Author: Ben

A Sign of Accurate Sawing

A few nights back I was sawing the side aprons for my Stickley Lost Side Table to length. My procedure is to mark all of the faces using a knife, nip out a small starter notch for the backsaw, and then saw away the waste; it’s pretty standard stuff.

Knifing in the lines does a few things: it gives you a clean entry line on the shoulder, it makes it easier to track the saw, and if you cut things fat, it gives you a nice place to register a chisel when paring. One thing I discovered is that it also lets the waste piece break away beforeÂ the saw gets to the bottom of the work piece.

In the picture above, notice the little shelf of wood left on this piece of waste? The top of the shelf is where my knife scored the wood fibers. The width is the width of the kerf on my backsaw. I looked through my other waste pieces, and this only appears when your cut is square and plumb, that is, when you’re exiting the cut with the saw right against the marking lines.

If you see the shelf, you made a good cut.

Etc

Building a shower that won’t leak

Post author By Ben
Post date December 1, 2011

Great writeup by Bob Borson on building a shower that won’t leak.

Shopping Video

Inside Ikea

Post author By Ben
Post date December 1, 2011

A creepy fun look at what happens when you turn the page.

Shopping Woodworking

The Essential Woodworker for $10

Post author By Ben
Post date November 24, 2011

If you have any interest in hand work in woodworking, a wonderful introduction is The Essential Woodworker by Robert Wearing. This formerly out-of-print book was brought back by Lost Art Press a while back and is now being offered as a DRM-free ePub for $10 with a Kindle version coming soon.

This book is my go to reference whenever I have a question on how to build a piece of carcase furniture. It also includes some nice exercises to help learn essential hand tool skills, like planing a board flat and sawing accurately. It’s finely written, well edited and quite clear. For $10, you cannot go wrong.

The hard cover edition is also available for $23.

Woodworking

Two New Vises

While my bench has been useable for a while now, I’ve wanted to add a tail vise to help when milling up stock. When milling by hand, you have to be able to go across the board, perpendicular to the grain, diagonal to the grain, and along the grain with your planes. While I can get this done with a planing stop and battens, a tail vise and dogs make it really easy.

After I scabbed on a spacer block, I chiseled out the mortise for the inner vise plate, so it would sit flush(ish) with the end of the bench. Word to the wise, don’t do this with a 1/4″ mortise chisel; it takes a couple of hours.

Next, I attached the vise and made up a quick chop from some 12/4 poplar left over from the bench top.

All that was left was to drill the dog holes and make some dogs to go in them. I ordered some 3/4″ maple dowel and it showed up a bit oversize. Sadly, oversize means it doesn’t fit, so I had to break out the 80 grit and atomize a couple hundredths of an inch of maple. Fit with a bullet catch, a small leather face, and a coat of wax, the dog is ready to go.

I had mentioned two new vises. The other is my edition of a Moxon with hardware from Benchcrafted. This build is really pretty simple, though you do get to practice a bit of fancy mortising for the nuts. Next time, I’d hold the nuts down with a holdfast while marking them. They shifted a bit under finger pressure and things got a bit sloppy. Still works though. Oh, and I’d gang up the two pieces when drilling the through holes. That way, any slight deviation from plumb and square carries through. Or I’d use a drill press. Still, a damn pretty bit of kit and it works beautifully.

Tags bench