[Workbench] Done?!

What a long, strange trip it has been. I started my workbench by purchasing the doug fir boards in November 2011. Today, I believe it is complete (while acknowledging it will always be a flexible work in progress). Here is how it started back then:

I started the day by boring a large hole for the planing stop:

You can see the tools I used for the chopping. A mortise chisel, a corner chisel and a wide bench chisel. It was slow going, but I got there.

The stop is a 2" square of cherry, which is whacked up or down with a mallet. I waxed it a bit to make it a little easier to adjust, it will take some acclimating and time to get the perfect fit, but it works great now. Extremely solid.

I started to plane around the hole to remove my layout marks, then decided to leave them as a bit of history. The freshly exposed grain will soon weather to match the rest of the bench top.

I also installed a Veritas Inset Vise, which is a permanent and glorified wonderdog. This takes place of a wagon vise, and so far I really like it:

Here is the "complete" bench, with holdfases, sliding deadman, inset vise, leg vise, planing stop, and shelves. I doubt I will add the crochet, but it would be fun to try at some point.

I did have to overbore the dog holes, just as I did on my last bench. It seems that 3/4" holdfasts are really only good in about 2" max thickness of bench. For 4" slabs like this, the holes need to be opened up more underneath to get more of an angle on the holdfasts. This is the kind of thing that should be done before assembly, but I am typically late to such parties.

On my final day in the Foundation Course, I had some extra time so whipped together an English Layout Square. I've been using it a lot. It is made of cherry, and is in fact rather square. It was a blast to make, highly recommended for anyone who has been considering the project:

These are the other joiners tools I have made: winding sticks (walnut and basswood), try square, English layout square, and straight edge. It is a great feeling to make your own tools, and inspiring to realize how accurate they can be. It helps to know how to test and true them, but these are both simple to pick up:

It is just about time to get back to making stuff, instead of making stuff to make stuff! That said, I do need a sharpening table and a grinding station...

[Workbench] Shelves, Deadman, and Li'l Helper

With a day off of duties from the school, I had an excellent and productive session in my own shop. Some doug fir boards I brought from my valley in Oregon have been acclimating in my shop this whole time, and since my bench is made of the same stuff, I figured the shelves should be too. Also, how else would I use this knotty, splintery stuff?

I first utilized the space-age miracle of my thickness planer (an electronic machine, do not judge me). This was to quickly take the boards down to 3/4" thick. They were just nasty enough that this dimension was not quite enough to hit every spot of rough-sawn gnar, but this was fine since I would finish by hand. The dimension was solely so that the tongue-and-groove plane would have a consistent thickness to register from (as it is intended for 3/4" boards).

Here is a board after machine planing:

The next order of business was to joint a side using a (you guessed it) jointer plane. To be honest, at this point I would love to have a power jointer and would have used one without guilt, but I did it the old fashioned way, a la this:

You might notice knots, reversing grain, and other defects which would cause this board to be rejected by a well-intentioned furniture maker. Given the nature of this project, however, I just kept rolling with it. It is just shelves for a workbench. This did come back to haunt me.

Here is one of the tongue edges just about complete. The plane heats up rapidly while doing this, and waxing it often is helpful. This is a very specialize plane which only does this one thing, but it does it so well that it is mind-blowing. Not sure it is "worth it" or how many feet I will have to produce to have it pay for itself, but it really is a fun and amazing tool:

A quick switch of the fence and it makes the groove which matches perfectly. That said, this machine is no more automatic than a shoulder or rabbet plane. It takes a bit of attention, skill, and selective pressure to yield a good result. It does not like knots or reversing grain. It does help to wax not only the plane, but the board as well. It of course likes to be sharp. Doug fir is forgiving on clean stretches, and brutal on the reversing stretches. Somewhere in here, I added suede to the vise chop, which helped a great deal. In fact, I would consider this mandatory.

This is my tongue and groove plane doing its thing. This is a premium replica. I have also used a Stanley 45, which is great but much more of a pain to set up. Again, this is a hard to justify tool, but if you have one, you will love it. Except for the fact that you are committed to one dimension... and I suppose a bit of skill with rabbets would liberate you.

It is important to stop every so often to dry fit. This is not just to make sure that nothing is critically astray, but in fact just to make it seem fun and feel like you are getting somewhere:

Here is the stack of completed T&G board, awaiting face planing/smoothing. I number them because I am a dolt and mess things up a lot if I do not over-label. I only mess them up a bit if I do it:

And the boards installed after smoothing:

The next order of business was to shape the sliding deadman. I laid it out using curves from an offcut of a walnut rocking chair I saved from stock preparation at the school. No idea what its radius is but I assume it is pretty legit since it is a Maloof inspired rocker.

Since I do not have a bandsaw, or even a spokeshave, I kerfed the basic design with a crosscut saw:

and then attacked it with a chisel:

This is a technique I have really grown to love since using it for my English Layout Square (more soon on that). It has limitations, but is fast and fun. All those cube-like chips you see laying on the bench pop out with an immediate tap, usually flying up just enough to be exciting but not enough to be dangerous or haphazard.

Around this time, my main priority arrived home. I set up her frog-pattern folding chair and had her watch for a bit. Eventually, she wanted to sit on top of the toolchest. I had to make sure I had all I needed out of it, and then let her actually lay down on it. She was not content to be so passive for long, though, and needed a task, so I taught her how to consolidate shavings which she considered "playin' workin".

This sufficiently moved me such that I wanted to provide some deeper skill building. I tacked up a little strip of pine on one of the sawbenches, and gave her the smallest plane I had. After a few minutes of hand-holding, she was doing it on her own, making tiny tiny shavings.

I finally got back to shaping the deadman, and I just have to shrug at the unfair shape, doing what I can with a blockplane and chisel. Maybe someday I will sculpt it with a spokeshave, or maybe not. All it really has to do is hold pegs, which it already does:

It was a good day.

Soon: planing stop and mortise, inset vise, and maybe then I will finally pronounce this thing DONE and get back to actual "woodworking".

[Workbench] Functional and done (for now)

The workbench I have been building for (I think) well over a year is finally "done". Except its not. It needs the lower shelf, sliding deadman, and possibly the planing stop to be created. I consider this a milestone of doneness because the vise is finally installed! It takes a lot of tweaking to get it to roll smoothly, and some of its alleged frictionless behavior might be impossible because of some early layout mistakes I made back when I was young. However, it does run extremely smoothly, and while it took a long time to dial in, it was well worth it.

The best part of the installation procedure was finally trimming the chop to bench height so that I could really use it. I am still not sure what the final shape will be, but I put a generous mitre on it to allow rasping etc access from below.

Here is how it looks now:

Some who are familiar with the Benchcrafted hardware will wonder where the roller bearing bracket is. It fits inside the chop, thusly:

Yes, I did that by hand, yes it was a pain, and the main reason was just because my bench is so low that it seemed to be really awkward-looking to cut the chop above the bracket. I am a little better with mortising now than I was before doing that. Almost 3 inches into some hard cherry. Good times.

Here it is all snugged up and flush with the top. Yep, it is ridiculously strong, could probably crush a coconut. Soon: build a lower shelf, sliding deadman, and then actually get to work using it!

Spring Update

Yep it has been a long, strange trip.

The Foundation Course ended up taking all my time and energy, so much that there was none left to talk about it. People would ask me what I was doing and I was unable to say much more than "building things... planing... sharpening".

Nonetheless, I have been getting emails asking what happened and where I have been, am I all right, etc. It is very sweet for folks to check in and I suppose I should have been more proactive in posting updates, even if I had little to update.

All that said, I have not given up woodworking, and quite the opposite. It is now just about all I do!

After the foundation course ended, I was asked to stick around and help clean the school, resharpen the tools, and so on. Eventually, I was made an employee of the Port Townsend School of Woodworking. I have served as a teaching assistant for a couple classes, do much of the stock preparation, and of course do a ton of cleaning and other less glamorous work. I have built four new workbenches for the school, and plan to make some tool storage units soon.

I've also started to work on a traditional carpentry project, building a hand tool workshop using hand tools!  More on that soon, but here I am on the way home from work one day:

On the back on the bike (this is our "kid carrier" which serves as a minivan) you can see a tool tote I made at the school based on a Jim Tolpin design. It has ended up being very useful for toting construction tools. It is not long enough for my crosscut saw, so I am tempted to add some cleats to the side of it for that purpose. The tote is all designed around tool and human considerations; I have a feeling Jim's upcoming book "By Hand and By Eye" will address this.

So most days when I am not building, I am at the school preparing for classes, helping students with their projects, or cleaning up. Much more on all this soon.

Today was a very rare day where I go to work in my own shop, which is still a new-to-me space. We've decided to stay in Port Townsend and my home does have a unique shop space. It needs a lot of work, but is pretty functional already. My priority in there has been to get my workbench finished.

The top is finally joined to the base, I made a groove for the sliding deadman (by hand), and while they are not pictured, I have bored all the dogholes. I intend to build the Roubo planing stop at some point, but who knows. I have skipped the crochet, although I might try that someday, too. I do intend to add shelves to the bottom, but all in good time. As I expected, I started using the bench immediately. The vise still needs some work, and the bench has been useful in getting some of that going.

I installed the Glide hardware, and wouldn't you know it, my original parallel guide did not have a sturdy enough tenon:

It pulled right out while adjusting the roller bearings. This might reduce an ordinary man to tears, but not I. Quickly selecting a piece of cherry, I planed it rapidly into shape (using a thickness planer, since it was my day off).

When it rains, it pours, and so my mallet broke while I was cleaning out the mortise and prepping it for the new guide:

Dunno if I will bother to fix that thing or not. It has served me well, but we use the same mallets at the school (ubiquitous Crown Tools jobber) and I am not really a fan. They constantly slip down and need to be tightened, and they are pretty uncomfortable in the hand until you make a couple of my patent-pending mods such as rubbing off the slick varnish with coarse sandpaper, and rounding over the too-sharp corners and bottom profile. I've improved many of the school's mallets on the sly but not admitted this until now. Hope the boss is not reading, or is pleased if he is. This thing will probably be even stronger than ever if I glue it back together, but a big part of me would really like to burn it and say good riddance. I've re-flattened the head twice (it gets concave very quickly when mortising, and soon has very sharp, splintery edges as a result).

I switched back to my St Louis Cardinals baseball bat mallet, which I quite like. A Flickr user sent it to me on a whim and a good thing! It served not only to finish chopping the mortise, but was also the template for my elegant curves here at the end of the guide:

Sure the thing could be square but what fun is that... a minute or two with the coping saw,

Of course I cleaned it up with rasps (don't have a spokeshave yet, although with fathers day coming up I will still not have one I bet). I got into that mode of working and not taking pictures, so believe me that it is elegant and super nice. That pattern looks familiar! Oh yeah, I made a square also and it has a similar profile. I guess I like tracing round things:

This is another Jim Tolpin design which should look familiar if you have read the New Traditional Woodworker. A big turning point in my life has been to realize that it is actually square, and I totally trust it. Who knew? This precision device was made in walnut and oak. Tung oil finish.

I also took a turning class with Bonnie Klein. Lots of fun and another story. But this little scraper-thing I made was sitting in my shop so here it is:

I want a lathe now, but not really to make little kitchen things. I want to make tool handles, so that I can take junkyard chisels and turn them into fine paring tools!

And, finally after cutting a new tenon, drilling new holes, pounding out some trenails and drawboring, I had a new vice chop parallel guide:

It was then time to stop so the fine tuning and satisfaction of spinning that thing in and out will have to wait.

I will be posting more, so dust off your old Joiners Apprentice feed and get ready, I'm back!

PS:

Best wishes to Kari Hultman of The Village Carpenter! Just as I am going to start writing again, she is stepping away. Her blog has been one of my favorites and her work has been super inspiring. Check out the carved plane she just completed. Best wishes, Kari!

[Apothecary Chest] Mitred Dovetails

Mitred dovetails are also known as full blind, and they are tricky. The actual dovetail joint is not the hard part, once layout is really understood. I had to do about six of them before I could intuitively mark and cut the layout without confusion or uncertainty, and even then I still cut on the wrong side of the line (despite it being labelled). So why go through the trouble? Well, it is fun. If you are into that sort of thing.

Here is a sample joint showing what I am after: a frame-and-panel unit with mitred edges, pillowed corners, and no fasteners. Tails are oriented so this unit has strength when lifted, as it is meant to be portable, like a suitcase.

The method I have been using for marking involves creating a template which is used for both the pins and tails. It takes a great deal of care to mark properly, aware of orientation and which face is the reference. The actual cutting of the joinery is not so different than a half blind dovetail, I use a scraper with teeth cut into it to he define the rear corners. Skewed chisels are useful, too, but since the joinery is not visible, it can actually be a little ugly and narrow waists  on the tails are to be avoided so that larger chisels can easily fit.

For me the real difficulty is simply is sculpting the perfect mitres! It should be as simple as marking the 45 degree angle line, and working to it while checking for lumps with a bevel gauge. In practice, it is a finicky process and I have yet to feel that I really command it. Each one is improving, and that is the point.

My inspiration for this work is the apothecary chest on the cover of this book:

Unable to source (or to afford) vintage medicine bottles, I have secured some modern bottles suitable for herbs, teas, and the like and will be using those as my design module. My chest will only have one drawer in the center for simplicity, and this will itself be built with half-blind dovetails, which will feel like a breezy vacation after this. 

Here is the start of the rough draft. My over abundant and redundant labeling may appear like too much noise, but I have been needing all the help I can get when rooting through a pile of boards in a crowded, noisy shop full of distractions and tight on personal space. The location of the tape, cabinetmaker's pyramids, and english labels like "UP" all conspire to help keep me on track. I only mess up sometimes now, instead of often.

Soon the panels for front and back will be created and set into grooves, and then shelves will be inserted. This will start to look like something. I hope.

Note also the miniature anarchist's tool chest in the background. Not mine, but it has been a pleasure to consult and watch it go together.

Side Table

School has kept me very busy!  This is a good thing. For patient readers, updates are forthcoming, but in the meantime, I made a side table:

It is made largely of cherry, with a maple drawer front which came from a tree in my yard in Oregon. The drawer sides are poplar. I added complexity by including a lower shelf, which doubled the number of tenons involved. The lumber was milled using a power planer, but was finished with hand planes and all the joinery was done with hand tools. Finish is 3 coats of tung oil. This project was great fun and I look forward to building a second. This table was designed using the human form as a module, and proportional design throughout. At no point did I measure in terms of inches or meters, this is just "hip high" with whole number ratios driving the rest of the concerns. The chunky style is based on deconstructing a dresser we have, and imposing harmonious rations upon it. Smoothing the curly maple drawer face was an adventure, but I have learned a lot about sharpening and it was well worth it!

I am now in the midst of my final project, and I will have more to say about that soon.

[School] Midway

Time flies.

Each day I get up early, make breakfast, and head out the door. Depending on what the tot's needs were (and if she were awake yet) I get a half hour to an hour of quiet time at the school to prepare my materials for the day, sharpen my tools, and organize my workbench. These moments pay big dividends throughout the day, and I am feeling that organization and sharpening are not only fundamental, but are absolutely critical for my own success as a woodworker.

The day then flies by in a blur of instruction and practice. At the end of the day, cleaning happens again. In addition to general sweeping and cleaning of the shop, we each have a designated chore each week. This week I have been especially enjoying being assigned to the machine room. Since we are not using it all that much yet, I've been able to make visible headway each day, cleaning the machines themselves as well as long-forgotten corners and areas under the machines. My theory is that if I do the entire room three times (this only takes about 20 minutes) each day, by Friday it should look pretty good! We'll see.

After the cleaning, I endure the commute home, about 2 miles by bicycle through forested neighborhoods. Traffic includes deer and occasional cars. Sometimes there is a pedestrian or other bicycle. Dinner, dishes, play and read stories to the kid, and I am about ready for bed. Hence, not much time for blogging or even reading.

That said, we have been productive and I have been learning a great deal. Highlights have been becoming much more proficient with freehand sharpening, learning to (finally) sharpen my saws, and radically improving my chisel technique, particularly with rounded or sculpted forms. We've built layout squares and tool totes. The students skills are beautiful to see unfold, everyone has now a decent command of dovetail joints as well as basic rabbets and dadoes, meaning they can build a huge variety of constructions now. We've also learned the fundamentals of shellac and other non-toxic finishes. We have touched on design; the tool tote is made entirely from ratios based on a module (our hand span) with pieces all sized to each other or to ratios, no rulers or tape measures needed. So far, they all fit just fine. This week we will begin learning more design techniques and loft plans for a side table.

Here are some images: