New Canuck Workshop

[newcanuckworkshop]

One mortise down, three to go. At least when I took the picture. The first one wasn't the prettiest, but by the end I was getting good results. It's nice to have an auger bit to take out most of the waste. Makes cutting a 3/4" mortise much easier.

On a sidenote, I used a LN 3/4" O1 chisel to pare the sidewalls. I know O1 softer than A2, but it seems a bit much for the edge to show degradation after paring long-grain  in white pine. The tradeoff is supposed to be a "keener" edge in O1 vs A2, which is presumably helpful for paring as opposed to chopping but I'm not sure the loss in durability is worth it. All this makes the new LV PM-V11 steel and chisels more interesting.

[newcanuckworkshop]

Glued up, re-milled and cut. Working away on the first of two traditional sawbenches. (Mr. Schwarz has three iterations of the bench listed at the end) Finished up the 10° cuts at the top of the legs. Deciding whether to M&T the stretchers or nail them in place. Don't have any 6D cut nails so that might decide it unless I make an "emergency" run to the local Lee Valley. Oddly, the big boxes post pictures of cut masonry nails, but don't ever seem to stock them.

Original 2006 w/M&T

Simplified 2008 w/screws

Current 2010 w/nails

[newcanuckworkshop]

Having completed the milling of stock for a pair of pine benches, I was left with a thin but usable length of clear, dry pine. I thought it would make a nice bottom to the box, and give me a chance to use the plough plane I acquired last year. I milled the scrap board down to just over 1/4”, and started making grooves with the plough plane. Nice hand cut grooves. The grooving operation also emphasized how much I need to finish these sawbenches and get a proper workbench put together.

Milling stock by machine isn't particularly enjoyable work, but it's the most expedient way to get to the finer operations that matter, and are much more gratifying to do by hand.

[newcanuckworkshop]

After a week away, what started as a small pine box finished as a carcase, seems a nicer description than bottomless box. There was some underlying pessimism regarding my ability to complete four sets of dovetails that would assemble together, so I neglected to groove the boards to fit a bottom. The carcase is dry fit, so the option to groove and fit a bottom is still there, it depends on whether the envisioned use requires one or not.

The second picture illustrates most of the tools used in making the carcase. I left out a skew angle rabbet plane, and only the wood screw from the Moxon vise is visible on the right edge.

Time to sharpen again.

[newcanuckworkshop]

Little boxes made of ticky tacky. Aka air dried pine.

Well, almost little boxes. I managed three (two and a half?) sets of tails and one set of pins before my woodworking time came to an end. I expect there will be a small collection of little boxes when I'm through. I am fairly sure this will be my last piece of air dried pine though. Too much ticky tacky sap for my liking.

[newcanuckworkshop]

After much time off attributed to a number of different reasons, the weekly creation of shavings and sawdust is back in full swing. It is gratifying to accomplish my best set of pins, tails and resulting dovetail joint coincident with my 100th post.

The fit was still on the tight side, but no splitting of the end pins this time. Gaps are virtually non-existent on the "show" surfaces. The inside corner shows a bit of a gap, but I'm uncertain if it is acceptable or not. The misalignment of the edges is due to my careless flipping of the tail board during assembly from the original orientation used in marking the pin board.

[newcanuckworkshop]

More dovetails. More time on layout means better results. Couple corrections: baseline to stock thickness needs to be tighter, pin to tail was too tight and might consider using a pen to mark between the tails.

[newcanuckworkshop]

Toothy (Taken with instagram)

[newcanuckworkshop]

Part-time Dovetailing (Taken with instagram)

[newcanuckworkshop]

Expedit Follow-on

Sadly, it's probably a stretch to call the shelving mod carpentry. After milling close to 800 board feet of poplar, and sorting out a half dozen jigs for plantation shutters, the enormity of the task before me tends to overwhelm the few free hours each week.

The shelf depth on the modern mass manufacturing marvel wasn't enough to accommodate the old eMac so I bolted on another melamine coated board. With close to 100 pounds on the shelf there is a bit less than 1/8" sag in the middle, which means I'll be attaching an edging strip. The Sagulator tells me this should be ok as is, but an edging strip will give me a nice safety factor.

[newcanuckworkshop]

Carpentry != Woodworking

[spacearcher-deactivated20121108]

[newcanuckworkshop]

POS, and there's no barcode...

A rather large proportion of time in woodworking seems to be spent making decidedly irregular pieces of wood square. At least square in the sense that faces are parallel to one another, and perpendicular to edges. The operations then proceed from this reference form into any manner of angle and curve, but the starting point by necessity is the "4 square" form. The machine responsible for the reference surface and reference edge is the jointer. The planer addresses the surface opposite the reference surface. The table saw commonly addresses the edge opposite the reference edge.

Given the relative importance of the jointer in establishing the first two reference planes, one would surmise that any jointer is designed to achieve both flatness and perpendicularity. As with many things, reality is inconsistent with the theoretical. As a feature, the fence on many jointers are adjustable. Akin to an adjustable sole plate on circular saws and jig saws. There are conceivably instances where cutting or jointing at angles other than 90° is desirable. This would be a great addition in functionality were the primary function of cutting at 90° not compromised in doing so.

At this point, one might guess that this is hardly the case. A fence with an adjustable angle is a fence that cannot be set reliably to 90°. This was true on my Bosch jigsaw, and is acknowledged by Festool with the release of a fixed base on their 2011 line of jigsaws. When the Cadillac of handtool makers cannot design a baseplate for a jigsaw that reliably stays at 90°, it should imply that the Chevrolet's of the industry have no prayer of doing so.

All this to say the fence on my jointer/planer is a piece of junk. It is fully adjustable which means it will not stay at 90°, but I could cut miters, or at least approximate miters. I haven't tried cutting angles, but since it won't stay at 90°, is there real hope of it staying at another arbitrary angle? So a dozen components are required to render the fence, and by extension the machine useless at establishing a 90° edge. There is, thankfully, enough of a structure to devise a fix. It just doesn't seem like a homebrew fix should be required for a $2,000 machine to perform one of its three primary functions.

[newcanuckworkshop]

Chips Ahoy!

Seems I was negligent in emptying out the dust collector in time. This does illustrate one of the nice things about a spiral cutter head on the jointer/planer. It tends to generate shavings more than dust. In either case, with the volume of wood I milled, it results in a lot of chips.

The municipality I live in offers to take woodchips as part of the organics recycling program, the problem is the chips need to be placed into a compostable bag. I haven't come across 60L compostable bags, and the kraft paper bags for garden waste aren't acceptable. My immediate solution for this load was to toss it into the garden, in lieu of woodchips from the big box store. I'm pretty sure I'll be generating chips more rapidly than my garden will compost them, so I'll need a better solution shortly.

[newcanuckworkshop]

Trammel Points aka Big A$$ Compass

I expounded on the disparity in usage reversing for the divider and compass in woodworking. I would think most of that reversal comes from the fact that there is little need to actually layout circles (or holes) within the limit of most compasses. Why draw a 1" hole if it's going to be drilled out with a 1" bit? Mark the centre and begin boring. Beyond a certain size though, one becomes more interested in keeping the circle versus removing the circle. i.e. Drill 2" holes but cutout and keep 24" circles. Seems obvious enough.

As much fun as it might be to have a 3 foot long compass, it might be a bit on the unwieldy side. So here is a set of trammel points, again from eBay. Cutting circles isn't high on my list of things I've enjoyed doing so far, but that was all BBS. Before Band Saw. I'm thinking/hoping that things will be better than the vibrating, oscillating, bendy blade on a jigsaw. Did I mention that I think I have a growing affection for all things Starrett?

[newcanuckworkshop]

Divide & Use... er Conquer

Remember in grade school, the requisite geometry set from math class? In all those formative years of geometry, and even through an engineering drafting course, the one instrument that was eternally neglected was the divider. I remember questioning the utility of an instrument that resembled the compass but couldn't actually draw. Stepping into the world of woodworking, the compass falls somewhat to the wayside, with its semi-functional cousin stepping to the forefront. The divider, marking knife and marking gauge for a trio of indispensable layout tools in woodworking. Well, at least a trio of categories. While a pair (or two) of marking gauges is sufficient for most, it seems best to have at least a small assortment of dividers on-hand.

Here is my recently acquired set of Starrett dividers. That the dividers have round legs was an aesthetic choice, which turned to make acquiring dividers in good condition at a decent price more difficult. Thank you eBay collectors! These also answer the question of why my first set of dividers resulted in poor layout markings. These are pointed, almost dangerously so. My first set of dividers are on the blunt and non-pointy end of the spectrum. Think line more than point. Not having had to use dividers previously in an real function, I had naively assumed that this was how proper dividers were fashioned. I was incorrect. Like seemingly every other woodworking tool out there, these dividers require me to sharpen them to a point to be functional. Nice.

[newcanuckworkshop]

Wood in Waiting

Here lies a stack of wood waiting to be edge jointed and cut to width. I like to think, or hope, that this is the last time I will buy bargain wood off Kijiji, but the allure of sub-$1/board foot lumber might be too strong. Perhaps a couple two foot end cuts with severe checking will be enough to dissuade me from being too thrifty again. Given the rather inordinate time spent sorting and culling usable boards, I feel like slapping the bookcase together with lap joints would be a disservice. On the other hand, toothy dovetails might be a bigger eyesore and potential waste of wood. Regardless, the decision needs to be made before a truckload of poplar shows up for the shutter project next week.