The Heat is Gone; Back in the Shop

My workshop --a spare, second floor bedroom in a house without any air conditioning-- is usually too hot during the summer days for me. Also, I spend a lot of time gardening in my backyard, as well as various exterior projects around the house.

But the days and nights have been getting cooler, and this has allowed me to get back into the shop. I've gotten back to working on my English-style workbench. No pictures or videos, yet. I plan on making another video of the process of laying out and cutting the tenons for the leg mortises. I've also gotten to a couple of long overdue projects for my current workbench's top. Which brings me to.....

Most of the current English-style benches being built are constructed of construction lumber. This is a great application for that material. But I"m concerned me the 1 1/2" thick benchtop is just too thin. I've grown fond of my 4" thick laminated Southern Yellow Pine benchtop. And rather than re-invest in a benchtop, I'm going to reuse my 4" thick SYP benchtop for my English-style workbench. A tad unorthodox, but an acceptable novelty. Don't you think?

Thanks for being patient with the blog.

AMDG

Leg Mortise Video

Forgive the poor quality; just thought I'd mess around. This is my first video, taken with a camera that has video capability on it. If I am to do more of these, I will need to invest in a real video camera.

AMDG

English Bench Build: Part 1

My current workbench is serviceable. Many years ago, I started to build a typical European workbench, with a face vise and tail vise. You can see how far I got.

The bench was built to serve my slight interest in hand tools, and my major use of power tools. As I slowly started using hand tools more and more, I found that a tail vise was not needed; so I never finished it, even though I bought the bench screw for it. I never purchased the face vise. This bench has made me use very creative clamping and holding situations. When I finally realized that hand tools were in my heart, I turned the top around so the row of dogs was on the back, and I added a big 2 3/4" square planing stop on the new left end. 

Don't get me wrong. My bench has helped me immensely, but I know that its time to upgrade.

The English bench has caught my eye. I love the simplicity; I love the wide front apron. So today I started to build it. I had some 8' Douglas Fir 4x4's. I rough cut these to length for the legs, and laid out the mortises for the rails. Pictures below.

Cut to a rough, oversized length: 28 1/2"

Measuring from what will be the bottom of the leg (that scribed line at the right), the mortise for the lower rail is 5" up. The length of the mortise is 3". It will receive a 4x4 rail with a 1" tenon.



Measuring from the finished top line, the mortise for the top rail begins 1/4" down, and, similarly, is 3" long.

I will keep posting the progress on building this bench. Admittedly, I am quite nervous that the thinner, 2 1/4" top (compared to my current 4" top) will dissappoint me. We'll see. 

AMDG 

Shop Fixtures

The shop has received a lot of attention. It was very cramped, non-efficient, and focused on using power tools. That had to change; it had to be simplified. Here are a couple of ways I accomplished that.

AMDG

Altar Card Frames

I can't believe its been almost a year since my last post. Time flies! I've been very busy with work, housework, a new baby (Anne Catherine, 1/7/2011), etc.

Shop time has been spent on honing skills, cleaning up and organizing. For a while I had removed all power tools from my shop, but with this project, I re-setup the tablesaw to rip some narrow boards. I still have much to learn with hand tools.

This project was for a Roman Catholic priest friend of mine. He is celebrating Holy Mass for the feast of St. Joseph on March 19. He has a devotion to St. Joseph. He purchased the altar cards, but had no frames for them.

If you have any questions about what these are used for, please feel free to ask me.

AMDG

Portable Waterstone Honing Station

Waterstones are messy. My old process was to pull the stone out of its bath, set it on a rubber mat and keep lots of towels handy to catch any runoff or build up of the slop. It really made sharpening a chore. I even looked at other systems, i.e., oil stones (Norton's tri-stone thingy that revolves), diamond stones and diamond paste. Not wanting to waste my investment, I researched as much as I could to find out the most sensible way of holding and containing waterstones. 

David Finck, author of Making and Mastering Wood Planes, shows a set up in his book. Basically, a cradle is made to hold the stone over a pan or container. The cradle is dadoed on either end to fit the lip of the pan or container. 

So I set off design something for myself, with David's setup as my model. The most obvious thing to me was that the less the stone had to travel from bath to cradle, the better. My setup had to definitely place the stone over the bath, thereby allowing the slop to run off the sides and into the container. 

It had to be pleasing to my eyes. Simply setting the stone on a block over a piece of Tupperware did not sit well with me. But not wanting to go through the process of epoxy-coating the interior of a wooden box, so that it may hold water, I decided to build a box to hold the container. 

I'm still a very novice woodworker. This would give me a chance to practice some basic skills. A through-dovetailed box was the project. 

I wrestled with how to set in the bottom. I couldn't pass up the ease of just nailing it to the bottom edge. It will probably self destruct in the future, but, oh well; it looks and works nicely now.

The box begged to receive moulding along the bottom. Having no moulding planes at the moment, I just chamfered the edge. Box complete.

The cradle had to be of a rot-resistant wood. I had some redwood on hand, and just enough of it actually. The stock I had was only 5/8" thick, so I laminated two boards together, and the finished block is about 1 1/4" thick. After laying out the dadoes on either end, I sawed the lines and the waste, and cleaned it out with a chisel. The stops on the block were planed down to 3/8" in thickness, and glued to the face of the block. One stop had to have a slight angle cut on it to receive the wedge which holds the stone tight.

Two coats of boiled linseed oil —to bring out the color— and three coats of wipe-on poly followed up with a coat of wax finished it up. It hasn't been used yet; I expect it to get really dirty and wanted to take some pictures of it before it got to that point. The stone in the picture is a dry coarse stone; my honing stones are in the tub outside of the frame. The tub fits in tightly, too tightly. When I started this project I had planned on making a pond-liner covered box to insert. I'll still probably do that but this will work for the time being. 

I had never planned on this project getting this far. That's why I don't have any pictures of it in process. The soft maple used for the box was just scrap stuff I had laying around, and after finishing it I couldn't believe how much I loved the look of that maple. Some spalting, tiger stripes and other things going on. 

I'll be sure to post a couple of pics of it in use. This little station should help make my sharpening life easier. 

AMDG

A Panel Gauge

Okay, so I've managed to finish a project.

This is a good project for scraps and cut-offs. Not a whole lot of wood is needed, save for the long piece for the arm. Mine is made out of quartersawn white oak. Use a hardwood that will wear well. I can provide the detailed measurements if you ask for them, but the project really is straightforward.

The pin is made from a drill bit. The smooth end was just filed to a point, an undersized hole was drilled, and the bit was driven home.

AMDG