It’s been a while since my last blog post, but I’ve been far from idle in terms of woodworking. First off, I finished up the new office desk and it works great. The Eastern White Pine is much easier on the elbows than red oak, and sitting on a stool (rather than an Aeron Chair) has helped my posture immensely.

I have since purchased a drafting stool.  

I’m nearing the end of the the bathroom vanity build, which I’ll post in more detail about later in the week. It’s a complicated project in quartersawn white oak that really does a number on my edge tools. I’ve recently switched to a Lie-Nielsen honing guide (which my sister-in-law bought me for the holidays) and the angles don’t match the cheap-o guide I’ve been using forever. They are, in fact, about 5° difference (e.g., 40° on the old guide roughly corresponds to 35° on the LN). 

Sure, I could have soldiered on doing the math every time.  But thinking is the bane of efficiency in the shop.  So I made a new sharpening jig out of sweet, sweet mahogany.  This jig is less complicated too because planes and chisels register in the same slot in the LN guide (the cheap-o guide has different slots for each).

I needed a new notation because it’s really about 35.5°.

Interestingly, the LN guide is also wider.  Or, rather, it doesn’t have the extra material in the middle, so on my largest blades (specifically, for my No. 7 plane), it didn’t register fully and introduced additional error.  About 50% wider did the trick.  

The old guide and the old jig will now live in my toolbox.

Speaking of which, the new tool box is also finished.  It came out really great (if I do say so myself).  It fits a No. 5 jack plane, a tenon saw or half-back saw and all the other accoutrements I may need for on-site work.  And it looks really pretty. 

Compare it to the old tool tote.

I have two complaints about it, though. First, I haven’t found any lifts that I like yet.  Second, the eye on the transom chain anchor gets in the way sometimes, making it a little finicky to remove the tray.  But that’s the cost of storage, I guess.

So that’s all for now.  

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One of my very first woodworking projects was a king-size bed frame.  Made from Hard Maple and Douglas Fir, there wasn’t a single proper joint init.  Just glue, screws and corner brackets.  I built it over a couple of weekends from dimensional lumber (my only woodworking tool at that point being a miter saw).  I recall it being much too tall.  Between frame, box spring and mattress, it was probably 38″ off the ground.  Getting in and out of bed was a minor acrobatic feat.

But, god damn, was I proud of that bed frame.  the design sprang from my mind and was made reality by my own hands.  Little did I know it would be the first step down a figurative rabbit hole of my newest (and current) obsession.

Alas, the bed did not survive one of my moves.  It was permanently disassembled back in 2014 and, since then, pieces (like the stretchers) were re-purposed for other furniture projects.  And all along, the main pieces of the frame (four hard maple 5/4 x 8’s, each over six feet long) sat in the corner.  Too slathered in dark stain and polyurethane to ever be useful, I thought.

Until now.

I’m pretty sure the glue will hold at this point.

With Spring now sprung, it’s time for serious woodworking again.  Those four hard maple 5/4 x 8’s are now eight hard maple 5/4 x 4’s.  And they are quickly becoming ready for laminating.  Probably into into a single 40 x 16 slab to form the top of a sharpening/grinding station.  But, for now, I’ll leave them at full length and see how thick the final lamination can be.

And the great circle of life begins anew.

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My main set of tools has been overflowing from my 26″ Craftsman top chest and middle chest for a while now.  It’s very clear I needed a single storage solution and my first and  natural thought was “build it myself”.  But after making a few medium and small tool chests by hand, as much as I would love to build a custom, proper woodworking tool chest, there just isn’t the time.  Unless I went the plywood route, I’d never finish it on a timeline I’d be happy with.  And then, Sears had a sale and my dilemma went away.

But now I need to build a new rolling cart.

When I first saw this top chest, it instantly reminded me of a hybrid English and Dutch tool chest.  Like a Dutch tool chest, the top well is deep and my planes can stand on their soles.  It’s clearly meant to hold rechargeable power tools (hence the power strip on the inside right), so there is plenty of room to also attach a panel saw rack to the underside of the lid (with rare earth magnets).

Overall dimensions of the top chest are 41″, 24″ x 16″, which is pretty close (albeit slimmer) to a full-size English floor chest.  The drawer space is expansive, but not so much that I could be cavalier about tools I rarely use.  Those will stay in my old tool cabinet, tucked away for rainy days.

Outside the leather roll, it feels like too many chisels.

The rolling cart on which this new tool chest sits will be (once the casters are attached) 48″ x 24″ x 24″, with two shelves to house the balance of my everyday woodworking accoutrements.  Things like my sharpening stones, machinist granite slab and small clamps.  There may even be plans for a drawer or two in a future retrofit.  And that will bring everything up to a comfortable height.

And with the 60 shop hours or so I saved myself by not building an equivalent English floor chest, I can get back to actual projects.  Like a wall rack for fasteners or a crochet for my workbench.

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Many moons ago, when I first moved into my old apartment, the first order of business was getting my sturdy dining table ready for clamp on workbenches.  Two years later, I’ve moved, and now that I have the space for an actual workbench, it was time to get my sturdy dining table ready for use as an actual dining table.  That meant stripping the finish and reflattening the tabletop.

And also replacing the plywood shelf with ash.

Ash is quite porous, and the tabletop had soaked in quite a bit of steel slurry and rust particles over its life as a quasi-workbench.  Plus, the Danish Oil finish had fully cured.  As a result, there was nothing to do but have diamond plates on hand for frequent sharpening.  Two hours, half a garbage can of shavings and about ten resharpenings later, the tabletop was tried and true.

Fun fact: this rug was supposed to be under the table in my old apartment.

It had been a long time since my No. 4 1/2 got a decent workout.  I ordinarily use it only for panel smoothing.  All that resharpening allowed me to work on the blade geometry a bit, getting it mostly straight with a slight camber at the edges (as opposed to a full camber across the entire edge).  When it was time for final smoothing, though, I re-instituted a continuous camber.

This was sharpening #11.

Ash being a fickle mistress, there is significant tearout at one corner (far right, above), but I’m not so concerned. It’s meant to be a rustic piece. Before I refinish the tabletop, however, I will give it a once over with a tool I haven’t used in ages: the random-orbit sander.  Half an hour at 150 grit should clean up any remaining traversing marks that didn’t come out from smoothing.  I also dressed the long grain edges of the tabletop, just because.

The top is actually glued down, long grain to long grain.  No splits yet.

I can’t wait to show everyone the new workshop (spoiler alert: it’s larger than a dining nook).  I’ve been making new kitchen cabinet shelves for the new place (the old ones were warped and gross), so it’s high time for a real furniture project.  But everything in due time.

RIP old shop.

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