Tool Shopping

Today I went on a bit of a tool shopping spree at Lee Valley and Rockler. The initial motivation was to replace a pair of Crash Scissors I misplaced at Pennsic.

Of course a trip to the tool shop is never safe, even if just on the computer. I ended up finding a list of clamps I had jotted down a few months ago after I read Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings, so I got those and (oh yes) some hones I've been intending to get since Beauty is using dull knives in the kitchen and I'm carrying a dull knife in my pocket. For good measure I got a dust hood to install on the Radial Arm Saw. So here's the complete list.

From Rockler:

• Tabletop Dust Fitting
• 2 10" Rockler Brand Wooden Hand Screws (at $4.99 each!)

From Lee Valley:

• Sportsman's Hone
• Lee Valley Ceramic Honing Kit
• 2 8" Jorgensen Hand Screws
• 2 12" Jorgensen Hand Screws
• 2 3" C-clamps
• 2 4" C-clamps
• 3 Pairs of Crash Scissors
  

The damage for both purchases combined was about $187. Ouch. I hope to resist buying tools for a while: Christmas is coming and Beauty gets mad when The Beast uses up her good gift ideas.

Photo courtesy of Lee Valley.

Sand Table Assembly

The sand table was assembled and used for East Kingdom battle planning during the Pennsic War this year. I completed the parts just before leaving on vacation, stained them in camp during the first days I was there, and then assembled them into a sandbox on legs the following day. Here are all the parts, ready for assembly:

The key pieces where the legs, which I had pocket screwed together with the Kreg pocket hole jig. Each leg has a shelf that makes assembly easier and helps support the weight of the sand. Each of the side pieces has a ledge that is glued and screwed on. These sit flush with the top of the leg shelves, and the sides screw directly to the legs:

The addition of a lower stretcher makes the table side stable:

The second side slides into place much like a puzzle piece:

Installing the additional sides and stretchers makes a solid pedestal for the table:

A plywood bottom slides in to create the sandbox:

Five bags of sand filled the box:

A plywood top makes a functional table when the sand table is not in use.

The project was a success. The only thing that needs changing for next year is more or better sealant for the box (especially the lid). Moisture from the sand caused the table top to curl upward a little at the corners, and made the bottom swell enough that it took some force to knock it out at the end of the two weeks. Both of those problems should be corrected after a year of dry storage.

Return from Vacation

I'm back from two week's vacation and will start posting again soon. I did not find the primitive woodworking I had hoped to see while on the trip, but did have some woodworking experiences. I'll post pictures of the sand table and bench finishing projects soon.

Kreg Pocket Hole Jig / Shop tricks

My new "cool tool" was bought specifically for a project: a Kreg Pocket Hole Jig. I'm not keen on glue and screw construction, because it seems like cheating, but this time I had a temporary table to build for use outdoors. Pocket holes seemed like the right idea.

I had never used one of these before, but after this project I'll feel comfortable using it whenever it is needed. And it was a GREAT purchase: the jig works like they say it will work, and the precision was in all the right places. The drill bit is super sharp (I think you really could cut yourself on it pretty easily) and fits with perfect clearance into the jig. The table legs went together quickly and seem super sturdy. I may comment further after the table has spent two weeks outdoors.

Notice the two silver containers in the front. My wife buys Lush bathroom products, which are super expensive as soaps go, but they do tend to give her these little silver canisters. These fit perfectly into the spaces of the box, and keep some screws with the jig.
First: no, I am not actually ripping this board this way, that would be dangerous. The saw is just perched there while I took the picture. As part of the project, I had to cross cut some boards that were too long for my bench.

Two clever things (I think) are going on in this picture. First, the pink thing under the board: this is some foam insulation left over from siding the house. It gave me a sacrifice table to prevent damage to my bench. Even though the bench is functional, not beautiful, saw cuts in the surface would be a problem. This trick worked beautifully.

Second, notice the baby gate in the background. I don't have an outfeed, saw horse, or any other dedicated table extension, and I knew I needed something. The baby gate became my table extension: it adjusted to the height I needed and had a surface I could clamp to the board I was cutting. This worked great, and until I have another solution I won't allow that to be sold or given away.

I'm off on vacation for the next two weeks, so no posts from me. I'm hoping to catch sight of a spring pole lathe and some coopering while I'm gone. We'll see what happens. I plan to take a picture of the table once it is set up, and if I manage that I'll post when I get home.

Until my return, may your the saws of your enemy be dull.

First Rabbets with the Moving Fillister

Here's the moving fillister plane with the wedge inserted correctly. Also shavings and a half-decent rabbet (my fifth of the night) as evidence that it works. Seating the blade properly challenged me quite a bit since I'm used to the incremental adjustments on the metal bench planes. When I finally got it seated with a light enough cut, it turned out to be skewed slightly, so in profile this rabbet has a slight slope, like half of a sliding dovetail. That's nothing a chisel won't fix until I get the hang of this tool.

Just a little more playing around, and I'll feel ready to try this on something that matters.

Moving Fillister and Painting Project

As my big summer vacation approaches, I have less time to write. There is such a limited time to complete the projects I have. So I'm going to let pictures speak for me. First: the moving fillister arrived. Perhaps the blades need honing, as Patrick said, but they are the sharpest blades I've ever received on a used tool. The previous owner obviously used this tool, and cared for it well.

Second (and unrelated to woodworking): I've been working on the new shield (someday I'ld like to try making one of these using bent laminated wood, but right now it is T6 aluminum that has been curved with an English Wheel and covered with glued-on canvas).

I'll be working on this for a few more days, finishing the painting, shellacking over it and rigging it to fit comfortably on my arm. The painting you see took me most of yesterday afternoon. What remains is painting the white areas with the finish paint (what you see is the gesso) and touching up of some of the lines. I'm really happy with how this looks; it will be a shame to see it scuffed once I put it to use.

Tails First or Pins First?

I've cut dovetails using both the tails-first and pins-first methods. When I was taught to do this, it was using the pins-first method, and although I was a beginner, the joints were very tight and accurate. They just required a lot of correction along the way.

Soon afterward, I saw a video by Rob Cosman on making dovetails and he cut the joint tails first. It looked to have many advantages for speeding the process and making it more accurate so I started experimenting. I soon found that a pencil was inadequate for marking the pins, where it worked just fine for marking the tails on a pins-first joint. This caused me a lot of grief as I didn't have a marking knife. I tried a number of solutions, including a sheetrock knife (don't try this at home, kids), but they all compromised the tightness of the joints. Finally, Fine Woodworking did a test on marking knives and included a $3.37 solution: the Xacto Knife. Problem solved, and my tails-first joints got much tighter.

Yesterday, Christopher Schwartz posted a list of reasons why he has adopted the tails-first method, and a couple of them are destined for my shop: gang cuts should be a real time saver, and I'll be trying the rabbetting trick soon after the moving fillester arrives in my shop.

Fettling a Jointer Plane

My shop contains few working power tools. I'm not really a Neanderthal, but the shop has developed accidentally with an emphasis toward hand tools. This is partly because of my penchant for getting things used or free, and partly just bad luck.

For example, I would love to have a working jointer, but the little bench top model I bought for a "bargain" was setup incorrectly by its previous owner, and so far I've been unable to release the blades to adjust them properly (the man must have been a beast, because those screws are not budging, even after multiple WD-40 and Kroil applications). There's no point in trying to joint with blades that are set out of square.

I believe learning a task with hand tools teaches me more about power tools than learning it with power tools teaches me about hand tools. This may or may not prove useful some day, but I've been betting that it will. Hand tools also fettle more quickly than power tools (are power tools fettled?). My band saw, for example has much larger parts and labor requirements before it works to a fine standard than a any bench plane will.

So when it came time to glue up the bench tops for my bench project and I had a choice between driving the three hour round trip to my friend's house to use his power jointer or spending the time fettling my jointer plane and doing it by hand, you can guess which one I chose.

The plane had promise, but it needed some help.

My sole aim was to have both sides of the mouth in the same plane. Right, well even if the puns are unintended, I wanted to make sure the front and back of the mouth would contact any board I'm flattening. To ensure that, I made reference marks in front of and behind the mouth using a Sharpie and started flattening the plane on my "reference" surface.

The reference surface is a cutoff piece of marble that I got free at from a local granite counter manufacturer. It works well as a flattening surface and is heavy enough to hold a length of Klingspor Gold Cloth Roll under the ends using just gravity as an adhesive. The Klingspor sand paper is fairly expensive, especially at this width, but it is so worth the cost. It can be torn to an appropriate length using just a straight edge, it has a good tooth, and you can vacuum it clean and keep using it for quite a while.

With the plane assembled—no blade of course—I planed the surface flat on the sand paper. Here it is: flat enough, with just a hint of the mark left at the front of the mouth (all of that is in a scratch pattern that would take ages to sand flat, so I called it "flat enough").


The blade had apparently been sharpened and polished by its previous owner on a grinder with a felt wheel. Even though it looked good with a finely polished surface, it wasn't good. I had to flatten, square, joint, and resharpen the blade to get it going right.

I'm not going to comment on how this was done, except to say that I don't have a grinder (remember my lack of power tools?) so almost all of this was done on the Gold sandpaper. Ages ago I had purchased a sharpening jig from Lee Valley, and this made it easier to redefine the bevel at the correct angle. I also acquired a really thin metal ruler last year, which made polishing the back of the blade much easier than it might have been: I used the David Charlesworth trick of laying the ruler on one side of the oil stone to hold the back of the blade at a consistent angle and focus the polishing on the end of the blade. It was the first time I had done this, and it worked wonderfully. I'll cheerfully do it again when flattening plane blades, which don't get used as reference surfaces.

After honing on the oil stone, I hoped for the best. And fine, frothy shavings emerged. Success. I was ready to start jointing.

Moving Fillister Purchase

I've been planning to pick up a moving fillister plane for some time, so what better way to celebrate the return from a week-long vacation than to buy one from Patrick Leach. No, I was not fast enough to get WP3 (apparently you need to be quick in this town), but true to his word Patrick has others stock. I'll soon be joining rabbets by hand.

The moving fillister is a flexible solution for cutting rabbets, both with and against the grain. Since it has a built in nicker, it can cut across the grain without tearing out hunks of wood, and can just as easily cut with the grain. If you want to read more about it, Christopher Schwartz extolled its virtues on the Woodworking Magazine blog at the beginning of May.

Research on Waterproofing Wooden Furniture

I'm working on a pair of knock-down benches on a design by my friend Sean. These are being built with the ash I purchased last fall. I've finished gluing up the tops in one big panel that will be ripped down for two bench tops and one or two stretchers (as yet to be determined) Once the cutting gets under way, these should come together in under a day.

Since the benches are intended as camping equipment, and last year's two-week camping trip included 6 consecutive days of rain, I need to waterproof these appropriately. Some quick research turned up a couple sources.

First, from the U.S. Government, I found a short piece on finishing wood for outdoor use. This one sticks with traditional Big Box finishes—paints, stains, and varnishes—rating them on appropriate use. This gave me some thought: did I want to paint the benches, as this article suggested. Not really. And Ash wasn't on the list of recommended outdoor woods. Hmm.

So I started thinking about wooden boats, and my trip to Mystic Seaport last year. What would a boat builder do? Assuming that a boat builder would use ash in the first place. I turned up two more sites of interest: one about spar varnish and the other about a homemade polymer coating. As intriguing as the homemade option is, I think I'm planning to track down some spar varnish. I found three brands that seemed promising: Sutherland Welles, Man O'War, and Z Spar. I think one of these will end up on the benches.

If anyone has suggestions or cautions on finishing these benches correctly, please chime in.

The Promise of Pinch Dogs

This week I conducted a quick experiment: I jointed a couple of warped scrap bits to see how the pinch dogs I received last Christmas would work. The first thing I learned is that pinch dogs want roughly even surfaces: I knew they could go around corners (for mitered joints or more difficult multi-angle glue-up), but it didn't seem likely that they would work on the ends if the surfaces were not relatively coplanar.

Out came the hand saw (it was late and children were sleeping) and I cut down the longer board to roughly the same length as the shorter board. Then I smeared both edges with glue and started pounding in pinch dogs.

Thats when I learned that this tool could benefit from a little help when being applied. I would have liked to have a couple straight pieces of wood clamped together on each end of the work piece to keep the boards in the same plane. It also would have worked better if the boards were lightly held in place on the bench and had not been cupped (and therefore more like a rocker than a pedestal).

Even with these challenges, I managed to clamp the boards using these glorified staples, and set the assembly aside to dry. That was Monday night. When I came back to it this evening, I set it on the bench and it looked like the picture at the top of the page. The joint looked tight in spite of the trouble I had during glue up, but the rough cut surfaces and misaligned edges could be hiding the reality.

To get a closer look at the joint, I planed the surface down until the joint was revealed. Sure enough, the pinch dogs had done their job and held the joint tight. If you look closely at the picture below, you might see the joint, but it is tightly glued. The holes are visible where two pinch dogs held the joint together on the surface, but there will be many projects where that holes like that will be concealed. I expect to use these for the bench project I'm working on now: the holes won't be visible on the underside of the benches, and I've rough cut the stock long enough that I can trim off the ends after glue up.

First Dovetail for an Eight-year-old

Here's a great post by Konrad Sauer about his son's first through dovetail. This is the kind of experience that blow me away about being a parent.