Tag Archives: Woodworking

Woodworking Weekend

I’ve been on a bit of a woodworking binge lately, no doubt fueled by all the creative and talented woodworkers who have made a place on my YouTube subscription list. I’ve also been slowly acquiring used tools of various sorts, working on a variety of shop projects, and even taking a class.

The “class” is actually just a workshop held for five consecutive weekends held at the local high school where you are free to use their tools and avail yourself of the expertise of the instructor. I decided for my project that I’d like to make a laminated workbench top out of cheap dimensional lumber from the local Lowes. I’d never done such a project before, and as is typical for my projects, I dove in with more enthusiasm than pre-planning. But that being said, I also tend to be fairly thoughtful about such projects, and I learn all sorts of lessons in retrospect.

The workshop gave me access to a large jointer and planer, so I settled on a project that I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time: a heavy workbench top, made from laminated boards and designed to be flat. Like, not just sort of flat, but as flat as I could possibly make it. I didn’t “design” anything. I had a dimension in mind (roughly 2’x5′) and just kind of winged it.

I purchased 20 2x4s from Lowes, which were kiln dried Douglas Fir, for roughly $3 each. I spent a small premium (about $.50 each) to get their “premium” version, which did seem to be overall straighter and have fewer knots than their normal version which costs $2.50. Douglas Fir isn’t the obvious choice for a workbench top. It is fairly soft and fairly splintery, but it has a couple of major advantages: it’s available and it is cheap. I can certainly appreciate using a hardwood like maple for this, but my skills are certainly not adequate to justify spending $1000 on what will almost certainly be viewed as a learning attempt.

I cut all the 2x4s to 64″ and then set to work using the jointer. Here’s where I did things wrong.

The purpose of a jointer is to establish two flat, adjacent sides on a piece of work. In the ideal world, you’d then use the thickness planer to copy that flat surface from these “reference” faces to the opposite.

Here is what I think I should have done, and what I would likely do if I was going to make a second one of these:

  • Stare at each 2×4, examining it for twist and bow.
  • Joint the wide face, concave side down, until the piece is flat.
  • Then carefully joint one (hopefully concave face) by holding the reference face against the jointer, to establish an adjacent 90 degree face.
  • Now we have two flat faces. It is probably reasonable to use a table saw to rip the pieces to width, holding the jointed face down and the jointed edge to the rip fence on the saw.
  • Then, finally thickness plane all the pieces with the reference face down in the planer.

Sadly, I did some mistakes. None are going to be fatal, but they definitely made some mistakes and are slowing my progress and decreasing the quality of the final result. In no particular order:

  • I didn’t check the jointer’s fence for square until I was halfway through. Dumb, dumb, dumb. It wasn’t entirely my fault. Even if I had, the jointer in the shop has a fence which takes to periodic slipping, so it’s likely I would have screwed it up. I tried to do another pass to clean it up, which mostly worked (I missed a couple of outliers) but the jointing job was not perfect.
  • My jointing technique wasn’t perfect. I suspect that when trying to establish the 90 degree reference face, I didn’t do a consistently great job of holding the reference face against the fence, so even when the fence was perfectly setup, I managed to get a couple of boards through which had some taper and twist.
  • I suspect I planed some boards inadequately, and some convex bowing remained.
  • Some of the boards sat in my car for a couple of nights, where the variations in heat may have caused them to warp again, even had I done the jointing and planing perfectly.
  • I was in a hurry. We really only have 12 hours total workshop time, so I decided to forego planing each board separately, and instead went to glue up (with my imperfect stock) in three sections. Each would be small enough to thickness plane again, to establish the final surface.

This is where I was after class last week. I decided to proceed with the glue up as best I could, in three different sections: one of six boards and two of seven. I set them up on my assembly table at home. I took some care to use a set of primitive winding sticks to assure that both bar clamps at the ends were parallel, smeared in a ton of glue, and clamped them up.

A dry run of the first section…

The first section seemed like maybe I used a little less glue than I should have, and despite my best efforts, upon inspection when I was done, I saw that this section had a fair amount of twist (somewhere between 1/16″ and 1/8″) which was faintly annoying. But “once more into the breach”, and on subsequent nights I got the other two sections glued up. They were overalll much better. I did notice that there was still an issue with the first section when I tried to fit the first section to the second.

First section on the left. Note the taper?

Yeah, the edge of my first board has one very poorly cut board which isn’t anywhere close to at right angles with the surface. The first section is pretty terrible.

But I have a plan for salvaging it. Ideally, I could rejoint the section on the wide face and the adjacent edge, but these sections are a little bit wide, certainly not within the capability of my jointer, and not even within the capacity of the workshop jointer, which I’ll only have access to for another week. But where there is a will, there is a way. You can use a thickness planer as a jointer by taking a flat “reference board” and screwing/gluing/taping/attaching somehow the board to that reference sled, and then planing the opposite side. The planer will copy that faux reference face (which is flat) onto the opposite side, and once that side is flat, you can joint the edge and then proceed as usual.

The problem was that was going to take a bunch of time, and I only had a few hours of planer time.

So, I have a new (inexpensive, but highly rated) planer arriving next week.

So, for the class I decided to try to simply stop work on my bench during the class, and we decided instead to put together a simple shop stool that Carmen found on the web using some of my left over scrap Douglas Fir.

DIY Barstools made from 2x4s

It was designed to be made from dimensional lumber with only the simplest tools. We decided to avail ourselves of the jointer and at last clean up the faces. We didn’t do anything (either ripping or thickness planing) to ensure accurate dimensions, but tried to use some care. I made the top out of a glue up that I did as a test before doing my benchtop, which I did thickness plane to a consistent flat thickness.

And, two hours later, we had this:

I am actually pretty pleased. We made a couple of minor mistakes. I misread the instructions for the dimensions for the spreader: instead of 14 1/4″ on the short side, I cut it 14 1/4″ on the long side, which means that the stretcher is actually a bit high. We also followed their direction, which had us screwing the legs directly into the seat first, followed by the addition of the cross bar. This actually seems like the hard way to go. It made it difficult (or impossible) to drive the Kreg screws into the side pieces.

The better technique would be to assemble the two side frames first, perhaps by adding a stretcher at the top as well, and then attaching the top last. I’ve also thought that perhaps I should use a half lap joint to attach the stretcher, and avoid the use of Kreg screws entirely.

Anyway, that’s what’s currently going on woodworking-wise in the shop. More projects are coming, as well as others such as the refurbishment of a used bandsaw I picked up at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago. Stay tuned.

Shaking off the rust…

As part of my attempt to get into woodworking and develop some actual skills, I have been keeping an eye out for what would best be described as “junky piles of rust” at garage and estate sales. I have been updating my twitter feed with pictures and short comments, but I thought it might be fun to include some of what’s been going on here, in a longer format, and in a way that is more permanent and findable once my twitter posts fade into the past.

First of all, about a month ago I found someone selling this old Delta jointer for a good price. It was dusty and dirty, but entirely functional. I’d been looking for a jointer for quite sometime, as I think a jointer and a planer will make all sorts of woodworking more productive and more enjoyable. This one may not look like much, but the bed and fence are actually just dirty and not very rusty, and the planer works, although I think the blades could use a bit of sharpening. The stand is fairly rusty though. I got one quote for having it sand blasted and powder coated, but might still just attack it with my angle grinder and a wire brush. I’m also not fond of the power switch situation. It is basically a wire loop on the rod you see in the back of this picture that flips a power switch. I think I’ll find a way to mount a safety switch with the big paddle “OFF” on the front of the stand so it is easier to turn off and on. It’s also quite heavy, so I might think about figuring out a way to move it around easier.

Last friday, I found a guy selling some Stanley planes, and went to take a trip. I wanted a No. 4 and a No. 5, but ended up coming away with two No. 4s, a No. 5, and a No. 6. They were in what I would call “fair” shape: with a fair amount of surface rust and staining, but with all the parts and no obvious breaks, pitting or damage.

I’ve only started to work on the first of them, the No. 4 on the top which from the looks appeared to be the older of the two No. 4s. A little reading on the web made me believe that it is a Stanley Type 19, made between 1948 and 1961. I disassembled the plane and had a look at the various parts. The sole was perhaps the most interesting part:

As you can see, the bottom was fairly rusty and stained. I thought about using my electrolysis setup to get rid of it, but it was already busy with another project (see below) so I got out some of my trusty Metal Rescue and set it soaking. Four hours later, I pulled it and and gave it a light scrub with a Scotch Bright Pad. The results were really impressive:

There is still a little light staining, but the surface is overall very smooth. The blade and chip breaker had a small amount of rust which was also completely gone after the soak. I still have to clean and polish the nuts and bolts. I did try some Brasso on one of them, which looks like it worked just fine:

I should have the parts all reassembled and ready for sharpening soon. Then it will be onto one of the others. The bottom of the No. 5 is particularly bad, and may have some actual pitting. I’m excited to see how it will turn out.

I passed another garage sale and picked up a rusty Crescent wrench (like, actually made by Crescent) for $.50, along with a rusty chisel. I figured I could practice my sharpening skills on the cheap chisel.

There was only mild rust and some pitting on the wrench, but as a bonus it was frozen and wouldn’t move. I thought I’d give a shot at trying to use electrolysis to both get rid of the rust and see if it would free the mechanism. About fifteen minutes into the treatment, I saw small blobs of grease floating to the top of the bath, and four hours later, the top of the bath was the orange rusty scum that I’ve come to expect. I pulled the wrench out, and all the orange rust was gone, but there was still some scaling, and the black oxide was pretty hard to scrub off. And it was still frozen. So I let it go for another four hours, without much change. I ended up putting a couple drops of 3 in 1 penetrating oil on it, letting it sit for ten minutes, then giving the thumbwheel a couple of gentle taps with punch and a hammer. It yielded fairly quickly, and running it back and forth a couple of times it began to work pretty well. A screw holds the thumbwheel in place. I found a good fitting screwdriver and tried to get it to back out so I could remove the jaw, but it wasn’t cooperating. I left a couple more drops of penetrating oil on it, and an hour later, it came out easily. The jaw, screw, and thumbwheel separated from the main body, as well as a small brass wire ring (a washer?) that I wasn’t expected. I took a wire brush and some degreaser and cleaned these parts, and then let them soak for a bit in some Metal Rescue. I’ll get these back assembled shortly.

Restoring broken tools to working condition makes me feel virtuous. It’s also pretty fun.

Anyway, that’s all the “rust” related activities for the week. Once I get the No. 4 reassembled, I’ll show some more pictures here.

More adventures in the shop and around the house.

Okay, it’s not really a “shop”. It’s really just my garage. But then again, it’s hardly ever had a car in it in the last two decades, so calling it a garage is perhaps even a bit more of a stretch. But I’m trying to convert it into a place where I don’t mind spending time and have the tools and space necessary to accomplish some kinds of “making” that I haven’t done before and which can’t really be done inside the house proper.

Carmen and I began the day out back with a simple chore: laying down landscaping cloth and mulch in the small flower bed just in front of our retaining wall. For those of you who weren’t talking to me during the incredibly annoying construction process that was the retaining wall, I had the old rotting redwood retaining wall replaced with a properly engineered concrete retaining wall, with new drainage. While we were at it, we started on “zero-scaping” the backyeard, which in the area of our patio mostly meant replacing it with gravel and even more changes to the drainage. That process ultimately was good, but it was mentally exhausting, and we haven’t really done much with the space since last year. As the result, we got a fair amount of weeds and the like growing up through the gravel. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve tidied that up and sprayed, and got the grass that grows up on our hills trimmed back to comply with fire regulations.

But it’s about time that we got some low improvements going. Over the last week or so, we’ve pressure washed the (rather ugly) concrete patio so it is at least cleaner, and we thought that we should fill the bed which sits in front of the flower bed with some groundscaping cloth and mulch.

When we began this morning, we had this:



And with an hour or so of work, we transitioned into this.

I tilled the area a small bit (mostly in the corner) and raked the debris out and generally cleaned up the ground, and then laid down a roll of cloth and piled out six bags of new mulch. It still needs a lot of work, but it was what I had planned for the day, so I can’t really be unhappy with it.

Then, off to the shop! Carmen had done a fair amount of cleaning herself yesterday, so we had some more square footage to move around in. We are getting to the point where organizing the four 36″ x 24″ plastic shelving units on one side of the shop has risen in my priorities. They are big, and seem to collect an annoying level of junk, none of which is easy to organize or clean because out of necessity, they are too close to one another. But a few weeks ago, I saw this workspace hack done by Fran Blanche:

She basically took a simple mover’s dolly which you can get pretty inexpensively from Harbor Freight, and adapted it to mount underneath the shelving unit that she had. I thought this was a cool idea. But the shelving units that I’m using are a bit bigger than hers. The larger dolly from Harbor Freight is 30″x18″, and my shelves are 36″x24″, which means I’d have to split it along both dimensions. That doesn’t seem right. In pondering it, I have a new solution. It involves just 2 pieces of 2×4 and four inexpensive casters, and I’ll be writing that up when I test out the idea.

But I did have one smaller metal shelving unit which we 12″x30″, and I thought it would be possible to adapt it with just a couple of 2×4 additions. So, I gave it a whirl, and it worked great.

This shelving unit used to sit next to my drill press and gathered all sorts of junk. But now I can easily move it around, or spin it either to sit flush against the wall, or perpendicular to it. I can even roll it across the garage, load stuff onto it or off of it, and then roll it back. Nice! I think that when my other shelving units are on wheels, I’ll really enjoy them as well.

That’s my weekend so far. I might spend some time working on Carmen’s potting bench tonight, which will be great to put behind me so I can then work on a better stand for the drill press.

Have a good one!

I can delay the simplest tasks with endless questions…

Cheap fencing boards, after Carmen hit them with the sander.

So, last night I didn’t actually get any woodworking done. Carmen actually did more than I did: she took the orbital sander to some (very rough) and cheap fence material that I’m going to use for the slats on the shelving and cleaned them up. They looked much nicer after this process. At just about $1.75 apiece, they are actually kind of nice cheap material for this kind of project. I think I need six of them to complete the two shelves for my garden potting bench, which means I actually am one short. I’ll have to go back and get a few more (having extras will probably mean I can do a couple more projects).

A frame ready for glue and screws. But I’m not ready…

But I had left the scene on the right atop my rolling utility table. I had cut and trimmed the 2x4s for the top and bottom frames, and test fitted them with some of my 36″ clamps holding them roughly in place. I laid my smaller carpenter’s square inside, and the angles seemed pretty square. Measuring opposite diagonals showed a difference of about 1/8″. That isn’t so great, but neither is it especially worrying. It is, after all just going to be a potting bench, it will hardly matter at all. But it got me thinking about the tolerances, and just how much a deflection from right angles such a difference makes. So, instead of making more sawdust or boring holes, I started doing math.

My table is nominally 33″ x 24″ in size. If all the angles were perfect, you could use the Pythagorean theorem to figure out what the diagonal should be, and you come up with the value of something like 40.8″ But what if the measured diagonal isn’t 40.8″? How much of an angular difference of (say) 0.1″ make?

For that, I had to dust off the Law of Cosines. This is the generalization of the Pythagorean theorem. It is usually written as $$ c^2 = a^2 + b^2 – 2 * a b \cos{C}$$. Let’s say that my diagonal is actually just 40.7″ instead of 40.8″. Using that equation we can solve for the angle C, and if you have your handy scientific calculator around, you can find that the angle would be about 89.69°. (This is actually remarkably close to the accuracy of the cross cut sled that I made a week ago, but which I didn’t use at all on this project. Pure coincidence.)

It’s mocking me.

So, after doing this little bit of math, I thought I’d go back out to the workshop and get something done. So I went out, and stared at this corner for a while. You see, I have a couple of options here, having to do with how I could fasten these corners together. I’m not at the stage where mortising, tenons, dowels or even lap joints are on the table. I was basically trying to decide between two very simple options:

  • I could simply pre-drill and sink two 2 1/2″ deck screws in through the face board and into the end grain of the side rail. Or…
  • I could use my pocket hole jig, and put two Kreg screws in from the side frame and into the face frame.
    • For bonus points, do I want to put the Kreg screws in from the outside of the frame, or from the inside.

(I will of course use glue as well. I have my bottle of Tightbond II ready.)

This simple question actually seemed to have a few dimensions to it, which of course left me ponding thoughtfully like Hamlet, asking “to screw into end grain, or not to screw into end grain. That is the question.”

Frankly, none of this really matters for this project. Either technique is likely to work. It’s not like my potting benchis going to hold back flood waters or hold up a roof. Indeed, the way these frames are oriented, the loads will almost certainly be unchallenging.

But it got me thinking: what principles could guide this choice?

The obvious thing to think about is the strength of the joint. So, which is stronger: a glued/screwed butt joint, or one which is glued and screwed with Kreg screws?

I did a little bit of online research, and the answer is… well… in an hour or so, unresolved to my satisfaction.

The obvious argument against the butt joint is that you are screwing into the end grain of the piece, whereas with the pocket screws, you are screwing into the side grain. Indeed, most people would say that screwing into end grain is a big no no. Wood is not isotropic, and forcing a screw into the end grain is like forcing a wedge in between the wood fibers and likely to induce a split. Thus, if you are screwing into end grain, you should always predrill so that the screw generates less force in a direction perpendicular to the screwing direction. I found this excellent explanation that I found helpful and encourage you to read.

If you read and understand this, then you understand a bit of why the engineering of pocket screws are the way they are: they allow you to not screw into the end grain. By starting in the side and burying themselves into the face, they allow most of the screw to be buried in the cross grain, where the holding power is much better and where pre-drilling is not only unnecessary, but is in fact undesirable: screws hold better in cross grain without a pilot hole.

Further scrounging revealed this page on whether the pockets should go on the inside or outside of the frame. The simple answer is perhaps the obvious one: you want the screw to be heading into the biggest part of the board, which means that you should start from the outside. It is also usually easier to clamp the piece together that way. But… well… that can be cosmetically less desirable. Of course depending on the size of your project, it may be difficult or even impossible to drive the screw in from the inside.

In other words, it’s all trade offs.

So, in the end I didn’t even make one hole in my project. I spent all the time thinking. But in a way that’s great. I want to gain more experience wood working, but since I’m relying on self-teaching, I have to spend time thinking and watching and pondering the possibilities.

Tonight, it’s likely I’ll put the frames together with pocket screws, but I can do so with a bit more confidence and understanding. And that is good.

I’ve also spent some time pondering how I am going to lay out the slats on the top, but I’ll save that for next time.

Monday night sawdust creation…

I got home from work today, and decided that the best way to lower my stress level was to go into the garage and make something. I didn’t really have a project in mind. I’ve been pondering making a drill press table and have been thinking about a couple of design options, some of which I mocked up over the weekend in Fusion 360. The inspiration was this really simple base that I found in one of my many sessions of binge YouTube watching:

By modeling this in Fusion 360, I could easily use parametric design to adjust the top size and angle, as well as the height of the shelf, and it would calculate all the odd lengths to reproduce it. But this still has a couple of things in my head that I needed to think about, and I didn’t feel like thinking that hard.

I could have probably started on this simpler design for a drill press stand:

But I don’t need two drill press stands. I was also thinking about making a stand for my combination belt/disk sander, but I wanted to think about that some more too.

This was a stool. The garden table will be bigger, and have a lower shelf, but has all the same joints.

So, I settled on a project that I told Carmen I’d do: a simple little potting stand for use on our (freshly weeded) backyard. We guessed at the dimensions, which were a top at about 36″ high, and about 33″x24″. I had enough 2×4 stock on hand to build the two frames and the legs. The goal is not to make anything fancy: it will consist of a top frame and a bottom frame, covered in some cheap fence boards for the top. In fact, it’s almost exactly the same design as the simple garden stool that I did a few days ago, except that instead of just having a top frame, it has a shelf frame as well. I also decided that I’d spend a little time ripping the sides off the 2x4s, taking 1/4″ off each so that the final stock is a little straighter and has nice crisp edges. I also think that using Kreg pocket screws to build the top is probably a waste: I plan to just use butt joints and deck screws and glue.

Bailey inspects the garden stool after Carmen painted it. I think he approves.

Anyway, there are still some details about the assembly that I have to work through, but I spent an hour cutting all the parts to length and ripping the sides, and then some more time cleaning off my assembly table and doing other small bits of tidying.

I think the frames will be glued and screwed together, but that I’ll attach the legs with carriage bolts so that if we ever want to disassemble the table, I could just remove the bolts and stack everything down into a small space.

I was too lazy to take any pictures tonight, and besides, there isn’t anything actually exciting: I just have a pile of lengths of wood on my desk. Tomorrow I’ll glue and assemble the frames, and then cut the slats for the top and the bottom shelf, and it will begin to resemble a bench.

The good thing is that I feel kind of relaxed now. It was a peaceful time in the shop.

Catch you all later.

Update on tool caddy, with a few lessons learned on designing and order of operations

Got home from work after seven last night, so didn’t have a ton of time in the workshop. I was also impatient to actually get the parts for my tool caddy actually glued up, so I worked rather more quickly than I should have. I taped the edges, spread some glue, rolled up the sides into shape, checked for square (still hardly perfect) and then shot some pin nails in the side. I then also routed a shallow dado in the bottom for the center divider to fit in, cut it to size, and then later glued and tacked it in. I then spread glue along the bottom and sides of the center divider, centered it in and shot some additional pin nails to hold it in place.

Here is my original, standing along side its inspiration. It’s not a slavish copy: the center divider is slightly taller, the slot a bit narrower (the ends match the 1″ Forstner bit that I had) and I haven’t gotten in the dividers. I’m also debating whether I really want to add the little side areas. I do find them convenient to hold a pencil and my box cutters, but I’m not sure they are essential.

So, what are my lessons learned thus far?

This is the first time that I’ve worked with 1/4″ plywood and pin nails, and it shows. My ability to drive a 1″ pin nail at right angles to a face and into the narrow edge of 1/4″ plywood without having it drift out the sides is… well… it happened a fair amount. I actually wanted to use shorter nails which would help, but my local Home Depot didn’t seem to have many 23 gauge pin nails in stock. The rule that I learned is slow down and be careful, but even then, it seems like had a few wander out the face.

In fact, slowing down in general seems to be a good rule. I wanted to bat this thing out, but I frankly would do a better job and would learn more if I just sat back and really thought about the project and developed a plan. I have to balance this out with my natural (and helpful) desire to just finish things so I can go on to the next thing. And I still must recognize that some of that will simply come with more experience.

But mostly I think that adopting a better, more careful plan on exactly how to construct the project would be helpful. As an example, my order of construction on this project would be roughly:

  • Cut sides, middle and bottom. I did this on the table saw, so they were all ripped to the same width.
  • Cross cut the pieces to length using my cross cut sled.
  • Assemble the shell with pin nails and glue.
  • Slot the center of the bottom with a 1/4″ router bit set to make a shallow dado, and then glue and attach the bottom.
  • Apply glue to the center and slide it into place, pinning in place with some pin nails.
  • Measure and cut some dividers, apply glue and hold in place with pin nails. (yet to be done.)

It’s not a bad plan, really and mostly worked. I rushed some steps so some of them aren’t done brilliantly, so a couple of the glue joints are probably weak (mostly from lack of clamping pressure). But the real mistake was building the project from the outside in, instead of the inside out. Were I to try this project again (and I might), I would likely do it from the inside out. This would mean an order of operation which would be closer to:

  • Cut the pieces again. But instead of relying on butt joints, consider using shallow dadoes, not just for additional gluing area/strength, but to register parts together during assembly.
  • Begin with the bottom and the middle divider. Route the dado in the bottom to hold the divider, as well as possibly shallow slots for the cross dividers. Attaching the dividers to the center will be easy before the entire things become wrapped in the sides.
  • I noticed that the interior dividers in the original are actually made out of 1/2″, not 1/4″ plywood. The heavier material could be used structurally to ensure the middle is set at right angles and is sturdy.
  • After the center is fit, then construct the outer case. You could even apply either end first, glue clamp and dry, and then apply the sides. This gives you additional opportunity to double check for square.
  • You could also consider adding additional reinforcing dadoes in the faces, although to do so in 1/4″ plywood would likely require measuring and care to a degree which I would apparently consider challenging.

Maybe the details of my “new plan” aren’t right. Maybe they are excessively fussy. After all, I am just building a tool caddy, it doesn’t have to be a model of jointing perfection to be useful. But I am trying to use projects like this to build skills and train my mind and hands to work more consistently and carefully, and I find the kind of problem solving that I’m exercising here to be helpful (and pleasurable).

It’s likely that I’ll just cut some dividers out of 1/2″ plywood (easier to tack in place) and glue them in, rub some boiled linseed oil on the whole thing, and call it done. But I think I’ve learned some lessons, and whatever my next project is, I’ll try to carry some of the lessons forward.

Other simple lessons:

  • I did take some time to measure the accuracy of my cross cut sled. It’s about 0.27 degrees off, making cuts which lean a little to the left. 0.27 degrees doesn’t sound like much, but in an 8″ wide board that’s the better part of a full mm, which is pretty easy to see and pretty obvious when you lay a square against it. I used that sled here to cut my sides, and while the overall thing went together fairly well, it’s still not to my satisfaction. I think that version #2 of my cross cut sled is likely a project I’ll try sooner, rather than later.
  • I didn’t take enough care to get the slot for the center divider actually centered in the base. If I were to do it again I’d take more care, and were I to add matching dadoes for the two ends, I’d likely choose an order of operation where I first slotted the piece, then cut them to size to make sure the dadoes all lined up precisely.
  • More clamps. I also think some 1-2-3 blocks would likely help me get things lined up properly.

Anyway, that’s enough for now. I’m likely to spend some time in the shop this weekend, if it doesn’t get too hot. Yesterday, temperatures reached about 85, which I don’t find comfortable. I had Carmen open up the shop doors, which helped a bit, and it was probably only 80 when I did the bulk of the work, but if I can do some work on Saturday morning, I’ll probably find it more comfortable.

Hope you all are having a good day.

Building a tool caddy…

A few weeks ago I was at a garage sale, and picked up a few old tools for just a few bucks. One of the things I got was a little tool caddy for $1. It basically is a box with a central handle, constructed from 1/4″ plywood and divided into a number of compartments.

In the weeks since, I’ve found it to be remarkably handy. I can load it with tools like hammers, wrenches, tape measures, rulers, my coping saw, my box cutter, and whatever, and then move them all from my workbench to my desk to my floor.

As it happens, I had a quarter of a sheet of 1/4″ plywood lying around and I thought it might be fun to make another one, basically copying the same design. I thought that this one might be good to hold various painting supplies, like brushes, cans of spray paint, masking tape and the like, but the general design is sufficiently versatile that I thought it might be useful regardless.

And, I’m trying to build skills and familiarity with using my tools.

So, last night I ripped most of the pieces, used my (imperfect) cross cut sled to cut them to size, and duct taped the basic design together, copying (not slavishly) most of the dimensions from my garage sale find. Sadly, I don’t have a picture of the original, but here’s the basic layout of the existing one.

Held together (just temporarily) with duct tape…

Tonight, with a little bit of luck, I hope to get the sides glued and pin nailed together, and then cut the bottom to fit. I may route a 1/4″ slot to allow the middle divider slip in. Then, with any luck tomorrow I’ll measure and fit some dividers, and finish up with some finishing.

This isn’t really amazing woodworking I know, but it is a baby step along the way of gaining some basic competency. I could definitely use practice in just the basics of measuring, cutting, and assembling boxes. It is also a project that I can easily complete in small chunks of 30 minutes, which means I can get them done during the week.

Stay tuned for a final update later this week.

My first real table saw jig: a cross cut sled

After yesterday’s success in building a little garden stool, I wanted to get back into the garage to do a little more woodworking. Sadly, today was the last day of my “staycation”, and I still had quite a few chores. I spent part of the afternoon breaking out the pressure washer to clean the mold and lichen off our sidewalk leading to our front door, and that took a fair amount of time (although it looks quite a bit better).

So, it was after seven before I got into the workshop. And I decided that I wanted to finish a jig that I had started awhile ago: a simple little cross cut jig for my table saw. I had cut most of the pieces for it days ago, but it had been sitting in a pile on my assembly table, mocking me.

I was chickening out. The thing about a cross cut sled like this is that you want it to be really accurately set at 90 degrees, so that you can make great repeatable cuts without any fear. And because I’m still a novice, I didn’t have any confidence that I could lay such a thing out.

But, I decided to dive in.

Glue. Screws. Double checking with my framing square and my machinist square.

And, here it is.

Finished!

Okay, but how square was it?

Well, holding a square against the real fence and the blade, it looks pretty square. Unless I look really hard. Then I can see that there might be the tiniest gap at the back of the blade when I hold the square to the right of the slot, and a tiny gap at the close end when I hold it to the left.

My guess is the error is something on the order of half a degree or so. This is okay for most of what I normally do, but it isn’t great for the most critical work. I can quantify the error more carefully (and probably will sometime soon) by using the 5 cut test. I’ll have to prep some 8″ or 10″ pieces of material to make the test. When I do, I’ll report back here.

I’m also thinking about adding a piece of polycarbonate across the top to provide a little extra safety. I am trying to decide if I should bore some holes to mount it, or just fasten it with some mounting tape.

I’ll ponder the various sources of error more carefully over the next few days. But for most pedestrian uses, I suspect it will be entirely adequate, at least for a while.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m back to work in a new role at Pixar which will likely take up more of my time and energy. I’m excited by the new opportunity, but want to try to make sure that I continue to make headway on some of these “outside” tasks. My goal is to try to continue to get some hours in on projects like this mostly by jettisoning more passive and useless activities like watching television. Wish me luck!

How to turn pulling weeds into a wood working project…

Okay, after all the drought-ending rain we’ve been having, our yard has turned into a lush jungle of various kinds of weeds. Part of it is just grass which has sprouted above the black landscape cloth in the mulch, but other areas were more or less unimproved since we finished our retaining wall project last year. After a couple of days of actually doing vacation stuff during my vacation, I decided that doing chores was probably something I should get to. So, Carmen and I set to work.

First on my agenda was to weed-whack the worst corner of the back yard, while Carmen set to work on pulling some of the weeds. This plays to both of our strengths: I like to do big things, preferably with power tools, and she is more fastidious and careful in making things look nice. I also don’t mind wading into piles of buggy weeds where a tick or two have been known to hide.

Anyway, after a half and hour or forty minutes, I had gotten the worst of this corner roughly chopped and tilled (sorry, no “before” pictures):

Where once there was a lush patch of thistle and weeds, now, there is mostly dirt…

I then went to check on with Carmen. She had been making some good headway, but wished aloud that she had a low stool that she could sit on while pulling weeds. I empathized with her: I don’t like crawling around on my knees either, and bending over while standing isn’t all that much fun for my lower back.

But then I thought “Hey, I have tools, and some scrap lumber. I could make a nice, sturdy little stool that we could use for this purpose.” And not only that, I could then stop working on the weeding and spend time in the garage using power tools instead!

So, that’s what I did. I spent a little more than an hour cutting up pieces of 2x4s and attaching them with some 2.5″ Deck Screws that I had lying around, and then topped it with some other scrap boards I had lying around. I decided not to glue anything (who has time) but did spend some time pre-drilling and countersinking screws to hold all the pieces together. I didn’t draw up a plan, but I had been thinking about how to make a potting bench, and most of the elements here are the same, just smaller. I just cut six pieces of 2x4s 16″ long and 2 pieces 20″ long. This made the top about 19″x20 when I assembled the frame, and the top is about 16.5″ tall, which was about right to enable us to work at our feet while sitting. Carmen used my newly completed router table to smooth over all the top slats with a 1/4″ roundover, and I eyeballed all the hole locations and screws, trying to get the edges even and the spaces relatively uniform. It’s better than it needs to be.

Here’s the completed (but not yet finished) bench in place in our flower bed.

I haven’t figured out how we should finish bench yet. Carmen I think is fine with just spray painting it. I am tempted just to rub a couple of coats of linseed oil on it and let it be that way. Anyone have any suggestions?

It’s good and strong. I’m a big (okay, I’m fat) guy, and sometimes stuff like this creaks ominously when I sit on it. This seems really, really stable. I have no fear if I chose to jump up and down on it.

And, I managed to spend two hours in the shop woodworking instead of doing more lawnwork! And Carmen even thanked me for it. Double score!

My Dust Collection “Cart”

I have been trying to do a bit more wood working in my garage, with the net result that a fine layer of sawdust is settling everywhere. I had started to use my aging Ridgid WD12000 4.5HP 12 gallon wet-dry vac attached to my table saw and my newly finished router table. But just using a vacuum on the outlet port isn’t optimal. The fine dust that these machine tools produce can easily clog vacuum filters. The obvious upgrade is to add a dust separator into the “system”. I did some research on the costs and benefits of using them. While there were some designs for a completely DIY designs, and many expensive “off the shelf” systems you could purchase, I settled on using a cheap, available cyclone based extractor called the Dust Stopper which I could get for about $40 from Home Depot. It is a little plastic “cap” that you can place on top of one of the ubiquitous 5 gallon buckets you can get from the big box stores. Air is sucked in the side, and swirls around, eventually settling into the bucket. The wet-dry vacuum pulls air from the center of the vortex, where it is much less dusty. This results in less dust in the vacuum, which prolongs the life of the filters and the vacuum.

Here is a picture of what the system looks like, from Home Depot’s product page.

Can you spot the problem?

But there is a problem. As you tug the vacuum hose around, cleaning up or attaching it to one tool or another, it is just downright cumbersome. It’s easy to knock over the bucket, since it doesn’t have wheels. And even if you had a separate dolly for the 5 gallon bucket to sit atop, you’d be maneuvering two different items on rollers which were attached together with a stiff but flexible hose. Not fun.

The obvious solution would be to build some kind of cart to hold both items together. Youtuber Steve Ramsey was an early inspiration to me in my quest for woodworking competency, and he details both the problem and his (rather nice) simple solution.

But there were still some problems with his cart. He replaced his old, large shop vac with a smaller unit, but the footprint of the cart is still essentially 2x the footprint of the vacuum alone. My old WD12000 has a lot larger footprint, and would have a correspondingly larger cart. I liked his idea, and wondered if I could do better.

The obvious idea would be to mount them vertically, rather than horizontally. I found a number of very nice designs, some of which were very complicated and included all sorts of storage space and things like hose reels. I’d love to have such a cool cart, but I didn’t want this to be a project in itself. After all, my shop vac is quite old, and could easily give up the ghost any day. I’d hate to invest all that time and effort, only to have to rebuild the cart for a new vacuum.

So, I was looking for a simple solution when I stumbed upon this neat idea from John Builds It on YouTube.

It uses a feature of these Ridgid shop vacs. They wheel around on four feet, each of which are topped by a cylinder that you can use to store the various wands and accessories. John basically used them to hold vertical legs, which then bolted into a platform with a hole cut in the top that the dust extraction bucket could sit in. The entire system rides on the original vacuum, which means that it has no more footprint than the original.

My own version…

Watch John’s video for details of his (much better) build than mine. But here are some details from my own simpler build.

I did some quick measurements. It is about 24″ from the top of the feet to the top of my vacuum cleaner, and I thought it was about 12″ from the bottom of the bucket to the “lip” that will hold it in place. Because I didn’t measure all that carefully, I decided that I needed 4 pieces of 1.5″ schedule 40 PVC, which I said needed to be 38″ long. I also picked up 4 flat endcaps, and four 2″ to 1.5″ reducers similar to the ones specified by John. The idea was that the reducers would fit on the outside of the feet, and then the pipe would fit inside the reducer and rise up above the vacuum, ending in a cap which you then bolt to the platform which was cut from some scraps of 3/4″ plywood I had around. As John explains in his video, you can’t use 2″ PVC for the risers (which might have been a better fit) because the body of the vacuum tapers out slightly, and the verticals won’t be straight. But I discovered when I did a dry fit that the 1 1/2″ Schedule 40 PVC actually was a loose fit inside the cylinders that cap each foot, and was a better fit overall than the reducer was to the outside. I ended up returning the reducers, and just resting the pip inside the foot.

I cut a 19″ square piece of 3/4″ on my table saw, and marked four in the corners of a 14″ square (the measured spacing on the bottom of the vacuum) centered in the top, and bored it for some 1/4″ bolts. I then used my drill press to cut 1/4″ holes in the center of each of the black end caps. I then made a homebrew compass out of a scrap of wood, and marked the circle centered in the middle of the top. A little math showed that the radius was about 5 5/8″, for a diameter of 11.25″. I drew the circle, drilled a starter hole, and then cut out the center with my jig saw. I also rounded the corners, and then used my new router table to smooth over all the edges. I then bolted the endcaps to the top with some 1/4×20 screws that were about 1.5″ long, and held in pace with some stop nuts.

And that’s about it. PVC posts in the foot, caps hold the top of each post, and the bucket drops in. The only unforeseen issue (and additional expense) came when I realized that unlike John’s setup, I had built mine a little too high, so the 36″ section of hose that came with the Dust Stopper wasn’t long enough to reach. I ended up getting a new 7″ section (which is too long, but it’s what was available) and we were done. Actual time spent doing the work (as opposed to going to Home Depot Twice) was about an hour, and I’m slow.

I haven’t fixed the base of the risers into the feet yet. Friction holds them in reasonably well, but I will probably get a small self tapping screw to fasten them more permanently, or maybe just wrap the ends with tape to increase the friction a bit more. But it’s totally workable, and is easy to move around the workshop.

I’m pleased. I’ll be using it for the first time “in anger” tonight when I cut some pieces for a potting bench for my wife.

A rolling stand for my Harbor Freight Router Table

I’ve slowly been trying to do some woodworking projects. I have very little skill and experience. In the past, I had (barely) enough skill to put together some simple Dobsonian telescopes out of plywood, using mostly a handheld router and a jigsaw, but they weren’t actually very accurately made (especially compared to the tolerances the optics were made, which measured in millionths of an inch).

While I had a hand held router (a big, rather heavy one) I didn’t have it set up for use as a router table. A few weeks ago, I took a 20% off coupon and bought a new little 1 3/4 HP router with a “table” for around $80. It is frankly not that great: a little hard to adjust the bit height, but I’ve only done a few test cuts with it. I thought that I’d like to have a stand to put it on so it would be at a convenient height. On top of my bench, it would be too high, and on the floor, well, let’s just say as I’m getting older getting up and down off the floor in my garage isn’t the most fun in the universe.

So, I thought I’d build a stand for it so that the top of the bench would match the 36″ height of my (very successful) rolling bench that I built a couple of months ago. I didn’t bother drawing any complicated plans at first. My idea was to basically cut 8 pieces of 2x4s to a 20″ length, and then rip cut the curved edges off each leg so they would be 1 1/2″ x 3″. I’d then join two of them into an L shaped bracket in each corner with glue and screws, cut rails to stretch between them and then fasten them together using a pair of Kreg pocket screws at each end.

This is a little bit of a skill building exercise, since I have relatively little experience with my new little DeWalt table saw. The ripped 2x4s weren’t as flat as they would have been if I had a proper jointer and thickness planer, but they did come out more square than they would have otherwise. About halfway through the build, I had a problem I couldn’t visualize, so I ended up making a model of the bench in Fusion 360. I didn’t do the complete model (it lacks the bottom shelf and a couple of braces) but it did show the overall dimensions and helped me clarify some of my thinking.

The basics of the rolling table as modeled and rendered in Fusion 360.

I knew I wanted to have some rollers on the bottom (optimizing my space around moving stuff seems like a good strategy) and I was going to use up some 1/2″ plywood for the top. I also wanted to cut a shelf to go in the inside. On my rolling table, I made part of the lip just the 3/4″ edge so I could clamp things to the edge of the bench, but since this will basically be a dedicated stand for the router, I just decided to leave the 3″ thick top frame around all edges. Originally, my plan was to cut the top oversize and trim it to exact dimensions with a flush trim bit, but in the end I decided to just leave the 3/8″ overhang around all four sides because it seems nice, and doesn’t harm anything.

Anyway, this morning I finished the construction. I still need to get the hardware to bolt the table down to the top, but here’s what it looks like:

A few finishing touches (or is it touches of finish?) needed, but it’s good to go as soon as I bolt down the router table.

Here are some general thoughts from the build…

  • It’s pretty square, but not absolutely right. I tried to use my small machinist square and my large carpenter’s square on every joint, and it’s close. Much closer than probably any carpentry I’ve ever done, and given that I’m using construction grade lumber, perhaps that is as good as I could hope for.
  • The dimensions were a bit hard to wrap my head around. I ended up using 3/4″ plywood for the top, so it’s was going to be 1/4″ taller than my other bench, but in the end it turned out more like 1/2″. Similarly, when notching the shelf out for the bottom, it turned out to be slightly off in a couple of areas, making for a loose joint on one side and a tighter joint on the other. Frown. Oh well. In the end, it was tight enough that I didn’t even bother screwing it in place.
  • I broke a bit off while drilling a countersink hole. The tool steel crappy countersink/drill combos I bought at Harbor Freight are single fluted and made from tool steel, and generate a lot of heat while drilling. I wasn’t paying attention, and snapped one.
  • I wasn’t paying attention with two Kreg Screws and over tightened them, which drove them out the back. I need a lighter touch on the impact driver.
  • Don’t balance your can of boiled linseed oil on top of what you are working on. I dumped a bunch of it on myself when I knocked it over, and that’s why the front in the picture looks unfinished: I had to clean up a mess and tossed my sweatshirt into the wash with a lot of soap.
  • The only joint I did which wasn’t close to flat was one of the bottom ones underneath a caster. A few seconds with the belt sander flattened it.
  • I think design wise if i did it again, I’d raise the bottom rails up about 3″. This makes the shelf higher, and easier to get to, and the extra space makes it easier to roll over stuff on the floor. It would also avoid an odd routing problem with the Kreg screws intersecting the area where I’d bolt the casters in place.
  • Having my assembly table was a god send. It made so much of the work more accurate and more relaxing.
  • I need at least 2 more 36″ bar clamps.

Still, I had a lot of fun, and it looks great. The frame is way over engineered. The rollers are only rated for 110lbs each, but I’d trust the frame to hold well over 600 lbs or more. I only bought 2 2x4s to add to 2 more that I had, and used scrap plywood that has been in my garage for over a decade, so the total cost in materials was under $20, most of which were the casters.

Carmen wants me to design and build a potting table for our back patio, which will probably be our next project. Stay tuned for more woodworking.

3D Printed Gadgets for Woodworking…

I’ve been slowly working toward getting a reasonably equipped garage for woodworking, and have been watching a metric ton of Youtube content made by woodworkers. Today, I ran across this nice list of things that you can 3D print to help out with various tasks, the most immediately useful being some knobs I can print for 1/4×20″ bolts. Shared with all of you, and archived for myself.

https://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Gadgets-for-Woodworking/

Brent’s Sharpening Pages…

My experimenting with plane sharpening has (like so many other things) caused me to research stuff on the Internet. I’ve been working on grinding the back on my older plane using sandpaper cemented down to a flat piece of glass. It’s still not quite there after about a solid 30 minutes of work, and it’s pretty clear to me that the grit is breaking down and not cutting as fast as when it was new. So, toward that end I started to consider the possibility of investing in some sort of grinding stone. But, I don’t know anything about them, so I started reading. That’s when I ran across this page, with tons of information and designs for jigs that can be used to help make sharpening quick and repeatable. I haven’t absorbed it (or even read it all), but I’m stashing this link for future reading.

Brent’s Sharpening Pages

30 minutes in the workshop…

So, last night about 9:30PM I decided to spend a little time in my garage workshop. I cleared some items off the top of my rolling workbench and decided to do a short bit of work on two projects.

A couple of days ago I had started making a cross cut sled for my tablesaw. I had cut and glued two oak runners to a piece of 3/4″ ply. Today I trimmed the extra bits off from the board, and smoothed the ends with a bit of work using my belt sander. I took some extra time to rub some paste wax into the bottom, and now it slides easily in the miter slots. I didn’t feel like doing anything more on it, because I want to spend some time to double check my table saw blade for square before making any additional cuts. I have some 3/4″ ply cut to serve as the end fences already, but will need to chop it to length and glue up a double thickness to serve as the rear fence too. Perhaps I’ll get to that this weekend.

But, I didn’t feel like stopping, so I decided to try my hand at sharpening.

Old (and dusty) wooden fore plane. Bed length is about 16.5″…

Years ago, my wife got me a couple of planes as a gift. She had found these in some antique store and I had mentioned to her that I liked old tools, so she bought them for me (she assures me they were inexpensive). I always thought they were nice objects, but hadn’t either displayed them or converted them into working tools. One was a molding plane that I haven’t got any serious plans for, but the other is an old wooden fore plane, with a 2″ wide iron and about 16.5″ in length that appears to be in pretty good shape.

I thought I might actually try my hand at restoring it to working shape. And I figured the best way to start is to sharpen the tool iron. Inspired by Rex Krueger’s video:

I decided to give it whirl! I had a large 24″ square piece of flat tempered glass, and took a piece of 150 grit sand paper, prayed it with some 3M Super 77 spray adhesive, and glued it to one corner.

Examining the old iron, it looks to me like it hadn’t (perhaps ever) been properly sharpened (he say’s boldly, having literally no experience with it). The back looked like it had never been flattened, and the bevel was rounded and uneven.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a honing guide from Amazon. The basic idea of this is to hold the iron at a particular angle that you can set by adjusting the amount of the iron that protrudes out the front, and the guide will hold the blade at the proper angle. For a 25 degree bevel, it required a 50mm (or 2″) protrusion. For fun, I decided to give it a try.

Hard to photograph, but the white area is the newly ground surface. As you can see the leading edge is blunter, and not even.

A few minutes of work revealed what I thought. The leading edge of the blade was actually much blunter than 25 degrees. It will probably take some work to get back to a single, consistent bevel.

My understanding is that many fore planes actually used a curved or cambered blade. This is because fore-planes were used to make fairly aggressive, overlapping cuts to roughly flatten stock. But there was a significant left to right change, so I thought it probably would be best to try for a simple, flat bevel, and worry about trying to adjust the camber at some later date.

But first, I needed to flatten the back. I took the iron out of the honing guide and set to work. My goal was to get about 1.5″ of the back flat. A few minutes of work revealed that the center of the iron was obviously significantly concave, and pretty rough overall. There was also some general uneven-ness near the the leading edge, and one side looked like it was a a bit rounded relative to the rest of the surface.

After 15 minutes you can clearly see the concavity in the center, and the left side is a bit off as well.

I kept at it for about 15 minutes. It rather reminded me of my old days of working grinding telescope mirrors. Careful, even pressure, long strokes, examining your work at intervals.

It still needs a lot of work. While the portions to the left and right are now nice and bright and smooth, the leading edge is still a bit stained and uneven, and you can see a fair amount of concavity still remaining in the center, although it’s much better than when it began. It was getting late though, so this is where I halted for the night.

As I went off to sleep, I started to consider the meta question: how flat was flat enough? And why is having a flat back to the iron important anyway?

Ask questions, and the internet provides the answer. This article from Fine Woodworking provided me some light reading before sleep took me.

Anyway, the time in the garage was quite relaxing. I did decide that I needed to add another LED light strip toward the front side of the garage, because I was basically standing in my own light. Perhaps I’ll get to that this weekend.

Hopefully, my next update will be to let you all see how nice and flat this iron has become, and how I’ve ground a proper bevel. Stay tuned.

Making a cross cut sled for my table saw…

Okay, a few weeks ago I bought a little Dewalt DW745 table saw for use in my garage. I’ve never actually owned a table saw, but lately I’ve been wanting to do more construction, and I thought investing a fairly small amount of money in a table saw would be a good way to go.

And I’ve begun to do experiment with some cheap, simple projects to learn how to operate it and operate it safely.

The way I’ve decided to start is by trying to research and build some simple jigs to help me safely and accurately cut pieces of various types. One of the jigs which everyone recommends that you build is a cross cut sled.

I had some old 3/4″ plywood lying around my shop, left over from when I built my last telescope more than a decade ago. I decided to rip some pieces to form the bed and the two ends of the cross cut sled. It was good practice. All the pieces had nice clean edges, and sighting along them and checking them with a square shows the edges to be nice and straight.

The only part that I didn’t have was material to make the rails that will fit in the miter slots. While I have a fair amount of scrap plywood and softwood like Douglas Fir 2x4s lying around, I haven’t done any hardwood woodworking before, so I don’t have the usual oak or maple that most people use for it. I will probably go out and source some 1″ material I could trim down over the next few days, but while thinking about it, I ran across this nice video series of videos to help newbies like myself build their first cross cut sled.

They suggested that it actually is reasonable to cut runners out of plywood, at least if you use a good quality plywood like Baltic Birch. As it happens, I don’t have any of that either, but there is still a lot of good information here which I’m trying to absorb. If you are a beginning woodworker, you could probably learn some good stuff from this series too.