", of the surrounding frame, and the gaps between the doors and the frame, about 1/16" - 1/8" are just a trap for shavings and dust.

I also have discovered the short-comings of a wide apron skirt, you can't clamp well to the top. It just doesn't work well to clamp to the edge of the skirt and the 10" skirt is too wide to clamp around it.

Add to that the lack of a tail vise, the rough chop in my existing vise (an off-cut of the 2x10 from the skirt) and it's a barely functional ugly bench. I'm still fond of it in a way as we've been through a lot together. It comes apart and moves easily, but only by unscrewing the huge screws that hold it together.

I really, really needed something that allows me to work to the level I want to achieve. I need heavy, I need the ability to easily work end, edge and face, and I need flat with good clamping surface.

I began to look around for bench ideas. Scott Landis's book was an obvious source and gave me lots of shaker bench envy. I then stumbled across Chris Schwarz's book at a big book store. As soon as I started to read it, the scales fell from my eyes.

The book is clearly laid out, it describes the reasons behind why benches look the way they do, and what the real needs are for a workbench. It then discusses two possible approaches to a workbench with detailed designs and descriptions on how to build the benches.

I read the book cover-to-cover and just knew the Roubo bench was the one for me.

I played around with drawings in Visio (I know, how lame, get with the sketch-up program already, I'm working on it in my copious free time) and got an idea of dimensions based on my limited shop space.

It's pretty much like Schwarz's design in the book including a wagon vise. The dimensions will be:

32" high
24" wide
60" long
Top: 4" thick
Legs: 5" x 5"
short strechers: 3" x 2"
long stretchers: 3" x 3"
Legs mortised into top

Some of the details of the design I've been working on as I go along. I'll share those in the detailed descriptions of each part.

I went to get the wood and decided to go all out and get maple. I found a good deal on soft maple and when I went to order it they told me their soft maple in the dimensions for the top was just not very good quality so they'd cut me a deal on hard maple for the 4"-thick top. Needless to say, I jump at the chance.

So, I purchased the lumber and drove home with a car full of wood and a song in my heart ready to begin.

Next, where to start?

AAAndrew

A short history of my woodworking projects, part 2

2009-01-30T22:30:00.003-05:00

We're quickly coming to a close on my woodworking career.

After I moved out of the apartment, my woodworking stuff was packed away for quite a while until we could build our house. Once it was built and we moved in, getting my workshop in shape was not the highest priority, but I eventually got it set up as described in my earlier post.

I no sooner had it set up and started to work on a possible tool chest, and my wife became pregnant. We had a very "interesting" pregnancy which ended up turning out well, but we had a healthy premature baby to visit in the hospital for 6 weeks and then take care of for quite a while longer. Basically, I didn't get diddly squat done for a couple of years.

Then we needed a step stool for our son to be able to reach the sink. Sure, I thought, that would be an easy one. I took the old glued up panels I had made out of borg poplar and cut them down to make the sides and treads of the step stool.

The hardest part was getting the sides cut down even and straight. If I had started out and glued up the sides from scratch it would have been much, much easier. I dovetailed the treads in and stuck a cross post in at the bottom of the front to keep it from spreading.

And that's dovetailed into the sides as well. It was dovetail practice time.

I was rusty, but it turned out pretty good. It's a little high for its footprint so can be a little tippy if you're not careful, but I could now build another one in half the time.

With one more project success under my belt I convinced my wife that we needed a bookshelf in the kitchen for the cook books. I went a little crazy in the lumber store and decided to make it out of 4/4 curly maple.

It's a pretty simple design, and I had to make it to definite dimensions so that it fit in a specific place, but I still managed to screw it up a bit. I cut the last shelf just 1/2" too short, and since my wood stretcher isn't working these days, I had to go buy one more board for the last shelf. Very frustrating.

But it also turned out ok. I did wedged tenons to hold the bottom shelf to the sides. I did have some measurement challenges and ended up making the top shelf too short for anything but my son's kid books and a couple of other odds and ends.

But the wood is beautiful (Danish oil and wax finish) and the dovetails in the 4/4 material turned out pretty good as well. Overall I'm happy with it despite the few mistakes I know I made.

So, that brings us to the present day. With this incredibly extensive resume of woodworking projects, I decided that I was ready to tackle a new challenge. I got Christopher Schwarz's workbench book and fell totally in love with the Roubo bench. With no real fear, or enough sense to know any limitations, I decided to go for it. But that's another, and longer story, that's still going on. I'll start that in my next post.

AAAndrew

A short history of my woodworking projects, part 1

2009-01-30T21:33:00.002-05:00

I haven't actually created that much as far as furniture goes. I thought I'd throw out at least a record of what I have done.

When I first became interested in woodworking I took two classes: Introduction to Hand Tools, and Hand Cut Joinery. Both were good classes, but just one evening introduction classes. After the joinery class I wanted to practice the joints and didn't want to spend much money on materials so I used some of that mysterious splinter wood from Sweden they call "pine." I made a modest hanging cabinet which was basically a box with a couple of shelves and a drawer. It was originally going to have a second drawer above the one it has, but I never got around to it.

Right above the cabinet you can see another project of mine, and the only tool I've made, a bow-saw. The saw was relatively easy to make and would work well, except I need to get a better blade, and I need better string so that I can tension it more. I should try it again since my sawing skills have improved since the last time I tried it. Maybe it wasn't the blade, but was me. It's possible. LOL

I then moved here and set up my apartment workshop (see my earlier post) and made my tv table. This was quite a project. I was very naive going into it. I used hard maple as the wood. (stupid!) I had no conception of how to select wood for faces and insides, nor how to really dimension wood with hand tools. But nevertheless, it turned out extremely sturdy and pretty good for a first piece.

I bought the lumber rough sawn and dimensioned it myself. I did a great deal of it with just a scrub plane. Despite having a great old German scrub plane, it was a lot like work.

You can see the great grooves left by the scrub plane.

After a while I decided to try rip sawing the 1/4" of wood I needed to take off of the legs.

That was also a great deal like work, but not as much as the scrub plane. Between the two I managed to get the job done.

I also used some great new tools I had managed to buy including a Steve Knight razee jack plane which was so sharp and well tuned that I was taking end-grain curls off the hard maple.

And a Steve Knight razee jointer plane which is also a very nice plane.

I had made bottom rails spanning the legs to support a lower shelf in such a way as I couldn't get the shelf in, so I ended up cutting the rails off (thus leaving the tenons still in the legs), and dovetailing in a center support. I now know it's not really needed, but I doubt I'm the first person to over-engineer my first piece.

I attached the top and shelf with wooden buttons, thus using the only screws in the whole piece, finished it with dyed shellac and it's all held together pretty well for 5 years.

You can see that my tenon shoulders are not quite straight and so there's a bit of a gap, but because I had made my haunched tenons a little long, they've held quite well. Overall I hand cut 16 mortise and tenon joints (24 if you count the wooden buttons which are sort of mortise and tenons) and made two frame and panel constructions. I jointed and glued up two surfaces with no gaps, and all in hard maple with no design but my own ideas, and all with hand tools. I'm pretty proud of this for my first try at furniture.

More in my next post.

AAAndrew

Introduction to my shop.

2009-01-30T18:33:00.001-05:00

We'll start with my crowded little shop. It's in a spare bedroom. I took up the carpet and put down a plastic engineered floor which makes it very easy to sweep up the shavings and dust.

My first "shop" was the basement of our house in Michigan. I don't have a picture of that, but it was pretty typical for a basement workshop. Lot's of room, not much glamor.

My second shop was in a two-bedroom apartment I rented when we moved to our current location. My wife stayed behind for some months and so I brought my tools and workbench and set up shop.

My current shop is the aforesaid bedroom.

My meager supply of tools didn't make much of a dent in the room when I first moved in.

But I got them set up and it is pretty cozy. Here's when it was new and neat:

My solid-core door and construction lumber workbench

Here it is today:

I also have a "step-in" (not as big as a walk-in) closet where I store my clamps, and some true walk-in attic space that's mainly filled up with house-hold stuff, but there's some room for seasoning wood.

Well, that's about it. I make do and get a lot done. It's climate controlled, which makes up for a great deal. I'd rather have a climate-controlled small workshop than a massive one that alternates from freezing in the winter to boiling in the summer. But that's me.

The only power tools in my workshop are the lights and a CD/Radio I use to listen to Jane Austin books on tape while I woodwork. I'm weird that way.

Next I'll start a quick review of some recent projects, then I'll start on my current project, a Roubo-style workbench based on Chris Schwarz's version.

AAAndrew

Purpose of the Blog

2009-01-30T18:18:00.000-05:00

Every blog should start with some kind of mission statement. I don't mean some corporate speak gobbeltygook full of buzzwords meaning nothing. But I believe in having some focus, some reason to exist. I've tried the "whatever I feel like writing about" blog and that lasted about four entries.

This blog is a bit more narrowly focused, and is really meant just for me. It is where I shall record the (very slow) progress of my woodworking projects.

The name, Incidental Woodworker is appropriate as "incidental" means:

(sometimes followed by `to') minor or casual or subordinate in significance or nature or occurring as a chance concomitant or consequence ...
incidental expense: (frequently plural) an expense not budgeted or not specified; "he requested reimbursement of $7 for incidental expenses"
not of prime or central importance; "nonessential to the integral meanings of poetry"- Pubs.MLA

My woodworking fits this definition well. I get only a few hours a week, when I'm lucky, to work in my shop. Recently, though, I have been having the desire to create a record of what I'm doing, and how I'm doing it to try and remember what I did to solve certain problems. It's also nice to remember all of the mistakes I made and what I learned from them.

So, this blog is really for me as an aide memoire for my woodworking experience. It won't be a daily thing, nor will it be terribly interesting, I suspect, for anyone else. But, I will assume I'm writing this for an outside, and interested, spectator who cares as much as I do about what I've done. In other words, it's for my future, senile self who can't remember what I did, but would like to remember.

Here's to you, future self. Hope you're having a good time regardless of the memory loss.

AAAndrew