Benchless School Box Build - Part III - Stock Preparation

This build is going slow not because my workholding methods are slowing me down, but my lack of shop time is. I've run into an unexpected mental barrier to woodworking in our new apartment.

The barrier has to do with the fact that my "shop" is actually our home office. Any mess I make in there must be instantly cleaned up, and when I'm done, all woodworking materials must be put away.

This is much different than the way I usually work. Even when I'm being good in my home shop and keeping everything neat and tidy, I leave my project on my bench, and my tools go in my easily accessible tool chest.

Here, it's a bit different. When I'm done, cleaning sawdust isn't too bad because I pretty much sweep after every operation. Tools, however, can not be left out here. They go to the bottom of a bin in a cabinet.

This isn't the worst thing in the world, but I find that getting 15 or 20 minutes of work in isn't so attractive an option of my spare time when half of that is preparing and tearing down my workspace.

I think I can solve these issues with a couple of projects to do soon, such as a sawbench and a Dutch tool chest. Mostly, though, it is just a matter of changing my work routine and making these processes more efficient.

Enough excuses, let's get on to my build:

Some of you may have been wondering in my last couple of posts on this build what I meant by using a tiny piece of fiber board as a bench.

Well, the answer is that more than anything, it is used as a stop to allow me to work on the floor. The spacer board lets me plane to the end of the board, using the wall as a stop, without my plane bumping into the wall stopping the cut.

Edge jointing with my new "bench."

I have to say, some care must be taken to find a part of the floor that is flat enough that the board does not rock when planing. This tile floor is pretty flat, but it isn't perfect. With just a little trial and error, a proper place to plane is found.

Such concentration!

I do find that planing this way I must slow down comparing to doing it on my bench. It's not so bad though. If it takes a minute to joint a board like this rather than the usual fifteen seconds, it's not really that slow.

Not the most comfortable, but it works.

This position is far from ideal, but it does indeed work. I would say if you are learning woodworking by doing it on the floor, you are giving yourself a bit of a disadvantage, but it can indeed be done.

Notice that I am just resting the board on the ground. Nothing is holding it up straight. I wanted to try this build without any clamps, but I think if I had one to help steady this board to edge joint, it would be easier. I feel like I really have to balance things to get it right. The trick is just to go very slow.

Two boards edge jointed.

Really, in no time I had these two boards edge jointed. A bit of liquid hide glue, and a rub joint is all that was needed for this.

This panel will eventually be the lid to the box.

How about smooth planing the faces?

Well, with my stopping board, this is also possible.

Face planing.

The stopping board is much thinner than the pine boards I am planing, so it isn't a problem. I was worried that the hard tile floor might mar the opposite face I am planing, so I used a towel to protect it. This works just fine.

The next issue I had was shooting the end grain square. My new shop is so new, I don't even have a proper shooting board. I have some ideas of one to make that would work on the floor, but I want to get on with this build. Here's what I came up with:

Shooting end grain.

It might be kind of hard to see what is happening here, but everything is loose. My "bench" is used to slide my jack plane back and forth on without damage, and some of the stock I have for trim on the school box is used to elevate the board I am planing in order to allow the blade to make contact with all of the endgrain. I used what I had at hand to space the board to be planed far enough away from the wall that the plane wouldn't stop before the end of the cut, and the towel protects my plane if I am a bit too aggressive.  This gets the cut square in one direction only (the width of the cut), unlike a regular shooting board which will also automatically square the cut along the length of the cut.

This means that one has to be careful, and plane to the line I have scribed that hopefully was square when I laid it out.

Here you can see I am getting close. I am planing very close to the line I marked across the width.

Another swipe or two, and this is what I have:

Finished cut.

Next, I sized out some of the parts to finished length. This required some cross cutting, and I have to admit I've been thinking about a few different ways to do this.

I tried out this method, which seems to work. I used my dining chair which we are using for an office chair at the moment as a traditional saw bench. The only major difference being I have a Japanese saw, which is only a little more awkward in this situation.

Cross cutting with a kitchen chair.

I used my spacer board to protect my chair, give support to my cut, and help make sure I wasn't sawing into the front of our brand-new kitchen chair.

It's not a bad idea to triple-check that there is plenty of clearance before sawing this way.

Please don't cut into our new kitchen chair!

Something to keep in mind, is that the board you are cutting likely will NOT be level to the ground when cutting, so a bit of adjustment must be made. In my case, I left plenty of room to fix an unsquare cut with the shooting board.

Clean up.

Here are the parts to my school box.

Now how to figure out workholding for dovetails?