Bench Build Next Steps

The bench build continues to go well, I have finished the parts for the front glide vise and I my goal is to get this installed and adjusted this weekend.

Glide vise parts

The parts above are hard maple, the chop was a challenge. It is 2 5/8" thick at the top and tapers down to 1 9/16". I tried to resaw the glue up on my band saw, but it was a struggle, so I stopped, got out the #40 scrub plane, the #6 jointer, and the #4 smoothing plane and had my workout for the day/week/month.
One thing I learned is that you can tap hard wood to accept machine screws. This may seem elementary to some of you, but I had never thought to do that before, and is suggested in the plans to do so.

bench view with leg attached

I went ahead and painted the unit, oiled the knobs and door stops and the bottom foot of the bench. The plan calls for a 4/4 foot I believe and I felt that would make the bench lower that I like so I used simple 2x4 and with the thickness of the top will put the height where I want it.  I can touch up any dings later. The finish is General Finishes Milk Paint Bayberry Green, hardware supplied in the Bench crafted hardware pack.

Additional bench view

The remainder of the work will be on the top and the tail vise. I have all the maple I need barring any major screw ups, and I had to use hard vs. the preferred soft maple. My wood monger in Indiana did not have a good selection of clear soft maple so rather than wait I switched to the hard maple. 

So far the build is going well, there are some challenges which keeps things interesting, and I am learning some new techniques along the choice.

Back At It Bench Build Underway

Finally getting started on the new bench for my shop and am excited with the progress to date. With respect to Monsieur Roubo, Shaker is my style and I am building it using the plans, and hardware, purchased from Benchcrafted. The level of detail in their drawings is outstanding, the hardware package is complete, and the 3D available in a download are a plus.

Shown above is the basic carcass made from some pretty decent birch ply I bought at HD of all places for a reasonable price, was surprised at the quality of the plywood, havent found a void yet. It is sitting on an old bench that moved with me from TN that was sitting in my garage. I drilled some holes in the top for the holdfasts, and use the Benchcrafted Moxon vise I built to use as an end vise. It is working out great, but cant wait to get the real deal.

Case with face frame and end frame dry fit. Both frames are constructed with 5/4 (net 1") poplar. If you look at Benchcrafteds website, you will see the base of the bench is painted , so poplar is a good choice for the outer frame.

Frames and back attached, all that is needed for the bottom is the "foot" It is a frame made of 1X3 poplar. I may change that thickness once I determine the overall height of the bench.

As of this posting, the door for the end panel is mounted, the doors for the front are made, the drawers are next. 

This will be one solid bench. The advertised finished weight will be around 350 lbs, certainly sturdy enough to handle any hand tool work.

A finished photo can be seen at Benchcrafted website and for those of you attending WIA in the Fall in Covington, KY, Jameel my have his bench there at the show.

More to come as I hit significant milestones during the construction.

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 After a commission job, and a very nice trip to Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg, I completed the next major step in the bench build, adding the doors and drawers. 

The doors are 1" poplar and are attached with the hinges supplied in the hardware pack from Benchcrafted, the knobs are cherry as is the door latch on the side door. I still need to make two more.

The half blind dovetails on the drawers are hand cut, I used pine for the drawer sides and back, the big reason was I ran out of poplar for the drawers, and I had the pine on hand from a previous job.

Happy with the results of the dovetails, the more I cut the better they look (to me anychoice) and this step was one of the more enjoyable parts of this phase of construction.Next step. Front Leg Vise construction and installation, final fit, and finish, of the drawers and doors, and coloring the cabinet in a yet to be determined color of Milk Paint.

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The Sawdust Chronicles 2010 Build Challenge Part II

My saga of the 2010 Sawdust Chronicles Build Challenge continues.
The Build

My milling equipment is set up
and ready to go.

The build was done mostly with power tools. I prepped the stock with my jointer and planer and dimensioned with my table saw. I used a 5" random orbit sander to smooth the pieces once they were cut to size.
I ended up fabricating three (3) of the center sections as the first warped before I could tile it and I miss dereferenced a joinery mark on the second. As I had never tiled before and I had plenty of tile, I chose to tile one of the unusable center sections and the real section. Since both the mortar and grout had mixing ratios and pot lives I set the real tile immediately after the test tile and mortared the real tile immediately after the test tile. Even though this only gave me about 2 minutes practice, I feel it did help and Im glad I did it.

The bottom lip and upper wing
section are Dominoed and ready.

All of the joinery was done using Dominos and Tightbond III glue. I used Tightbond III because of its longer open time when compared to Tightbond II. As many of the glue ups were clamped at odd angles with custom made cauls, I wanted as much open time as I could easily get. Luckily, the glue ups went smoothly. Once the top section was done I smoothed some misalignment in the face with my block plane and flattened the back of the center section to the wings with my new Rotex in a moment of mental ineptitude (I bought the Rotex during the project with no intention to use it. As I did use it for this one step, it is included in my project expenses under power tools).

Gluing the base/arm assembly to
the top assembly using one
funky looking caul.

After 5 glue ups the book stand was assembled. It unfortunately needed dramatically more touch up sanding at this point than I was planning on, so I went to work with a variety of sanding sponges and my 5" random orbit sander. Once the sanding was finally done, I began with a 1 lb cut of shellac applied with a rag. After that I switched to the full 2 lb cut of Seal Coat and applied 5 more coats by rag, sanding with a "00" steel wool equivalent synthetic pad between coats. When the final coat of shellac was dry I installed a thin bead of tile caulk to act as an expansion joint between the glass tile and the walnut which surrounds it.
My 2010 Build Challenge Photo Album
The Sawdust Chronicles 2010 Build Challenge, Part IRead More..

Senin, 20 Juni 2016

Bench Build Complete !!

The Shaker style bench is now complete and ready for use (officially), I was using it prior to the finish coat for some other small projects.

 The finished top dimension is 26" x 83", I left it a little wider than the plan to allow for a couple of round bench holes to accept holdfasts for the Moxon vise. Even at that width, there is still plenty of room all around the bench. I used Tried and True wipe-on oil for all of the unpainted pieces.

Back view showing the back panel routed to give the impression of ship lapped boards. 

 Tail vise view and overhang required for all the hardware under the bench top.

 Front view shows the square dog hole strip that runs the entire length of the bench. I do have a few more bench dogs to build, and the plans are clear on how to do that, even though it is not the most exciting part of the build.

 The deadman and rail 

The parallel guide bar prevents the leg vise chop from racking, simply slide the bar into the hole close to the width of the board you have in the vise.
One thing I can say is this bench is solid, and heavy! I had a chance to edge join a board and I detected absolutely no movement at all, solid as a rock. This bench was a pleasure to build. The quality of the hardware and plans are outstanding. I had some challenges along the choice, but what fun would it be if it was easy? I learned a lot along the choice and would be glad to share if someone is thinking about building this bench.

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Sabtu, 05 Maret 2016

The Sawdust Chronicles 2010 Build Challenge Fun with Picasa

Having documented my build with about 150 photos, Ive spent some time playing with them in Picasa. As it integrates so well into Blogger, I use Picasa for all my Penultimate Woodshop photos.

The completed book stand.

A Picasa generated collage of all 165 photos.

The first thing I did was make a collage. With Picasa thats as easy as selecting any number of photos and then hitting the collage button. If you dont like the choice it arranges the images, you can have it re-arrange them automatically, or you can drag and drop them anywhere you like. Once youve settled, hit save and it turns the collage into one photo. The image above was made by selecting the whole photo and having Picasa re-arrange the images once automatically.

The next thing I did was make this video. Its really just a slide show of all 165 images, but I think its cool because it takes the viewer thought the entire process (could just be cool to me, since I lived the build). I could (should) have added music. Pleas forgive the fact that I didnt have my audio library connected to the computer when I did this.
If fancy collages and slide show videos dont do it for you, then just check out the Build Challenge photo folder.
How do you document your builds?
The Sawdust Chronicles 2010 Build Challenge, Part I
The Sawdust Chronicles 2010 Build Challenge, Part II

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The Sawdust Chronicles Build Challenge 2010

Ive entered the Sawdust Chronicles build challenge. I did it kind of last minute and havent yet completed the idea in my head, but Ill be sure to share my progress with you kind folks here. In the mean time, take a look at The Taylor Garage post linked to below. Steve does a much better job describing the event than Im doing here. Also follow the link on Steves site back to the Sawdust Chronicles to learn more about the event and watch as it unfolds.

The Taylor Garage ? Blog Archive ? The Sawdust Chronicles Build Challenge 2010

The Sawdust Chronicles 2010 Build Challenge Part I

The finished book stand.

I begin with an apology. Im sorry for not having posted since October 22. I try to post at least weekly. A number of personal and work projects have conspired against me lately to prevent my posting. Chief among them was the Sawdust Chronicles 2010 Build Challenge.
As I was entered in the Build Challenge, Ive spent every free moment over the last few weeks working on the book stand which I submitted as my entry. When I lost my build time on the final Friday and Saturday of the challenge I feared it may have all been for naught if I failed to complete my project. Thankfully Rick was nice enough to extend the deadline for all and I successfully submitted my project almost 4 hours before the it was due!
Here for you, my dear readers, is part I of my submission description.
As my entry to the Sawdust Chronicles 2010 build challenge I have constructed a book stand. The book stand is constructed from walnut and glass tile, assembled using Domino joinery and finished with 6 coats of de-waxed shellac.
Design ProcessWhen I decided to enter the Sawdust Chronicles 2010 build challenge in late August I had already been asked by my mother (a second grade teacher) to make a book stand for the dictionary in her classroom. She had given me a print out of some book stand designs, a physical copy of the dictionary to be held on the stand and a request of a 60 degree display angle. On review of the Sawdust Chronicles 2010 build challenge rules and entry form I quickly abandoned the designs she had suggested and got to work on my own.

The Bell Forrest project pack &
the glass tile laid out on my
table saw.

My starting point was walnut. I had alchoices wanted to work it and when I saw Bell Forrest Products labor day sale I ordered a 10 board feet project pack and hoped that would be enough (it ended up being almost twice what I needed). Another point I wanted to incorporate from the beginning was a secondary material. My initial though was copper, as I have experience working with sheet metal at work, and copper is such a beautiful metal and so easy to work with. My idea was to use copper sheet metal to veneer a piece of MDF which would act as the arm portion of the stand. Unfortunately, the build challenge rules forbid the use of MDF, so I began to track down some plywood to veneer with the copper. During this early stage of the design I was walking through Home Depot and was inspired by the glass tile on display. I bought some there on the spot and decided that rather than use copper to veneer the arm portion of the stand, I would use the glass tile as an inlay for the center section of the top where the spine of the dictionary rests.

The tile laid in position during
a dry fit.

Incorporating the tile into the design was the inspiration for the top. I recessed the center tile section for the practical purposes of housing the tile and holding the dictionary spine and for the aesthetic purpose of allowing the side sections of the top to rise up and achoice from the center like wings. After some trial and error with the actual dictionary, I decided on 10 degrees as the appropriate angle for the wings. Once I had the top designed, I set to work constructing it. I had finished assembling the top before giving the base design any serious thought. Since I knew the top had to be held at a 60 degree angle, I started with that and cut the now walnut support arm at 60 degrees. I ripped it to width so that it matched the top. The base was the final component I designed. I made it slightly longer than the support arm to give it small lips in the front and rear. I determined the width of the base though a combination of what looked good to my eye and what was wide enough to support the top. In order to give the piece visual balance, I gave the bottom wings angled down at 10 degrees to mirror the angle of the upper wings.
More on the build in the next post. Until then check out my 2010 Build Challenge Photo Album.
What did you build this fall?

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