TUMBLEWOOD CREATIONS

Entertainment Console - Design Phase

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 02:46:00 +0000

Sometime last year, Sylvia and I were having dinner at my friend Ken's place. He'd recently got a copy of The House That Sam Built. Sam is one of my favorite designers. I love his simple, elegant and organic sense of design. This hall table was the piece that most captured my eye.

At that time, I jotted a couple ideas down and when I got home I did some really rough sketches, until I found something I really liked. I let it stew a bit and after awhile came back to it and did this sketch. This was something I added to the list of projects I wanted to do. I planned to do this as a veneer piece with solid edging that I could sculpt round in a bow to Maloof.

The order of things changed recently when Sylvia got fed up with our present couch and decided to get new living room furniture, which meant I had to actually hang the TV and build a console. I also decided to tweak the hall table design.

I sketched these two perspectives while Sylvia and I were watching something, so she could see what I was thinking and give some buy off before I started scale drawings.

Based on the single point perspective and the actual measurement of the wall and all the components of the entertainment center, I produced this first drawing.

At this point I put it out to my woodworking community on Facebook and Twitter. I got some really good feedback. Mark Cherry, a buddy on Facebook and @woodshaver101 on Twitter, has done a lot of cabinet style furniture and suggested, due to the length, I employ a torsion box in the design. Earl Kelly, again a Facebook buddy, thought the piece looked a bit stretched and after stepping back, I thought so, too. This is the final single point perspective with 5" trimmed from each side, all from the panels.

The center section will sit just back enough for each front panel to bypass. The bottom-middle is for the surround sound's bass reflex speaker, the center speaker will be directly above and the left and right front channels on each of the respective shelves in the curves. The choice for the material center panels is still up in the air. I was originally thinking metal and may still go that route. I just need to consider vibration. I'm planning on building this as a veneer piece. Under the right circumstance, I don't mind solid wood, but if the piece will benefit from man made materials, I'd rather go that way. I'm thinking the shop made veneer will be ~ 1/8 inch thick. The dark wood is Wenge and the top and panels will be Black Limba.

I've still got some logistics to figure out, one being to find some good plywood. I'm looking forward to the build!

A Quick and Easy Upgrade to The Sharpening Center

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 16:04:00 +0000

I finally got around to making a strop. If you haven't added this last step to your sharpening process, I definitely recommend it. I could easily shave arm hair before. The difference is the same as changing out your shaving blade for a new one. Where it had started to pull hair a bit as the blade wore, a new blade glides with no resistance and leaves a baby smooth surface. For woodworking this means a cleaner cut for longer periods and when that blade does start acting a bit dull, just strop it. With the strop you can go much longer in between actual sharpening sessions.

The upgrade is extremely easy. I took a piece of good quality plywood and glued two pieces from an old belt onto the surface. In this case I used Power Grab by Loctite,

which is a favorite "construction" adhesive of mine. I like it because it cleans up with warm soapy water and doesn't have the horrible off gassing that many other construction adhesive create.
I used a J - roller to makes sure the leather was solidly affixed to the plywood with no voids and as flat as possible. A bar of jeweler's rouge and you're done.

You will be able to create a beautiful mirror surface and as you've been taught, a sharp edge is the junction between two dead flat surfaces. So, the fewer scratches in the surface the more likely you will achieve a good edge. This was easiest upgrade I've done yet. If you haven't already, go do it now. Totally worth the small amount of time.

My Favorite Plane by Scott Meek Woodworks

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 02:49:00 +0000

I have had this plane for awhile, but have yet to publicly give major kudos to the man that made it. When I first got the plane, I immediately broke it by hitting the wedge too hard to seat the blade and cracking the pin. I was mortified and after calling Scott, so was he. Even though it was clearly my fault, he offered to fix it or make me a new plane. Mind you, this plane is not cheap and yes, I know many woodworkers who make their own wood body planes. Here's where the value comes in. I have quite a few metal bodies planes that function extremely well. Some are vintage Bedrock, Stanley and Sargent planes, other are Veritas. Why Veritas? I've used Lie Nielsen planes at Woodworking in America and, while they are very sweet, I am much more impressed with the innovative approach that Lee Valley/Veritas take toward making planes. They really just make them better than the old vintage planes. Lie Nielsen are the cream of the crop for making beefed up replicas of the old planes, but they don't innovate, at least as far as I've seen.

What makes a Scott Meek Woodworks plane stand out? Exceptional quality. The plane arrived sharp. While I couldn't bring myself to actually take Scott up on his offer to fix or make a new plane, I did manage to fix the break myself. I drilled a small hole, used a very small C-clamp and dripped some epoxy in and let it set. Luckily, when I went back to use it, the wedge still fit properly. The ergonomics of this smoother is fantastic. The design of the plane makes long sessions very comfortable and no matter what grain or wood I have tackled there is NO tear out. I can barely see any gap at the mouth. I've had the chance to use other wooden body planes, including Ron Hock's Krenov. Not even close. From what I've heard within the internet woodworking community, the others that have bought Scott's planes seem to feel the same. I may make a plane at some point, but I don't really feel the pull to make any of my tools. The money spent on this purchase was money very well spent. Thanks, Scott!!!

Art Deco and Bent

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 06:35:00 +0000

At the end of my last post you can see the hot pipe bending set up I built. My buddy, Ken, gave me some bed rails someone was getting rid of off a waterbed. They're 1 inch plywood and are perfect for an application like this. I built the bending rig for some upcoming light fixtures I'm planning on making for the house. Two of the fixtures definitely will have curves. I'm hoping to use some of my old growth Fir to make all these.

Before I tackle a specific project I wanted to get some practice in. I don't like to be too wasteful, so didn't want to bend just to bend. So, I decided to see how many Christmas presents I could get out of the experience. Ken had taken down a Russian Olive tree and noticed the ends of the logs were a deep chocolate color, so he dropped a couple firewood size logs off for me to cut up. It's actually quite pretty. It seems to continually darken, but is nowhere near as dark as the ends of the log were.

I quarter sawed the log to yield around 13 slats approximately 3/16th inch at the bandsaw. I currently am running a 3/4" Laguna Resaw King on the saw. It produced really nice resawn boards. After cutting out a basic design from heavy craft paper, I transferred that to all the boards and started the rough shaping, again, at the bandsaw. This time I switched to a 1/8 inch Timberwolf and changed out my regular Carter blade guides to the Carter guide for curve cutting. It works really well and allows you to really ride the back of the blade when cutting a curve. After soaking overnight, which I don't think is necessary, I started bending.

I had a pattern on a piece of plywood I was trying to match. I wasn't clamping any of the bends to help retain that specific shape, but I was trying to approximate it as close as possible by over bending to account for spring back. I then let them dry completely. Because of that, none of my spoons or "salad tongs" are exactly the same. Each was finished shaped on the Rigid oscillating drum and spindle sander. I had several of the original slats that weren't large enough for the pattern and a few more that I bent too fast or too much and split.

Here is an example of a set.

While I was waiting for the spoons to dry I also started up a project for my wife, Sylvia. We have been using a Senseo coffee machine for a couple of years. Unfortunately in the United States, Senseo has been eclipsed by the Kuerig. It's the whole Beta-Max / VHS thing from my childhood. Beta-Max was a superior platform, but VHS caught on first. I personally don't like the Kuerig, because of all the plastic that ends up in land fills. Also, it's not nearly as good a cup of coffee as the Senseo. Anyway, to the point, we bought a little "5" cup (two of ours) cone style coffee maker. Not as good a cup of coffee, but I'm not willing to deal with a plunger pot each day. The following show the project from rough sketch to some full scale drawing to the finished piece.

My tablesaw sled and the Grrripper push block were invaluable in cutting the little parts. The faces are rabbited at angles to accept the end pieces. Figuring out the compound angles was a challenge. I don't have a trig calculator anymore. I managed to find this site for a behind-the-scenes math solution.

Although I can't say I'm a fan completely of every genre, I do like more elements of specific genres, Art Deco being one.

I'm still debating adding little birch feet.

A Facelift without the Kenny Rogers Look

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 03:59:00 +0000

As always, I underestimate everything. I really wanted to not wait until I had a huge amount of information to report, but again find myself needing to write a rather long post.

The summer was, well, fantastic. I got to go to my first hands on training with Seth Rolland, we entertained quite a bit, ate a lot of good barbecue, took some great hikes and I got to shoot a lot of "film". It's still bizarre for me not to consider the medium film. You'd think I'd be over it, since the digital age of photography has enamored me like the young Swedish maid that I've always tried to talk Sylvia into would. Like wood working and design, photography will be a life long pursuit. There's no way to get to a point that you've mastered the art. You can always get better and I will continue to try. You can check out my photography at http://www.flickr.com/photos/30350434@N07/ or click on the little Flickr badge on the right of the blog. But, for now, the shop is back in focus and I'm excited to have everything mostly the way I want the shop organized to function well. I'm what my doctor likes to call ADHD. She says I'm not truly OCD because I fidget too much. I have a "need" to have a place for everything and everything in its place. I tend to come in and blankly stare at things when they get too "out of hand". I do realize that my sense of what is out of hand varies greatly from the norm, but my little behavioral problem is actually something I embrace. Most times our weakness is our strength and vice versa.

So, changes. Let's see. I have a new heating and cooling system for the shop. I put in a ductless heat pump (DHP). Now that I have this unit for the shop and the DHP system I had installed in the house a couple years back, I'm thinking my 1000 gallon propane tank will last a good ten years once I get it filled again. That's a lot of barbecues!!

I took down eight feet of shelving to enable better vertical lumber storage. For now, I have shorts on the remaining twelve feet of shelving, as well as assorted kitty litter bucket. They're the new version of old five gallon buckets I used to collect. Quite handy.

One thing I'd been waiting on was a proper outfeed table for the table saw. I knew approximately what I wanted, but once I found out I was going to be able to take the bending course with Seth, I put it off until I got through that. I couldn't easily build the table like I had studied and seen on Marc Spagnuolo's site, The Woodwhisperer because I really don't have anyone that is readily available to lift heavy objects. To see how it is supposed to be done check out Marc's video. This table is to be my outfeed/assembly/bending table. Instead of the approach Marc takes, I started with a simple box as a base that was level and square. I don't really need more storage, so did not opt for a set of base cabinets. Once the box was in place, I put the box skins (plywood) down. I drill pocket holes in all of the "ribs" to enable me to suck the bottom skin up to the ribs, which it seemed logical would be level, if set atop the level base. Luckily, logic prevailed. Here is an in progress shot of the build.

After the ribs were set, I glued and brad nailed the sub-top to the ribs. Through out the process I checked for flatness with a long piece of steel stock I have for just such occasions. I have one corner that dips about 1/64", which bothers me, but not enough. Next came the final, top layer which is only screwed down. This layer is to be sacrificial, but I'm guessing it will be years before I need to address it. The entire assembly sits about a 1/64" to 1/32" below the level of the table. Oh yeah, I also replaced the off cut table for the saw with one of the exterior doors I still had. The original was very cheap particle board. The last things to do were to route out the miter slot extensions and install a shelf to house the veneer and bending equipment.

I needed to run a new dust collection leg and needed some extra pipe and fittings, so now was a good time to rebuild my sliding compound miter station's dust collection, install a proper fence and finally get a table on the right of the saw. The design for the dust hood originated from Mark Hochstein over at Gunpowder Woodworks. He has a phenomenal shop and recently completed a very beautiful dining table. You should definitely stop by and check it out.

This new hood is very effective and once I get the rubber/plastic strip curtain in place will work even better. I increased the pipe diameter to 5" and being the first branch out of the cyclone, there is plenty of CFM. The strip curtain will provide velocity and direct it wherever the saw penetrates the curtain. Quite ingenious of Mark.

Adding another leg to my existing system was relatively easy, as I have a couple Ys I installed to facilitate expansion as I grew into the shop. Here's a shot of the piping in the crawl space. To all my energy and building associates: YES, I KNOW I'm supposed to have a vapor barrier down. I'm in the desert and will get around to it one of these days.

After getting the pipe secured below, I got all my Ys, corners and blast gates install up top. I also installed a boom arm to use on any tools that will require dust collection.

Since I'm getting ready to start designing some lamps I went out this weekend and got all the parts to make a hot pipe bending rig. It will also come in handy to do small bends on scale models for future designs.

I told ya it was gonna be a long post! The next thing I'll be adding is probably a proper router table. I've been using a top and fence I made years ago that mounts on a couple saw horse. I have the dust collection port in place for when I get around to that.

Thanks for stopping by!

Icarus Landed on His Feet

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 21:55:00 +0000

A little update on the piece that was started as part of the bending class I took at The Port Townsend School of Woodworking. I got home and found this in my email and thought I would share with all of you. I wish I could get over to Bainbridge Island for the show!

Its finally done! trimmed, sanded, with enough white stain to look like bone and some small walnut dowels as spacers. If you want to see it in person, it will be part of my show at The Gallery on Bainbridge Island August 3^rd to 27^th.

I hope you are all having a great summer!

Seth

A Tour of Tumblewood

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 01:08:00 +0000

Periodically I'm asked to do a video tour of the shop. Today, I have it fairly clean, so here you go. I hope you enjoy. Feel free to ask any questions you may have on set-up, etc.

The Butler Really DID Do It!!

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 03:12:00 +0000

In my previous post, I mention my friend Todd Butler and his wife, Elizabeth were at the wood bending class at the Port Townsend School of Woodworking. He just posted a small bit on the class over at his blog, The Butler Did It. He also links you to his Photoshop site where he has a ton of very detailed shots of the different procedures we studied in this weekend class. It's definitely worth the time to look at all the shots. He has captured a lot of details. Good job, Todd!

Bending with Seth Rolland

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 16:09:00 +0000

Last weekend I had the opportunity to take my first live woodworking class. I belong to The Woodwhisperer Guild and Shannon Roger's The Hand Tool School and I've been to a few seminars, but this was two very full days at the Port Townsend School of Woodworking learning bending technique from Seth Rolland. Seth is one of my favorite modern woodworking artists. You can see some of his work at Seth Rolland Custom Furniture Design to understand why I was so excited to take this class. In this post I will discuss the different methods we covered in the class. There was a lot of information, so I will not go into great detail. I encourage you to read all you can about bending and, if the opportunity arises to study with a professional, take it!

The school is located in beautiful Port Townsend, Washington where my brother spent time in the Coast Guard manning this lighthouse.

This was his view every day.

The town has a vibrant and very funky vibe. Located in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountain, it is lush, but only receives 18.75 inches of rainfall per year. This was the view off the deck of the house we rented for several days.

On our first day of class some of us got to go the the local farmer's market, which although smaller than the local market here in Pasco, WA had much cooler fare to offer. I had a Big Bob sandwich which had fresh salmon and egg among other things. Delicious! I also very much enjoyed that the town is extremely dog friendly. Many people had their little and not so little buddies with them.

On the first day of the class we got the prerequisite safety talk, which is more a philosophy of mindfulness than anything else. Because this class was focused on bending and only two days, Seth had all the material we would need for the two days already prepped and ready to go. He did take us into the machine room to show us how he made regular and tapered laminate strips. For any size that can be done on the tablesaw, he prefers to do them there, using a thin kerf blade. For tapers, he will either use a sled that is equipped with toggle clamps to create the tapered laminate on the tablesaw or a simple sled that holds the laminate for use in a planer. I apologize that I didn't get photos of those particular items. For laminates that are wider than the tablesaw's capacity, he suggests a bandsaw and a drum sander or planer using a sled to keep the thin strips from exploding as the force of the planer knives engage the work.

The first class session was bending laminates using forms. I wish I'd had this class prior to building Gretchin's Cradle. The form I built for the laminated legs was way too much material and going with a positive and negative form made the glue up much more difficult than it really needed to be. Seth quickly shaped a half elliptical form in the machine shop, fared the curve and drilled some holes for clamping. We then arranged the laminates according to the cabinet makers triangle Seth had placed on them earlier and got to rolling on the glue. The other form was to show acute and concave bends, which take much more care to accomplish without blowout.

After lunch we got to tackle free form bending utilizing a vacuum press system. This was a lot of fun! We first stacked the laminates in the vacuum bag and drew a vacuum. Then we moved the laminates into the form we wanted to create. Once satisfied with the form, we had to create blocking to hold the form. Then it was a matter of removing the laminates, applying glue, re-installing the laminates into the vacuum bag and getting everything back into position and clamped down. That and a bit of clean up brought our first day to a close and we were off to have some beers and then some great Indian food with Tim Lawsen, the Executive Director of the school.

The second day of class we returned to the free form bend. The vacuum bag was removed and we embarked on a complimentary free form bend using surgical tubing. This is something I can't see myself ever doing on my own. There is just too much going on for one person. You need one or two people bending ahead while another feeds the tubing ahead of the person drawing it tight. The results were still quite good.

While we were stretching tubing we had the steam generator going to heat the steam box. Seth's generator was an old electric deep fryer with a trouble light dome caulked to the top. It made copious amounts of steam, but chose this day to die. After a bit of excitement with the local fire department we quickly got other steam boxes going. A Twitterverse buddy of mine, Todd Butler (@Tbdi0629) had come to the class, along with his wife Elizabeth. Together they run The Butler Did It Woodworks. Todd had the Rockler steam generator and a PVC steam box with him. Tim Lawsen had built the steam box outlined in the Veritas Steam-Bending Instruction Booklet. We got those up and running and discovered that while the steam got to temperature in the PVC steam box, the box itself was dissipating, instead absorbing and holding the heat. With a small modification, we connected Todd's steam generator to Seth's steam box. Seth's steam box design seemed to do the best for holding heat and I liked that it was made to easily add sections for longer pieces. The box is made from CDX plywood, has blocks on the bottom at angles to both support the bending pieces and allow for good steam movement. All the edges are sealed with a heat resistant caulk and screwed together. Simple weather stripping is used on the door and flanges to prevent too much steam escaping, although you need to allow some steam to escape, so that boards can be fully engulfed for even steaming. Weep holes are place on the bottom to allow condensation to drain.

The basic principle of steam bending is that you are softening the natural occurring glue, called lignin, so the fibers of the wood can move past each other. This shot of a failed bend shows the lignin between the fibers.

Once the lignin sets up again, minus a bit of spring back, you have a bend. In this shot, you see we twisted a piece.

To do that we first bent the wood along one axis, then along the perpendicular axis to break all the lignin bonds. Once done a clamp was affixed on the top and we twisted the piece. You can see how the fiber slid past each other in this shot.

We also got instruction on hot pipe bending, which is used quite a bit in the luthier trade. Be sure to not to use galvanized pipe, as the coating takes a long time to burn off and is not good for you. You want the pipe hot enough to make drops of water dance, but not evaporate.

Hotter than that and you'll too easily scorch your wood, cooler and it will take forever to relax the lignin. In the following shots, you can see the set up of the propane torch and how high to set the flame.

Here are some shots from the class and a short, my apologies, poor video of us bending on the elliptical form.

While in Port Townsend I stopped at the local Rockler and picked up my steam generator. I also have the basic bending hardware as well as the transition hardware on the way from Lee Valley Tools. Soon I will finally build my outfeed/assembly/bending/router table on the back of the tablesaw. I'll keep you posted, as always.

NOTE:
There was a in depth discussion on glues and why Seth uses the glue he does on laminates. Urea Formaldehyde found in glue such as Unibond 800 and DAP Weldwood Plastic Resin Glue, which create a rigid glue bond, is classified as a carcinogen. While there are some, like myself, who don't seem to be sensitive to formaldehyde, there are others, like my wife who are very sensitive to these type of environmental toxins. A person's sensitivity can increase dramatically from prolonged exposure. From discussions with Titebond, Seth had decided to primarily use Titebond II for glueing laminates. If you do use a Urea Formaldehyde product in your shop, be sure to wear appropriate safety gear and try to limit your exposure time. To learn more about Formaldehyde do some research. Here are a couple links to articles I found:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/formaldehyde ; http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehhe/trailerstudy/pdfs/08_118152_Compendium%20for%20States.pdf

Twisted Timber and the Dogs - Fini

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 05:31:00 +0000

That would be a good name for a band! Next up was the gap/stop. The Split-Top Roubo has a few, what I consider, advantages over a solid slab top. Mind you, this is from someone who is mostly knowledgeable from reading and a bit of doing. The main and most advantageous aspect to building the split-top is being able to handle all the operations without help. That's not to say help wouldn't make the job of flattening the top easier, but it is less convenient to have to schedule the help. The other aspect is that the gap/stop can be flipped from the flush position to being proud of the top and acting as a stop for planing. We'll have to see how much I really use that. I tend to want to do the major stock removal, which is where one would employ the stop, at the machines. I really believe the forefathers of woodworking would have gladly used machines to do the "menial" tasks. But, then what would have happened to apprenticeships and how would that have impacted the future of woodworking? Something to ponder.

I was getting my gap/stop from a twelve foot 2" x 12". After setting up the support at the bandsaw, I ripped the 2" x 12" in half. I had to be careful feeding the board to avoid binding or stressing the blade.

After ripping, I used my custom made winding sticks to evaluate the twist.

They're simply two pieces of 1" x 4" mdf. One has an edge painted black with a Sharpie and the other is the factory white. I have another piece about ten feet long that I use for setting up infeed and outfeed support.

I find if you use and place infeed and outfeed support correctly, it's not that hard to get the twist out of a board without loosing a lot of thickness.

If you can have one of the supports at the crux of the twist you can begin the cut with the downward pressure at that point.

I was a little off from the crux of the twist, but not too bad. You can see the progress in these photos.

Once jointed, I set up and sent the board through the planer. The entire process only wasted 3/8" of the thickness. I went from 1 13/16" to 1 7/16".

That left me enough to get the entire gap/stop from this half of the original 2" x 12". I went back to the bandsaw and resawed the board and again ran the two halves through the planer. I got to each being 5/8", which was perfect. There was enough material to get the five center dividers from this board, too.

This shot is from the next evening before I started working again. The old growth Fir is dry through and through. That has really been the joy in working with this old wood. It just doesn't move.

Here you can see what I find so special about old growth Fir. This old tree experienced some good droughts in Eastern Oregon. There is one section that had 4 growth rings within 1/16".

To keep things aligned during the glue up, I used the method I'd seen David Marks use on DIY Woodworks. For each divider, I tapped in two small brad nails and clipped them, so a nib was sticking up. Before applying glue, I aligned and pressed the assembly together, so when I did apply the glue the pieces fit and stayed in place as I applied the clamps.

The final step in the build for me was to make the sliding dog hole and all the dogs. The sliding dog hole was made the same way I made the other dog holes. After gluing up the board, it was simple to cut and fit to the Benchcrafted vise hardware on the bandsaw.

This seemed to be as good a time as any to go ahead and do the final flattening on the top. The finish I'd already applied made it easy to see my progress.

After creating a bunch of shavings, I had a dead-flat top. I took six passes diagonally and six more with the grain. I didn't worry about tearout, and there are still some planing marks, but it is flat.

I'm really happy that I installed the floor sweep on this side of the shop. Most of the mess I make on this side will always be able to be swept without putting dust into the air.

The process I used to "mass produce" dogs was first milling some stock to be close, but a little oversized for the holes in the bench. I ripped the stock first at the band saw, jointed, edged and thicknessed at the jointer and planer, then crosscut to length with the tablesaw sled.

A stop block on the bandsaw stopped the long cut on the dogs and the little "chin" was cut using a square piece of plywood for a guide.

I had some of the dog stock left and ripped some strips at the bandsaw. I only needed one side to be smooth for gluing, so I left the other side rough, figuring it would help keep the dogs in place. I cut the spring pieces to length with my 2" chisel and also put the inaugural chisel marks in the top at the same time. By clamping the dogs in the vise at an angle, it was extremely quick to put the angle at the bottom of the dog where the spring would be glued and screwed to the dog. A one man assembly line later and the dogs were done.

And THAT, my friends, concludes my participation in The Woodwhisperer Guild's Roubo Bench Build. This was, as always, more time consuming than I originally thought. I'm still getting the processes of building more efficient within my shop. This build changed the location of my bandsaw and opened up some other idea for changes. I'll get into those when I make a firm decision.

This is the completed bench:

And this is me actually using the bench to build my Br'all. A full tutorial can be found on my friend, Chris Wong's website Flair Woodworks. After all, EVERYONE needs a Br'all!

The beautiful wooden plane pictured is made by my buddy Scott Meek. He's a very talented plane maker. This smoother is heaven to use. Be sure to support your boutique tool makers.

If after following this blog for the last few months, you're still jonesing for more of that bench building fever, check out these other fine people doing their versions of a woodworking bench. If I've missed anyone, my apologies. Contact me and I can add your site to this list.

The Village Carpenter

High Rock Woodworking

Better Living Through Woodworking
The Wood Canuck

And, of course, you can sign up for The Woodwhisperer Guild and learn from Marc Spagnuolo. Marc is taking the Guild through the building of this lifetime woodworking bench. With his usual easy delivery and thorough understanding of the process, he makes this very large project easy enough for the beginner, who has a very basic tool selection.

I hope you have enjoyed the building process. Woodworking is what I want to do until I die. It is what gives me peace and is my passion. If you think you may be interested in woodworking, contact me and I will try to get you pointed to a resource near you and/or online. Thanks for taking the journey!

The Deadman Lives - Part 11

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:53:00 +0000

I thought I'd get a lot more done this week, but NOOOO!!! I've had an issue with the master bath shower door installation. I'm up to four corrected shipments, once the part arrives tomorrow. Luckily, it wasn't my error. After I'm done with this bench, finishing the master bath "semi" remodel will be my priority. I get to make several lamps for that project and I'll, of course, take you along.

This week I got the bench assembled and applied two coats of polymerized tung oil. These photos are with the oil still wet.

This particular oil is my favorite finish, as it's super easy to apply and looks wonderful. I've used straight tung oil and a tung oil varnish before, but this applies and dries differently. It also provides the ability to build a finish, if you wish. I like it for the bench because I can reapply without any prep work and because this is a work bench, the surface prep was extremely minimal.

All this week I spent laying out the design and position of the dog holes for the deadman. I got to use my favorite power tool, the bandsaw, for the design and then moved to the drill press for all the holes.

I used a forstner bit for the holes and set my depth stop to only allow the point of the forstner bit to penetrate the back of the deadman. I then came back and finished up from the back side. Both the drilling and clean up of the design were much more difficult than I expected.

The growth ring are very tight and, while I don't know why, this particular piece was harder to pare with my just sharpened chisel than the Osage Orange. Here is what I came up with after a coat of oil has been applied.

This week, I'll get started on either the gap/stop and/or the dogs.

Get Woodworking Week Is Here. Get To It!!

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:56:00 +0000

Tom Iovino, a prolific blogger for Tom's Workbench came up with

The idea is for those of us that are doing woodworking to encourage newcomers to dig in and and give it a shot.

Woodworking for me is about designing. It's a creative outlet. I started helping out a friend who was a general contractor years ago. All that time with power tools made me comfortable with them. Taking my time with cutting, and lots of it, greatly improved my hand to eye coordination.

Almost 15 years ago, my wife Sylvia and I bought a very modest 1910 Craftsman Four Square house. The house had all the original trim and it was in great condition, except for nearly a century of paint on the woodwork. It was all very basic and unadorned.

I had the idea of woodworking in my head prior to this, but bringing that house back to it's original beauty was what really fueled the fire and placed the desire squarely in my heart. I bought a contractor tablesaw, a planer and a drum sander during that time, as well as assorted other small power tools.

Although we loved the house and all it's character, it was downtown and not the greatest area. I had bought five acres of land several years into that remodel and by about year number eight, we decided to finish up the last of it and move to the country. The deal was that Sylvia would get a pool, I would get my dream woodworking shop and the dogs would have lots of room to run.

Five years into building the shop and I still had not built anything of my design and not much of anything beyond regular trim work. I had been pouring over all the woodworking magazines: American Woodworker and WOOD for years; Fine Woodworking and Woodwork magazine came in as I gained the basic knowledge the former magazines target toward the "beginner" woodworker. I had watched David Marks on DIY Woodworks, discovered a young man named Marc Spagnuolo who was creating online content that was geared toward the woodworking community, and started seeing more and more online activity to follow.

I was well on my way to being one of those guys whose real hobby is the shop, not building furniture. I was comfortable. Yes, I had big dreams to design and build, but I was building a shop, dammit, and it needed to be perfect before I started down that road. The problem was, nothing is ever perfect and if you're going to do anything, at some point you have to actually start doing it!

Queue a request from a life long friend, who had just found, after trying for quite some time that they had finally got pregnant and in my enthusiastic joy for them, the words coming from my mouth, "I'd love to build you something for the baby." Oh my god!! What was I thinking!? The shop isn't done! I'm not ready for this! Take it back! Quick, take it BACK! After the initial shock of what I'd committed to subsided, I thought about it and, hey! I've read about it. I've studied it for years. I CAN DO THIS!! That statement is key! YOU can do this!! It's not rocket science. It's a series of steps toward an end product.

The result of me finally doing, instead of planning to do has been a turning point in my life. I'm in the shop as much as humanly possible. I've not only dreamed of a life of design and woodworking, I'm doing it and although there are times I still freak out over one process or another, I think it through and approach it with confidence. Everyone can do what I'm doing, you just have to believe in yourself and GET WOODWORKING!!

Enjoy your one shot at this life and make it everything you dream!!

Vic

Leg Vise Complete - Part 10

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:47:00 +0000

At the close of the last post, I had just started in on the guide wheel brackets. This week was all about finishing the last piece to the leg vise. Because of what I wanted to do with the brackets, there needed to be a specific sequence to the process. After cutting the slot for the wheels, I cut the curves for the wheels and a 1/4" slice off the front of the brackets. I then cut the front profile.

After that, I adhered the off-cut back on and that allowed me to cut the side profiles. Again, I repeated the "chevron" pattern. Some time spent with my 2 inch chisel and some of my rasps and files and the brackets were cleaned up.

Next I tapped for the set screws for the wheel pins, installed the Orange Osage pins I'd made and put a slight bevel on the round.

When I went to tap for the bolts that hold the brackets to the legs, I spaced and used the wrong tap. I went too big and messed up the holes. Luckily, the world makes a product called PC Lumber that set up in about an hour and let me re-tap for the bolts.

From here is was a matter of assembling the vise and adjusting the glide for smooth movement. After I'd achieved a fairly smooth action on the leg vise, I mounted the leg vise's screw bushing. This fits the screw like a glove and keeps everything precisely tuned. I used my router plane to inlay the bushing and it is purposefully not a tight fit to allow adjustment. Sorry, but I didn't get any photos of this procedure. I always have too much fun using the router.
Here are a few photographs of the completed leg vise.

I'm extremely excited to know that this week I'll finally be getting rid of the sawhorses I've been working on as a bench for the last couple years!

Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...Everyone must build Roubo

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:25:00 +0000

If you've been paying attention and you know the bloggers I do, you know that for one reason or another workbenches are "it" right now. Kari Hultman of the Village Carpenter has started her version of the Andres Roubo workbench. Erik Gilling of Better Living Through Woodworking and Chris Adkins of High Rock Woodworking are just two off the top of my head that are building along with me and we're building along with The Woodwhisperer Guild, headed by yet another bench builder and entrepreneur, Marc Spagnuolo. It seems everyone is taking slightly different approaches to the bench, but the one thing they all have in common is they are the Roubo workbench that Chris Schwarz popularized in the woodworking community with his books on workbenches. Be sure to check out their blogs, you can even view Marc's progress on his woodworking blog that is housed on his free site The Woodwhisperer.

This last week I finally got back into the shop. I'm now in the process of building the parts and assembling the Benchcrafted leg vise. The first step was after I finished fitting the glide to the roughed out chop, was to figure out the location of the of the hole for the vise's screw and the mortise for the guide rail. I just clamped everything in place, leaving about 1/16" on the top of the chop that I will flush after the complete install.

I transferred all the marks to the chop and drilled for the screw.

For the glide mortise, I started by using my Triton router with an edge guide to make the initial slots on either side of the leg. I drilled the waste between the two slots with my drill press and cleaned everything up with my chisels.

After checking alignment, I drilled the hole through the leg for the screw and laid out the design on the chop, which is a continuation of the design used for the glide. The design is based on the chevron design found in the art deco style. You can barely see it laid in this picture of the chop.

The wheel and screw are actually fastened to the chop with machine screws and required tapping. Luckily, my Grandpa had given me his tap and die set. It was nice to finally be able to use it.

I mounted the hand wheel and tested the clearance of the glide in the glide mortise. After that, I cut out the design for the chop and cleaned it up with my chisels. My chisel of choice is my 2". It's probably the most used blade in my shop. The weight and size make it very easy to yield for many operations.

I made some 3/8" dowels on my Woodrat from the Osage Orange, drilled the holes to pin the glide and drove the dowels home. Since Orange Osage is so hard, it should do well as a pin for this purpose.

Late last night I posed the question to my social media friends, should I inlay this nut or not? Was there any reason I should other than that seems to be the thing to do. The overwhelming response was to do the inlay, but no particular reasons why it may be better to do so, in terms of integrity. I decided to go ahead and do the inlay, thinking that besides being slightly better looking, it would put less stress on the machine threads that are only holding in Fir, which is considered a softwood. Today, Marc Spagnuolo saw that I had decided to do the inlay and concurred on the possibility of this being slightly better in terms of strength.

The operation was again at the drill press using my large diameter forstner bit to hog the majority of the waste from the recess. I cleaned the perimeter with a chisel and got to the final depth and a clean bottom with my router plane. Here is the nut after the inlay process.

This morning while I drank my coffee, I decided to do some detail work on the chop and glide. The glide "stub" sits proud and rather than cutting it off flush to the surface, I decided to facet it, as well as cleaning up the final edges of the chop. This is a detail I later found will need to be changed.

The last thing I did today was start to rough out the glide wheel brackets. Once I get these done, I can finally glue up the base and set the tops on!

I'm pretty close to wrapping this project. I still have dogs to make and the lower shelf.

TWW Roubo Build - Part 8: Builder's Block

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:02:00 +0000

I'd like to say I just haven't had any time in the shop this week, but the truth is I hit a wall. Earlier this week I milled the stock for my leg vise, deadman and parallel glide. All was going extremely well. I had routed the groove that the deadman needs in the bottom of the top of the bench. As you can see, I even had a knot explode on me.

No problem. These things happen. It wasn't catastrophic, just an annoyance. No one is ever going to look under the bench and I believe the leg will cover the transgression. I proceeded to figure out the design I wanted to incorporate into the leg vise and the parallel glide. I cut the design out on the bandsaw for the parallel glide, cleaned everything up with my chisels
and then proceeded to layout and drill the holes that are used to keep the leg vise from racking. CATASTROPHE!!!

I had horrible tear out. Luckily, I have many friends on Twitter and other social media sites and I ran the situation by them. Some felt I should just be OK with it and move forward. "It's just a bench!". My buddy Chris Wong of Flair Woodworks and Time Warp Tools thought I could simply do another, thicker glide and plane off the offending tear out. My Hand Tool School teacher, Shannon Rogers, explained the forces that the glide encounters doing it's job and suggested that maybe Fir was a bit too soft to handle the situation. My first reaction was to follow Chris' suggestion to go thicker and stay with the Fir. A little background might help here. I'm a bit obsessive compulsive in certain things of my life. I really wanted to build the entire bench out of Fir. If I was to introduce a contrasting wood, I would have done the end cap of the wagon vise in that wood. I envisioned me sawing apart the end cap from the bench, which is now glued in place, simply to appease a compulsion that would gnaw at me endlessly until I succumbed to the somewhat psychotic demand. Ultimately, I am choosing to move forward with the glide being made from some Osage Orange I have on hand, which over time will fade, but is fairly close in color to the old growth Fir I've used on the rest of the bench.
While I had the part dimensioned and the mortise fit, I laid out the cuts I need to make on the leg.
I will wait to do those until I have the new part, just in case the dimensions change a bit. Only time will tell if I have to start tearing things apart to make them either match or properly contrast. YES, I'm weird, but I'm OK with that.

The Woodwhisper Guild Roubo Build-Part 7

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:32:00 +0000

It seems some parts of this build go quite fast and others, not so much. The fitting of the tenons is something you really want to sneak up on. So, I tend to cut everything a little fat, then pare, test, pare, test, pare. Except for the haunch for the long stretcher that was cut deep enough to accommodate the extruded "V" shape that the deadman runs on, all the joinery was originally cut using my Excalibur for the tablesaw. That particular cut was going to take me outside of my comfort zone on the tablesaw and the litmus test on anything you do on power tools should be, "if it doesn't seem safe, DON'T DO IT!" There are many ways to accomplish the same thing. In this case, I got to use my Doc Holliday saw from Bad Axe Toolworks.

In this first shot, you can see I used a flip-stop to enable repeatable cuts and I drew a line on the fence to make it easier judge to where I needed to cut after the initial shoulder.

This next shot is the view of the nibbling out of the waste. Again, I didn't find the time savings of installing the dado blade to be worth it. I'd rather cut the shoulders of the tenon with my Freud Fusion blade and so made a series of cuts, broke off the waste and pared with my 2 inch chisel.

Although I don't want to fill the splits in the legs with epoxy, you can see here that it may prove inevitable. When I go to glue the ends with the short stretchers, I will use the West System epoxy and make sure they are set to dry with the split upward. I'll also use some blue tape to keep any epoxy from coming out of the split. After the glue up, I'll reassess whether I need to fill the cracks. Most of what I'll be concerned with is the aesthetics. If I get too much epoxy visible in the crack, I will fill it completely.

Once all the short stretchers were cut and were a snug "slip fit", I did a dry fit and squared them up to enable me to take the measurements of the long stretchers directly from the piece.

If you are a follower of Marc Spagnuolo's The Woodwhisperer, you'll be familiar with this process known as relative dimensioning.

These two final shots are a couple views of the base dry fitted. Although the entire project is built to be "knock down", it is quite the feat to both assemble and disassemble. The mortise and tenon joints on the long stretchers will be mechanical held together with hardware that came in my Benchcrafted kit. Therefore, these joints were slightly more loose than a "slip fit".

After the first assembly, I checked for square and found I needed to slightly move the position of the tenons that let the top sit on the base by about 1/16 of an inch. To do this, I had to get on the bench and lift each end out of the mortises and carefully slide each long stretcher from the legs, all the while trying to avoid letting anything crash to the floor.

After seeing the piece as a whole, it seemed to me to be beefy enough to not need a fifth leg. Luckily, there is the The Sagulator. I entered the dimensions of the bench with 200lbs of dead weight in the center. Even with that, the bench should only deflect by .003" and the threshold on The Sagulator is .020", so I'm well within engineering tolerances.

A Beefy Base - TWW Roubo Build Part 6

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:27:00 +0000

Welcome back for the sixth installment of my build for The Woodwhisperer Guild Roubo bench build. Upfront, I apologize for not capturing and subsequently glossing over some of this process. I'm still not great at remembering to always document. I get caught up in the process and totally forget.

The first up was laying out the mortises for the top to land on to the base. Again, the Sketch Up model that Aaron Marshall did for Guild was open and constantly referenced. Using Aaron's model has convinced me that Sketch Up is a must for me to learn. Any questions I've had during this build have been easy to answer by referencing the exploded views. I am always tailoring some of the measurements due to my bench being both 10 feet long and only having a 3 inch laminate top.

I had been planning on routing the mortises, but wasn't really looking forward to it because of all the dust it would be creating. More on dust later. Through discussion on Twitter and an earlier recommendation by Rob Bois of The Bois Shop (A VERY excellent podcaster), I decided to buy the Triton 2 1/4 HP plunge router. While, according to all the input, the Triton did not have the 5 star rating of the Festool routers, it did have really good dust collection and at a much lower price point. Luckily, Milne Power Tools, which is conveniently right across the street from my office, carries the Triton brand. When I got the router home, I made a few modifications with foam tape to help the dust collection to be a bit more effective and set up what I like to call my white trash boom arm.

This allowed me to route without dealing with the weight of the vacuum hose, which I fed over the top of the only interior wall and suspended with a rope. If I had only had some baling wire!

Once the mortises were cut, I set up the Excalibur sliding table with the miter fence and cut the legs to length and also cut the tenons.

I'm essentially a lazy person, so I just nibbled the material away rather than deal with changing out my everyday blade with the dado set. It really didn't take up any time and the cheeks cleaned up quickly with my 2 inch chisel.

I spent quite a while perfecting the fit of the legs to the top, but I'm finding more and more I actually love hand work. I can lose all track of time while I'm playing with a sharp blade on wood. The size of these tenons was a real joy to work with the 2 inch chisel. The angle is set rather shallow to be a really great paring blade.

Once I was happy with the fit of the legs to the top, I stopped and milled all the stretcher parts. This is a process that I forgot to document. I still use, and sure I always will, power tools for any of the processes that would be labor intensive with hand tools.

Since I plan to first assemble the ends, I made sure the legs were dead square and marked the shoulders of the tenons. I then laid out the mortise on the legs that will house the stretchers. Again, I extensively used Aaron's Sketch Up model.

The next part, which I know some are interested in, was again missed in photo documentation. The Woodrat, a machine that I really love, is also a machine I really hate. I have not come up with a good solution for dust collection while using it. I couldn't cut the tenons with the Triton because they were too deep for the Triton plunge capacity. The Woodrat really excels at rather quickly cutting mortises, although I don't have mine set up to easily handle this size of timber. You can get a pretty good overview of what the Woodrat is capable of on the Woodrat Site. I don't remember the name of the guy, but before he died, he reviewed tools and showed how to use them in great detail. He always had some young lady helping him out. If you remember his name, please post it in the comments.

Tonight I finished up the mortises and will start the stretchers tomorrow. If there are any processes you have a question about or frankly advise on a better way to do a process, please let me know in the comments.

Thanks again for following the build!

Whew! Part Five - TWW Guild Roubo Build

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:10:00 +0000

This was easily the most intimidating part of TheWoodwhisperer Guild build for me. I've only cut one dovetail up to this point by hand. It did not go well. This time I'm cutting blind dovetails and from reading the BenchCrafted instructions, you either get the fit of this vise correct, or it doesn't work well. What good is a premium vise if it doesn't work like it should?

So, I laid out my dovetails and put my little Doc Holliday to work. I tried to employ what Shannon Rogers has taught us at the Hand Tool School and did my best to "split the line". I don't know if it was because I was cutting horizontally, the learning curve, or I'm just a spaz, but I managed to drift on each dovetail when cutting the right side. Both were straight and true on the left where I could actually see the line, but the right sides both drifted to the left as I approached the bottom of the tails.

After cutting out the dovetails, I needed to "straighten" them and pare the waste. I got to use my Knew Concepts fret saw. I think next time I can get closer to the base, but even though I was probably being overly cautious, it was fun getting there.

Right off the bat, I found I needed to fire up the sharpening station. My chisels and, as I found, my planes all needed drastic attention. I had too shallow an angle on my chisels and was damaging the edge trying to chop out the waste. The station proved to work very well. Since I still haven't been pleased creating the initial angle on my Delta variable speed grinder, I used the DMT Duo Sharp in the bottom drawer, moved up to the wet stones, then finished on the sandpaper on glass. Considering I was completely reshaping the blades, I was surprised how little time it took to get them from rough to a polished finish. Because I tend to be a space cadet, I made sure to write the settings I used on for the Veritas Mark II honing guide.

Once I had the tails cleaned up, I created a 1/4" rebate on the bottom of the tails to register against the end cap and transferred the tails to the end cap.

After rigging up a clamping solution, which I will NEVER have to do again once this bench is built, I again pulled out my Bad Axe dovetail saw and got to work. It all seemed to go well, but as you can see in the second photo, I was over zealous in marking my lines. After using the knife to mark, I wanted to define the line a bit better with my chisel and I think I pushed too hard and "moved" the line.

After chiseling out the waste and doing a dry fit, you can see my joint had almost as big of a gap as my front teeth.

With much finessing and dry fitting, Saturday night I glued everything up and called it a day. I did, however, return to the shop about an hour later to clean up my glue mess. I'm still not very good at applying just the right amount.

Luckily after clamping up and paring down the end cap, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd originally suspected. I've thought about using glue and sawdust to help hide the mistake, but I think this is a good lesson to remember. The second and bottom is much better than the top and, as time goes on and I keep practicing, I WILL get better.

Now came the fitting of the vise. Because I went with a bench top thickness of 3", the Benchcrafted directions said to use 3/4" thick spacers to properly position the tail vise runners. That ended up being too thick and made the hardware bind too much to travel as freely as the video shows. After trying a couple pieces of 3/4" plywood, which is actually 23/32", I thought momentarily about just using it.

Considering the reclaimed aspect of this build, I decided not to introduce man made wood. It turned out that was a good decision in terms of the vise, too. I ended up with a even slightly less thickness and the vise's action was incredible. So, if you are building along or using a Benchcrafted tail vise on a future bench. Test it out and play with the thickness.

The last thing that was kind of freaking me out was the drilling and final set of the runners. In the previous post when I'd drilled for the retaining bolts, I had not though about the placement of the runners I think I dodge that bullet by a hair, which you can see in this photo.

I think the hardest part is over. I already have the legs, dead man and tail vise parts milled. I need to mill the rails still and then on to the base construction!!!

The Woodwhisper Guild Roubo Build-Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:45:00 +0000

The last two evenings I haven't had any time in the shop, except to clean up a bit. But, this weekend, which started on Friday, I awoke to a damp and frosty morning. It was the perfect start to a blissful weekend in the shop.

The first thing I worked on was the finishing touches on the mortise and tenon for the end cap. This was the second tenon I've cut. The first was at WIA '11, where I was fortunate enough to have Adam Cherubini give me some one on one instruction on sawing.

For my second tenon and a monster tenon at that, I did pretty darned good with my new Bad Axe Beastmaster and Wyatt Earp saws. The tenon required very little work to fit just right into the mortise.

The fit was just about perfect. I left the cap a little proud on both sides to allow me to flush it up after I've got everything together.

Next, I went back and poured over the PDF from Benchcrafted and the Sketch Up plan that Aaron Marshall has put together for the The Woodwhisperer Guild before I started drilling holes to both attach the end cap to the top and the ones needed for the tail vise.

The Benchcrafted instruction are VERY clear that a perfect fit is essential for flawless operation.

Next up was the part I was dreading the most. I really hate dust and have tried to design excellent dust collection through out the shop. The one weak area is any hand held routing operations. On the next post I'll review the Triton router I bought in response to the mess made when I routed the channel for the tail vise screw.

The initial fit looks very good. I think it will be dead on!

For the next exercise I got to put my sharpening station to good use. I drilled the holes for the bolts that attach the cap to the bench and drilled and chiseled out the holes to capture the nuts.

You can see in this photo how hard the winter growth rings are in this Fir. After talking to Shannon, who is my Hand Tool School teacher, I'm increasing the angle of my bench chisels from 20 degrees to 25 and adding a steeper micro-bevel.

In the midst of all this, I managed to mill up my legs, deadman, and leg vise boards. I'm going thicker on the legs than in the plan. Mine are 5 3/8" x 4 1/4".

Hopefully, this weekend I'll finish up the top and move on to the base!

Split Top Roubo - The Top First

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:28:00 +0000

When building a bench, I think most people opt to build the bottom stretcher and leg assembly first. While that makes sense to me on one level, the sheer mass of the top made me think it would be much easier to tackle it first. The following is the process I went through from rough to finished (mostly) top.

The first step is assessing what exactly you need to do. With my very high tech winding sticks, I found the twist and high and lows of each timber. These winding sticks are made from two pieces of some 1"x4" MDF I have in stock for the house trim. Both are primer white and I ripped one down slightly and used a Sharpie on the other for contrast. They're straight and cheap!

Next, I used a long straight edge to level four roller stands on either ends of my jointer. I'm lucky enough to have an 83 inches in jointer table. Having the roller stands dead on helped in taking the twist out of the timber.

Normally, if you try to joint a twisted board, you end up following the twist as move the board across the jointer. The sheer weight of these actually allowed me to use the weight of the timbers to establish a flat face. I only had to push and keep the timbers in one position as I moved them across the blades.

Here are the before and after photos of one timber. They're representative of the majority of the wood.

There are also many "defects" such as this throughout the boards. Luckily, all the knots are nice and tight still.

Once I had a face flat, I made one of the adjacent faces square to the face. The next step was to resaw the remaining twist out of the timbers. I had to move my bandsaw to accommodate a 12 foot operation.

After I had the timbers resawn, I staged and numbered them for the planing operation which which would take them to a uniform size.

I, again, put infeed and outfeed rollers in place for handling these large pieces of wood.

Now that all the timbers were "roughly" finished, I could decide the sequence of boards for the top. Taking into consideration knots, color, and material size in relation to the final project size.

At this point, I ripped some of the timbers down and then cut them to length. One of the boards I ripped was then processed at the tablesaw with the Excalibur sliding table and a dado blade to make the square dog hole strip.

This is the glue up. I used a paint roller and about a 1/4 gallon of glue. A total of about 14 parallel Jet clamps, 8 Bessey F-clamps, and four cauls to help keep the pieces all lined up.

Here are two shots of the top all glued up and ready for the next step of installing the BenchCrafted tail vise and laying out for the base.

The entire build is going well. As usual, it's taking me far longer than I anticipated. Maybe someday, I'll either get faster or better at estimating my time.

Cleaning Timbers and an Early Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:01:00 +0000

I know, it's way too early for talk of Christmas, but people are gearing up and I'm especially filled with holiday cheer. Santa Claus must think I'm a very good boy, because he's recently sent me two very excellent Christmas gifts. I've received my Bad Axe saws from Mark Harrell.

Meet Doc, Wyatt and The BeastMaster! The beautifully handcrafted saws are exquisite. I had mine made with Cherry handles and stainless steel backs and split nuts. I can't wait until I get to play with my new little friends!

And today, my Benchcrafted hardware for my
Roubo bench arrived. The entire kit includes the leg vise and wagon vise hardware, along with extremely beefy bolts for the the bench stretchers. Those will allow me to adjust for seasonal movement, or if Sylvia ever decides I'm too damn expensive, she can take the bench apart and sell it after she's gotten rid of me. Remind me to make sure she stays happy!!!

The timbers are almost all cleaned up and I wanted to get you caught up. I brought over nearly 380 board feet of the reclaimed barn timbers, which is nearly three times the amount actually needed for the build. The reason for this is that it is a bit rough in places and without being able to see the wood, I really don't know how I am going to choose which timber becomes which piece of the build.

This is a shot of the board I'm cleaning right now. This is the last board that needed cleaning before I start laying out the pieces and start the rough dimensioning.

These are the tools I used for the surgical removal of all the errant nails. Pictured is the Wizard metal detector, gloves and ear muffs, dead blow hammer and chisel, small nail puller, cats paw, side cutters and a dental pick.
I used the Wizard to find the nails and marked each with chalk, then went back over each and used whichever tool suited the situation best to get the metal out of the board.

As you can see I had to excavate to get to the nails that had broken at the surface and rusted inward.

This final shot is how I set up the belt sander to remove the old age, grit and god knows what from the surface prior to subjecting any edge tools to these boards. The next step is selecting the parts from the oversized pile of lumber and start the rough dimensioning.

I HATE DUST. As you can see the floor is covered in sawdust and chips from the chiseling, but nothing got airborne. I've still got to figure out a better solution for my router operations.

Here's to Another Hundred Years

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 02:57:00 +0000

Finally, summer is gone, my winterizing chores are done and I get to build something. First up, I'm going to be building a Roubo Split Top Bench from the BenchCrafted plans via The Woodwhisperer Guild winter build. I have some phenomenal hardware on the way, also from BenchCrafted. Today, I went over to the warehouse and brought home some very old friends.

These old joists and timber frame members were bought over 15 years ago from a guy that had already been storing them for about twenty years. They were taken during a deconstruction of a 100 plus year old barn in eastern Oregon. I'm thinking they might be dry enough to work already. As you can see, old growth red fir has some very tight growth rings! I can't wait to clean these ladies up!!

Stay tuned for updates!! THIS is gonna be fun!

A Slight Re-design to Pay Due Respect

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 02:59:00 +0000

You may notice my blog has a little different layout. I don't know why I hadn't already addressed this, but now is better than never. I have been following Marc Spagnuolo for about four or five years. I think I discovered him shortly after he entered the realm of woodworking podcasting. The guy is simply a genius. He is a constant student and never claims to know everything about woodworking, but he does knows a hell of a lot and he knows a hell of a lot of other great woodworkers, who know a hell of a lot. (Could I use "a hell of a lot" anymore?) He's accessible and his podcasts are the best on the internet and, in my opinion, the best woodworking shows period on or off the internet. I've been a member of The WoodWhisperer Guild since it's inception and although I don't usually build along with the projects that The Guild is making, the enormous amount of information make it very well worth the money spent to become a Guild member. Please take the time to to click the affiliate link on the right side of my page and peruse his Guild site. If you don't know who Marc is or the online presence he has built, check out the free The WoodWhisperer offerings: The WoodTalk Online site for a really great talk radio webcast featuring Marc, Matt Vanderlist of Matt's Basement Workshop, the Podfather of Woodworking and Shannon Rogers - The Renaissance Woodworker. On Woodtalk Online you'll also find a new radio show featuring Marc and Matt reviewing woodworking DVDs and giving them a rating of 1 to 5 "grape sodas"; The WoodTalk Online Forum, which is the most friendly woodworking forum you will visit. Mean spirited or overly judgmental people simply aren't welcome; Last, but not least, is the Live Chat/Live Stream page where you can chat in real time with fellow woodworkers and usually get a glimpse into one of the many shops that stream live via Ustream, including mine. All these sites can be reached via the main The WoodWhisperer site.

Another addition is The Hand Tool School badge. The Hand Tool School is the brain child of Shannon Rogers, mentioned above. The premise behind the school is to capture the apprentice experience as best we can in this cyber age. You will learn how to use hand tools, which is an essential aspect of creating fine furniture. While I'm what is referred to as a hybrid woodworker, which means I make furniture with both power and hand tools, all the fine tuning and fit is done with hand tools. You simply can't set up any power tools to give you the fine fit and finish you can achieve with hand tools.

If you love woodworking as much as I do, are a beginner or even a well skilled woodworker, you have a more available knowledge base than ever before. Take advantage of that. I hope to see you around the community I love so much.

Modular Sharpening Station

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 04:27:00 +0000

YEAH!!! SPRING IS FINALLY HERE!!!

Spring brings mixed emotions. We had a very long winter and what has seemed to be a quite wet and extended spring has turned our very beige environment into a very green one. Sylvia's Garden that we planted last year with a bunch of trees and a perennial wildflower mix is vibrant! More than anything SUMMER IS ALMOST HERE!! Our summers here are great. The days are hot and the evenings are perfect for hanging out on the patio and taking evening swims. The flip side of that is I don't get into the shop nearly as much as I'd like, due to spring wake up and weekly maintenance chores.

Here and there, I've managed to get into the shop and my latest project has been to install my deep sink and small hot water tank.

This, of course, facilitated a great place to have a sharpening station.

To design this station, I took a few things into consideration. First, I wanted it to be modular to enable full access to the water tank for maintenance flushing and the sewer clean-out in case I ever need access to that. Second, I wanted this station to house all my sharpening arsenal, except the variable speed grinder, which will mount around the corner. Finally, I wanted a no mess solution to my water stone sharpening regimen.

The first thing I did was build the base,

then the cabinet to house my sharpening tools and supplies. The drawers come later.

Next up was the sharpening basin. A buddy had an off-cut piece of Corian he let me have. I was originally going to use it for the top of my upcoming router table, but I really liked the idea of using it here as it is impervious to water. The first thing I did was create a sub-base that I could more easily create the actual basin in. This was made 1/2" plywood for the bottom and 3/4" for the sides. For proper drainage I needed to create slope. To do this I split the bottom of the basin. So, I cut the plywood bottom and then created a deep kerf to allow it to bend. I also added a small strip of 1/8" plywood on the left and front side, then added the 3/4" sides. Now, I was ready to start cutting the Corian basin. The first piece to fit was the thin strip shown here.

Next I cut and fit the remaining pieces and glued them up. I used epoxy for a watertight seal and torqued the basin as much as I could without breaking it to allow the slope I wanted.

After the glue up I tested it for leaks and proper drainage.

I also cut an other piece of Corian to be the dam for the basin. That didn't quite work, as you can see in this shot. It was a slow leak, but I'm kinda OCD and it wasn't good enough.

Next up, stone holders. For cutting these little pieces I pulled out my crosscut sled. It was the only solution I could think of that I felt was a safe option for cutting these.

Then over to the basin to position and mark everything out for glue up.

I used a file to round over the edges of the blocks, so they were less prone to chip in use.

I used pure silicone sealant to adhere the blocks into place. I preferred this over epoxy to allow me to remove them in the future if I get new water stones and they don't quite fit.

When I test the basin earlier for leaks and drainage, I noticed surface tension was making the water curl back around the end of the drain and get the wood wet. The solution to this was gluing on a little off-cut piece I still had.

Before I said the dam I'd made of Corian wasn't quite cutting it. I scoured the shop and found an old foam rubber sanding block I never use and this worked perfectly.

Here is the final product and everything in it's place!

I know it's not pretty. It is, however, functional and it's just shop furniture. I think the only two nice pieces I will ever build for the shop are going to be my hand tool bench and my hand tool cabinet. Those two objects deserve a little more love and attention. The rest only needs to be utilitarian.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope this has been helpful.

Trestle Cradle - Fine Woodworking Photo Gallery

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 04:50:00 +0000

Trestle Craddle - Fine Woodworking Photo Gallery

The cradle was published in the August 2011 edition and is now on the online site as well. Gretchin and Joe are pretty happy to own something published and I'm pretty darned happy to of had my work among some brilliant woodworker's pieces.