Shop Equipment

Working it Out

Once upon a time, I bought a twelve foot long board of 6/4 cherry that was supposed to be the top of the reclaimed cherry console table. But as fate would have it, there was just enough of the original table to make the full reclaimed version, so this board sat in my workshop for night on a year. I couldn’t sleep last night, so this board’s time came at about 3am.

The basic bench takes shape.

The entire bench is made from that one board. The top consists of two edge-jointed boards and is about 10 3/8″ x 1 1/2″ x 49″. The legs are 2 1/2″ x 1 1/2″ and angled at 10 degrees. The overall bench is 19 1/4″ high, which is my preferred height for sitting benches (and saw benches, at that).

The legs are beyond friction fit in their lap joints with the benchtop. I went through two pine beater blocks with lump hammer persuasion just to get them to seat in a dry fit. A small part of me wants to make this a knock down bench, but it is compact enough to be portable even when glued together.

As I was making the bench, I had the Saalburg workbench in my mind’s eye. But looking at it now, I don’t think one could ever mistake the two. In any event, this bench is more for sitting than for woodworking. I’m not saying I won’t bore some peg holes. I just don’t plan do much more than home handiwork on it.

I have some sweet square head lag screws left over from a prior project that would be perfect for reinforcing the glue joint connecting the legs to the bench top. But I still think there should be some gussets. I wonder if it’s worth doing drawbored mortise and tenons or just simple lap joints with glue and screws.

I remembered this time to leave enough extra to make the cutoff easy.

I’ll take some more pictures when I decide what to do. Until then, I plan to get back to dimensioning the white oak for the lower shelf on the bathroom vanity.

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Keeping it Clean

Let me start by saying that my old workbench is still for sale. Anyway…

To varying degrees of success, I try to live by the Shaker adage: “A place for everything and everything in its place”. In the last six years or so of woodworking, I’ve learned at least one important lesson: the place for sharpening is not on your main workbench.

Sharpening is a messy endeavor. Metal filings, steel slurry, honing fluid and tool oils can impregnate the benchtop and wreak havoc on your tools. So I tried to keep my sharpening implements on the far right side of the bench (away from main work area). But that just robbed me of the rightmost two feet of work area. So I decided to do something about it.

I told you I was practicing!

Largely relying on the Paul Sellers blueprints, I turned about fifteen home center whitewood 2×4 studs into a dedicated sharpening station. The Nicholson-style design was important. I needed an apron so I could mount a Grammercy Tools saw vise, which was a gift from my brother and sister-in-law. The overall dimensions are 47.75″ x 20″ x 36″.

It has enough space for the saw vise, my sharpening stones (or bench grinder)…

These Ikea goose neck task lights are pretty nice.

… and a dedicated metalworker’s vise. It also has a tool well for random implements.

Which I still need to finish by adding a skirt around it.

There is no mortise and tenon or dovetail joinery in this build. Only lap joints and housing joints, glue, nails and screws. Without exaggeration, I used a tiny subset of my entire tool kit to make this sharpening station (on purpose), which are tools a beginner woodworker is likely to have:

No. 5 bench plane (all dimensioning tasks)
No. 4 bench plane (final smoothing only)
Block Plane (a shoulder plan would have worked better)
3/4″ bevel edge chisel (with mallet)
Eggbeater drill
Hammer and die-forged nails
Screwdriver and slotted wood screws
Various clamps and hide glue

Never likely to see any hand planing, so I re-purposed the back apron as the bottom shelf.

I took this minimalist approach because I wanted to know whether or not a beginner, with a core set of hand tools, could actually build something like this. The answer is a resounding: probably. I’m no beginner anymore, but some of the joints require pretty tight tolerances (like the housing joints where the aprons connect to the legs). I guess if I went slowly and took great care, I could have pulled this off all those years ago. But it might have ended up slightly wobbly.

But I’m glad to have undertaken the exercise, as it’s a piece of shop equipment I’ve been missing for a long time.

Long live clean workbenches.

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There Comes a Time

We must all live with the choices we make. In my case, the choice to make a small workbench out of home center Douglas Fir. Even sharp tools bounce around because of the varying hardness. But one great property of Douglas Fir is its compression. A friction fit joint can be nearly mechanical if done right. And the angled back legs of that small workbench are beyond friction fit. They are sledgehammer fit.

The most important trick is getting the angle right.

While I recently chose the benchtop boards for their clarity and color match, the legs had been prepared for some time. As a result, the grain pattern is not great. I used what was left of the Lamp Black milk paint (leftover from various tool chests) to paint the undercarriage. It’s a silly contrast that serves no purpose other than vanity.

The back legs are lag-screwed to the top, but the front legs merely through tenoned. No glue.

I did not glue the short rails to the legs. They are just friction fit lap-jointed with carriage bolts. The laps on the back legs are intentionally left long, so the short rails (and not the benchtop itself) butt up against the wall.

In the absence of glue, I guess this is, in theory, a knock-down workbench.

Once the paint dried, I packed up the bench and the Dutch tool chest and brought them to their new home at my buddy’s house. I was sad to see it go, but I know both the bench and the tool chest will have a good home. My buddy does metalworking, so I also bought him a proper vise as a housewarming present.

Goodbye, dear friend.

I’m officially over Douglas Fir for a while. With the extra room in the shop, it’s time to get started in earnest on my next project: a new guard rail for the staircase. I need to check the building code, probably.

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Sincerity in Imitation

Thoroughly ripping off Mr. McConnell, I’ve been making a small workbench to clear out some spare Douglas Fir 4×4’s from the home center. I don’t know about you guys, but whenever I see a rift-sawn, clear-ish 4×4 at the local Lowes or Home Depot, I buy it. For US$8 or so each, it’s hard to pass up such useful dimensional lumber. I’m sitting on ten or or so of them right now, so why not make a little workbench for a buddy who is moving into a new place?

It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for any workbench.

My friend is about 6’1″, so a 36″ high workbench should be perfect. He does metalworking (not woodworking), so I’ll skip the crochet and assume he’ll bolt a metalworker’s vise to the top. Speaking of which, a 48″ x 18″ top (i.e., about 6 lengths of Douglas Fir 4×4) should be plenty of real estate. With the splay on the back legs, it will probably be 20″ from the wall (and I’ll make a backsplash that he can screw on to keep things from falling down the back).

The front legs will pierce the top with through tenons (like a Roubo bench but without the sliding dovetail). The mortises will be formed in advance by shaping the front piece of the lamination (to keep things simple). The back legs will also be through-mortised, but on an angle in much the same way as a joined saw bench. The back lamination, like the front, will be shaped in advance to create the mortise for those angled joints.

Short rails will connect each front and back leg with lap joints. But there will be no long rails between the legs. Instead, a scrap of 3/4″ plywood, reinforced with a couple of Douglas Fir strips, will fit neatly across the short rails. I don’t expect the workbench to receive much lateral stress (like occurs when planing by hand), so I’d rather leave the area under flexible for storage.

Beautiful, beautiful lap joints.

In the spirit of adventure, I’m using only a very small number of edge tools to build the bench. To date, the only handtools to touch the work have been a Stanley No. 5 bench plane, a 3/4″ chisel and a large router plane. All pieces go through the thickness planer once a reference face and edge are tried and trued. And F-style clamps are used for glue-ups (with Titebond I).

This vintage Stanley No. 5 has quickly become my favorite bench plane.

I’ve purposely selected the more twisted boards for this project because they aren’t good for much else. As a result, each length of 4×4 ends up at about 3.25″ square. These boards have been in the corner of the shop for over a year at this point, so once the twist is removed and they are laminated, I’m willing to bet they’ll behave (more or less) for the rest of the bench’s working life.

This is all just a distraction from finishing up the Dri-core in the basement. It’s amazing how much gets done when you’re procrastinating.

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Front and Center

None of us are as young as they used to be. I’m in my mid thirties now and I don’t stoop over the work as well as I used to. As a mostly hand tool woodworker that dovetails more often than not, I’ve gotten accustomed to a clamp-on, twin screw vise (what many call a “Moxon Vise”) that raises the work slightly above the benchtop. As my original twin screw vise was starting to wear out, I more and more just relied on my sort-of shoulder vise (it’s actually a crochet with a screw). But that is not a permanent solution, unless I become a sit down woodworker. And I’m far too fidgety for that.

So a more permanent solution has been born.

Fine furniture, it ain’t.

My original inspiration was Jeff Miller’s benchtop bench. At its heart, though, this is a twin screw vise with some extra work surface. The work surface is 24″ long, 13″ deep (including the inside jaw) and 3″ thick. Including the feet, it raises the work over 6″ off the benchtop, which equates to about 40″ from the floor. That height is comfortable for me at 5’10”.

The vise has just over 24″ between the screws, and it opens to over 5″ wide. More than enough capacity for things like saw vises and tenoning work.

Very stable.

I like this form because it is so stable. Many purist twin screw vises are tippy, both while clamping it to the workbench and when working at max extension. Suffice to say, this one is not.

Quite a bit of counterbalance to the vise jaws.

The new benchtop bench is admittedly Frankenstein-esque in its composition. The work surface is four sheets of 3/4″ plywood. The vise jaws are both 8/4 red oak (bone dry and lined with adhesive backed cork from the home center), as are the feet (with non-skid ladder tread applied to the bottom). The wooden screws are 1 1/4″ hard maple, threaded with a Beall Tool Company wood threader. The vise nuts are 5/4 ash.

The inner jaws are tapped to hold the wooden screws; the threads on the wood screws terminate for a tight lock to the jaws. The outer jaws have 1 1/4″ clearance holes, drilled with a different drill bit that is slightly larger than the one used for tapping (but not so large that there is risk of wracking). The vise nuts are also tapped with the Beall Tool Company kit.

You may have noticed how chunky the design is. The source material has a lighter feel, but this is not a magazine piece. Two recesses on each leg create trestles which are sufficient for clamping. Any further aesthetics (including shaping the vise nuts) would have added to the build time.

Before the benchtop bench gets put to work, I’ll secure the feet (which are currently just glued on) with lag screws coming down from the top. I also have not secured the wooden screws to the back jaw yet, as this is technically a prototype. Securing the screws would take as little as a 1/4″ dowel through the inner jaw and the screw itself. I may also add dogging capability.

I also must chamfer the outer jaw all around.

This project was long overdue. I have a ton of dovetailing coming up, which was a good excuse to finally get this done. But more on that later.

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Walking on Sunshine

I had intended to call this post “Let there be Light: the Revenge”, but thought better of it in the end. But the point is the same: proper illumination is an integral part of doing quality work (woodworking or otherwise).

It’s not pretty, but I don’t want to hardwire any fixtures yet.

By now, that I swear by these LED light bars is not news. But as always happens, there is some finesse in the hanging. To hang properly, the hooks in the ceiling should be about 45 inches apart. But in the orientation I desire, that meant hanging on studs 48 inches apart. Too far for just the S hooks to reach.

My solution? Twist some leftover coat hangers from the Roman Workbench mockup.

And I got to use my electrical pliers!

Each is about 5 inches long and much sturdier than the thin wire that originally came in the box. Nothing fancy, totally free, and quick.

The simplest solutions are always the best.

And now I can see what I’m doing. And isn’t that really the point?

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Some [Non-]Mechanical Assistance

I’m not always kind to my Work Sharp 3000 sharpening system. It’s a temperamental machine, in my experience. But seeing as I somehow let some of my chisels get a bit out of shape, the Work Sharp has spent a fair time on my bench lately.

In all its glory.

For those unfamiliar with the product, the Work Sharp spins a tempered glass disc covered with adhesive-backed abrasive paper on each face (see above). With the disc spinning, the top face is typically used for flattening, while an adjustable tool rest permits bevel-grinding and sharpening on the underside (up to 2″ wide). Though great for bevels, I’ve found it nearly impossible to evenly flatten on the top face while the disc is spinning. But the discs are very flat, which is what I’d like to talk about today.

For flattening, I typically use a machinist’s granite slab with adhesive-backed sandpaper. The setup is admittedly much better for planes than for chisels and the granite slab can be cumbersome in use. For example, I can only adhere a few different grits at a time (which range only from 80 to 320). Also, changing sandpaper often leaves adhesive residue that needs to be scraped away (or worse, removed with mineral spirits). So instead, I’ve been using the Work Sharp discs for re-flattening my chisels, but off the machine.

To begin with, there are more grits available than with adhesive-backed sandpaper (WS goes from 80 grit to 3000 and above) and each of grit is available at all times because I own 5 glass discs. Plus each disc is naturally non-skid on the benchtop, having abrasive paper on both sides. In addition, because each disc is barely over a chisel-length in diameter, I can work the chisel from all angles use every square inch of abrasive on the discs (unlike my granite slab, where large swathes of fresh grit are wasted). Finally, the abrasive on the WS discs lasts much longer than ordinary sandpaper and can be easily cleaned with a crepe block while spinning on the machine.

And the results have been more than satisfactory, especially for my purposes.

Polished to 1000 grit only. I already own enough mirrors and my chisels are for chopping.

I’m not recommending anyone go out and buy a Work Sharp 3000 (and certainly don’t blow $100 on extra glass discs just because they are nice surfaces for flattening). But small-space woodworking is about finding the right tool for the job from what’s available. And in this case, something I had on hand works better than anything else.

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Finding the Hole(s)

It’s pretty snowy out, all of a sudden. And I’m using the quiet time to get some things done in the shop. Sharpening and plane making in the early am, then onto other tasks.

On my list for a while was drilling a few more dog holes in the maple planing bench. Not actually for bench dogs, but for aluminum planing stops. Extremely low-profile, they come in several lengths (and can be hacksawed to exact measurements). I’m sure I’ve talked about them before, but I could not live without them in my apartment woodworking shop.

Not sure if others sell them, but all mine are from Lee Valley/Veritas.

The pegs (which come in 3/4″ or 20mm) slide in a track on the underside of the stop, so they fit in a variety of dog hole configurations. And the pegs are shallow (less than 1 1/2″): perfect for a clamp-on workbench made of 8/4 maple.

In addition to their utility for surface planing (seen above), I have found these planing stops to be quite useful as bench hooks. Two more holes to the right side of the bench now make a crosscutting bench hook (see below). And because my plywood shooting board/bench hook is too deep for this particular bench, I no longer have to unclamp the whole bench every time I want to cut a tenon shoulder.

And it saves me from always digging out the saw benches.

There are actually three more holes to drill. One centered in the far right for a holdfast. And two more along the back edge on the left side of the bench to form a perpendicular for traversing and general bracing. Everything is measured and marked; I’m just taking it slowly today.

Hope all my east coast readers are staying off the roads. It’s not too bad out here, but pretty blustery. I can only imagine what it’s like further north.

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Some Minor Maintenance

It’s true that I don’t woodwork on a full-size woodworking bench. I am not, however, immune from some of the more mundane workbench maintenance tasks. Specifically, I took some time this weekend to re-flatten and re-seal my Milkman’s Workbench.

I’ve been working with thinner stock lately (some pine siding off-cuts for little dovetailed boxes) and have noticed that the as-planed pieces kept developing a slight twist. Turns out, the bench had a couple small high spots (in the middle of the main bench), as well one large high spot around the last two dog holes. Nothing terrible, but enough to affect stock that isn’t thin enough to self-support while planing.

You can see the slightly lighter areas in the above picture.

The flattening didn’t take long (other than the drying time on the Danish Oil), but I took a pretty sizable tear-out chunk from some swirling grain near the wagon vise. Clearly nothing fatal to the function of the Milkman’s Workbench, but you all know my feeling on aesthetics.

It will eat my brain forever.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been watching a lot of Paul Sellers’ videos and am thinking about making one of his shooting boards. We’ll see.

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An Apology to Accessories

A few days ago, I wrote about how cleaning, honing, sharpening and project planning just wasn’t as fulfilling as actually making things. Although I stand by that statement, I think it may have sounded more negative than intended.

When I first started woodworking, for good or for ill, I was focused on acquiring “tools” (as most people understand the word). Things that cut. Things that shape. Things that go ” whirrrrr” at various pitches (which nowadays is just me making sound effects for my router planes and braces).

In a brief moment of calm over the weekend (I did not, by the way, get any ripping done), I was rummaging through my toolchest in hopes of finding more excess to trim. I was struck by how few “tools” I actually own. I won’t go through the litany again, but in sheer number and volume, it’s not much (and certainly my “tool” collection hasn’t grown significantly since establishing the apartment workshop several months back). In reality, there is so much more to a workshop than “tools”.

The real heroes of my apartment woodworking shop.

A good portion of my shop equipment is not “tools” (as most people understand the word), but accessories for sharpening, setting up, maintaining and protecting my “tools”. Accoutrements that allow my chisels, knives, planes, saws and squares to consistently perform at a high level.

And clamps. Lots and lots of clamps. Always more clamps. In soft focus.

Learning to use these support items effectively is the other half of woodworking. Dull, poorly set tools are as much a threat to safety and success in the workshop as poor technique. So while I will enjoy the making more, I will also be thankful for the vises, sharpening stones, files, gauges, blade guards, rust prevention chemicals, and that sort of thing that make the making possible.

In sum: sharpen early and hone often; lubricate and polish regularly; protect edges always. Your tools and your projects will be better for it.

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The Apartment Woodworker

Hand tool Woodworking for the Urban Apartment Dweller

Shop Equipment

Working it Out

Keeping it Clean

There Comes a Time

Sincerity in Imitation

Front and Center

Walking on Sunshine

Some [Non-]Mechanical Assistance

Finding the Hole(s)

Some Minor Maintenance

An Apology to Accessories

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