Winding Sticks Epilogue - Fixing a Screw Up: Part I

One of the inserts in my newly constructed winding sticks turned out pretty ugly. You'll notice I didn't have too many close-ups of them in my last post. These winding sticks will work just fine (in fact, the inserts are overkill, in my opinion), but I realized that every time I use them I will be embarrassed of the giant gap in one.

Giant Gap.

The others, while not perfect, look pretty good to my eye.

I decided that since the inserts were attached only with liquid hide glue, it should be easy to fix. I decided to remove the insert, make a new one and replace it.

Incidentally, I am extremely happy with how my center markers turned out. I drilled all the way through each stick, and inserted a 4mm bamboo skewer.

I think these bamboo dots look great.

Back to scheduled programming: I used some hot water and a blow dryer to weaken the glue holding the insert. I then popped it out with a chisel being careful not to bruise the sycamore, as I didn't want to re-cut this joint. The mortise itself is pretty good.

Insert coming out.

Insert out.

I have plenty of this insert wood for lots more inserts, so it was just a matter of cutting a piece a little oversize.

Oversized insert stock.

I split it to rough width with a chisel.

I wound up with a piece a little oversize. Once the glue cures, I will plane it flush for a perfect match.

A bit oversize.

If you wonder how I plane with only my two sawbenches as work surfaces, here is a photo of my setup. I put one sawbench near a corner in my office, and use a piece of wood with a birdsmouth cut out of it as a planing stop that is braced against the corner of the wall. If I need a longer worksurface, I just add another sawbench behind the first. I also added a strip to my planing stop to act as a shooting board. It works perfectly.

Shooting the ends of the insert to sneak up on a perfect fit.

I also slightly beveled the underside of the insert, so any dreck will not interfere with a tight joint where it shows.

It has the potential to be nice and tight.

All that's left is to add some glue and clamp it up.

And, cross my fingers that it doesn't move again. I think the C-clamp is what caused the problem before: I probably used too much clamping pressure.

Hopefully this clamping strategy will get it to look nice and tight.

Come back tomorrow to see how it turned out! I will take the clamps off, plane it flush and add some more finish. If all works as I hope, it will be a perfect repair!

Benchless School Box Build - Part II

I didn't get very much done on my build today. It was, however, good to get a little bit of woodworking done. It is clear that I am a bit out of practice.

Pretty much all I accomplished was to get the rough boards cut out for the carcase.  To do this, I spent the usual inordinate amount of time looking the boards over to see where my cuts should go.

Oh! I almost forgot. I also got some sharpening in. I brought along two beautiful chisels given to me by Kim Malmberg (@kims.tagram on Instagram), the big one and the medium one. The small one was a great size that I brought along from my mounting collection of Nordic chisels I call the Swedish Hoarde.

A few of the tools I brought with me.

I sharpened the two smaller ones, and my Veritas BU Jack plane using the oil stones I brought along. I had to run to the corner hardware store for some appropriate oil, though. - Back to our scheduled programming:

Once I figured out where the cuts should go, I laid them out like this:

Laying out crosscuts.

I only have a six inch square, which is pretty small for this. For a straightedge, I used my 1.85 Euro bench as the edge on it was square enough. I used the Starrett to double check.

I decided not to use the bidet for crosscuts, as I have this little boink in the wall that worked just fine, using my feet as workholding ala the Japanese.

I need to get some cool toe-socks.

The biggest problem here, is sawdust gets on your socks. Other than that, it works. I think with a little practice, I could probably cut a nice straight line this way.

Close up.

Finished cross cuts.

I have to say that this works just fine. I used an old towel to try to keep the wall and the lumber from getting dinged up, and the OSB seems to work pretty good at leveling out the small inconsistencies in our tile.

The big issue was that everything seemed to take twice as long as in my German shop. Partly as I was learning how to do it this way, and partly because I have all of those jigs and workholding devices in my German shop for a reason - to make things easier and quicker.

Tomorrow there are a few more crosscuts to get the pieces to final dimension, and I have to figure out a way to shoot the ends square.

'Till then!

A Woodworking Bench for 1 Euro 85

That's right - a buck eighty-five!

Curious?  Here's a photo:

My 1 Euro 85 cent  workbench

Oh, gosh! What's he on about now?

Let me back up a bit. Here is a photo of my new shop in Alicante, Spain:

My new shop.

If it looks like a home office, that's because it is. We recently moved to Spain. The Frau went ahead to pick out he apartment. She asked me what my MUST-HAVEs were for a place here. I told her that was easy, only one thing - a shop.

She said, "No."

While our place is beautiful, I am going to have to get creative with furniture building here.

A little aside - I would like to make a shout out to Ethan, the Kilted Woodworker, and to the NAF Benefits Office. And a big "Eff-You" to the Defense Finance and Accounting Services in Indianapolis. DFAS took ten weeks to get me a report I needed for some retirement paperwork I had to get done before I left federal service on Monday.

Since they wouldn't scan me the report or mail it to my German address, I had them send it to the Kilted Woodworker, who agreed to scan it to me when it arrived in his mail box.

Everything finally got submitted two days before the deadline and the NAF Benefits Office processed it in one day. Plenty of time for me to mail off what I needed to mail to them on the last possible day. Thanks, Ethan! I literally could not have done that without your help.

Back to woodworking:

I brought a very modest woodworking kit with me. Basically it was whatever I could fit in a plastic tool box I had. The idea now is to get some good woodworking in with the resources I actually have.

Yes, it's a bidet.

Ever wonder how to use one of these?

Me too. I figured it's the perfect hight to use as a sawbench for crosscutting.

Joking aside, I plan on participating in Reddit's Popular Woodworking School Box Build. My plan is to prove you can do decent work with far fewer resources than you might think necessary.

Today I took the bus (we don't plan to get a car) to a local home center to buy some construction lumber for this build. Their construction lumber was crap, but they did have some plastic-wrapped laminated wood that will work. I picked out two of the nicest boards of appropriate size I could find. As a bonus, this is the kind of laminated wood where the pieces that make up the lamination are full-length.

Some assembly required.

I also got some nice pine strips intended for molding that were clear and relatively straight. these bits are around 1/2", for the bottom and box moldings. If there is enough of something left over, I will do the till, too.

I also bought some brad nails and a couple of really nice brass box hinges, because they didn't have anything like the strap hinges in the article that would work. These should look very nice.

Here's everything in my wheelie bag while we wait at the bus stop.

Now that I am not in my beloved Munich shop (for at least two years), I have decided to focus more on the positives of my new workspace: There's a gorgeous view, plenty of natural sunlight, a computer is in there, and air conditioning.

What more could I want?

BTW, I was serious about using that piece of OSB for a workbench. Wait until you see how this build goes! I was at first tempted for a first project to be a sawbench, a bench hook, or some other piece of workshop convenience, but I decided to try an experiment, and do a full on furniture build without any of that.

Wish me luck!

Shop Tour - VIDEO

A couple years back, when I built my bench in Christopher Schwarz's class, he actually helped load the bench into the SUV, and he helped unload it, too. He was intrigued by my tiny shop and posted a video about it on his blog. You can check out that post here.

My shop has changed a little since then, so enjoy.

While you're here, check out the tools on my For Sale tab as I am trying to thin the herd.

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.

Mockup of Necessity

We are looking at doing a renovation in one of our living spaces.  The Frau and I decided we need a largish cabinet for storing some of our stuff.  For some reason that I can't fathom, she seems to think I have enough unfinished projects that there is no point relying on me to build something, so she started looking on the internet for something to purchase.

Panic time for me, as it means either putting up with crappy termite poop furniture in our living room, or selling a kidney to afford something that is a bit more to our taste.

Sooooo... I thought I would try to surprise her with a quick and dirty version of a cabinet similar to this one while I had a couple days off.  My version will be joined with nails and painted, but should turn out to be nice.

I think that many readers will not be so crazy about this cabinet design.  It is fashionable in Europe at the moment, but it looks like it was born to be made on a table saw.  This should be an interesting exercise with hand tools.  Being a mockup, this piece should teach me a bit on how to do the next one better.

The problem is we really don't know if the space we have will look right with a cabinet like this, so this build I will dub a mockup, but the finished product will be a perfectly functional piece.  We will probably want one made of beech with proper joinery.  The mockup can be used in our second appartment, the Frau's office at work, or we could even sell it.

First step for me when building quick and dirty furniture like this is laminated wood.  They had a great deal on spruce, which is one of my least favorite woods to use.  The great part about this stuff is it comes in whatever widths you need, and they will cross cut them at the home center for free.  Once I came up with a cut list, an hour at the home center found me on my way home with all of the parts I needed already cut to length.

Not exactly the finest material, but it will work for this purpose.

Basically, this vitrine is just two boxes stacked on top of one another.  It is a simple thing to make some rabbets and nail the carcasses together.

Rabbeting the carcass.

A factory making a hundred of these a day probably would have all kinds of jigs and machines to do things like this in a hurry.  Just for this one, though, layout with dividers and an eggbeater drill work just fine for adjustable shelves.

Laying out adjustable shelves.

One thing that I chose to do during this build is not get overly crazy about straight and square.  I made a choice that the crosscuts from the panel saw at the home center looked square enough to me, so they will probably look square enough in the finished piece.  We'll see if this is a mistake or not.  I'll get right into nailing it together.

I clamped the carcase together, and set the nails below the surface a bit.

It's before noon on the first day and I have one box nailed up!

Nails can be very sturdy for case construction.  The strength is in the rabbet, and pounding the nails in at opposing angles results in a fairly strong joint, with no waiting for glue to dry!

Case number two.

A note about my shop.  It is small.  I don't often build big furniture in it.  Usually I find another shop to use if I do.  But, I thought it would be fun to try.  My bench is almost two meters long, and the long boards I have here are exactly two meters.  My space is not much longer than the bench, so as you can see, it is a challenge.

My small shop.  I am actually standing outside the door to take this pic.

The end of day two ended in completion of the basic carcase of this piece.  The center part has temporary plywood spacers holding the place that will eventually be glass that has been ordered.  It should be a fine looking vitrine if it doesn't collapse in a heap.

End of day two.

Day three was all about the doors.  I shiplapped the boards for the door and applied a cross-grain batten using clinched nails for support.

Here I am laying out the position of the batten.  Notice I have already painted the shiplaps, as I won't really be able to reach them later.

If you have never clinched nails before, it is fun.  And a very strong joint.  I don't know if this door could be taken apart without destroying all of the wood.  I think there are about seven hundred and eighty three ways to clinch nails.  You should be able to find a way that works for you with a google search.  I'll post about how I do it at a later date.

I just used regular unplated wire nails from the home center.

Day three shows something that is starting to look like a cabinet.  All that is left is to tune the hinges (they are cheap European cabinet hinges), paint, and install the glass.  I might even put a light in the glass compartment.

When I got to this point, I said, "this vitrine is cool!"  The Frau, who is a lawyer, said, "this vitrine will be cool!"

I probably won't get to work on it again for a few days, but I will post some photos as soon as it is done.

Disobeying Christopher Schwarz: Changing the Saw Rack - VIDEO

Here is the problem I had with my tool chest:  Once I had the first till constructed, I noticed there was not much room to reach into the bottom compartment to get to tools stored there.  I have a screw arm fillister plane that would not go in without removing the till. 

Not ideal.

My moulding planes would not drop straight in or lift straight out.  To get them in or out, I had to first lay them sideways so I could twist them around a bit.  Not too big a deal while I still only have a few moulders, but I plan on making more.  If my chest has a full compliment, I will not be able to get them in or out without removing the bottom till.

Definitely not ideal.

The moulding plane problem I could live with for a while.  Although the first problem I mentioned really is a pain.  I either have to get the plane in the chest and probably never bother to take it out again when I need it, or, keep the screw arm fillister out of the chest perhaps to get dirty, damaged, or lost when I need it.

After all, the rule is, if it doesn't fit in the chest, then you don't need it.  Right?  I think that means I must figure out how to get this gorgeous tool in the chest.

What did Chris do with his chest?  Honestly, I don't know.  My saw till is exactly 4 5/8" from the front of the chest to the side of the divider.  The Till is exactly 9" deep.  Both dimensions are right out of "The Anarchist's Tool Chest" book.

Perhaps my chest is overall not as deep, or perhaps it is because the stock for my dividers is too wide.  Honestly, I only need another 1/2" for my moulding planes to go in and out easily.

My first reaction was to adjust the till.  It looks great now, and will hold a lot.  But, if it was only 8 1/2" deep, the moulders would fit perfect.  I used hide glue, so technically I can take the till apart, saw off one set of tails, recut them and glue the till back together.

But, then I started to look at the saw rack.  There is plenty of room between the saws.  I could cut a new saw rack, with slots closer together.  If the divider in front was closer to the front wall, the bottom till would have more room to travel, opening more space for the moulders to go in and out.  This would have the benefit of holding the same number of saws, leaving that nice big tray, and give me more real estate in the bottom compartment for more planes and stuff down there.

I'll go with option 'B.'

I could have just made it 1/2" narrower, but I decided to see how narrow I could make the saw till while still allowing it to hold four saws.  The new saw rack wound up at 2 11/16" wide.  The divider now gets to move almost two inches closer toward the front wall.

I decided the saws didn't need so much space under them in the chest, so I lowered the rack a few inches.  I thought this might give me more room for a chisel rack someday.  Instead of 12" tall, the new is only 9", and the kerfs go down to only one inch above the bottom of the chest.

For some reason, I took only two photos of the process, and this is the only surviving pic.  The rest is video.

I first planed the stock nice and square(ish), and sized it to the 2 11/16" wide.  I left it in one piece, just over 18" long.

With my #24 brace bit, I drilled a hole directly in the center, cut it in half and cut the kerfs with my rip saw.

You can see the results in the video.  It first shows the saws loaded in the original configuration, along with the restricted till movement.  The middle clip shows the new saw rack installed, and the gained room in the chest.  Lastly, you get to see me removing and re-inserting all the saws in the rack. 

My appologies for the quality of the video editing.  I am trying out a new open source video editing program called Kino, and haven't quite got the knack of it yet.  It seems to be missing a few functions that I'm used to.  Or, perhaps I just haven't figured it out yet.  Anyone know of a different video editor that works well in Linux?

Overall, I am happy with the upgrade.  The saws are not quite as easy to get in and out, but the advantage in access to the lower compartments more than makes up for it in my opinion.

I'll have to use it for a while to give you my full opinion. 

If I don't like it, I can always change it again.

Bonus Tips on Sharpening

My last post feels to me like it was a bit of a rant.  I didn't really intend that.  If you can get your tools sharp with a grapefruit and an innertube, then you are doing it right.

So, if you are still with me, you get a trio of my practical tips on sharpening that help me, and may or may not help you.

First, my sharpening station.  My shop is in a 10' by 12' storage room, so needless to say, I don't have a dedicated sharpening station.  I would love one, and if you have room, I would go that way in a heartbeat.  I have to sharpen on my bench.

This has created a few problems over the years, as waterstones can be messy.  I have tried some shop-made solutions as well as several commercial products, and have settled on the following:

Fancy Sharpening Station

Simplicity is what makes this awesome.  This is just one of those flexible, plastic cutting boards (I got this one at IKEA) clamped to my bench.  I got tired of chasing my stone around while sharpening.  I needed something to protect the bench, and normally when you do that it defeats whatever you have to keep things put.  The clamp is all that is needed.  Any clamp will do, the nearer to hand, the better.

The second function of the clamp is it works as a stop for the stone.  I pull my blades toward me on the stone, whether I use a honing guide or not.  The stone bumps up against the clamp and moves no further.

Note also that the edge of the cutting board is right on the edge of the bench.  My experience is that water runs off the edge of the plastic here, and this helps keep your bench dry and clean.

The downside is that one must be mindful of the water on the plastic, as it can run off easily pouring all of that nice slurry on your clean bench top.  A) it's a bench and dirty is OK, and B) just wipe it up from the plastic on occasion.  This is easy enough to set up that you can do one blade and get back to work.

Next tip:  Don't get too fussy with your main bevel.
 

Un-hollow grind

Although I would really love to have a grinder, my shop just is not suited for one.  This leaves me doing all my grinding the old-fashioned way:  by hand.

Thick blades can take a long time to grind to a specific angle this way.  I think I'd rather re-saw by hand.  At least that is wood working.

What I discovered here, is that If I grind the main bevel to 25 degrees, and the microbevel to 30 degrees, there is quite a bit of play between those two angles.  What this photo shows is a second main bevel between the 25 and 30 degree bevels.  This was a LOT less metal to remove than if I had tried to re-establish that 25 degrees.  It took me about a minute to grind, hone and polish this blade when it last needed grinding.

Save the hollow grind for when you have access to a power tool.

Third tip: use an angle finder with your honing guide.

The specific angle is a lot less important than finding that same angle again.

This was a revelation when I saw Christopher Schwarz use it while demonstrating his method.  I used to use the Veritas angle finder, and found that repeating the exact angle was not so easy.

This finder is based on CS's, but is smaller and handier.  Plus, it gives you some great practice with your backsaw, polishing your lap-joint chops.
 

Good lap-joint practice

 I just used some appropriately sized scrap, in this case pine and oak.

I got extra fancy with this one and used a punch set to label it.  This one has (very) approximate angles of 25 degrees and 30 degrees when I use it on my thick Lee Valley plane blades.  I have another for my chisels with 30 and 35 degrees for those tools.  If I need another, it just takes a few minutes to make.

I used my old angle finder to determine the angles for these, but I wouldn't bet that they are exact.  Who cares?  They allow me to get back to whatever angle was there.  The microbevel is the important one.  When I need just a touch up, I can use the honing guide and line up the angle exactly where it was before with no messing around testing the angle.  Four or five swipes with my polishing stone, and I'm done!

Get back to woodworking!