Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Scrub Plane out of Firewood

 


Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads to light

Milton., Paradise Lost




So first off this is my first post is a long, long time. I had a couple management jobs away from woodworking and chairs the kept me busy and frankly life has been really busy. But like Longfellow said, don't tell me your busy, ants are busy, tell me what you're about. It's also funny (funny weird not funny ha ha) how a non emotion, an adverb, has become the go to answer for how we are. 

As you can see I can still tangent. So yeah a couple jobs and other life stuff but I did recently get a really nice order and am setting up a shop which I will post about in the coming weeks. My current bill payer is carpentry which well pays the bills. Nothing more. 

Below you can see a handplane, specifically a scrub plane, that I made a while back. I could have bought one but this a really simple,  really forgiving introduction into plane making. The body is ash (made like a sandwich) and the front tote is ash as well.  All the wood came from a very well seasoned piece of firewood. 


It's sitting next to a Lie-Nielsen #5 for size comparison. The iron (also from L-N) is held in place with a pin and wedge which holds is tight enough. I do get pretty aggressive with this plane and the blade has come loose but that's a sign to me to settle down not a failure on the part of the plane. 


Here is a view of the cambered blade and wide open mouth. 







I don't lavish a lot of sanding on my shop tools or fixtures and this plane is no different. I barely sanded the bandsaw marks off and the finish is just wax but it does work really well. One thing that flies in the face of conventional plane wisdom is despite being a very light plane it cuts remarkably well. It's not a show pony more like an old pickup. If you want the plans I'd be happy to draw the shape and email them to you. 






Sunday, December 4, 2022

High Vise

 "When my grandfather brought us home,  I could still hear her voice down the corridor, the tail end of a whisper"

Akil Kumarasamy, Half Gods


Here is the latest addition to my ongoing vise collection (which brings the total to 5).  I usually use a mechanics vise to elevate the work and while it worked it was far from ideal so when I saw this idea I decided to build one. 


Benchcrafted makes a beautiful one with all the bells and whistles but I didn't want to spend much on it not being sure how much I'd use it. Also it's a pretty simple project requiring not much skill or wood. 


There are many ways to mount it to the bench (clamps, shoulder vise etc) but I decided to use ⅝ bolts to hold it down and ⅜ thru bolts to hold the inside upright to the clamp bar. This one is red oak with some chamfers to ease edges and add a bit of craftsmanship.  I thought layer a lambs tongue would have looked nice maybe someday. 



The screw is from Lee Valley. I also decided to keep it simple and use a spacer bar that is held in place with oak dowels which keeps it from wracking. The leather pad helps with grip. 

While I haven't carved anything yet I do have a couple chairs with knuckles coming so I'll keep you posted on how it works. 


 



Saturday, December 3, 2022

Fixing a hole

 That's the power of literature,  you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people's 

Fredrik Backman, Anxious People


So Anxious People was the best book I read (I try to read one book a week) in 2022. Just amazing and I have to say the Netflix adaptation was amazing. 

So I was building a so called high vise (see last picture) for carving and I drilled the hole for the threaded rod the wrong size, namely I drilled the thru hole too small which of course didn't give the larger counter bore hole anything to center on. 



I knew I could cut a 1 inch diameter plug to center the plug but that wouldn't allow me to actually drill it. So in a moment of inspiration I stuck a couple ear plugs in to push the plug up enough to engage the center but then allow the plug to get pushed down and cut the counter bore. 



And here's the hole and vise. I'll post on this next week but I do find it quite handy; more than I thought. 








Friday, December 17, 2021

Two Benches



"Oh you old woman. She said it again,  oh you old woman"

Stuart Maclean,  Rock of Ages
from his Vinyl Cafe Stories




So I finally finished my seat carving bench. I'm my old shop at my old house during my old life I had a pretty rough but effective small bench that I used to carve seats. What's so ideal about it is the small size allows me to carve all the way around the seat without having to unclamp the seat. Because as you carve a seat the grain is constantly changing so must your approach to the seat. 


My new shop is a converted one car garage so every foot counts and I made a couple chairs with my big bench and while it's possible clamping and unclamping turned into a pain. So while watching Curtis' YouTube videos I saw this bench and built one with his plans. To be honest I totally messed up and somehow put the vise on the wrong leg but it's fine. Who knows it may be better this way.  The plywood box is filled with old nuts and bolts and such from my new job and weighs around 200 lbs. 


Here is my other new bench.  A fair bit different to say the least. The legs I welded up from old box tube and the top and shelf are ⅜ plate which will withstand years and years of millwright and welding abuse. I like welding tables (oddly in fab and machine shops they are called tables not benches)  tall around 42 to 44 inches for welding.  I may paint the legs and shelf but maybe not. The shelf holds all the various tools for welding and wheels work really well to move heavy equipment around. 





So yeah. Didn't think I'd ever be welding again but life is nothing if not ever changing. 






Sunday, July 18, 2021

Trimming tenons


 
In our eternal migrations as humans, we leave our histories behind, so a human yearning to know what came before us is as fixed as the nose on our face

     Kerri Arsenault, Mill Town 

Above are a couple recent chairs. The close one is my design (based at least the bottom off Pete Galberts rocker that appeared in FWW) the farther one is Curtis Buchanan's birdcage rocker. One of these chairs almost put itself together.  The drilled angles were perfect all the measures spot on just easy going. The other one had an extra set of legs made, 3 crests (one drilled acutely not obtuse one broke) 2 sets of arms ( bandsawed them before turning the tenon) and a weird 1" error in the back posts that I only partially fixed. 

My point is that, after paint and finishing, they both look fine and 5 years from now (maybe less) I couldn't tell you which was which. My further point is often just keep going. Because often in chairs are small errors all that noticeable and besides you always need a chair for the neighbor.

So onto the post. One thing that has always vexed me was the little shoulder that forms on the end of the stretcher tenons. I turn my tenons on the lathe with a Veritas tenon cutter ⅝ and because they are green when I turn them initially I have to make them oversize then spin them once dry. This invariably leaves a slight (or not so slight) shoulder which bugs me. 


So I was watching a video with Elia Bizzari and he mentioned how the inside of a steb center is ⅝ and thus will seat the end of the tenon so I can turn and sand it off. 

The problem was the spring loaded spike that comes in the steb center. It made it hard to center the tenon which is kind of the whole point. But a few minutes and a long punch (actually a 4mm Allen wrench) removed the center and now the tenon seats perfectly.  Turn the tenon even little sandpaper and its perfect.  Or as seen in the first picture close enough to perfect.