Projects

Nesting Saw Bench

Been ripping a significant number of longer boards lately for the planing slab project, which motivated me to finally make a smaller, companion saw bench to nest inside my main saw bench (both are based on the Christopher Schwarz 2009 version).

I’m psyched to use something other than a dovetail saw for joinery, for once. Lap joints are the best.

All stock preparation and joinery only took a few hours and I am very happy with the result. I just need to let the glue dry before I fit the stretchers and level the seams and feet. Should definitely make ripping easier, as I can now support both ends of a long board won’t need to stop halfway through and flip it around anymore.

Also, I started using the wagon vise on my bench like a front vise for thicker stock that wont fit in the actual front vise. Works well enough; still need to make an actual moxon vise at some point, though. I guess I’ll add it to the to-do list.

Small-space woodworking is all about improvising!

Hope everyone has their holiday shopping wrapped up. I’m one home center gift certificate away.

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A Planing Slab In Process

Ever since the LED light arbor project (linked here), I have been searching for a reliable way to support 5-6 foot boards for face planing on my 4 foot worktable. For thicker stock, the overhang didn’t really matter; the work was rigid enough to support itself. On thinner pieces (less than 6/4 or so), although edge planing was usually fine, flex at the ends while face planing caused me to unknowingly plane humps into the work, no matter how sound my technique.

Just not enough tabletop real estate for face planing longer, thinner stock.

After much debate (I even consulted Christopher Schwarz on the issue, whom I thank greatly for his quick response and prescient input and whose Lost Art Press I once again plug), I decided to laminate a planing slab (like a Japanese workbench). Made from inexpensive materials, the slab would be rigid and flat and could be clamped to my worktable with angle irons or leaned against the wall when not in use. It would also have a Veritas inset vise and dog holes for Veritas planing stops and holdfasts.

Rough sketch in hand, I went to the home center on a lazy Sunday and dug through the 2x10s for an hour or so (the 2x12s were so saturated they were almost too heavy to move on my own) and found 36 feet of the driest, straightest, clearest Douglas Fir 2x10s available (all from the bottom of the pile, sadly). In the parking lot, I used two lumber carts as saw benches and piled the six 6 foot lengths in the car.

Quite proud of myself for this one.

Ever since, in my spare hours, I have been hand ripping 3 inch wide lengths, face planing the gluing surfaces and laminating the pieces, one at a time (Paul Sellers’ workbench playlist on YouTube is a great how-to for preparing dimensional softwoods for laminating into a bench top). The whole lamination should be approximately 18 inches wide (which equates to about thirteen boards) , 72 inches long and 2.75 inches thick when finished. I think, though, that when the slab gets to be about 10 inches wide (seven boards or so), I will flatten the bottom by hand and skip plane it with my thickness planer. That way, I can more easily finish up the second half of the lamination, using the first half as an (albeit smaller) planing slab.

Only four more laminations to go and I’ll have half a planing slab!

Once I have the space, I will probably re-purpose the planing slab as the bench top for a proper workbench for lighter work (and maybe add a face vise). Until then, though, I am looking forward to having a real planing surface, so I will keep laminating.

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Necessity versus Generosity, or Why I Make Things

A Venn Diagram of my woodworking motivations would consist of two, significantly overlapping circles: necessity and generosity. It turns out (unsurprisingly) my joy is in the making and I don’t form great attachment to the finished piece. So unless there is a concrete need on my end, odds are high the final product is going right out the door (usually to someone who has a concrete need on their end) and I will move on to the next project. Some examples may help.

Necessity:

Coffee Table

Slate-top Side Table

Media Console

When I vacated my previous apartment for my leave of absence, I gave away almost all of my furniture, including my living room set (which I had acquired prior to taking up apartment woodworking). I did this on purpose, so I would have to build myself a coffee table, side table and media console while I was on my leave of absence. They had to be ready for when I moved back down full time to Connecticut because, otherwise, I would have an unfurnished living room, which is no fun at all.

Be it an original design or a reverse-engineering from a high end furniture retailer (I subscribe to all the catalogues), each piece is custom fit to my needs. As soon as my needs change, the piece goes out the door.

Generosity:

A footstool for my niece and nephew (a second, similar version is in the works).

An under-desk stool for my buddy to elevate his legs after a long run.

I enjoy making footstools. They’re really just tiny tables (usually for tiny people, like my niece and nephew). The stock preparation is manageable (the biggest piece is usually 14″ x 11″ or so, at most) and the joinery is straightforward (dovetails and/or mortise/tenon). As an added bonus, they are meant to be literally stepped on and are usually stored on the floor (probably in the bathroom) for their entire working life, so a stray tool mark or other aesthetic imperfection is (relatively) meaningless. As a result, footstools make excellent scale test models for design elements in future projects.

I’ve made other pieces as gifts (benches, side tables, storage containers, other things), but footstools continue to be the most popular.

In the end, though, be it necessity or generosity, I don’t think the reasons matter. Like I said, it is the making I enjoy most, not the having of the thing that I made.

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A Dovetailed Box

Over the last couple weekends (in what little free time there was), I have been making a simple dovetailed storage container for my car.

Not winning any awards, but definitely sturdy enough to hold a pair of aquasocks, a multi-tool, a portable air compressor, an emergency water bottle and some miscellaneous supplies.

I’ve been meaning to replace with something more permanent the heavy duty cardboard file box I use in my car to maintain organization of odds and ends. Finding myself with some leftover 3/4 birch plywood, I decided it was time to dovetail a box. I don’t cut dovetails often and I like these little, non-critical projects to keep my skills up. Mostly, though, this project was good opportunity to test the capabilities of the Milkman’s Workbench in a situation where perfection is non-essential. Spoiler alert: it performed admirably, as advertised.

Just to be clear, I’m not here to teach you how to dovetail. If you are looking for instructional videos, there are wonderful dovetailing tutorials all over teh interwebs (I highly recommend Paul Sellers or Rob Cosman).

Dimensioning:

I want to say from the get-go that plywood is not ideal for dovetailing (I rarely use the stuff anyway) and dimensioning sheet goods with hand tools is almost more trouble than it’s worth.

I typically rough cut sheet goods with a jigsaw and use a flush trim bit and a straightedge clamp to clean up and square the edges, but I am inside again and plywood dust is gross. Instead, I rough cut four pieces by hand (2 sides and 2 ends) and planed straight and square with a #4 bench plane one end piece and one side piece to use as patterns. I then lined up the factory edges and used double-sided tape to attach the pattern piece to the second rough cut piece (show-side to show-side, which will be important later). Using the affixed pattern piece as a guide, I planed down most of the overhang on the rough piece to approximately 1/32″ (to have as little waste as possible) and cleaned up the final edge all around with a flush trim router bit.

Less waste to remove means less gross dust to clean up.

The bottom piece, which is 1/4″ plywood from the craft store, floats in housing joints in the assembled box and is just hand ripped reasonably square and straight and fine tuned with a block plane.

Joinery:

There shouldn’t ever be a ton of stress on the glued up joints, so at a little under 12 inches high overall, I went with three tails per corner. I’m a “tails first” kind of guy and typically I prefer to hog out most of the recess waste with a coping saw (then chisel down to the line), but go with what works for you.

Layout is simple with a decent dovetail marking guide. I use the Veritas version.

I did not separate the now-identical side pieces prior to sawing the tails. I had a good reason, however: supporting the show-side to prevent blowout is critical when dovetailing plywood. By leaving the pieces affixed, the show-side of each piece acts as a backer board for the show-side of the other. As an added bonus, the tails you saw are (hopefully) identical. Plus, I find working on the wider stock makes sawing perpendicular easier (on plywood, you should also eyeball perpendicular against the layer lines). All in all, it saved some time and, again, not a museum piece here. I note that this trick does not work for cutting pins when you cut the tails first; you will need to separate the pin boards. It may work if you cut pins first (I think the pins may be asymmetrical, which may be a neat design element), but I haven’t tried it.

Tails first.

A coping saw and a chisel made quick work of the first set of recesses between the tails. All of a sudden, just after I finished sawing the second set of tails, the double sided tape gave way and I had to finish up the tail boards individually. I also decided to put down the coping saw and chiseled out the remaining pin recesses (more on that later). Beware cracking the veneer when chopping out the waste with a chisel.

I then scribed and sawed the pins in the usual way, also using a chisel to cut the tail recesses.

Not bad for plywood and being out of practice.

I routed the 3/8″ deep housing joints for the bottom piece with a 1/4″ up-spiral bit and a fence (dust extraction works much better in this router orientation) and tweaked the fit of the bottom piece with a block plane.

Assembly, Gluing and Finish:

A backer board also comes in handy when seating the joints during final gluing. I always use a piece of wood to cushion against the mallet blows when seating joints and the support for the tails guards against chipping and blowout if/when the joint is a little on the tight side. Unlike solid wood, plywood de-laminates and cracks instead of compressing, even when lubricated with glue, so the extra support goes a long way. There is a chance the box might get wet, so I opted for overkill with Titebond III.

Mechanical joints mean single-direction clamping pressure.

After the glue had dried, I flushed any protruding pins or tails and trued the base of the box. Then I softened all corners with a radius plane and plugged any large gaps in the exposed plywood “end grain” with some water-based wood filler. No finish required. It’s not pretty, but it’s not meant to be pretty. Everything then got a quick 220-grit orbital sanding to remove the pencil marks.

Sitting on my saw bench, “clamping” the work with my feet.

I had the idea of threading some 7/16″ nylon line from the boating supply store to make a rope handle. I tested a couple different lengths and finally settled on a single strap that I could sling over my shoulder (as opposed to individual handles on the ends). I hope I don’t regret the shortcut.

Conclusions:

I’m pretty satisfied with the box; it is solid and it holds stuff. Truth be told, it’s been done for about a week. I am just staggering posts.

There are gaps. It happens. I’m not looking for a critique of my dovetailing.

Next time I dovetail plywood (I still owe my father some marine plywood drawers for his Frers 33), I am definitely skipping the coping saw. It works fine for solid wood, but is tough to control in plywood (with the multi-directional grain of the layers and all) and the veneer can tear easily. Not to mention the awful screeching sound.

The Milkman’s Workbench worked quite well for this project. Early on, it became clear the grip of the front vise screws wasn’t great until turned so tightly they mar the work, so I added leather pads to the ends of the front screws. This improved holding power at much softer clamping pressures and work slippage nearly disappeared (although with increased grip, the work rotates a bit when the screw is engaged). Front vise flex decreased dramatically as a by-product of lower clamping pressures as well, and I recommend anyone using a Milkman’s workbench take the time for this easy upgrade. After a few more months of use, I will do a full retrospective on the bench’s total functionality.

Much gripper.

As I was working, though, I started fantasizing about making a significantly larger version of the Milkman’s workbench. Something with at at least 36″ of maximum clearance between the widest dog and the wagon vise and not less than 30″ of front vise inside clearance. This would mean 40″ plus of total workbench (and probably a third screw in the front vise); my workshop table is slightly over 50″ long and should easily handle a clamp-on bench of this size. I would probably make the main bench deeper too (for a larger chopping surface) and maybe abandon current front vise configuration for something more like a moxon vise…

Several hours with pencil and graph paper later, it became abundantly apparent that what I really need is not a larger Milkman’s Workbench, but rather a planing slab (like a Japanese workbench, maybe with some dog holes and a Veritas inset vise). Something around 18″ x 60″, made of laminated pine framing timbers. I guess I know what my next project will be after I finish those footstools for my brother’s new house.

Also, I can’t say it enough: plywood dust is gross.

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Let There Be Light!

“See the line; cut the line.” It’s the basic premise of hand tool woodworking. It seems like everyone is so focused on the latter (cutting the line) and no one cares about the former (seeing the line). I would like to change that, because no one should struggle through the literal and metaphorical darkness.

In my experience, an ample source of clean and bright light is just as important to quality and safety in woodworking as sharp tools, solid workholding and proper technique. With a little bit of planning, you too can drive away the dark and see what you’ve been missing.

You can’t cut what you can’t see, and quality shop lighting goes a long way in improving your woodworking, even in an apartment.

Up front, I want to say that you do have choices when it comes to shop lighting. I use LED lighting because when it comes to efficiency, durability, simplicity and safety, LED in my mind is head and shoulders above incandescent or fluorescent equivalents. If you’re looking to illuminate a workbench tucked away in a corner, without having to change bulbs or wire permanent fixtures, then hanging LED bar lights are the way to go. If you are looking for tips on lighting your 1500 square foot production workshop, you are clearly on the wrong website.

Okay, now that’s over, let’s talk about goals. My shop lighting goal is (and has always been) to have bright, white light shining directly on my work surface(s) without shadows or obstructions. Ideally, I’d have a north facing window and a high ceiling with plenty of clearance and wooden studs directly above my workbench. That way, I could hang two Lithonia 120V LED light bars over the workbench and be done with it. I had this setup in Vermont (plus an LED task light for joinery and sharpening tasks) and it worked great.

In my current apartment, though, my windows face east (which is a nightmare in the mornings) and, although I have 12 foot ceilings, everything is concrete and drywall with nary a wooden stud to be found. I only need to hang one bar light given my smaller work space, but I am just not comfortable using drywall anchors or drilling into the concrete [i.e., losing my security deposit]. The LED task light alone was not cutting it and I needed to get creative. The solution turned out to be easier than I could have hoped. I built an arbor.

Sometimes the best ideas are born of lazy necessity.

Take some leftover 6/4 ash (ripped and planed into two approximately 60″ x 3.25″ x 1″ pieces), add in couple of angle irons (left over from the Milkman’s Workbench supplies) and a pair of threaded screw hooks (hardware store specials), clamp to opposite sides of the table and hang a bar light. Done and done. No finish, no flair: just bright, clean light directly on the work surface. I might one day scrap the screw hooks and make a cross bar that fits in bridle joints on the supports, but for now, good enough is good enough for me.

It’s that simple.

The best part is, because they’re just clamped to the table, I can move the supports around if I need the clearance or want to focus the light on a particular part of the work surface. Plus, the whole thing is portable, relatively speaking.

Nothing permanent here.

With very little effort, I now have a well-illuminated work surface. My task lamp can be tucked out of the way until needed for close up work and the whole project took about 2 hours (not including the drive to my parents’ house and back to use my thickness planer).

Quality shop lighting makes tasks like reading grain direction and inspecting the camber on a freshly-sharpened plane iron a snap. You’re also less likely to miss a spot when planing or applying finish or wander over a layout line if the work is brightly lit.

So before you cut the line, spend some time making sure you can see the line. Drive away the dark in your workshop and see what you’ve been missing.

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Down-sizing (and, perhaps, right-sizing)

Sometimes, smaller is better. Let me explain.

While at my parents’ house in Rutland County, Vermont on and off during my six-month leave of absence, my woodworking shop occupied two bays in a three-car garage. It was I think the right amount of space for a shop that consisted mainly of a seven foot workbench, compound double-bevel miter saw, thickness planer, Craftsman rolling cabinet and dedicated sharpening station, as well as a largish lumber rack. I had room to spread out and I never felt cramped (except when an assembled, drying project was messing up my Feng shui).

Which, let’s face it, happened pretty often.

But, as they do, all good things end and I have since returned to my life as a Manhattan-based M&A attorney. My workbench, miter saw, thickness planer and rolling cabinet are all now living in disuse at my parents’ house in New Haven County, CT. The closest thing I have to a dedicated sharpening station in my new apartment is a machinists granite slab and a WorkSharp 3000 with its own plastic toolbox.

Zero exaggeration

Out of necessity, I am now making due with less. So let us explore the brass tacks of the new, apartment-based woodworking shop:

The full workshop, again!

At a macro level, my apartment workshop now consists of what you see in the picture:

1.) “Dining” table with storage below (for more info on the table itself, please see last week’s post, “A Proper Foundation for Woodworking”)

2.) Rolling cart with Craftsman 26″ Top Chest and matching Intermediate Chest for hand tool storage (more on that next week!)

3.) 30″ Milkman’s Workbench (shout out to Chris Schwarz for all the astounding work he does for the craft, especially at the Chris Schwarz blog and at lostartpress.com) firmly clamped to the “dining” table

4.) Saw bench (the excellent 2008 Lost Art Press version; again credit Chris Schwarz) [not shown]

5.) Two(!) shop vacuums: my trusty Dewalt D27904 Dust Extractor and a brand new Ridgid four gallon portable shop vac (very pleased so far with the purchase)

6.) A condensed array of Dewalt handheld power tools, including compact router kit and random orbit sander, as well as 20V cordless versions of a drill, jig saw and circular saw

7.) Other miscellany includes my excellent LED task lamp, a Lie-Nielsen-style saw vise, a shooting board/bench hook (once again, a Chris Schwarz design), various straight edges and squares and other random items.

I should probably also mention the clear plastic bin of glues and finishes and the general purpose tool bag

I am confident everything possible is packed into the limited space, but I don’t feel like I went overboard. I have everything I need to continue meaningful woodworking in the limited space of my apartment (and it’s not like I was overly reliant on power tools in the first place, having always been sans table saw and sans jointer).

I know myself well enough to say that I will make regular sojourns to visit my thickness planer (it’s much easier to hand plane two sides straight and square and let the machine do the rest), but I am rather looking forward to breaking my miter saw dependence.

One final note: I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what to use as a planing stop on the new “dining” table for stock that is too long to pinch between dogs on the Milkman’s Workbench. I am certainly not going to bore dog holes and, just as I was about to concoct some plywood monstrosity to clamp to end of the table, I stumbled upon a most simple, elegant solution:

It’s a straight edge clamp! Duh!

That’s all for today. I promise that next time I will dissect my tool chests. I also have a silly little project in process (mostly for testing the capabilities of the Milkman’s Workbench), which I hope to unveil soon.

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A Proper Foundation for Woodworking

Welcome to The Apartment Woodworker (.com)! After much delay, I have finally finished organizing my new apartment workshop.

The full workshop

Today, I present my new “dining” table, which forms the [literal] basis of the workshop. Hand-crafted (by me) of solid ash (purchased rough-sawn from Exclusively Vermont in Bristol, VT), the table measures 50″ long, 34″ deep and 31″ high and has a 48″ long and 24″ deep lower shelf. The entire piece is finished in two coats of Watco Danish Oil (Medium Walnut).

All joints are hand cut, other than the mortises in the rails (hogged out by router for expedience)

The foundation of any workshop is a rock-solid work-surface

Each leg is a single piece of solid ash nearly 3″ square. The top rails (3.5″ x 1.75″ of solid ash) are joined to the legs with draw-bored mortise and tenon joints. The bottom rails (also 3.5″ x 1.75″ solid ash) are joined to the legs with 1″ deep housing joints and the bottom stretcher (3.25″ x 1.5″ solid red oak, purchased rough-sawn from Gagnon Lumber in Pittsford, VT) is mortise and tenoned to the lower rails.

Detail on the draw-bores and reveal

The tabletop consists of four 1.125″ solid ash boards, edge jointed with a slight round-over at the seams. After much debate, I decided to glue the tabletop to the frame and reinforce the glue joint with four angle irons (custom made at Mac Steel in Rutland, VT) secured with 1″ #10 wood screws. The goal was rigidity and, although not elegant, it did the trick.

These are the same angle irons that I use on my milkman's workbench

Metal fasteners do have a place in my work, after all

There will also eventually be a lower shelf of solid ash, as soon as I can get back up to Vermont and retrieve the remaining ash lumber. For now, though, a sheet of .75″ birch plywood works just fine. I am also waiting for delivery of the carpet which will live under the table permanently.

All-in-all, I am very pleased with the result. Even though the table is clearly intended as a clamping surface for a milkman’s workbench (which will be covered in the next post), the table is very much furniture quality and one day will take its rightful place as a dining table that will far outlast me. On its own (even without the bottom shelf), the table weighs over 100 lbs and, with the plywood bottom shelf fully-loaded, the table is nearly impossible to move. I doubt I will need to worry about bench-wobble causing handplane chatter.

Thanks for coming by! Please let me know what you think and stay tuned for my next post, which will cover my condensed tool chest and other workshop accoutrements.

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