Some Shop Maintinence

One of the things I did on the current table build (more on that later) was to fill the knot holes with black epoxy.  Whenever I mix epoxy, I use the leftovers to fill some of the cracks in my bench top.  There are a lot of cracks, because the top is four beams of French oak laminated together, and the beams all contain the pith.

I think the top is stable, and would recommend if you build a bench not to turn up your nose at wood with the pith in. Just be warned that there will be cracks. The cracks are not a problem unless you drop something small like finishing brads on your bench top. They will get lost in there, but structurally they make no difference to the bench.

I figure that while I have extra epoxy, I can just dump it in these cracks, and someday I will have a bench top with no cracks in it.

Here is my bench top after I poured extra epoxy into some of the cracks.

Not too long ago I went to a flea market and found a cool hand cranked grinder, an American Champion made by American Hydraulics. I think it is the bee's knees. I like it so much, that when I found two more on eBay, I bought them. Now I have three awesome grinders.

Why three? I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out.

There wasn't much to getting these new two running. One of them worked perfectly, the other felt like there was bubble gum wrapped around the axle. A little WD-40, and it works perfectly, too.

There was a surprise, in that one of them had a one inch arbor. That means it will fit a modern grinding wheel out of the box. The second one had a 5/8" arbor, and it fit a modern grinding wheel using the plastic bushings that came with it. In the past, I have found hand cranked gridners (including the first of this trio I found) have a 3/8" arbor, and need some real fiddling to make work. I had both of these running new wheels in five minutes flat.

Lucky me, a one inch arbor.

I took a recommendation from Larry Williams' InstaGram feed, and bought from Victor Machinery, a 24 grit 6"x1" Meda grinding wheel. The good news is it was less than ten bucks, but there is a minimum to order. I bought two of these wheels and a bunch of wet/dry sanding paper from them.

24 grit seems awfully course, but Larry knows his stuff.

The six inch wheel fit perfectly on the blue grinder, and surprisingly I found out the green one would take a seven inch wheel. Next time I'll order a bigger one for that grinder.

Everything installed in no time flat.

I have a brace of new Ohio Tools bench planes that all need rehabbing, so I thought I would try out this new wheel grinding a plane blade, one of my least favorite pastimes.

This Meda wheel, I have to say, is pretty awesome. The blade never got very hot, and the grinding went very quickly. Definitely an upgrade from my brown Norton wheel (80 grit, I think - maybe 40). The only thing is the grit seems to come off quickly. But, for the price, I think it would be worth burning through these wheels twice as fast.

Here's my grinding set up using my saw bench.

Enough of that, back to the bench. I haven't flattened it since the first time in 2012. Over that time, the top has settled quite a bit. There was a dip in the center I would estimate at about 3/16" deep in the center.

Before

I learned in this time that I can work just fine 99.5% of the time with a bench that isn't perfect and doesn't look like the cover of a Fine Woodworking article. As long as the bench stays still while I'm planing, I can make many other deficiencies work.

With this in mind, I decided to make it flat, but not to waste time making it too smooth.

This was over before I really got a chance to photograph the progress.

I took a big wooden jointer set with a heavy cut, took passes front to back evenly across the grain for the whole length of the bench. Next I took shavings at a 45 degree angle across the top. Last, I went with the grain using a medium cut with my BU jack plane.

Done.

After

It has made a big difference in looks, but I really needed it to be flat to plane the couch table's top. I would say about 20 minutes of work, probably less, from start to finish.

Here is a close up of a crack that has been filled with black epoxy, then planed.

The bench is great. I built it in a class with Christopher Schwarz in 2012. What I like is it is heavy and stable.

So far I have yet to put finish on it, and I think I probably never will. Someday I might put a shelf on the bottom. The only thing it really needs is the sliding deadman, which I need about twice a year for the kind of work I do. So far I have gotten away without it. The bench is about 18" deep, maybe a little more, and a little over six feet long. I have upgrades still awaiting for the tail vice, and I have a nicer piece of elm waiting to be installed as a face vice, along with a Benchcrafted CrissCross.

Stanley #3 Smoother

Last fall I finally finished the walnut dining table I had been working on for the last couple of years.

The main reason I got hung up with this project, is the stock that I had chosen for the top had crazy reversing grain and produced tear out when it was just looked at wrong.

I tried everything I could think of.  I sharpened my blade on LV bevel up jack plane.

No go.

I tried the 37 degree blade in that plane.

No go.

I tried the 50 degree blade, which resulted in a 62 degree effective angle on that plane, which should be enough to tame the worst wood.

No go.

I tried my #80 scraping plane.

No go.

I finally used a hand scraper over the entire top to get a top that had no tear out.  The only problem with this is the table now didn't look flat.

I hated this look.

Don't get me wrong, I am extremely proud of this table, it looks gorgeous -

- In the right light.

It is difficult to photograph, but in the wrong light, it looks a lot like the following picture:

Crazy scraper bumps.  Believe me, it looks a lot worse in real life.

This is the only project I have done in the last couple of years that I couldn't smooth satisfactorily with the tools I had - i.e. my BU jack.

I therefore paid close attention when Christopher Schwarz announced he was going to use a #2 smoother for a year, and Richard Maguire started a series on cap irons and tear out with his #3 smoother.

I decided I needed to find a small smoother with a cap iron rather than one with a high angle and a tight mouth.  After striking out on eBay, I found the perfect plane at Handworks in Amana.  A Stanley type 10 #3.

Planing this table top isn't the catastrophic extremity that you might think.  The finish is just burnished bee's wax.  That's it.  If I decide to leave half of the table the way it was, the wax finish should theoretically be able to be re-applied to the table with none the worse for wear.  Time to get my new secret weapon out.

I monkeyed with my new plane the other day, sharpening the iron and setting up the cap iron like the Schwarz and Richard Maguire said.  Tonight, I decided to go for it and try it out on our dining table.

The first couple swipes showed how not-flat the table is.  However, I was astounded that this plane worked easily where so many of my previous attempts failed.

The secret is the cap iron being set as close to the cutting edge as humanly possible.  I was getting absolutely no tear out, going either with the grain or against it.

Just to prove it, here is a photo of how wide I have the mouth set on this plane:

This is about how far I usually set the mouth back on my jack plane for rough work.

This was utterly amazing to me.  I would say that I am getting to the point in my woodworking that it is getting hard to utterly amaze me, but there you have it.

About 20 minutes work.

I do have to admit that I have very little experience with a bevel down smoother.  One of the reasons I haven't got one, is that with bevel down planes, I think you probably need three:  a jointer a jack and a smoother.  I can do a lot of these tasks only with my BU jack.  I haven't ever run across a wood that I couldn't smooth with that plane.

Until this project.

I decided that this project was worth the investment in a new vintage tool - if it worked.  Boy am I glad I did.

I have a feeling that every once in a while a dedicated smoother is required, so I think that this one will be it.

The only problems I came across is that after a while, a shaving got caught under the chipbreaker.  This was expected, as I couldn't quite get the chipbreaker to fully close up to the original iron.

I also found out that this table top requires the blade to be super-hyper-freaking sharp in order to work well.  I did wind up with some microscopic tear out toward the end of my planing session that wasn't there at the beginning.  Unfortunately I don't have my sharpening stones here, so I'll have to finish this task up another day.

I like the steel on this iron, and I have no problem with using the original thin iron.  The only problem is there is only about 1/4" on the iron left until I run in to some pitting, and the cap iron isn't quite what it used to be.  I am a bit undecided at what to do to remedy this.  I could buy a new cap iron and blade from a company like Lee Valley or Hock, but I could also get a vintage replacement.  I think a vintage Swedish blade and chipbreaker would be cool.  I could also spend some time and research rehabbing the one that is original to this plane.

Anyway, here is some vintage tool porn:

I really like the look of this old plane with the low front knob.

The type 10 was manufactured between 1907 and 1909, according to the internet.  There are some real neat features from this time period.

You can tell it is a type 10 because it has two patent dates (unlike the type 11 which has three), and there is no frog adjustment screw.

The frog adjustment screw would be nice, but I figure once the frog is set, there shouldn't be much need to muck with it on a dedicated smoother.  Plus, my intention is to keep the mouth relatively open.

I thought it was neat that this was a model #3C.  That means the bottom has the corrugations.  I don't think they do much other than look cool.  But hey!  It is cool to look cool.

Just look at the frog:

The money shot.

I think the blade says, "STANLEY - PAT. 4/19/92."  I mistakenly thought that this was a later blade, but it turns out it is from the time that this plane was made, so my guess is it is original.  If it was in good shape, it would be worth as much as I paid for the whole plane all by itself!  I like the steel, it sharpens up nicely.

Overall I am extremely pleased with the plane and it's performance.  The walnut on this project was extremely frustrating to deal with, and this little smoother seems to be capable of taming it nicely.

My plan is to smooth the top until it looks good enough, then re-finish it.

Flea Market Finds

Saturday's haul.

 Less than twenty bucks, done by 9:00 am, no rain, nine items, 28 photos.

1 Euro for these awesome old tailor's scissors.

I think I got these three for 7 Euros.  Expensive.

The mortice chisel turns out to be Peugeot.  This should be a good one.

8mm Voltus?

1/4" chisel by Two Cherries.

How about some out-of-order action?  I think this handle isn't original to the gouge.

Nice shallow sweep.

A little rusty, but a British chisel. 

Here it is, 50 Euro cents.

This chisel was 1 Euro.  Another nice and narrow one.

I have never heard of this before.  Matador, and the back of the handle is stamped, Ulmia.

Hefty for such a narrow chisel.

This pair was two Euros.

More non-orignial handles.  But, I really like the octagonal one.

Nice and thin.  One of them might be bent, I am not sure.

Another expensive lot, 7 Euros.

I have no regular drill bits for a brace.  Now I have three!

This is what I really wanted, a countersink.  And, there were four!

A little grubby, we'll see how they clean up.

The obligatory gimlet bit.  This one could be nice.

I soaked them all in a water bath with citric acid to remove the rust.

The gouge says, "Herring Bros., London"

Three out of four of these look really nice!

I completely took the scissors apart, cleaned them up and sharpened ala Paul Sellers.

I couldn't see this with all the crud.  It says, "Flexo, garantee."

They now work perfectly.  A little rough on the handle.  I might paint and coat with epoxy for comfort.