Month: December 2016

The Vainglorious Optimism of Despair

It’s that time of year again.  The time for reflection, introspection and after-Christmas sales.  The time when everyone looks back at the previous revolution around the Sun and thinks: “Man, that sucked.  But next year: that’s going to be my year.”  I applaud your hope, whether real or feigned.  But I will not delude myself into thinking things are looking up.  My only hope is that, just like cleaning your room as a child, things have to get worse before they get better.

And so we find ourselves, on the precipice of autocracy, the world almost certain to figuratively and literally burn.  But I have my workbench, and my tools, and my hands and my mind.  And for this, I am grateful.  So if I am needed, you can find me in the shop making something that will last.

And when the world does burn, at least the hide glue will flow better for a time.  Happy New Year, everyone.

Here is a picture of my cat under a blanket.

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Merry Christmas and Whatnot (2016)

It’s Christmas, again. Happens every year, just about this time. 

Here at The Apartment Woodworker, I’m excited for my next mini project: another interlocking plant stand to match the original. 

Solid as a rock.


They are fun to make and involve two of the three basic joints (mortise and tenon; lap joint [a form of housing joint]). Best of all, they make use of some extra whitewood stud offcuts. 

The best use of a leftover 45″ offcut I can find.


I hope everyone has a happy and healthy holiday. 

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I Think I Figured It Out (Thank You!)

Thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions about why a leg wasn’t seated squarely in its joint.  After quadruple checking my combination square for squareness (it is), it turns out the culprit was human error.

First, the shoulder isn’t perfectly seated after all.  The mortise canted ever so slightly inward, but the toothed underside of the benchtop hid the minute gap between the slab and the shoulder of the mortise.  I corrected  this (with a bit of paring inside the mortise) and the joint still (thankfully) fits very snugly.  The canted mortise was about 75% of the problem.

Second, there is a very slight hollow where I was resting my square.  It must be left over from traversing the underside of the benchtop.  It runs down a couple thou toward the mortise, which doesn’t really show with a long straightedge across the whole width.  But with a small machinist’s square, it’s plain as day.  Not worth fussing over, I think.

Oh well.  At least I got blog two posts out of it.

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I Am So Confused (Please help!)

I cut the first leg mortise in the slab for my new ash workbench and I’ve hit a snag.  I can’t figure out what the problem is.

If the reference surface on the leg is flat and true…

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Which is it.

And the mortise is cut into the undreside of a benchtop in a plane that is perfectly flat…

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Which it is (double checked it with my square).

And my shoulder line for the tenon is perfectly square to the reference face on the leg…

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Which it is (sorry for the blurry picture).

Then why is the reference face of the leg not perpendicular to the underside of the benchtop when the shoulder is perfectly seated to the leg?

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What am I doing wrong?

My best guess is that there is some optical illusion from the toothed surface and the tenon isn’t actually seated all the way.  I can bend the leg out a bit to make it square, and it’s 12/4 ash, so that’s probably at the joint, not the leg itself, right?  But I fear that adjusting the inside of the mortise might make the tenon loose (it’s friction fit right now).

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End Grain Problems

Monday’s post was apparently number 200 here at The Apartment Woodworker.  I feel like 200 posts in a little over two years isn’t so bad.  Here’s to the next 200 or so.  Still with me?  Good.

Call me crazy, but I left the workbench slab in the clamps for almost 48 hours.  There was a tiny bit of twist (maybe 1/64″) in the mating surfaces between the two timbers and I didn’t take any chance the PVA glue (Titebond II) would fail simply for insufficient curing time.  This isn’t 3/4″ pine here.  But I’m starting to think the twist might have had something to do with this nasty check at the end of one board.

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Masked for when it gets stabilized.

I’ve talked about it in the past, but I like to stabilize end grain checks with thin viscosity cyanoacrylate glue (i.e., super glue).  It dies hard and clear and penetrates deep into the check.  This particular check goes almost 3/4 of the way through the thickness, but seems to angle upward, so I might not need the whole bottle of CA glue.  But if I do, so be it.

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That ridge in the middle of the tape is the gap.

The good news is the check is on the underside of the main slab, and at the back right corner (to hide the bit of wain).  As long as the check gets sealed up, that should be the end of the problem.

Should be.

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That Still Only Counts as One

I’ve been building an even better workbench of late, and today was a major milestone in the build: laminating the top. Unlike my current workbench, the main slab of this benchtop is just two boards. And they both came from the same length of wood, so in my book, that still counts as only one board. 

Gimli would be proud.

The lamination is 91 inches long, 15.5 inches wide, and a shade under 4 inches thick. I would like the benchtop to be about 22 inches of total depth, but I dont have any more 12/4 ash and I don’t want to laminate smaller boards onto the main slab.  So I have a decision to make: add a tool well or make a torsion box out of 5/4 ash to form the final third of the benchtop. Can it be both?

That hollow will come out during final dressing.

I keep thinking about that stretcherless Shaker Workbench and how that back board was held on with pegs in the main slab. But I’d like the option to use the tool well when I don’t need a full-depth bench. 

Has anyone ever made a reversible tool well?

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