Tag Archives: Assegaai

Building a Wooden Jack Plane

21/08/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

19/8/2013 – I am in the process of building 4 different wooden planes as you might have seen under the post entitled “Shooting Plane Pregnancy”. They are a Jack Plane (aiming at 17″), a Fore Plane (probably 22″), a Shooting Plane and a Jointer (aiming for 30″).

This post will document the process of how I build the Jack Plane. The plan is to add new photos and text as I progress over the next few weeks.

The stock for all of these planes were cut from the two beech boards pictured.

The Jack Plane is the furthest from the camera accompanied by it’s ysterhout sole prior to gluing.

Another photo of the Jack Plane’s stock together with that of the Shooting Plane.

A closeup of the beech and ysterhout prior to gluing.

The gluing process.

I found this closed tote pattern as a free pdf download at http://www.oocities.org/plybench/handle.html. I am still considering whether I will use an open or closed tote for the Jack Plane but am pretty sure I will use this closed version for the Fore Plane and the Jointer.

29/8/2013 – With regards to the above conundrum, I decided to rather use an open tote on the Jack Plane, which I will discuss a bit later.

I used the array of planes pictured below to establish one flat surface on the side of each of the plane blanks, as I do not have a Jointer. In the last two pictures you can see the difference between a jointed side and an untouched side.

The blanks were then fed to the thicknesser to created another flat surface parallel to the planed one.

After that I first squared the future top of the plane with regards to these flat and parallel sides. That enabled me to slice the strips off the sides on the bandsaw with the ysterhout sole facing upwards in order to prevent blowout.

I removed the saw marks from the sides with the thicknesser.

The next step was to mill the centre down to the exact width, which was 3 mm wider than the 2″ Lie-Nielsen blades I am planning to use.

At this point I was able to utilise my bandsaw mitre-sled to cut the ramp and curved toe section. I wrote an entire post on how I built the bandsaw mitre-sled, which you will find under the category “jigs” on this site. It is important to keep the wedge created by these two cuts. It comes in handy later on as I will illustrate. I decided on a 50° degree bedding angle (also known as York Pitch) for all of these planes. It is the best all-round angle for my purposes working predominantly with very hard woods.

The curved cut on the toe section was tidied up by means of the Green Monster.

The first place where the wedge-offcut comes in handy is when you need to square up and flatten the ramp on the heel section. In order to prevent blowout of the ysterhout sole one can clamp the wedge together with the heel section as shown. Then you can go ahead and plane the ramp with confidence.

After planing the three ramps I scribbled on them with a 2B pencil and did the last of the flattening on glass with 3M adhesive-backed sandpaper on it. It seems to me that one should not overdo this step as it is easy to round off the edges if not very careful. As soon as all the pencil marks disappear you have done enough.

I chose 2″ wide Lie-Nielsen blades with their accompanying chip breakers for each of these three planes. Lie-Nielsen produce blades of absolutely tantalising quality. In the pictures below you can see how I measured the the screw that clamps the business end of the plane together, in order to set the router up to cut a custom slot for it in the ramp.

Here you can appreciate the second reason why it is useful to retain the wedge produced by the two cuts made earlier in the centre section. It help to created enough of a flat section as a reference surface for your router in order to cut the mentioned slot in the ramp.

I thought I should quickly show you these delightful Kershout beams I made many moons ago. They are kept quite handy in the location as shown below my bench. You will notice that their have their length indicated to help me find the exact contrivance needed in a particular situation. In this case I used the Godfather of the beams (at around 1.7 meters in length) as a fence to align the plane parts as shown. This process entails the marking out of the centre-heel piece relative to the centre-toe piece and pinpointing the location of where to drill the first hole for the cross-pin.

This unfortunately represented the first major blunder in my hitherto Utopian-plane-building-activities. I somehow marked out the location of the cross-pin without taking into account the thickness of the Iron-chipbreaker-combo as is clearly indicated in my extensive notes on the topic. Please see my post entitled “Wooden plane building tip” for information on the measurements I use. If you follow them correctly (as a posed to me in this instance) it works like a charm. We will discuss my fix for the my blunder a little bit later on as at this point in time I still did not realise that I made a mistake.

In order to drill the opposing hole for the cross-pin, I assembled the plane using small Bessey f-style clamps to keep the various pieces in place, while fixing it with very small panel pins as shown. I first drill a 1 mm hole and then tap the panel pin home, in order to be able to take the plane apart easily afterwards. These same panel pins stay in the side strips to enable me to reassemble the plane in this exact way during the final dry-fit and ultimate glue-up. I you will notice that the panel pins go in the area at each end of the plane that will be cut away after gluing.

Here you can see how the initial cross-pin whole acts as a guide for locating the opposing hole on the drill press.

Next step was to prepare a ½” square length of Assegaai for the cross-pins. I tend to make them 3 mm longer than needed each side and only trim them down after the plane is glued up. The inside is only about 1 mm shorter than the width of the centre pieces (toe and heel sections). I used a Lie-Nielsen carcass saw and a bench hook I made that keeps the saw at precisely 90° to cut the cross-pins to length.

In order to create the rounded ends of the pins I use, a Veritas centre-finder (by lack of a better term), a Tamboti marking knife, a compass, a chisel and a selection of files.

After a final dry-fit I usually go ahead and glue the plane together, but not in this case as it was at this point where I luckily (although it did not feel that way at the time) realised my mistake in measuring out the location of the cross-pin holes. There were no space for a wedge and a blade as I did not include the thickness of the blade in my measurements!!!!! This is one of those horrible feelings in woodwork when it hits you like a ton of bricks that you made a stuff-up that might mean all the effort so far was in vain. I usually start sweating and develop acute palpitations, as I did in this case as well.

After I managed to calm down I realised that I could simply move the heel section back by the thickness of the blade-chipbreaker combo to fix the problem. The only real side-effect of my indiscretion after the fix was that I now had a much wider mouth/throat opening than initially intended. On these planes I was not too concerned about that so it worked out fine in the end. You can see the glue-up process in the pictures below.

The Jack Plane after it was liberated from the clamps.

Then I went searching for a nice orange piece of Assegaai for the totes. In the first picture you can see the rough boards and in the second how it looked after some attention for the thicknesser. In the end I decided to use an open tote for the Jack Plane and again used the tote of my Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Jack Plane as a template as you can see. I did however modify it slightly for this particular job giving it a significant base section (by lack of a better term). You will also see the template for the closed tote I used for the other two planes but we will discuss that in the posts on the Jointer and Fore Plane respectively. On the Lee Valley website one can find free pdf documents with tote templates of various old Stanley planes. The accompanying text and pictures is very helpful when trying to make your own totes for the first time. I used them when I made my “Proletarian Sanding Contrivances” and therefore I now feel very comfortable doing it without help. You will be able to find an entire post dedicated to these sanding planes under the category “Hand tools” on this site.

After drilling out the tight corners with appropriately sized Forstner bits on the Drill Press I used the bandsaw to do the rest.

I then did the initial shaping with the Green Monster (pictured), after which I used the setup as shown to do the final more delicate work with files.

1/9/2013 – I am very pleased to add the following pictures of my progress over the past week. My family took advantage of the school holidays and disappeared off to Henties Baai during the latter stages of last week, which gave me some time in the shop after work during the week. Unfortunately I spent all of my Saturday at the Medical Council examining, which left only Sunday to push ahead with this project, but here are the results of my efforts.

I use this handy flush saw from Veritas to remove those extra millimeters at each end of the cross-pin.

Then I did the first stage of flattening the sole using of the two planes pictured. A Lie-Nielsen no. 4½ Smoother (with a York pitch frog) and a Stanley Bailey pattern no. 5 Jack Plane. After that I did the final flattening using 3M adhesive-backed sandpaper on glass.

In the pictures below you can see how I marked out the guiding lines for the final shaping of the nose of the plane. I first used this design on the scrub plane I built. You will find an entire post on this project under the category “Hand tools” on this site. I find it an absolute gem of a design and certainly attains my goal of building objects that is functional and beautiful at the same time. Otherwise known as a certain je ne sais quoi. I would therefore like to call this … wait for it … “The Marx Nose”.

Yes I know …

In the pictures below you can see how I shaped “The Marx Nose” using a Forstner bit and the bandsaw. Please feel free to use it, as long as you also call it “The Marx Nose”. Feel free to contact me and I will give you an idea of the proportions I used. It really feels extremely comfortable and natural while using the plane. Your left palm (if you are right-handed) rests on the top of the toe section, enabling easy and controlled downward pressure and your fingers curl into the rounded slot of the nose to improve the ability to pick the plane up for the back-stroke. It really feels so much better than a cast-iron and normal square-nosed 18th century wooden plane.

I usually mark the pencil lines for the chamfers by hand, using a finger as a fence.

The chamfers on the side were done with this Lie-Nielsen low angle block plane. The top edge of this chamfer runs along the glue line where the sides were glued to the centre sections, in order to hide it. This works very well. I will notice that it is not a 45° chamfer as it extends further down the plane than across the top. I find that this add a certain je ne sais quoi.

Where the chamfer extends across the front of the nose I used files as this is a curved surface with end grain.

For the stopped chamfers at the heel end, I follow the procedure as illustrated stepwise in the pictures below. I first use a round file to do the end of the chamfer …

… and then clamp a bit of scrap wood over the end that will stay to protect it. Next I used a selection of flat files to remove the rest of the wood.

For the the tote of this Jack Plane I decided on an open tote in the end. In the pictures below you can see how it was attached to the plane body utilising three different strategies to ensure strength: mortise, glue and two screws.

4/9/2013 – I am currently busy applying various layers of oil etc to this plane and aim to create the Tamboti wedge on the weekend. Then I only need to shape and sharpen the blade and Bob’s your Uncle.

In these pictures the two planes are kicking it in the Finishing Spa.

I took this picture tonight after it received it’s final treatment with liquid wax. By early next week I should be able to add pictures of the completed plane if all goes well.

9/9/2013 – In these pictures you can see the the piece of Tamboti I used for the wedges. They were initially cut with the bandsaw and tidied up with my very special spindle sander known as the “Green Monster”.

The blades were then shaped and sharpened using the setup as shown. I like writing the angles used on the blades for future reference. Both of these blades were honed with a slight camber, but the Jack Plane with the more pronounced curve. You will notice that I use the terms Honing Angle (HA) and Polishing Angle (PA). These blades come with a primary bevel of 25º and I added secondary bevels with a HA of 33º and PA of 35°. You will find and entire post on how I built this sharpening jig under the category “Jigs” on this site. You will notice the small ruler on the water stone indicating that I use David Charlesworth’s “ruler trick” to created a mirror polish on the back of the blades.

Next step was to set the blades under normal tension, but retracted in order to do the final flattening of the soles.

You will notice that I have a new piece of glass that takes three different grids of sandpaper.

The most rewarding part of this process is the first few shavings taken with your new plane. Here you can see the beautiful assegaai shavings taken from a scrap piece.

I moved some stuff to create this space right next to my usual planing area as a home for the three planes.

Now I can move on to finishing the Jointer and then the Shooting Plane.

Shop storage, Wood

The lumbering odyssey

06/08/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

In this post I would like to document the long and arduous odyssey of the wood I love so much. As I have explained in previous posts such as “My journey 3”, I feel a special connection with the wood from the area where I grew up. The ancient hardwood forests of the Southern Cape is were I feel most at peace as a person. I love the the smells, the sounds and the cool damp atmosphere.

It is from these forests that I bought small batches of wood with every cent I could spare at the auctions they used to have there. They used to cut trees that are more than 80% dead in their crown and then auctioned them off once per annum. Apparently, even this activity has been discontinued since 2005.

It used to be my favourite day of the year, getting up in the early hours of the morning to prepare for battle. I used to pack some biltong, a few sandwiches, coffee, a bottle of Calitzdorp’s finest port and head off to the forest to tussle with the big furniture companies (with even bigger checkbooks) in order to secure a few logs. Over a period of 2 years (2000 and 2001) while living back in my hometown, I personally attended and bought wood from two of these auctions. On the second of these auctions I was accompanied by my father, my wife and my cousin. We had an absolute ball of a time and secured quite a few logs. My father then attended two more auctions on my behalf while we were living overseas. We managed to accumulate 17 cubic meters of mainly Assegaai, Ysterhout, Witpeer, Harde Peer, Kaapse Swarthout, Kershout and Wit Els.

21/11/2013 – Last night I found this piece of paper documenting what I bought over the mentioned time. My father must have drawn it up in order to get the clearance to transport the wood to Namibia. There are a few mistakes, but at least it reminds me exactly when what was bought.

Once you buy the logs you have to arrange to get them removed from the forest and sawn to your liking. My logs were always processed by a lady by the surname of Botha. In this part of the world Botha is similar Smith in England. My mother’s maiden name was Botha to give you an idea. Anyway, this Botha lady did a great job every single time.

In the pictures below you can get an idea of how these trees look like in the forest. The wood is (in almost every case) extremely hard and takes literally several hundred years to grow to the size needed for furniture making.

The Knysna Loerie is a shy yet glamorous resident of these forests.

The wood then went straight into this garage stacked with spacers (as shown) without any artificial drying. It sat in this exact position for between 6-10 years (depending on the batch) in a coastal environment at a fairly high ambient humidity. As you can see, my father did a great job of stacking the wood for slow yet consistent drying. By the way, you will notice the baby on the wife’s arm. This is my son Didi whom you would have met in earlier posts masquerading as Pai Mei.

Thought you might need a quick reminder of who Pai Mei is. If you are still intrigued watch “Kill Bill”.

At the end of 2011 we bought a house in Windhoek and moved all our earthly belongings 1800km. The wood that was very much stable at the coastal humidity at that time were stacked without pacers as shown below. I decided to stack it this way for two reasons. One, I did not have enough space at the time, and two, in an attempt to slow down the drying process moving from high to low ambient humidity. I also kept a few 20 liter buckets full of water in the garage and did not open it much at all for the first year in a further attempt to slow down the drying. Whether it was as a result of these measures I do not know, but the wood really settled down very well.

I will add the last stage (hopefully) of the odyssey, which should take place in the next few weeks to a month. I am in the process of preparing their longterm home. The idea is to have them under a roof shaded by many big trees in racks sorted by species. Here are the most recent pictures I have of their future home. You can see the carcass of the, soon to be, tin roof hiding under several large trees. It is an area of around 20 square meters in total. I hope to have my prized lumber ‘kickin’ it in the Caribbean’ (so to speak) under this roof by the end of this month.

19/8/2013 – I took these photos on the weekend of the rough structure my father-in-law built in order for me to be able to sort the 9 odd species of wood into separate “boxes”. Now we need to first wrap the area with shade net and black builders plastic in order to keep the sun off the wood and create an optional enclosed area in order to regularly fumigate the stack of wood.

18/10/2013 – A week ago my friend Sigmund and I started to add a sprinkling system to this wood storage facility. You will also notice that all the wooden structures have been painted with a 50/50 mixture of diesel and oil recycled from vehicles, as provided by my mechanic who filled a 20 litre can for me in only 2 days. The idea is that if and when the riverbed vegetation bordering this structure goes up in flames, (as what tends to happen during the last few months prior to the first rain as lit by thunderstorms) I could open one tap and the area around the shed and the wood in it would be soaked in water within minutes.

8/2/2014 – We finally managed to move the lumber into it’s cosy wee home today. Almost the whole family (Didi, the wife and I) and four chaps from Oshiwambo extraction (including our own Tobias) worked very hard for more than 5 hours on the trot to get the job done. We had a system going where the wood first ended up on the saw horses for me to code it according to species. Then it was moved to it’s new home to be stacked in piles according to the species.

Here you can see a ‘Y’ on a board, indicating that it is Ysterhout.

The wife enjoyed her gym session with a vengeance.

Didi got tired of carrying wood and decided to become the event photographer.

At this point we decided to have lunch. As you can see we made good progress.

Lunch came in the form of a proper Africa braai, which Didi managed with quite a bit of encouragement from his mother.

My precious wood finally came to rest in it’s purpose-built shed after 10-14 years (depending on the batch) in various different storage facilities and close to 2000 km of traveling!!

Handtools, Quick projects, Shop made tools

Reprobate Sealskin Strop

18/07/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

This is a straight forward hand tool that some might argue to have become obsolete, especially since the advent of devilishly fine waterstones used in conjuction with Nagura stones. However, to me it reminds of the days gone by, which creates a sense of being part of the traditions of the craft.

That is why I fashioned this sealskin strop. Before all the whiny greenies get on my back, I did not kill any seals for this purpose. I simply bought the skins at Nakara. As far as I know, Namibia has been involved in a sustained seal genocide to which more liberal societies have developed an aversion of note. As I see it, these seals were well and truly dead by the time I bought the skins, so I might as well honour their expired existence by creating a timeless heirloom tool with it. Come to think of it, in the light of the above I should probably warn sensitive readers that this post might contain disturbing images, if you are that way inclined.

As per usual I found a small piece of Assegaai for the job. The bandsaw was responsible for the rough shaping, before I took to it with a few files to round the areas forming the handle.

I then used a card scraper to remove the file marks, which I can really recommend. It works like a charm for this purpose, as you can see from the pictures below.

The area that would end up covered with sealskin, were then planed flat with a rehabilitated old Stanley Jack Plane. I wrote a comprehensive post on this particular endeavor, which you will find under the category of “Rehabilitation of old tools”.

To make absolutely sure it was flat, I used 3M adhesive-backed sandpaper on glass to get it as close to perfect as possible. I used the technique of scribbling on the wood with a 2B pencil before sanding to identify the low spots. The job is done once all the pencil marks has disappeared as you can see in the last picture. I advise those sensitive types to stop reading at this point.

Two sealskins as bought from Nakara. In the closeup picture you can appreciate that the leather is quite rough, which is probably wicked for this purpose.

A magic marker was used to trace out the strips needed.

I first glued the narrow strips to the sides …

… then the wider strips.

I used a very sharp chisel to remove a few untidy strips of leather and …

… finally the usual treatment with Ballistol gave the Assegaai a beautiful sheen.

Bench accessories

Sliding Deadman (with a twist)

09/07/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

As promised I will now write a post on how a sliding deadman could look like that toils in tandem with my “legvise with a twist”, while they are both attached to my “alternative workbench/assembly table”. There are posts on both these projects under the categories of “Bench accessories” and “Bench” respectively.

I built this deadman at the same time as the legvise, but concentrated more on the legvise towards the end of the project, finished it and went back to the deadman. I again used Assegaai predominantly with small pieces of Ysterhout, Witpeer and Kershout to make up the rest. In the picture below you can see the feral nature of the wood I work with. In order to make up stout chucks of lumber I always have to laminate petite pieces that are carefully liberated from the crude boards of wild wood. You can see the rough boards these pieces came from in the post on the legvise.

In the next picture you can see how a tidied up version of the laminated piece in the previous picture receives a face of Assegaai. The reason for gluing the bigger piece together like this is in the first place to have a front that looks solid (rather than laminated), but also to created strength/stability (by means of glue lines) in different directions. Whether it actuals works like this I am not too sure, but it makes some sense to me. I guess only time will tell. Anyway, you should be able to see the piece of Ysterhout in the centre of the original laminated part flanked by Assegaai. The Ysterhout was available it the size needed (reason number one for inclusion) but was also included to enhance the strenghts of the beam.

The blank that emerged after the clamps were removed was quite a bit more irregular in shape than what is apparent in the picture below.

I managed to flatten and square it up by means of stoical hand planing over a few days of doing tolerable sessions at a time. This approach (despite not being the motivating reason for doing it this way) is probably the best one can hope for in terms of the result as the blank are allowed to settle after each minor release of tension.

The sqaured-up product was quite pleasing to the eye and supplied a heartening sense of achievement.

The next step was to router out a fairly large stopped dado that would accept the mechanism designed to easily adjust the height of the deadman.

In the pictures below you can see how I simply used the F-style clamps hooked into the conveniently located T-channels along the side of my assembly table to fix the evolving deadman in order to locate the guiding jig (resembling a woodworking square) firmly on the table as well as the substrate. The advantage of using these jigs is that it shows you exactly where the dado will be cut in relation to the guiding edge.

I made a further upgrade to the jig for the purpose of this particular assignment. You should be able to see the panel pin that I tapped into the stock of the guiding square located in the previous dado. This setup allows you to cut dados at exactly the same distance from each other without the need for any cumbersome measuring.

Despite my clever jig-adaptations this process took ages as each dado had to be cut twice to reach the decided depth. The dados are 6 mm wide (the width of the threaded rod meant to frequent it in the future of this contraption) and 12 mm deep. There is this rule of thumb that one should only cut to a maximum depth equivalent to the diameter of the straight router bit being used in a particular pass, hence the double pass strategy.

After such an endeavor it is usually advisable to take a moment to savour what you have accomplished before moving onwards and upwards.

As if the above effort was not enough I decided that the edges of these dados are in need of a chamfer that would promote facile access for the piece of threaded rod intended to hook into these dados once our deadman enter into operational mode. For this purpose I used a V-groove router bit sized to allow me to chamfer both edges of each dado in a single cut. The modification of my guiding jig came in handy once again in lining up the cuts perfectly without much fuss. The results are apparent in the pictures below. Incidentally, you can also see the Ysterhout running down the middle of the deadman in the second picture.

Now we move on to the construction of the moving parts of the deadman. First, we will look at the block of wood meant to support stock much like a peg on a regular deadman. This block of wood is meant to be height adjustable by means of hooking into the dados at the back of the main beam and (as always) another elaboration I simply could not resist.

In the pictures below you will observe a collect of the petite pieces of wood chosen to make up the moving parts of the deadman. The second picture depicts the laminated blank earmarked to become the adjustable block. Please note that this block consisted of two equally sized parts clamped together in a face vice for the purpose of marking out the next cut. The cut was made on the table saw as illustrated in the next two pictures. It will become clear what I was aiming for as we progress.

I drilled a 8.5 mm hole with the drill press in the valley of one of the v-grooves created by the previous cut. I then widened the hole from the v-groove side only deep enough to accept an insert nut for an 8 mm bolt. The insert nut was seated using the drill press and manpower. Next I chiseled out an area that would house the wooden brake. In the last two pictures you can see the wooden brake in it’s place.

With the inside work done the block was glued together creating a diamond shaped channel (in actual fact it is square but positioned like a diamond) meant to accept an adjustable shaft. The orientation of the square channel was aimed at combatting the effects of wood movement, much like some of the better marking gauges. With this design the shaft will always sit tight when jammed into the 90° v-groove. If orientated differently it would rattle from side to side when the channel gets bigger and get stuck when the humidity swings the other way.

The block was then shaped on the band saw to assume an elegant sloping appearance. The rough marks of the band saw were tidied up using a handplane. In pictures 3 and 4 you can see the threaded rod screwed and epoxied into place. These holes were drilled before the block was sloped in order to drill them parallel to the ends. I drilled 7.5 mm holes and screwed the 8 mm threaded rods in after lubricating it with epoxy. You can also see the knob turning the 8 mm threaded rod onto the wooden brake we seated earlier. I will write a brief post in the near future on how to make these knobs.

In the next few pictures you can finally get an idea of how the support block function with the brake we made earlier. We already discussed the reasons behind the shape of the shaft, but here you can see want I meant. I slowly hand planed the shaft until it fitted perfectly. You will note the flat area on one of the corners of the diamond shape, which is where the brake asserts it pressure.

We will leave the the block’s evolution for the moment and shift our attention to the adjustable lower section meant to anchor the deadman to the floor. You can see how I used a Festool router to cut slots in a piece of Kershout. The choice of wood was driven by aesthetics. Kershout has a very deep colour once finished, which contrasts nicely with the light orange of the Assegaai. It also helps the deadman fit in with it’s brother the legvise. Yes I know, it sounds a wee bit girlish, but remember my goal is to bring into being workshop paraphernalia with a certain je ne sais quoi.

The two bits of Kershout were separated and clamped in my face-vise. I then used this newly acquired gadget from Veritas to cut one single dovetail pin in each. The gadget is called a Veritas Dovetail Saw Guide System. You will find it in the Veritas catalogue downloadable from their website (find the link in the library page on this site) which makes superb reading for tool aficionados.

In the pictures below you can see how I glued the Kershout parts into position after cutting the corresponding tails in a piece of Assegaai. I used the actual stoped dados in the bottom of the main beam, where the Kershout will slide up and down to keep the setup in the exact position while drying.

In the next few pictures you can see how I made a quick test of how my design works. I clearly need to improve on my dovetail technique, but in my defense this was the first dovetail I did since a woodworking examination in 1987. I think it is pertinent to digress from my story-line at this point in time.

On that particular day I made two first class dovetails in the time the rest of the class were supposed to make one. My best mate Gerdie Smook used to share a workbench with me, as per usual I guess in most school woodworking classes around the world when it still existed. The problem was that Gerdie tends to be a danger to himself (and others in his immediate surroundings for that matter) in the shop environment. In this particular exam we were issued with a three dimensional drawing of a doveltail joint and given a bit of wood to whittle into something resembling the mentioned drawing.

The game plan was formulated several days in advance, as Gerdie were on the brink of failing woodwork as a subject and it would not go down well as son of the Headmaster. I made one copy of the joint in the speed of light and handed it over to Gerdie with the idea that he would not alter it at all, yet try to look busy sanding it lightly. I then grabbed his chunk of wood and and made his joint. Obviously being warm-up at this stage, his turned out better than mine. To add to the discrepancy, Gerdie managed to mutilate mine sufficiently (with the mentioned “light sanding activity”), to ensure that he got a much better mark than me. Despite that, I still regard what I did that day as the finest achievement of my non-existent woodworking career.

I made some of my usual crude Sketchup drawings to show what is happening in the engine room of this part of the design that is a bit difficult to see from the pictures above. As you can see I drilled two 7 mm holes lined up with the slots in the Kershout that slides up and down the stopped dados. Then I widened these holes on opposite ends to accept insert nuts for a 6 mm bolt. The bolt was sunk into a wooden knob and epoxied. The knob of each bolt obviously sits on the opposite end to the insert nut that it engages with.

Here I added the caster meant to make it easy to slide the deadman along the side of the assembly table, hence “sliding” deadman.

Since finishing the legvise (with a twist) I acquired thread cutting tools, which you can see in action below. I am in the process of cutting 8 mm thread in a piece of steel left over from another job, to act as the anchor in the T-channel on the side of the assembly table. You will remember how I had to weld bolts to a piece of steel to accomplish the same while creating the anchor for the legvise.

Finally you can get an idea of what we were aiming for with regards to this unique deadman. In the pictures below you can see the first “dry fit” to the assembly table. In the second picture you can see the two bits of scrap 6 mm plywood attached the inside of the face board were it nestles up against the side of the assembly table. These were added to bring the face of the deadman perfectly in line (flush) with the inside jaw of the legvise. In the third picture you can get an idea of how the height adjustable mechanism operate.

After all that fanfaronade, let’s get back to the adjustable support block. I made the arms in the pictures below to wrap around the main beam of the deadman while being attached to the support block and the 6 mm threaded rod that hooks into the profusion of dados at the back of it. The wood is meant to created a soft wood-on-wood feel when adjusting the support block, but also considers the matter of wear.

In then next few pictures you can see how the support block works. It hooks into the appropriate dado depending on the hight needed for the job and has the ability to make fine adjustments with the “marking gauge mechanism” for lack of a better term. You will note the use of two lock nuts on either side of each steel/wood-arm, allowing precise adjustment for a custom fit.

Every deadman deserves a good manicure before being flung into another samsara. In this case a facial treatment with Tung oil diluted vigorously with mineral turpentine. After only one layer of this I rubbed some (you’ve guessed it) Ballistol on for good measure.

In these pictures you can see how the deadman and the legivise function together for the first time. At the time I was working on t-brackets to hang from the rafters in order to keep a few boards out of the way while it acclimatizes to the shop.

Bench accessories

Legvise with a twist (Chapter three)

01/07/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

In the final chapter of this series of posts we will look at how I finished this unique legvise. It could be a useful idea to other woodworkers who does not have a proper dedicated workbench.

In these first pictures you can see how I made the rollers for the parallel guide. Unfortunately I only saw the idea to use skateboard wheels after I built these, but I would recommend using them if you still have to build yours. I used an inexpensive plastic wheel used to guide automatic steel gates, which is very common in this part of the world where we all hide behind electric fences. It works fine but does not have a smooth low friction ball-bearing system like the skateboard wheels.

Next I used my newly purchased Festool router to cut a dado that would accept the Kershout strips meant to clamp the edges of the leather that would ultimately grace the faces of the jaws.

I then assembled the legvise temporarily in order to drill the hole for the large single screw vise.

Due to the length of the “nut” (pictured below) that accepts the screw, I had to add some wood to the inside jaws, as seen in the pictures above.

Below you can see how I used handtools to custom fit the “nut” into the inside jaw for a lifetime of abuse.

I then fitted the screw to the chop.

Below you can see how I glued leather from a Red Dear I shot while living in New Zealand to the inside of both jaws.

The leather was then clamped into place tidily using custom sized (by using handplanes) Kershout strips screwed into a shallow dado on the sides of the jaws.

Next I had to shape a scrap piece of steel that could slide into the T-channel on the side of my assembly table in order to fix the inside jaw to the table in a manner that would make it easy to move the legvise from one location to the next if needed. You can see how I welded nuts to the steel as at this point in time I still did not have thread cutting tools. You will also notice that the piece of steel was deliberately bent slightly so that once the bolts are tightened it would apply even pressure across the length of it.

From this point on you should be able to see what I was aiming for. In the first picture you can see how the rollers and adjustable feet were attached. The next pictures show how the two jaws were assembled by means of the vise screw for the first time.

The first time I attached the legvise to the assembly table to test out a few things. I realised that I had to do a few adjustments to the feet.

Here I am shaping a piece of Witpeer in order to turn the ends of the handle.

Here you can see how I modified the feet. I inserted two pins that was epoxied into place that would ultimately sit inside a small rubber disc. The area between the disc and the nut received a coat of grease to allow the adjustable feet to rotate easily while being firmly pressed against the floor.

I am not sure what the correct term is for this instrument, but it is the one that gets jammed into the wholes in the parallel guide and you can see that I made mine from scratch.

Finally the legvise was fitted to the table in the position I thought would be best for now. In the second picture you can see what I was on about regarding the modification of the adjustable feet. You will also note the nuts that was added to lock the threaded rod feet into place once it is adjusted to the correct height. The third picture show the nameless instrument in position in the parallel guide.

The final product was well worth the effort displaying the beautiful orange and grayish-yellow colours of the Assegaai and Witpeer. I have to say that it works even better than anticipated and I would not change too much at all if I build another one.

You can start looking out for some posts on the sliding deadman that I built to toil in tandem with this baby.

Quick projects, Shop storage

Card scraper holder

21/06/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

This is a quick post showing an easy way to store your card scrapers so that they become very accessible. Until I made this high-tech holder my card scrapers were hiding in a leather wallet type of thing. That old saying that goes “out of sight out of mind”, applied and I often forgot that these handy tools would be idea for a particular job.

In the pictures you can see my set of Lie-Nielsen scrapers resting on the leather pouch while dreaming about their new luxurious abode. I took a piece of laminated Asseggai/Witpeer left over from my legvise project and tidied it up somewhat. In order to cut really thin curves to ensure that the scrapers will not wobble too much, I used this as a hand sawing exercise. My Lie-Nielsen carcass saw cuts a very thin curve, which only accepted the thin scrapers not the thicker versions.

My custom made Tamboti marking knife came in handy to mark out the cuts. (Please see www.jenesaisquoiwoodworking.com/tamboti-and-witels-marking-knives if you want to read the post on how I made the marking knife) I left the rest of the block of wood untouched for now. It might become the home of scrapers of different shapes that I still plan to make once I find a suitable piece of steel, like an old saw blade.

You can see how I practiced the skill of sawing to a line using a benchhook.

The results for all to see. It is certainly not perfect but good enough for this purpose and gave me a bit of practice.

As usual the product was finished off with some Ballistol and Bob’s your Uncle.

Handtools, Shop made tools

Shameless Flush Plane knockoff

13/06/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

By now I presume that you are quite familiar with the fact that I have to improvise from time to time, (more often than not) in order to acquire tools that most other people buy at their corner cafe. In this particular case my improvisation included the shameless liberation of a Veritas catalogue idea. They sell a so called Flush Plane, which I thought could be very handy as they explained for:

“flush trimming projections such as glue lines, laminate edges, plugs, etc. It can also be used for cleaning out inside corners (e.g., hinge gains, tenons, half-laps)” As copied from the catalogue of September 2012.

So I set about to make my own version of this elusive (only to mortals from Africa) tool. As usual I used scrap pieces of Assegaai. I promise to use another species of wood once I start making furniture. Despite all the hassle to get hold of tools I did find Stanley plane blades which would fit the 1/2 numbers, not the others only the 1/2s!! Therefore this rip-off was tailored around the mentioned blade.

In the pictures below you can peruse the first phase of sculpting the laminated Assegaai blank. At least the actual contours of the rip-off are entirely my own ingenuity.

Enter Phase two.

Phase three was done with hand tools exclusively. I created an area at the front of the handle where one can get a grip with your leading finger/s. On the sides (less visible in the pictures below) I hollowed out an area where one’s wrap-around fingers can nestle into for improved grip. You can also see how the blade was marked for drilling holes to accept the screws that would ultimately fix it to the bottom for the grip.

Once the shank holes were drilled I first transferred it to the grip before countersinking the holes in the steel.

The reason for this was that I had to countersink the holes in the steel to the point were it increased the diameter of the shank holes. It was necessary to ensure that the steel screws seat below the level of the blade.

After seating the blade the sole of this knockoff was lapped flat with sandpaper on a piece of glass.

The final product lacked je ne sais quoi, so I decided to play around with some craving options. I will add it to this post once it is done.

Bench accessories

Legvise with a twist (Chapter one)

12/06/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

In this post I thought I should spend some time documenting one of my preeminent projects to date. As stated earlier in a post on my alternative workbench/assembly table I decided to go with an adaptation of an assembly table to serve as a workbench until I have acquired the skills to build and the experience to design my ultimate work bench. In order to do a wide range of hand tool orientated tasks, I thought that a proper leg vise toiling in conjunction with a sliding deadman is essential. We will start with the leg vise and move on to the slithering deceased somewhere down the line.

Creating a leg vise for an assembly table with legs hiding quite some way away from the edge of the top conjures up a formidable challenge. In the pictures and text to follow you can join me on my jaunt towards solving the mentioned poser.

If you read anything I have written so far you would be able to guess were this story starts. Yes, I went looking for some Assegaai. Where would I be without Assegaai? Well, come to think of it, several of my ancestors will have to scurry around frantically to find an alternative cause of death. Did I say that aloud?

In the pictures below you can see the foxy beauty of the assegaai tree (one of which is rooted on the slopes of Table Mountain), it’s leaves and the traditional weapon it derives it’s name from.

After a fervent root around (there seems to be a theme here), I found the boards as displayed in exhibit A and B below.

At this same time my father-in-law was visiting and helped me to laminate the Assegaai mixed with a bit of Witpeer into two boards. On the photo where he is cleaning off some glue, you can probably see how we mixed Assegaai with Witpeer. The Witpeer being the gray coloured wood and Assegaai more towards orange. I combined these two for a spesific reason. I wanted the elasticity and stability that the Assegaai brings and added the Witpeer for it’s rigidity. You can see that we laminated the two species to form alternating ribs that also adds the usual je ne sais quoi on the aesthetic side of things. To enhance the cerebral exercise that it was even more, I decided to use more Assegaai on the board that would become the face of the vise (increased flex) and more Witpeer on the board that was to become the leg (more rigid).

Next you can see how the boards looked after it came out of the clamps and a bit of tidying up.

In the picture below you can clearly see how the one board appears more orange in colour (Assegaai dominated) and the other grayish (Witpeer dominated).

Until this point my design for the vise was quite a bit different from how it was eventually put together. One day at work I thought about it and started scribbling on some paper, as you can see below. It led me into a different direction altogether. It might make more sense once you see how it paned out, but basically I decided to take advantage of the strengths of the construction of plywood in the design of the vise. You will see what I mean as we progress. On this piece of paper I also decided on the joinery with regards to the parallel guide and how I would tidy up the leather that I planned to use on the vise.

In order to strengthen the boards across it’s width, I used short Assegaai boards with it’s grain running 90 degrees to the rest of it. These were screwed on as gluing would cause havoc with seasonal movement of the wood. Therefore the shank holes were drilled significantly bigger than the actual shanks of the screws. You can also see in the second to last picture how I used a shim to create a consistent gap between these boards, also with seasonal movement in mind.

In the next compelling chapter we will look at what makes this leg vise different from others.

Handtools, Shop made tools

Proletarian sanding contrivances

11/06/2013 Gerhard Marx 2 Comments

Although I do own a belt sander and two orbital sanders (that were past down from my Dad to me), I still prefer sanding by hand. Unfortunately the cheap and nasty commercial sanding blocks I used to own in New Zealand were all stolen en route to Namibia. I thought making some sanding planes would be a good start towards my next goal of building some wooden hand planes. This way I get some experience in producing the plane tote (handles) and joining it to the rest of the tool. Even with sanding planes the aim is to keep it as flat as possible, so this way I can get a feel for doing just that.

One of the annoying things about using a sanding block is having to change the paper all the time as you move from one grid to the next. Therefore I decided to build 3 short (230 mm) and three long (380 mm) sanding planes, in order to load each with a different grid. It would allow me to simply grab the next plane when moving up a grid.

I had some trouble to get the pdf documents on Stanley totes (handles) from the Lee Valley website printed to the correct scale. It necessitated me to take the tote off my Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Jack Plane and use it as a template. The Lee Valley documents were very helpful nonetheless as it explains clearly what the best sequins of steps are to produce the handle. In the picture below, you can see how the Lie-Nielsen tote was used as a template, ensuring that the hole running through the tote is 90 degrees to the sides of the board.

Here you can see the documents, as mentioned. It is downloadable from the Lee Valley website.

Below you will notice that the hole that runs through the handles were drilled before drilling the large diameter holes which simplifies the actual cutting of the blanks.

Next step is to shape the blanks to resemble the perfect Lie-Nielsen tote it is based on. For this purpose I used the green monster, which is a machine my father built many years ago. In the pictures below I took it’s work surface off to enable me to maneuver the blank a bit more. Some of the shaping was done with the surface intact.

Next I took some scrap Witels, which I thought would be a nice colour match with the pale fungi induced spots on the Assegaai handles and plane bodies. Yes, I know, ‘a certain je ne sais quoi’. After laminating the three pieces I turned the six knobs from it

Unfortunately I did not take pictures of how I prepared the plane bodies. It was fairly gnarled bits of Assegaai to start off with. In order to flatten these bits of wood I spent quite some time working on my hand planing technique. Then I moved on to custom fitting each handle recessed about 4mm into the plane body. The totes and knobs were then glued and screwed into it’s permanent home for the next 500 years (I hope).

The mechanism I chose to fix the sand paper to the plane necessitated a lot of fiddling with small bits of wood, screws and panel pins. Although probably not the fastest way of changing paper, it works like a charm and also adds a certain je ne sais quoi on the looks side of things!

Seeing that these are sanding planes with which I do not want to spoil a surface that was already elbow-greased to perfection by hand planing, the next critical step was to ensure that they are as flat as glass. I used two different grids of 3M Adhesive-Backed Sandpaper on a piece of glass. You can see how I used the trick I learnt from David Charlesworth by scribbling on the sole with a pencil to see low spots. I saw him using this in a DVD on sharpening. I think if I saw this guy working in his meticulously cerebral fashion earlier in my life, I probably would have pursued woodworking as a career. His DVD’s are highly recommended. I bought mine from Lie-Nielsen.

Next I mixed epoxy and added some wood dust to increase the viscosity. This concoction was then used to fill the holes left by the countersunk steel screws which fixed the knobs and handles to the plane body. It dried to an incredibly hard filler, which was again sanded perfectly flush with the rest of the sole.

I then glued Red Dear leather (short planes) and Kudu leather (long planes) to the soles to ensure an even contact between the sandpaper and wood that is being sanded. You can see how in one case I used a piece of glass as a flat surface clamping through the assembly table. In the other case I used the two sanding planes as each other’s flat reference surface, to ensure flat and consistent adhesion of the leather.

Finally the first test with sandpaper and it works like a dream.

Usually my favourite part of building these tools is to rub on Ballistol. It brings out the beautiful colours of the wood and does not dry to a film at all, nor does it go yellow over time.

Here you can see how I indicated on the back of each plane which grid of sandpaper it is loaded with. This makes it easy to simply grab the next plane needed during a sanding operation.

In these final pictures you can see where the planes found their little home.

Handtools, Shop made tools

Mallet Mania

27/05/2013 Gerhard Marx Leave a comment

May 2013

I thought I should start with something easy as far as documenting my progress in the shop. These hand-tool-building posts are therefore not in chronological order.
It was a good 18 months into my workshop-development-activities when I got round to building some mallets. I started with two made on the lathe that seems to be recommended from carving purposes. I actually find that they are very handy for general chisel work too.

First, I found a few bits of scrap Assegaai (Curtisia dentata) and so called Rhodesian Teak. Assegaai is my favourite wood for making tools as it is known for it’s elasticity and tends to be very hard too. The Zulu’s obviously had good reason for preferring this wood for their assegais. It was also used extensively for wagon building (in particular for the spokes of the wheels) in the Old Cape Colony. In the pictures below you can see some pictures of the Assegaai tree, leaves and the traditional weapon it’s name is derived from.

Rhodesian Teak (Baikiaea plurijuga) has undergone a name change to Zambian Teak, which is probably more politically correct. The bits of teak I used came from some left over from another project to do with my workbench/assembly table, which we will cover in another post. By the way, this wood actually originates from Zambia, despite the fact that you find the tree in several other countries such as Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana to name a few.

In the above pictures you can see the scrap pieces I used, with the Cecil John Teak (CJT) closest and Assegaai furthest.

You can see the lamination process which is the curse that I have to live with as 95% of the wood in my possession were cut into boards varying between 25-30mm (around the 1 inch mark). Therefore, I need to laminate in order to generate stock thicker than that.

My lathe is old and a bit dodgy so I tend to do my best to shape the blanks before loading the cannon. In this case I used the bandsaw.

Here you can see the Assegaai mallet already turned next to the CJT blank. The light coloured spots you see on the Assegaai mallet is caused by a fungus, but does not affect the wood’s strength at all (apart from inflicting the colour change) in this case. I therefore prefer to use Assegaai with these spots for my tools, where one is less concerned with aesthetics.

The above pictures show the same Assegaai mallet after a treatment with Ballistol oil. I use Ballistol on all my tools. In the case of metal tools the plan is to prevent corrosion, as opposed to wooden tools where the aim is to limit moisture movement. Luckily I find myself in a very dry climate anyway where we do not see any clouds between May and October. Yes, that means no rain either and quite low levels of humidity. By the way this Ballistol stuff is really top class in my opinion. It smells nice and has been used by just about every adventurer, hunter, bush doctor, and gun nut south (by way of expression of course, as it was probably used even more to the immediate north of the mentioned desert) of the Sahara.

Here both mallets are finished and you can see that I made some minor adjustments to the handle of the CJT mallet. The Assegaai mallet weighs 500 grams (1.1lb) and the CJT version weighs 430 grams (0.95 lb), which might sound like an insignificant difference. In actual fact I find these mallets quite different in that the CJT mallet is significantly smaller (and therefore quite a bit more manoeuvrable), but does not lose that much in weight.

(Added 11/11/2013) – This weekend I learned a new trick. The short piece of copper pipe picture below (which I picked up for free from a antique dealer) have me the idea to line the holes I drill in tool handles with copper. The idea is to drill a hole of the same diameter as the outside of the copper pipe, apply some epoxy, tap the pipe in, tidy it up, and Bob’s your Uncle.

Now I have the option of hanging the mallet.

Fine, so let’s move on to mallets of the alternative design. So far I have built two, again with an aim to produce mallets of different weights and size.

For both of these I decided to use a combination of Hardepeer (Olinia ventosa) (deep yellow in colour) and Stinkhout (Ocotea bullata) (dark brown) in order to take advantage of the beautiful colour contrast. Yes I know that is contrary to what I said earlier. I must admit that I am a sitting duck for aesthetically pleasing tools.

For the bigger mallet I used hand tools to cut the mortise for the handle, before gluing the Hardepeer inner part. Note the flaring nature of the mortise.

In order to add some considerable heft to this mallet, I created a flat mortise (not sure if this is the correct term) to accept a piece of steel. The piece of steel fitted very tightly into the mortise and was fixed with a screw as well as being glued in with epoxy.

Then I glued the two Stinkhout pieces to the outsides of the Hardepeer inner.

The handle was made up of two pieces of Witpeer (Apodytes dimidiata) laminated together.

Then the shaping process started together with six Witpeer dowels inserted from side to side through the laminated parts. Two of these dowels also passed through the steel weights. This was probably not necessary, but (you’ve guest it) were added for aesthetic reasons and I did want to ensure that the steel weights never starts rattling inside while using the mallet. Maybe others have some experience with this? Let me know whether it might add value or simply a wast of time.

The handle was shaped using a band saw and Lie-Nielsen carcass saw to cut out the rough blank and from then on only files. It was then glued into place using two Stinkhout wedges to expand it into the flaring mortise and left proud by ½ an inch, which was trimmed after a few days.

The head of the smaller mallet was made up of the same species of wood, but were the lucky winner of an Assegaai handle. It does not contain any steel and weighs in at 350 grams (0.77 lb), as apposed to the Godfather of mallets at a whopping 1300 grams (2.87 lb).

The same method of attaching the handle was used, again for strength in the first place yet adding a touch of je ne sais quoi as well.

Finally, I glued a piece of leather to one face of each mallet and finished it off with a coat of (you’ve guessed it) Ballistol. The leather that was used came from the skin of a Red Dear I shot on the South Island of New Zealand (Fiordland) while living there between 2002 and 2009.

9/12/2013 – This weekend I finished a this beautiful mallet which will become my main mortising mallet with my new Lie-Nielsen bevel-edge chisels set, which is set to arrive early in the new year. It has an Ysterhout head and a Boekenhout handle. The Ysterhout is ridiculously hard and sinks in water. It took em ages to created the mortise for the handle and almost loss several chisels in trying to. I used sealskin on the on face. It is as tough as nails (if you excuse the pun). As you can see it weighs in at 780 gram.

3/8/2014

A week or so ago I added a number of layers of leather to the leather side of these two mallets. The idea being that it would make them saver when tapping joinery together in order not to dent the work.

Je ne sais quoi Woodworking

Tag Archives: Assegaai

Building a Wooden Jack Plane

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Reprobate Sealskin Strop

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Sliding Deadman (with a twist)

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Legvise with a twist (Chapter three)

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Card scraper holder

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Shameless Flush Plane knockoff

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Legvise with a twist (Chapter one)

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Proletarian sanding contrivances

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Mallet Mania

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