woodworking in an apartment

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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:

  1. 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).
  2. 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).
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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:

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Why is there a diapers box in my planer dungeon?

into this:

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2/3 of the core slab.

I had to replace these:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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So Many Things Change

My weekend was somewhat productive.

On Saturday, I set up the temporary workshop at my parents’ house.  I even solved the biggest problem with my old workbench: stability.  I did so in two ways.  First, I screwed the top down to the frame with some 3″ No. 12 screws (no longer just relying just on the friction-fit 3/4″ stub tenons for lateral support).  Second, I loaded up the underside of the frame with additional ballast in the form of five-to-six foot lengths of lumber.  The net result is a workbench that now weighs about 300 lbs (better known as approximately what a workbench should weigh).

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From L to R:  8/4 red oak, 6/4 maple, 8/4 maple, 2×6 Douglas Fir and 2×10 Douglas Fir.

On Sunday, I got right to ripping down almost all of the Douglas Fir 2×10’s that will become the new workbench.  Approximately 60 feet of 2×10’s became the following:

  • 2 x 4.5 x 72 (times 12, for most of the laminated benchtop)
  • 2 x 4.5 x 62 (times 4, for most of the laminated legs once crosscut)
  • 2 x 4.5 x 82 (times 2, for the tenons on the laminated legs once crosscut)

The final 82″ of 2×10 (seen below the bench) is the prettiest lumber of all (even with a knot or two) and will become the faces of the front legs and the benchtop.  Some of the off-cuts from the 82″ lengths will also go to the strips of the benchtop that form the mortises (more on that below).

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To be left out, for a week, to further acclimate.

Four things became apparent during the stock breakdown process.

  1. I really miss my miter saw.  For this build, waste is anathema, and a clean, straight, crosscut is key to ensuring full length.  And it’s so much quicker than by hand.  my miter saw used to live in my old apartment.  I had no idea how much I missed it.
  2. Even quarter- and rift-sawn lumber has internal stresses.  One of the 12 foot lengths of 2×10 (in fact, the clearest and straightest-grain of the batch) split lengthwise along the grain while I was crosscutting it on the miter saw.  There was so much energy bound up in the piece that upon splitting a shard of wood shot off the main board and hit me in the eye protection.  After cutting around those stresses, the remainder of the piece will become one of the strips that form the mortises on the benchtop.
  3. I don’t have enough lumber for the entire bench.  The plan was for the lumber seen above to be the entire bench, but I don’t think that will work.  This should nonetheless get me a 4 x 20 x 72 benchtop and four 4 x 4 legs, and probably the short stretchers.  I think another 16 feet of Douglas Fir 2×6 will be plenty for the long stretchers.
  4. Battery-powered circular saws have limitations.  Just ripping the lumber shown above used four full charges of double 20V batteries and three full charges of single 20V batteries.  I either need another charger or a corded circular saw.

More than anything, this post has helped me think through exactly how to use the available materials in the most efficient way practicable. I may need one or two more boards, but for about $100, I will have most of a proper workbench.

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Out of Retirement

As I begin the new workbench build this weekend, I won’t be in my apartment woodworking shop.  For starters, there is just not enough room.  And the entire operation relies on proximity to my thickness planer.  So I am pulling my old workbench out of retirement.

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My, how far I’ve come.

 

At 84″ long and 24″ deep, my old workbench (which has been collecting dust in storage my parents’ house) is the perfect work surface for laminating the new benchtop.  The old workbench needs to be moved inside, though, and will reside in their basement for the foreseeable future.

I’m also pulling a few power tools into the mix for this build in particular.  The top will be laminated from 72″ lengths of Douglas Fir 2×10’s ripped down the middle and a circular saw will rip much squarer (and quicker) than I can by hand.  The end result should be a thicker overall bench top.  In fact, I am hopeful the slab will be over 4″ thick after flattening, so my 12-inch double bevel sliding compound miter saw will be indispensable as well.

I’m doing 72″ for two reasons.  One, it should still be transportable (in pieces).  Two, the use of a quick-release tail vise will add extra length as required (and I can always make an insert).

More details to come, but suffice to say, I’m heavily influenced by Roubo’s Plate 11 in this build.  There will be a crochet, but I do plan to skip the sliding dovetails.

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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.

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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.

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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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