giant Cypress

Building a Roubo workbench rerun - 4

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:38:05 -0500

Last night I got a leg up on flattening the bottom of my benchtop. When I was gluing up the beams, I tried to align the tops of the beams as best as I could. The top side looks pretty good, but what this means is that all the misalignments show up on the bottom side of the bench. Since I’m using a Roubo design, the legs are going to be mortised directly into the bottom, so if the bottom surface isn’t flat, the shoulders of the leg tenons won’t be in the same plane, and the legs and lower stretchers won’t be square.

I forgot to take a better “before” picture, but you can get an idea of how much unevenness there is between the bottom surfaces of the beams here. In many places, there were 1/8” discrepancies between the beams.

I put an even more aggressive camber on my jack plane than I had been using — about equivalent to a 10” radius. This allowed me to take off really thick shavings, close to 1/64”. This meant that theoretically, 8 swipes of the plane would level a 1/8” discrepancy. Being able to take down this much wood at a time, the majority of the unevenness was gone after only 30 minutes.

Look at the mess I made! Not bad for just 30 minutes of planing, I think. I was pretty surprised as to how quickly this went. You can get an idea of how thick the shavings from the jack plane were at the front by the jointer plane. The jointer plane is just there to give a sense of scale for the size of the benchtop. I didn’t use it last night, but I’m sure it will be put to use pretty soon.

At this point I realized that I hadn’t made winding sticks yet to check for twist, so I called it a night.

The Woodworking Show, Somerset, NJ, Feb 24-26

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:38:06 -0500

The Woodworking Show, Somerset, NJ, Feb 24-26:

The woodworking club that I belong to, the Central Jersey Woodworkers Association, will have a booth at The Woodworking Show at the Garden State Exhibit Center in Somerset on Feb. 24-26. Our club will be running demos throughout the weekend.

Bob Rozaieski and I will be at the CJWA booth on Saturday afternoon, so expect some East vs. West woodworking cage match action. Please stop by and say hi.

I should also note that Lee Valley was kind enough to donate a pair of Veritas carcass saws for a raffle prize to anyone who joins our club between now and June. My greatest thanks goes out to Lee Valley for their generosity.

Of course, the best part of this video is at 1:50.

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:08:05 -0500

Of course, the best part of this video is at 1:50.

Building a Japanese Workbench

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 06:38:06 -0500

Building a Japanese Workbench:

Speaking of Nik Brown, he did a terrific writeup for Get Woodworking Week on building Japanese style sawhorses that serve as a basis for his workbench.

I have a pair of sawhorses that are made from 2x4’s screwed into sheet metal brackets that I got from the local borg. Boy, am I embarrassed.

Waste not, want not

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:18:06 -0500

Waste not, want not:

Nik Brown doesn’t know you can’t use Japanese saws on hardwoods, much less exotics like ebony.

Building a Roubo workbench rerun - 3

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:18:00 -0500

Got the last glue up done for my workbench top! Whew! Glad that’s done with. Now all I have to do is flatten it.

The last photo shows what will be the top side. It wound up being 22 1/2” wide. Final length and thickness TBD.

Japanese puzzle boxes, called himitsu-bako. I would love to...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:18:00 -0500

Japanese puzzle boxes, called himitsu-bako. I would love to learn how to make these.

(Thanks to Nick Brygidyr for the link, via Chris Wong.)

the legend of lin | angry asian man

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 06:08:00 -0500

the legend of lin | angry asian man:

madeoftofu:

Yes, we all watched. Yes, we’re all crazy excited.

Jeremy Lin may do the impossible — make this born-and-raised Chicago sports fan who lives in New Jersey cheer for a New York team. May Michael Jordan have mercy on my soul.

Also love this from the article:

Dare I say it, Jeremy Lin is the biggest sports story in a city that just won the effin’ Super Bowl.

Here’s one last item for Get Woodworking Week. The...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:08:00 -0500

Here’s one last item for Get Woodworking Week. The woodworking club that I belong to, the Central Jersey Woodworker’s Association, recently started group build projects. These are not exactly like a traditional woodworking class, but instead are a way for CJWA members to take advantage of the experience and talents of other CJWA members who lead these Group Builds. The way that these builds are structured is that each small group of people meet on a regular basis at the leader’s shop to go over each step of the project, and then go home to their shop to work on the project. Each project is designed to take a relatively short period of time, and are usually at an intermediate level of difficulty.

How effective are these group build projects? Here’s an example of what can be learned and accomplished. This Arts and Crafts table with a turquoise inlay in the top was made by one of our members. This table was the first woodworking project she had ever made. And she made this table out of pallet wood, no less.

This will be ironic considering that Get Woodworking Week is an internet-based initiative, but one of the most effective ways of getting started in woodworking is to find a local woodworking club and meet real live woodworkers in person. The club member who made this table said that she had learned a lot from videos and the internet, but there was so much more that she picked up in person that there would have been no way she could have done this without hands on help from someone else. If you go to a local club, there will be a lot of people eager and willing to help you get started, and all it will cost you is the time to go there.

What you need to get a kid into woodworking: A kid. A piece of...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 06:08:05 -0500

What you need to get a kid into woodworking:

A kid.
A piece of wood.
A tool.

The Shellac Redemption

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:18:05 -0500

Prologue: Tom Iovino has come up with a great idea, Get Woodworking Week, where the internet woodworking community gets together to write articles encouraging people thinking about taking up woodworking to jump in. I initially imagined this post as a bit of shellac trivia, the sort of overly technical article that would only be of interest to woodworking geeks, but if you stay with me, I think this does have a message for beginners. Here goes.

========

Back in December Kari Hultman wrote about a batch of dewaxed blonde shellac that gave her fits:

I had encountered shellac gone bad before, but I had never come across shellac that won’t dissolve completely in denatured alcohol.

I mixed up a batch of blonde shellac but, days later, it looked like semi-masticated lemon jello rather than clear finish.

The problem was that some oxidation had set in, since these flakes weren’t kept in an airtight container. There’s something about dewaxing shellac that makes them more sensitive to oxygen exposure. This is a problem that I haven’t encountered yet, and I was curious to see how bad shellac could get. Kari was kind enough to send me the batch of shellac for me to play with.

So the first thing I did was to try to mix up a batch of the problematic shellac. I tried a couple of things that I thought might help. Instead of using denatured alcohol, I used my favorite solvent for shellac, Everclear. I made a relatively dilute mix, shooting for a little less than a one pound cut. I also let the shellac sit overnight.

One big difference between denatured alcohol that you can get at the borg and Everclear is that Everclear is 95% pure ethanol, compared to denatured alcohol which can be up to a 50-50 mix of ethanol and methanol. Methanol is highly toxic, and I’d rather not have that stuff around my house. I thought that using a purer solvent might be advantageous. Also, I thought that using a more dilute preparation would help the shellac get into solution.

This was somewhat successful. I did get some of the gelatinous stuff floating in the shellac as Kari did, and you can see some of the bits on the side of the jar in the top photo, but overall it seemed to be fairly liquid.

At the time, I was in a hurry to get some projects done as Christmas presents. Running really short on time, I went with a wine bottle stand, which is otherwise known to woodworkers as “a board with a hole in it”. I made them out of cherry, and used this batch of shellac as a finish. It worked well, much better than I expected. The board on the left has a coat of shellac on it, and the board on the right is bare.

I wound up applying about a half-dozen coats of the gummy shellac in pretty quick succession, using a paper towel to wipe it on. Occasionally I’d get a bit of sticky residue, much like the adhesive goo that holds an insert or a fold-out page in a magazine, but this would wipe off cleanly after the coat dried. After the last coat shellac, I put on some wax, rubbed it out with a cloth, and they turned out pretty good.

Action shot:

My takeaway from this is that if you have a bad batch of shellac, it still might be usable. I’m not sure if it was the Everclear or the dilute preparation (or both) that helped me out here, but I was happy with the results. There’s certainly no harm in trying it out on a piece of scrap wood to see what you get.

Clearly, it’s better to avoid this situation altogether, and so to that end I’ll just avoid using dewaxed shellac.

========

What does all this have to do with beginner woodworkers? One of the most often feared part of any project is applying the finish. This part of any project is quite stressful, probably because at this point a lot of time and effort have been invested in the project, and there’s a great concern that a poorly applied finish will mess everything up.

This is where shellac and wax really come into its own. Shellac is easy to make and easy to apply. You can buy it at the local borg. It’s non-toxic, and if you use Everclear like I do, you don’t have to worry about accidentally ingesting the solvent. You can apply it without special equipment, since all you need is a cloth. It’s very easy to repair a shellac finish — just apply more shellac. Applying the wax just requires another cloth, time, and a little patience.

But the biggest advantage of shellac that I see based on this experience is that even if you have a bad batch of shellac, or if you screw up making the shellac, you still can get a great looking finish, which makes shellac and wax a perfect finish for the beginner.

Heard your debut on Car Talk. Defying our parents -- universal.

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:48:00 -0500

That show was actually from a few years ago. I guess they reran it this weekend. It was a lot of fun. I found out later that my dad happened to hear the show as well. He thought it was fun, too.

10 Reasons NOT to Use Liquid Hide Glue for Furniture

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:18:06 -0500

10 Reasons NOT to Use Liquid Hide Glue for Furniture:

I disagree with reason #10. I use these things called paper towels that avoid this issue.

Shannon Rogers needed to plane an 18 foot long beam, and came up...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:28:05 -0500

Shannon Rogers needed to plane an 18 foot long beam, and came up with this tool selection:

So I’m grabbing my jointer plane and I’ll bring along a block plane and a card scraper in case I need to do any spot work clean up.

Of course, I might have considered one of these.

Woodworking Media – How Do You Learn Best?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:08:00 -0500

Woodworking Media – How Do You Learn Best?:

Great observation from Bob Rozaieski on his experience learning how to do some sleight-of-hand tricks:

The simplest of tricks seem to be really complicated when they are written out in a book. However, actually seeing the sleight explained by someone who is practiced in the effect all of a sudden makes it much clearer to me. It makes my practice time that much more focussed and productive instead of clumsy and confused.

This got me wondering, is it me, or is it just that this particular skill is not easily taught in print? I then began to wonder the same thing about woodworking.

Woodworking is full of tacit knowledge — knowledge that is hard to pass on via writing or talking, but instead is learned by doing. There are some aspects of woodworking that can certainly be written about. But there are other things, such as what a truly sharp chisel is capable of, what cutting with a really good saw is like, or what a well set up plane can do, which are quite hard to describe just in words or pictures. One of the seminal events of when I started woodworking was when my back door neighbor, who is a tremendous woodworker, showed me what a Stanley #4 plane can do. In an instant, I knew and understood. I would have never been able to understand this just by reading.

Which is why my usual advice to people looking for a start on hand tools, Japanese or otherwise, is to go find their local woodworking club, find the hand tool nut (believe it or not, in my club, it’s not me), and hit them up to show them what hand tools can do. There’s a lot of great information on the internet, but some things need to be experienced in person.

From the December 2007 and February 2008 issues of Woodwork...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:48:00 -0500

From the December 2007 and February 2008 issues of Woodwork Magazine.

wyckoffwoodworks:

Geta-Bako, Japanese Shoe Cabinet

Toshio Odate

This cabinet is made from a 200-250 year old ash tree that had fallen. Odate was given the opportunity to turn the tree into lumber for his own use.

Clearly, Toshio Odate does not know that Japanese tools can’t be used on hardwoods.

Building a Roubo workbench rerun - 2

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:38:00 -0500

Some of my friends look at me like I’ve grown a second head when I tell them what I’m up to, especially when I tell them that I’m doing this with hand planes. This is probably not new to many readers of this blog, but I thought I’d share how this is really not as much manual labor as you might think.

Here’s a picture of how out of square the beam I was working on this morning was.

That’s out 1/16” over the 3-1/2” width of the beam. Boy do I suck!

Now, when most people think of hand planes, the image of a finely tuned plane making those 0.001”, wispy, see-through shavings that just float in the air immediately comes to mind for most people. We don’t need no girly-man plane like that for this job.

I have a jack plane set up with a decent amount of camber and set for an aggressive shaving. This is the shaving that I get with this plane.

Just under 1/100” thick, and it falls straight to the ground. Japanese plane aficionados like myself would be horrified at such a thing. But this is important for this purpose.

Remember, I need to knock down 1/16” to get the faces square. 1/16” = 0.0625”. If my plane takes a shaving 0.009” thick, it should take me only 7 swipes of the plane to take off 1/16” of material. This is what I got after 9 swipes. (I got excited.)

Not too bad! And easier than trying to put an eight foot long 4x4 back on my jointer. Not to mention the lack of dust and noise.

My beam is eight feet long, as I said. I can work on a 2 foot section at a time, so 4 rounds of this and I have the whole beam squared up.

If they are going to remake 21 Jump Street, they need to have an...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:18:06 -0500

If they are going to remake 21 Jump Street, they need to have an Asian undercover cop.

clarkatron: Why not build it yourself? You can!

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:08:06 -0500

clarkatron:

Why not build it yourself? You can!

Maebiki, by Lenox

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:18:05 -0500

I’m due for a new bandsaw blade, and I’ve been looking at trying out a bimetal bandsaw blade to get a longer lasting blade. These blades are typically made by laminating a piece of high speed steel to a carbon steel backing to form the teeth of the blade. I was marveling at this modern application of welding technology, and then I saw something on my maebiki that I hadn’t really noted before.

In these photos, you can clearly see a lamination line between the teeth and the main body of the maebiki. I took a small file to test the metal making up the tooth line and the metal making up the body of the saw, and they are clearly different types of steel, with the body being considerably softer than the tooth line.

This makes sense to me. Most Japanese saws are made from a single piece of hard steel, hammered out into the shape needed to make a ryoba, katana, or dozuki. If this same principle was applied to a maebiki, it would be a huge waste of steel, and would probably make the saw too brittle to use, given its size and thickness.

Now if I find a Japanese saw with carbide cutters welded to the tips of the teeth, I’ll be really impressed.

By the way, if anyone has recommendations on bandsaw blades that I should consider, please feel free to leave a comment. I like what I’ve read about the Lenox Diemaster 2, but I wish it came in a 1/2” x 0.025” 3 tpi configuration. The Lenox Tri-Master does have this configuration, but is quite a bit pricier.