7/9/2015

I managed to do a little bit of work during the evenings last week. One of those tasks were to add two strips of Meranti to the sides of the bench top’s centre beam. These strips comes from a doorframe. A friend of mine Anton Nel, rocked up at my shop a few weeks ago with this doorframe. He is a builder and was working on a house just around the corner from us. The so called carpenter on the site, arrived (as is exceedingly common around these parts) without any tools of his own. He needed to remove about 20 mm from each side of the 80 mm thick frame.

My table saw struggled as it is not made for this dimension of cut, so we decided to cut a 20 mm deep groove from both ends as a guide. We then used my monster 26″ Disston no. 12 rip saw to remove the timber between the grooves. Two cuts of 2 meters each had us both sweating like a gypsy with a mortgage.

It was these offcuts that I planed down to 15 mm (thickness), before gluing and screwing it to the sides of the beam. The idea behind the addition of these strips is to close the gap between the three beams that make up the top to only 3 mm. This will be enough to allow for wood movement, but small enough to prevent most things from accidentally falling through.

In the second and third picture below you can also see the slots I made with my Festool Domino. The three beams making up the top will have several dominos between them to help them to keep each other flush and straight. They will not be glued to allow free movement (horizontal), while only restricting movement in one dimension (vertical).

I used my 10 mm bit to cut the Domino slots. Unfortunately I do not have any 10 mm Dominos so I planed some Witpeer down to the desired dimension. Come to think of it, the standard Dominos would have been too short anyway as these will be breaching an 18 mm gap underneath the Meranti strips, extend 28 mm into one beam and 24 mm into the other. The slots are 28 mm deep in both beams, so the extra 4 mm allows for wood movement. In other words, I need to cut my home made Dominos at 68 mm (in length).

Here you can see how I am progressing with the row of dog/holdfast holes along the front edge of the bench. They are not perfectly in line as the marked difference in hardness between early and late wood cause the auger bit to follow the softer stuff, but I am not overly fussed by this. One could overcome this problem by building a jig, but for this bench it should be fine with the slight meandering of the row.

I spent most of my shop time this weekend on fitting the stretchers to their mortices. In the picture below, you can see how my chopping station is on one side of the bench and a station to shave the tenons down on the opposite side. I find it to be a very convenient setup and once again all those dog/holdfast holes come in handy. Monsieur Schwarz might have a heart attack, but he asked to be disobeyed.

For each leg, I first fitted the long stretcher.

In this picture you can see how handy the gap between the split top of my bench can be when fitting through tenons.

Once the long stretcher’s tenon was in place, I marked out the exact location of the “mortice” that will allow part of the short stretcher’s tenon to run through it.

Next up, the short stretcher being fitted in the absence of the long stretcher.

This picture illustrates nicely how the one tenon pass through the other. As I stated in an earlier post, this is a slight variation to the joinery used in my first bench that was inspired by Japanese joinery.

When fitting massive joints this precise (like a piston, as my friend Jonathan would say), it can be tricky to disassemble them. The picture below illustrate how useful my sliding-deadman-cum-leg-vise proofed to be in this regard. It kept the leg in position at the side of the bench, which allowed me to use both hands to carefully tap the tenon out with a mallet and a small off-cut.

Once that was done I could check whether both stretchers fit simultaneously.

At this stage I started to prepare timber for the shelve between the stretchers. I found two Without (Ilex mitis aka Cape Holly/African Holly) boards in my collect that I thought would go very well with the Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris).

Another reason for this choice concerns the fact that I have not worked with this species before. I am consciously trying to use all the different species in my collection during the shop-setup phase of my journey, in order to get a feel for each. Hopefully by the time I start building furniture it will enable me to make smarter choices.

 

This is a picture from the internet to show what it looks like once planed and sanded.

 

 

The next few pictures should be a reminder to all of you out there who can walk into a lumber yard and pic from hundreds of perfect boards that is ready to use. I have to do a whole heap of work to liberate decent bits of wood from these feral planks. You might be able to see how I marked out the useable areas.

 

My Disston no. 12 crosscut handsaw took care of all the crosscuts, while the bandsaw made short work of the rip cuts. I decided to keep the shelve’s boards at different widths to waste as little timber as possible and there seems to be a certain je ne sais quoi about the utilitarian appearance it creates.

 

As I said, at least there is minimal wastage this way.

24/8/2015

The time finally came to properly use my new Bad Axe tenon saw. As you can see in the pictures below, I used it to cut the massive tenons of the long stretchers. It was quite easy to cut with the aid of the saw horses that held the stretchers at a comfortable hight. The saw wasted no time on these cuts as it has a fairly aggressive tooth geometry.

The shoulders were done with a Lie-Nielsen crosscut backsaw. You can appreciate the surface of the tenons after the sawing (second and third picture below).

I added these two pictures to show a trick I discovered by accident. The row of dog holes along the front edge of my bench that operates in tandem with my quick-release end vise has two areas where a couple of holes are missing due to the placement of the leg. When I have a piece of timber that is of that particular length, it is a bit of a hassle to find a scrap piece of wood as a spacer in order to pinch the timber between dogs. The other day I realised by shear luck that my Veritas Wonderdog can solve this problem without much fuzz.

I then used a Stanley no. 10 rabbet plane to shave the tenons down to it’s exact size. You will notice how it also improved the surface of the cheeks (which is the important glue surfaces of the joint).

Here I am chopping the shoulders to the knife line.

I am not sure what this dimension of the tenon is called (?edge maybe?), but I trued it up with a pairing chisel and block plane.

Before reassembling the bench in order to mark out the correct location of the mortises of the long stretchers, I drilled the holes through the top that will accept a bolt to fasten it to the apron. The idea being that I could then use that hole to mark the exact location of the corresponding hole through the apron, while the bench is assembled.

Here you can see the bench assembled. The aprons are in their correct position, but the short stretchers sit at the top of the legs in order to line them up correctly without being in the way of the longstretchers.

I usually use these batons to located the exact position of the stretchers, as referenced off the apron’s through tenon.

The following two pictures might help to explain how the short stretcher’s tenon (traced off in pencil on the leg) will eventually pass through the long stretcher’s tenon to also become a through tenon that can be wedged. I got this idea from some Japanese joinery I saw some time ago and is one of very few subtle changes I have made to the design compared to my first bench.

With the holes for the bolts marked out on the aprons, I could drill them out after de-assembling the bench once again. I started with a 40 mm hole that will accept the massive nut. I used a Forstner bit (in the drill press) as it creates a flat bottom for a washer (plus I simply did not have a big enough bit for my brace). That was followed by a 1″ Irwin auger bit to allow for some wood movement as I will use a 20 mm threaded rod to produce my custom bolt.

I tried to copy (unsuccessfully) my friend Jonathan’s excellent photo of the in side of a rubbish bin. Check it out on his superb site by going here.

Marking out the mortises for the long stretchers.

Here I am drilling the set of dog holes along the front edge of the top and at the far end drilling out the waste from the mortises in the legs.

10/8/2015

It was a wonderful day when I was able to move on to  activities other than planing this past weekend. I first drilled out most of the waste from the massive mortises in the top with a 1″ Irwin bit and Stanley no. 923 brace (12″). Then followed the removal of the waste from the sliding dovetail part of the famous Roubo joinery.

This was the first time I used my new Bad Axe back saw on a project. It is not called a Roubo Beast Master for nothing. After doing damage with the saws and chisel, I used a router plane (Lie-Nielsen) and a Stanley no. 10 Rabbet plane to perfect the sliding dovetail mortise wall (unfortunately not pictured).

Next up was the chopping out of the standard mortise. You can see how my shop made saw bench doubles up as a seat at the chopping station.

Here I am in the process of fitting the legs. Non of them needed much persuasion to occupy their new home. I think these pictures also testify how well my bench handles these massive beams, which are currently in the order of 84 mm x 181 mm x 3300mm.

By Sunday afternoon, I assembled the bench in order to mark out the exact location of the long stretcher’s shoulders. I always enjoy this stage of proceedings as it is the first opportunity to really get an idea of what the bench will look like.

My father-in-law was so kind to help me, while enjoying the pleasant late afternoon winter sun.

My final task was to do the rest of the marking out of the tenons. They are now ready for the Bad Axe Roubo Beast Master. You might notice that the tenons are off centre by quite a margin. I deliberately designed them this way. These stretchers sit flush with the front of the leg so I decided to move the tenon as far away from the front edge as possible. This should ensure a stronger joint to the leg as there will be more timber left between the front of the leg and the stretcher’s tenon.

3/8/2015

I really like my hand planes, but if I do not see them for the next few months it will be a blessing of note. After almost a month of hand planing these freaking beams for the top of the bench, I am sooooo over planing it is not funny. In the pictures below you can see the final phase of planing, which happened over the weekend.

After establishing a reference edge, I used my shop made panel gauge to mark out the opposite edge.

I used a Stanley no. 9½ block plane to create a bevel to prevent splitting of fibers while working crossgrain.

The bevel enabled me to take quite aggressive crossgrain  cuts with my scrub plane to get rid of the bulk of the waste. That was of course followed by a truck load of longitudinal planing with a fore plane followed by a jointer plane.

Here they are after a month worth of removing nails, scrubbing away sand and bits of stone that got entrenched in the timber and planing. I include a few before photos to make me feel better about the ridiculous effort.

… and after.

Finally I was able to move on to marking out the location of the mortises for the legs. Before settling on a location, I moved the legs up and down with consideration for the length of the long stretchers (pictured) to ensure that they end up away from any knots. You will notice that the legs are still over-long, they will get shortened at a later stage.

Before the final marking out the legs were clamped with their aprons to mimic the exact position once glued up.

A glass of Whiskey to celebrate the end of another long day in the shop.

I decided to drill out halve of one of the mortises, just to do a non-planing activity before the end of the weekend.

20/7/2015

This particular instalment should actually be entitled “The weekend of the plane”.  That was literally the only tool I used all weekend, if we disregard the workbench as a clamping device. I feel as if I’ve been hit by a barrage of no. 8 Jointers.

In the pictures below you can see the setup I used to limit movement of these massive 90 mm x 200 mm x 3200 mm beams in order to do the damage (to myself mostly). Two blocks of wood fixed by holdfasts stop the lateral movement during diagonal work with the scrub plane. Two small blocks of wood screwed to the bottom of the beam hooks over the one end of the bench to stop the beam moving forward during conventional longitudinal planing.

Here you can see how I started off with my shop made scrub plane.

That was followed by this shop made Jack plane and then a Jointer plane.

For the second beam I flattened, I used this Shaw’s Patent (Sargent) for the Jack plane phase. It has a fairly aggressive camber on the blade and worked very well. I recently finished it’s rehab, so this was it’s first job. My tool model also had a ball of a time posing with it. Watch this space for a post on the rehab process.

All three of these boards had some degree of twist in them. You can probably imagine the blood, sweat and tears it took to create three flat and untwisted reference surfaces. By Saturday evening I managed to achieve that.

The next morning I started with the edges. You can see how my bench dealt with this enormous hunk of wood.

A picture of the barrage of planes that tortured me all weekend.

 

By lunch time on Sunday the wife joined me after her run to help feed the beams to the electric planer. That was a mission in itself, but we managed to get it done in about 30 minutes. The tool model then took the opportunity to do her impression of Puff Daddy.

 

It was the first time in many years that I chose to rest on a Sunday afternoon, rather than work in the shop. It is not me at all, but planing boards of this size by hand is not child’s play.

 

 

Now there are only 5 more edges to do by hand as these beams will not fit through my electrical planer. It only goes to 150 mm in height!! Can anyone remind me why I need a bench like this?

13/7/2015

It has been quite some time since I’ve had the opportunity to play in the shop. It felt very good to get into that zone again to progress this project. In the pictures you can see how I used the actual parts to mark out where the mortises should go in the legs.

This picture shows one of the two batons (a Schwarzism) used to make the placement of the stretchers repeatable and in the exact same position relative to the apron.

Here I traced the tenons onto the legs and then used that to locate the mortises.

As so …

I used my shop made saw benches in order to have a comfortable hight at which to drill out the waste with two different bits and braces. The larger diameter centre bit (Marples) was used with a 12″ sweep Stanley no. 923 and the smaller diameter spiral bit (Irwin) with a 10″ sweep Stanley no. 923.

At this stage I moved on to start preparing the three massive chunks of wood that will become the top. Here you can see what they looked like before any TLC. They all had lots of nails imbedded all over the place

Then I flicked back to the mortises in the legs and took to it with a range of chisels.

After the above picture was taken I started the careful chopping until the aprons fitted as seen below.

Hopefully I’ll have more shop time this weekend to attack those gigantic boards for the top with a range of hand planes.

 

22/6/2015

It feels a bit like deja vu doing the massive joinery for this bench, as it was exactly what I was doing this time last year. It is however excellent practice in preparation for building furniture. I realise that my skills have improved significantly since the previous round of doing this. Also, the bench I built last year, improves the quality and speed of my work this year by providing so many work holding options.

Here you can see the setup I used to tidy up the tenon faces. I used my Stanley no. 10 Rabbet plane and a Bedrock no. 606 for this purpose.

A before and after photo.

Next up was to saw away a part of the apron tenon to create a notch (I think this is the correct term). The reason for this design is to act as an anti-twisting device and not to weaken the leg tenons.

The short stretchers received the same treatment, but obviously with a different design.

I then tidied up the shoulders by means of horizontal pairing.

Again, it should be quite obvious how useful the array of holdfast holes around my chopping area are for all kinds of joinery related tasks. Here I am in the process of chopping away the wastes between the two massive through tenons at the top of the legs. The second picture show another handy (albeit unintended) feature of my bench design. My squares and 1″ chisel (as well as saw in an earlier picture) sit comfortably and handy in the slot between the bench top and the sliding tool trays.

Dual tenons done.