Author: The Apartment Woodworker

The Apartment Woodworker is a weekly blog with insights, projects and tips for making the most of woodworking with hand tools in confined spaces.

Squaring Up

Using a router and a straightedge clamp to square the ends of the core slab went better than anticipated. With some fussing, the straight bit worked like a charm, giving me a crisp step down to run the bearing on the pattern bit against. There wasn’t even any chipping on either first pass with the straight bit.

Quite a bit of fussing, actually.

Unfortunately, the pattern bit didn’t work as well and I did get some blowout on the second passes. Nothing terrible, but I was kicking myself for not first scribing the ends (to sever the fibers and prevent chipping). No harm, no foul, though, because I still had to plane the front face square to the underside. All in all, I’m very pleased with the final length of 71 7/8″, which will be further augmented by the inner and outer jaws of a quick release tail vise.

Not bad, starting from twelve foot 2×10’s.

The core slab, now S3S with only the top to go, is approximately 4 1/16″ thick. Assuming the slab doesn’t move any further (it cupped very slightly in the week after initial thicknessing), I doubt it will take more than 1/16″ to flatten the top. At any rate, anything over 3 1/4″ validates my choice to use 2×10’s instead of straight 2×4’s.

I’ve already created the mortises on the back edge, and I’ll be creating the front mortises over the Eastern weekend.

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A Different Direction

The first set of mortise strips went onto the core slab without a hitch (almost). I’m very pleased with the result, but I’m glad I did the back mortises first. When I get to the front mortises, I’ll have perfected my technique.

I don’t think this was faster than boring and paring, but it is certainly crisper.

After all the flattening, squaring and gluing (which I promise to write more about later), I’m sick of the workbench build. Instead, I’ll distract myself for a couple weeks with a traveling tool tote, based heavily on Christopher Schwarz’ boarded tool chest from 2015, but scaled down. I outgrew my soft tool tote long ago. It’s time I upgraded my traveling setup.

I like this boarded tool chest design because it’s rabbeted and nailed, rather than dovetailed. Dovetails are great, but this is a working piece that I want to complete on a decent timeline. And call me crazy, but I really enjoy splitting rabbets (my shop-made fillister plane is only 5/8″, after all). I will likely follow the oak-battened lid design of the source material, also for no other reason than it’s easier than a full dust seal of a traditional floor chest (but also because this tool tote won’t be populated full-time). The entire carcass, including the ship-lapped floor, is only seven boards.

Two sides, two ends, three floor boards, all cut to rough length.

Made almost exclusively from 1×12 common pine from the home center, the inside dimensions of the tool tote will be slightly over 26″ long x 12″ wide x 11″ high. There will be plenty of room in the floor plan for a panel saw, two back saws, a jointer plane, a smoothing plane and a router plane, plus a chisel rack on the inside wall. A single sliding tray on oak runners will hold everything else I need for on-site work.

One final note: it’s amazing what you can find when you dig through the stacks of common pine. In addition to a nearly knot-free carcass, there is enough clear, quarter-sawn wood to laminate a stable lid. Plus, the quarter-sawn off-cuts from the floor boards will become the walls of the sliding tray. All of this from only twenty-four feet of home center common pine.

I feel energized.

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Improvisation

I had hoped to quickly and easily square the ends of the new workbench’s core slab with my compound miter saw. Unfortunately, the slab is too heavy for the extending arm on the base and no amount of clamping pressure could keep it steady and square. As a fallback option, I will use a straightedge clamp and a full size router. A 3″ straight bit should hog off most of the waste, with a pattern bit to finish the job on the flip side. My little trim router may have the torque, but it definitely doesn’t have the collet, so my full size router and D-handle base are coming out of retirement for one last job.

Once the core slab is squared off, I can begin applying the boards that will form the mortises. Each mortise strip is comprised of three boards: two ends at 12″ long each, and one center board, sized to fit.

Seen here, surfaced but not yet cut to final length.

Each mortise strip board will be pre-sized and glued directly to the core slab, using the underside of the core slab as the reference surface and the tenon boards for each of the four laminations as spacers. As a result, the front and back faces of the core slab must be absolutely square to the underside of the core slab. The slab has probably moved since initial flattening last weekend, so the last thing before glue-up will be re-dressing the underside and faces. And I still have to surface those tenon boards

The mortises are completed by adding another, full-length, board to each face of the bench top. Then, on the front face only, a second full-length board, picked for its beauty, will complete the bench top and be the show face of the bench top. This added depth also keeps the dog holes out of the mortise strip.

Finally, each front leg will be brought co-planar with the show face of the bench top by similarly adding show boards. Having not thought it completely through yet, I would nonetheless imagine the show-faces of the legs will be sized and added after assembly and settling.

If I do it all correctly, only the topside of the bench top will require any further dressing. IF.

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Reflections on a Theme

The internet contains a wealth of information on how to properly laminate a workbench. Some are better than others, but something useful can be gleaned from all. Let me add to that wealth with a few reflections on a topic: grain direction in the laminated bench top. I know workbenches are supposed to be tools, not furniture, but this isn’t just about optics. Minimizing tear-out serves both structuring and aesthetic purposes.

Perhaps because I rely heavily on a thickness planer after S2S’ing boards by hand, I am conscious of grain direction at all times. I keep a charcoal pencil handy and every board, in addition to face and edge marks, gets two arrows, each indicating grain direction on the reference face and reference edge. This allows me to quickly orient the boards, flip them end-over-end, and pass them through the machine for tear-out-free thicknessing.

Every board. Every time.

Minimizing tear-out on face grain will increase the overall glue surface and, therefore, increase the overall strength of the laminated bench top. But, ultimately, those faces are hidden in the glue up and will never be dressed again. What is most critical when laminating a benchtop is aligning the edge grain direction of the entire slab.

All of this grain runs in the direction of the giant black arrow.

I have a specific reason for this assertion: the edge grain surfaces will be dressed many times through out the life of the workbench. Taking a few minutes to orient the edge grain direction during the glue up means less work both (i) when initially flattening the bench top during construction and (ii) when re-flattening the bench top from time to time. And over the life of a workbench, that will add up to quite a bit of time and energy saved. And you might possibly save yourself some awful splinters down the road.

Plus, it will look nice. After all, your workbench may one day be someone’s antique dining room table, right?

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Basic Project: LN-style Saw Vise

This new “Basic Projects” segment is a Lie-Nielsen-style saw vise. A good saw vise is essential, hand-tool woodworking shop equipment. This saw vise is simple to make from a few scraps and basic hardware and can be held in a bench vise during use.

The materials list below is for a 12″ saw vise, which I’ve sized to fit my dovetail saws (and therefore pretty much everyone one of my other saws). A larger 16″ version is fantastic for my panel saws and larger tenon saws, but not so great for saws with smaller plates. Please note that all materials were what I had on hand, so feel free to mix and match what’s available to you.

Materials list:

2x birch plywood (1/4″), approximately 12″ x 6″ (for the sides)
4x white pine blanks, approximately 12″ long and sized to fit your saws (for the upper and lower jaws)
Metal hinges
Wood screws/Cut Nails
Wood glue
Suede leather strips (to line the jaws)

Tools list:

22″ panel saw
Low angle block plane
Hand drill and screwdriver/hammer
Scissors, chisel or razor blade (for trimming the leather jaw lining)

First, make the plywood sides. Mine came from some craft store birch ply I picked up at the same time as the suede to line the jaws. Saw them to length and width and plane to equal size with a block plane. You can shoot them if you’d like, but exact squareness is not critical. All that matters is they are identical and the long sides are roughly parallel.

Then, to size the upper jaws, take your smallest saw and subtract 3/8″ from the height of the saw plate at its narrowest point (probably by the handle): that’s the height of each upper jaw. Then make each upper jaw about the thickness of the saw tote (or 2x overall) to accommodate different size saws in the finished vise (but there is no magic to this measurement). Using my Vertitas dovetail saw as a reference, each upper jaw is 7/8″ high and 1″ thick.

When you glue the leather lining onto the upper jaws, you can use pretty much any type of glue when bonding leather to wood. I use hide glue for the longer open time. Either glue the leather down proud of the wood on all sides and trim flush with a chisel and mallet (like I did), or cut the strips to size before gluing. Either will work.

In scales this small, a hand plane is a good as a granite slab.

Height on the lower jaws is not critical, but they should be substantial enough to take wood screws or nails. Depth on the lower jaws is more important: they must be overall pretty close the upper jaws (including the leather lining) so the upper jaws will close tightly when clamped around the saw plate. If you can, leave the lower jaws larger to accommodate the leather jaw lining on the upper laws (which can add up to 1/8″). I always forget that part and make all four jaws identical. So instead, I added leather to each of the lower jaws also.

Now glue and screw one upper jaw and one lower jaw to each plywood sides, driving from the outside. Three screws for each jaw should be more than enough. Cut nails will work also. I actually used 1″ headless cut brads (from Tremont Nail) because I don’t have a No. 8 countersink bit handy. If you use nails, remember to orient the head of the nail with the grain of the top piece.

Light pressure from the holdfast keeps everything cinched while driving the nails.

Then clamp the assembled halves together in a bench vise or with some F- or spring-clamps. Mount the hinges on the outside of the lower jaws, about 1″ from each end (and in any event, clear of the screws or nails holding the jaws onto the sides). The hinges I had on hand were overkill for this application, but I wasn’t about to buy more. Finish is optional

Good thing I added leather to both sets of jaws; I installed the hinges on the wrong side!

And that’s it. You’re ready to sharpen your own saws. If you’d like, go ahead and chamfer the top front edge. Although not strictly required, this detail will save your knuckles in the long run.

I will be hand-flattening the core slab of the new workbench this weekend, so wish me luck.

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Taking Stock (Literally)

Saturday was another productive day on the Douglas Fir workbench build. I surfaced and glued two additional boards to the core slab, bringing it to just over 13″ deep.

The same length and depth as the planing slab, but nearly twice as thick!

Dodging a bullet on the previous eight boards, the expired/near-expired PVA glue has in fact held. Being paranoid, I plan to add a couple full-length mending plates to the underside of the bench top once fully assembled. Not because I think it will do anything, but because it will make me feel better.

I also rough cut to length the remaining stock so that I could take, umm, stock of how much more lumber I needed. What’s shown below is almost everything required to make the full bench.

DeWalt, I am open to sponsorship…

Here is what’s still on the buy list:

Eight feet of 2×6, which will become (i) the tenon board and the inside board of the left front leg and (ii) [probably] the outside vise chop on the tail vise. Not sure if I’ve mentioned it, but unlike the other three legs (which are comprised of ripped down 2×10’s), the left front leg is laminated from 2×6’s for extra stoutness when chopping.

Twelve feet of 2×10, which will be ripped in half and cut down to (i) four 48″ lengths for two long stretchers and (ii) four 24″ lengths to make two short stretchers. I also have two other 24″ lengths which are flagged as short stretchers. The prettiest of the six 24″ boards will become the end cap/inner chop on the tail vise. I will decide on the fly if I want to add a second end cap to the benchtop (unlikely).

All in all, should be another $30 or so from the home center. I’m definitely under budget on this build, having carefully planned out my cuts from what was available. I will eventually need some pine for the slatted shelf, but I’m not worried about that right now.

I’m torn about something, though. My thickness planer is only 13″, so to use it I’d have to remove about 1/4″ of depth from the core slab as it currently exists. However, my local woodworking club has a 15″ thickness planer. If I use theirs, I can add one more board to the core slab. But then I’d be using tools other than my own (and it would cost me for shop time). A good problem to have, I guess.

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Lessons Learned (So Far)

A few things on the workbench build thus far:

Always check your glue expiration date. I’ve been agonizing this entire week over whether or not the first lamination of eight boards will hold up. The PVA glue I used was (unbeknownst to me) nearing its expiration date. After clamping the work for over 72 hours, I am leaving it un-clamped for another 72 hours or so. By the time I check the lamination again on Saturday morning, if the glue is going to give, it will have (or so customer support told me).
Finished length is never enough. A twelve foot board from the home center is usually no more than 1/2″ overlong. Subtract the kerf from crosscutting it to rough length and (theoretically) you’ve got about 3/8″ extra from which both ends need to be squared. It never really works out that way, and I’m always short of my desired 72″ length. An end cap on the tail vise side to cover the inner vice chop will get me back over six feet for the main bench (plus whatever thickness the outside tail vise chop will be).
Finished thickness is never enough. A home center 2×10 is about 1 1/2″ thick off the rack, but do not use this as the base multiple for buying the bench top lumber. After dressing for the glue up, I was lucky that one or two of the boards even came in at 1 3/8″ thick. Most were closer to 1 1/4″. Eight boards combined for only 10 1/2″ of total depth (or an average of 1 5/16″), so I needed to buy another twelve foot 2×10 just to complete main core of the bench top.
Remember the limitations of your tools. All of Item Three aside, I own a 13″ thickness planer. This means the actual core can only be ten boards total and still fit through. Each of the laminations containing the mortises (3 boards thick each) must therefore be created separately and added onto the main slab after. If I can get the mortise laminations square and straight (using the dressed core slab as a reference), they can each be glued onto the main slab (with fresh glue, this time, and maybe a lag bolt or two) to full the form bench top.
Improvise. The total bench top lamination described in Item Four is sixteen boards deep, and should be approximately 21″ total. This is a fine depth for a bench, but I plan to add one more board to the show face of the assembled bench (i.e., to the bench top and the front legs. Party because I know dressing the entire slab will remove additional material and partly because it will allow me to move the dog strip out of the mortise layer. I already have the prettiest boards set aside.

Sorry for the block text. This was more an exercise of me thinking through these issues than content generation.

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So here is the plan…

Before I could turn this:

Why is there a diapers box in my planer dungeon?

into this:

2/3 of the core slab.

I had to replace these:

I wonder if the old blades are re-sharpenable…

The previous blades got pretty beat up when re-flattening the old planing slab. It turns out that water-based wood filler > carbide blades. But I must have known this day was coming, because I had a spare set of blades.

So after a morning of flattening one face of each board (by hand), then an hour or so of thicknessing (by machine) and smoothing for final glue up (by hand), I had eight boards at a total depth of 10.5″. Exactly half of the total depth on the new workbench.

It’s actually 10 9/16, but who’s counting?

The glue-up was a nightmare, though. Despite some aggressive shaking, the older PVA glue was starting to get viscous and kept clogging in the nozzle. I am hoping the glue holds up, as it was over two years old. It would be a pain to redo the glue-up, but I do own a heat gun if worse comes to worst.

Ordinarily, the sign of a good glue-up is squeeze-out from the knots!

I can add two more boards to the core and still be narrow enough to pass through my thickness planer. Which I will do next weekend.

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What to do?

My car took longer than usual being serviced, and traffic was absolutely horrendous, so I didn’t make any workbench progress on Saturday. Instead, I spent some time dicking around with scrap 1/2″ x 3″ red oak left over from the tray runners on the medium tool chest. About 20″ total of flat and square stock was just enough for the carcass of a tiny dovetailed box.

Shooting with a block plane on my counter. Not recommended!

When it comes to dovetailing in softwoods, as long as you can saw straight, fiber compression will do most of the work toward achieving perfect joints. In hardwoods like red oak, though, there is such a thing as too tight. But if you go slow and apply some persuasion, everything can come together nicely. And dovetailing in hardwoods is a great opportunity to determine if your dovetail saw needs resharpening (mine needed both sharpening and set, in fact). Le sigh.

Meh, I’ve done worse.

On a related note, the bench chisels in the background are my spare set (made by WoodRiver). They hold an edge well and are quite balanced, but the side lands are way too thick for tight dovetail work. Not like my Narex chisels (which are still at my parents’). As a result, the tail recesses are not as neat as I would have liked. But the carcass is finished.

And sturdy as can be.

With the inside dimensions of only 3.75″ square, I would think it has potential as a keepsake box. Or at least an adequate receptacle for collar stays and cuff links.

Stay tuned for the upcoming “Basic Projects” installment for this piece. But first there will be more on the workbench later this week.

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Acute Sense of Longing

I left my No. 4 and my No. 7 hand planes at my parents’ house last week so they’ll be there when I pick up the workbench build again on Saturday. That means the only bench planes remaining in my apartment workshop (other than a block plane) are a No. 4 1/2 smoother and a No 5 1/2 jack plane. The shop feels positively undermanned.

Once my go-to bench plane, it’s been a long time since I’ve even touched the No. 5 1/2 (having been pretty much entirely replaced by my No. 7). And the No. 4 1/2 has always been exclusively for final smoothing (an excellent luxury if you can swing it).

All of this is a roundabout admission. I had hoped to put together another “Basic Projects” installment this week, but I feel absolutely lost without at least my No. 4. I just couldn’t psych myself up to make anything.

Everyone’s got a favorite, after all.

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