Working on Wide Boards

The way I cut my boards to final length may be unusual, or it may be very common.  I really don't know because I don't remember ever reading about how anyone else does it (though I haven't read very many of the classic woodworking texts).  Anyways, this is how I go about it:

I typically rough cut an inch or two oversize, depending on how my material works out and whatever other factors are in play.  Then (if not already done) I will joint one edge and shoot one end of the board off of that.  I pull my measure from the shot end, mark for square and saw about 1/16" over.  This allows for a little slop in case my saw has had a few too many to drink.  I then shoot to a hair shy of my line, being sure to reference off of the same edge.  This makes sure that my two ends are parallel, and square to the face edge.  Once I have all the pieces that are to match through this process, I carefully line them up to see how they compare.  I adjust their length with a few more passes of the plane until they match perfectly.

In the photo above you can see that the 14" wide panel for the bottom of the DVD cabinet I'm building takes up just about my whole shooting board.  Luckily I didn't have to make a new shooting board for this project, but if it were any larger I would have.  With longer planks like this, you can see that I have a couple of boards propped under the end to keep the board flat on my shooting board.  This takes a lot of strain out of the left hand, and lets me focus on shooting.

Below, you can see the trouble in flattening and smoothing a 14" wide panel on an 11" wide bench.  Luckily it's not that much overhang, so it's manageable.  I opened up my vise some to provide support, and used my Veritas Wonder Dog to secure the panel against my planing stop.  This allowed me to use my #5 Jack diagonally across the grain to bring down the hump, and then I had no problem using my block plane to smooth things up.

Where I did run into trouble was on the other side of this panel, where I had to plane out a dish.  I ended up getting rid of the Wonder Dog, and planing straight on each edge of the panel into the stop.  I simply shifted the board back and forth to support wherever I was planing.

If I were working something much wider (but still not wide enough to reach across to the back of my tool well), I could clamp a 2x4, 4x4, or whatever else would be necessary into my leg vise, and if needed secure it against the other leg with a holdfast or bar clamp, depending on the thickness of the piece.  This would effectively  give my a wider solid benchtop to work on.  I think for my next bench I might for a wider bench top, but I'm not sure yet.  I suppose it will mostly depend on what I end up doing more of when it's time for a new bench.  In an ideal world I could have a couple of benches, like Tom Fidgen, one like this, and then one with a really wide solid top for working panels and for assembly.  In an ideal world I would also win the lottery...I suppose I should stop complaining.  Haha!

I also decided that smoothing this big panel would be a good job for a cardscraper, so I made a couple real quick from a dull impulse hardened Japanese saw blade I had laying around.  I cut the blade into two pieces, ground most of the teeth off, more-or-less jointed the edge, ground a roughly 45 degree bevel on one side, polished the flat side on my sandpaper setup to 1200 grit, polished the bevel to the same (bringing it closer-to-but-still-not-quite-90 degrees), and put them to work.  They worked pretty well, but I still feel like the finish isn't quite as gleaming as I get off a sharp plane.  I need to make myself a nice comfortable wood bodied smoother.  This block plane is simply difficult to hang on to.

Once I had the parts for the primary carcass cut, I stood them up to get an idea for how the thing would look.  It should be pretty nice when it's all said and done.  The boards are all three feet long, to give you some scale.  This nice thing about having a low ceiling is that I can brace the thing together by applying a spreading clamp against the ceiling joist (difficult to see in the photo).  So I think that brings the tally to one benefit of low ceilings, five thousand reasons to still hate them.

New Vise Chop

 Today I took a little time to replace the chop on my vise.  Now it's a full 3 1/8" thick (slightly more than twice as thick as before), and I decided to leave it just shy of 8" wide all the way to the floor.  This chop is made from some species of Maple, probably "soft Maple" as I've heard it called.  It has an ever-so-slightly sprung inner face, almost not detectable.  The wood is still semi-green, so I glued the wood up to fight itself if it moves, the goal of which is to keep it stable dimensionally.  Hopefully the Gorilla Glue won't let go! 

You can also see the full length planing stop that I made from some Yellow Pine.  My other planing stop is about 2 feet long, and scrub-planing anything longer was nearly impossible.  My new stop limits the width of my bench top to 8 inches, but I rarely-if-ever need to plane anything wider, and of course it's removable (secured in place with 3/4 inch dowels).

You can see my old sissy vise chop below, made from a 2x6 Doug Fir.  I had to set the parallel guide a full inch more than the stock thickness, so that when the wood bowed to give full contact, I would have sufficient pressure.  There shouldn't be any such issues with the new chop.  For a quick test, I clamped up a piece of 6/4" Curly Maple about 3 feet long in the vise and jointed one edge, no signs of slipping at all.

Tool Cabinet Update

I finished up my tool cabinet last week, but forgot to post anything about it.  I cut some 1/4" Luan plywood for the front panel, which works well enough.  The door tends to sag a bit, because I only have one dovetail at each corner.  I put a little glue in each of the joints, but it doesn't seem to be helping.  No big deal, really, the door just rubs a bit when I close it.  Outside of the glue I put in the door joints, there is no glue in the carcass of this cabinet.

I stuck the wood bits to the door using some contact cement, and realized too late that the bottom block for holding my adjustable square is too high to allow the stock clearance below the wood square.  I guess I'll just have to make a small wood square to take it's place.  I put some small screw-in hooks on the lower block that hold my sliding bevel and my marking gauge.  The block for my carcass saw was cut out of a chunk of 2x Doug Fir with my 12" bowsaw, and trimmed to fit with a chisel and knife.  I'm thinking I'll eventually move the chisel rack up about 8 inches and put a few drawers under them.  I'll also be adding a second chisel rack in front of the mortise chisels for my couple of bevel edge chisels.  The plane tray is attached with hinges, allowing me to easily access the void behind it (currently storing my plow plane).

Reaching for my plow plane:

Still Improving The Shop

Now I feel comfortable calling my little corner of the basement a shop.  Last week I spent a couple of days tearing everything apart and putting it back in different places, which included throwing out a scuzzy old shelf that was down here when we moved in, and relocating the few things on it to a new shelf I built against a difficult-to-use section of wall.  I also built a lumber rack and another shelf unit to get a few things up off the floor and a bit more organized.  After that, I temporarily hung a few saws up to keep them close to hand and out of the way. All in all, I now have something resembling a proper shop.

Right now I'm working on a hanging tool cabinet to keep my most used tools close to hand, and so that I don't have to lean way over my bench to the back wall to reach my planes.  I have the primary carcass put together and hanging up, and I'm mulling over what to do about interior storage allocation.  I also still need to build the door, where I imagine I'll hang most of my layout tools because they're small and light.

I used my new Lee Valley & Veritas plow plane to fit the back panel into the cabinet, which included plowing grooves to accept the back as well as cutting rabbets around the edges (and the ends).  I was surprised at how well the plane did cutting cross grain.  Not as well as a dedicated fillister plane with nickers, but pretty good just the same.  The top of the cabinet is made from two narrow pieces, which proved tricky to hold for grooving.  I ended up using two thinned-down battens held with my hold downs, which worked well and allowed clearance for the plane to pass.

While cleaning out the shop, I decided to throw out of my earliest wood working misadventures.  It was intended as a chisel and screwdriver rack, and made from pallet lumber.  I've had it around the shop for the last few years, and it was time for it to go.  It was tippy and wouldn't hold much. 

Done (For Now)

I finished the main portion of the bench today, and I'm pleased as punch.  In all, it took about 3.5 8-10 hour days of work, so I spent about 28-35 hours on it.  Not too bad, I don't think.  Outside of driving a couple of fasteners with my new impact driver, it was all handtools.  This is the first time I've done so much heavy hand tool work for such long periods of time multiple days in a row, and I could definitely feel the cumulative fatigue in my shoulders especially after boring all of the dog holes in 40 minutes.  The majority of the work was really in the joints to join the legs to the top, after which the mortise and tenons for the stretchers felt like child's play.  It's like Chris Schwarz once said: You know you've been building a roubo when a 3/4 x 3 x 4" mortise feels small.  Eventually I'll be adding a floor and a lid to the stretchers below, and I'll probably add a drawer under the far right side of the bench.  Eventually I'll also need to replace the jaw for the vise, because the Douglas Fir that I used is a bit flexible.  I think I could get a lot more clamping force out of a stiffer wood.

Due to a dumb mistake, I made the frame for the tool tray three inches two short (by forgetting to add the thickness of the sides to the total length of the back piece), and it was easier to cut three inches off the end of the bench than buy more wood and make a new piece.  Good thing I saved my energy by never drilling that last dog hole.  In an earlier fit of dumb, I misaligned the back stretcher so it will take some jury-rigging to make the floor and lid properly supported all the way around.  The back stretcher is about an inch too high, because I marked it off the wrong point of the angles for the side stretchers.  Oh well, it's a workbench.

Now I'm trying to devise some sort of brilliant 5th dimensional portal that will allow me to store all of the clutter in my shop in a void in space to allow me a little more floor room.  I suppose I could settle for some decent shelving of some sort.

Bench Update

I took this photo earlier today when I had finished fitting the four legs.  Since this photo was taken I've mortised the two front legs, half-way finished the two short stretchers, drilled all the dog holes and a holdfast hole, and started mortising one of the back legs.  I'm not going to use an adjustable height planing stop as on a traditional Roubo bench.  I find that on my other bench I always leave it set at the same height with my planing batten across the bench, which is much easier to use than a single point planing stop.  So I drilled two dedicated planing stop holes at the very end of the bench, and I'll probably make a couple of different thickness planing stops that I can drop in there.

The leg joints are nothing pretty, but they'll hold and that's all that matters to me for this bench.  Maybe someday I'll build my dream bench, but in the meantime this is going to be several steps up from my current bench, and I think I'll be happy with it for quite a while.

Yesterday my big box arrived from Lee Valley, which contained a vise screw for the leg vise, a large Japanese cat's paw for work (I have the tiny 6" version, and ordered the giant 14" version), and my Veritas small plow plane with five blades.  I can't wait to put it to work.  I ran it through some scrap real quick, but with my old bench buried under tools (so that I'm not tempted to use it), and my new bench still in pieces, I didn't have any really good workholding going on.  Unfortunately, my canned-ham hands force my knuckle to brush the brass adjustment knob when gripping the plane, but I think I can get used to it or alter my grip sufficiently for it to be a non-issue. 

Today a box containing my backordered holdfasts arrived from Gramercy/Tools for Working Wood, and I'm quite pleased.  I'm questioning whether I really need two of them, now that I've used one for a few minutes for a little sawing and mortise chopping.  Oh well, it doesn't hurt to have extra. 

Oh, and today I tested the automatic flesh detecting feature of my chisel and found it to be less than satisfactory.  While mortising, my chisel became stuck (which happened several times).  I found the easiest way to free it is to lift the chisel and the wood it is stuck in (while seated on the wood) and strike the wood with my mallet.  This worked great except for when I produced the perfect recoil in both of my hands and the chisel took a bite out of the meat on the side of my palm below my thumb.  It's fairly deep but nothing too serious, so I super glued it together and put a couple of little bandaids on it butterfly-style to take stress off of it, but the skin in that area doesn't get stressed too much anyways.

Glued Up Benchtop

Last night I glued up the two 6x6" posts for the top.  First I jointed the two mating faces, they weren't too bad but needed a little straightening and squaring.  I wetted the mating faces and slathered on plenty of Gorilla Glue, then clamped up with my four clamps.  Then I flipped it up on edge, and drilled three pilot holes from the back for 10" Timerlock bolts, then drove the bolts in.  I was just gifted an awesome new Makita impact driver, so I used that to drive the bolts so I could try it out, but I've used my brace plenty of times before, so I know it works fine (and applies so much torque that I could drive these things all the way through the wood).  I put them 4" in from each edge and one in the center.  I'll just have to keep them in mind when I'm drilling my dog holes.  I also was unable to remove two giant nails from one of the posts that are indicators of their previous life as a retainer wall, so I'll have to watch out for those.

While the glue was setting up, I marked and cut the legs to length.  Next step is cutting the joints.  After watching the episode of The Woodwright's Shop where Roy talks about the rising dovetail a few times, as well as a video on youtube where a different person goes through the joint, I am starting to feel confident enough to tackle them.  I will admit that I am not looking forward to dealing with the angled mortise and tenons on the back legs.  I also find myself wishing for a 6" deep backsaw to cut the joints accurately.  Roy's top is only 3" or 4" thick, but he still cut the leg joints with a handsaw.  I may go this route.

Antique Stores

  Yesterday the weather turned nice here in sunny Connecticut, so I decided to get some shopping done.  I needed more socks, and I wanted to see what the antique stores had for tools.  Not a huge haul, but not bad.  At the Junk Shop I found a simple hand drill that was in decent shape.  I almost missed the saw vise, it was clamped to one of the shelves.  It's an interesting one, with a large ball-in-socket that allows you to swing the saw around at any angle in all of the axes, without the need to unclamp.  This will work well for small saws, but for the my new little panel saw, it was a bit of a moot point because I could only clamp half the blade at a time anyways.  There was some rust and gunk in all the corners and screws of the vise, which I figured would take some elbow grease.  I was surprised when I got it home and had it working fine after five minutes with some 3-in-1 oil.  I need to replace the wing nut that locks the ball joint, the wings broke off.  At the antique mall over in Collinsville there was mostly junk and overpriced axes, but I did find this Disston saw in halfway decent shape.  A few minutes with a ball peen hammer and a screwdriver had the plate straightened out and the handle tight.  Another 15 or 20 minutes with a file and it was cutting decently.  I think it might be overset, so maybe I'll flatten out the teeth and reset them.  The problem could also be my less-than-perfect sharpening job. 

I've started building a new bench because the one I've been using has been feeling a little small.  I'm also tired of clamping everything to it instead of using a vise.  I'll be adding a leg vise to my new bench, which will be something like Roy Underhill's Roubo style bench.  The top will be two 6x6" pressure treated pieces 6 feet long, that I already had.  Above is the picture of cutting them to length, after another couple of days I will joint them and glue them up.  I was going to build the legs from the same, but decided it wasn't worth the effort, so I bought some 4x4 and a 2x12 that that I ripped down the middle, because it was clearer and in better shape than any of the 2x6 that they had.  The 2x6 will be for the stretchers and the tool well at the back.  You can see how small my shop is compared to the lumber.  There isn't a lot of space to work in there right now, I'll be glad to make the new bench and get the old one out.  As a side note, I'm planning on taking video of all the steps and showing how I build a bench without already having a bench. 

Storage Solution and a Plan

Up until an hour ago, this is what the shelf against the back wall of my shop looked like, but the box of small scraps was on the bottom shelf.  That poor little cardboard box has been overflowing with little nearly-useless bits of nice wood for quite a while now, and spilling out onto the floor.  Yesterday I finally did something about it and made a drawer for that bottom shelf that would hold plenty of scraps (as well as the small scrap metal box on the shelf in the left corner).  I elected to use some of the wide Yellow Pine boards I got the other day, so I cut the pieces to length, shot the ends, laid out some half blind dovetails on the front and regular dovetails on the back, and went to work with the saw and chisel.  Because this is a piece of shop furniture and I don't really care about appearances, I went fast and the joints show it.  I would have just nailed the thing together, but I needed the practice on half blind dovetails (I've only cut one on some scrap before).  I did nail the bottom in with some cut nails, because I don't have a plow plane (which will need to change in the near future).

The completed drawer in it's new home, being very useful:

 In the above photo you can also see a few things that could be interesting, depending on your interests.  On top of the shelf I have two boxes, the bottom of which holds several axes.  The top box holds my Narex mortise chisels, my Lee Valley scrub plane, my Lee Valley carcass saw, and I have my two favorite axes resting on top.  There is also a plate of glass that I set there to get at something else.  The top shelf holds all of my glues and finishes, which doesn't really amount to much, but there it is.  The middle shelf (from left to right) holds my stapler, the dremel, a box of various drill and driver bits, a box of timberlock screws, some half-finished spoons, and a tackle box holding all of my screws and nails.  To the right of the shelf I have all of my hardwood, mostly Maple that I milled myself, but also a little Cherry and a couple pieces of some mystery wood that could be Mahogany.  Just out of the picture on the right is my hot water heater.

A friend of mine approached me about building a storage solution for her DVD collection, which is currently about 320 strong.  I have been drawing up ideas based on 400, to allow for some growth.  We met up last night to see which of the ideas she likes most, and we settled on a fairly basic frame and panel design.  This unit will end up being about 68" tall and about 36" wide, so it will be no small thing.  Right now we're leaning toward Cherry for the carcass and a high quality plywood for the panels, with glass in the doors.  The curved sides are due to the distortion in my camera lens, all the lines are supposed to be straight.  I'm thinking I'll aim for the main carcass pieces to be 3" wide on the face, with the door frame about 2" wide.  On the scale drawing it looks about right to my eye.  I think I'll want to use knife hinges to keep the clean lines on the front, but I'm not sure what to do about pulls for the doors yet.  Maybe a couple of those things that allow you to press the door in, and then it springs out.   I'm definitely going to need a plow plane for this project.

Happy New Year!

This morning (actually this afternoon) when I woke up I finished up my new saw bench that I started yesterday before joining my friends to celebrate the holiday. The top is a chunk of Maple that I cut out of the back yard, barely flattened and thicknessed (as is evident by the 1/2" variation in thickness across the length of the board), and planed a bevel on the long edges to give the legs a bit of splay. The legs are rough sawn Hemlock scraps from work, which I brought home along with some 1x ship lap Pine and a couple Yellow Pine floor boards the other day (photo below). The stretchers are some of that ship lap Pine. I screwed it all together, and did a pretty rough job of the whole thing. I wasn't interested in making a nice piece of furniture, just something that would make sawing a bit easier. For my imaginary future shop I'm planning on a nicer one, maybe with some real joints, but this will do for now.


I decided to use some of the ship lap Pine to make a shooting board so that I could finally easily square my crosscuts. First step is to plane the joint edges of the boards together. I learned this trick on some other blog (Correction: I was reading back through Roy Underhill's The Woodwright's Guide and realized I saw it in there), but it's such a good trick it's worth repeating in one more place. By planing the edges together, any out-of-squareness will be transferred equally, so the boards will still go together perfectly flat. In fact, to get a bit more face grain for glue up, it might be a good idea to put a pretty good angle on there.

My first experiment rubbing boards together for glue up. You just apply glue and rub the boards back and forth a few times. As long as you did a good job planing, the edges will suction together just like two wet plates of glass. In the picture I have the board perched on the Veritas Wonder Dog because I'm too afraid to set it down against a wall, for fear of the joint coming out of line. I just used regular Elmer's white glue because that's what I have right now, and I don't expect to be getting my shooting board wet.

The fence for the shooting board is next to the glued up panel. It's a rip off of one of the Yellow Pine boards, planed square.

A Few New Things

Last week I finished a new work bench, made from pressure treated 6x6s. I had them laying around, so I used them. This bench is super massive. The top felt it weighed 80-100 pounds alone.

I don't have any vises, but I installed a plane stop and I bought a couple clamps that can traverse the width of the top with room to spare. This allows me to hold wood adequately in the three major planes of orientation. In the photo I have a piece of scrap pine clamped for edge planing while I was tuning my planes.

The difficulty I'm having is clamping a piece flat to the top of the bench, such as when I want to chisel a mortise into the face of a piece. The trouble is that my clamps are too long to orient the excess bar below the bench, and orienting the excess bar above the bench puts them right in the way of my mallet. I drilled dog holes that will accept traditional holdfasts, but haven't decided whether I actually want to shell out for a pair or deal with what I have.

After I finished assembling my bench in my basement room, I started getting my planes in shape. I have had these for quite some time, but without an effective way to hold my work, they were almost useless (except for trimming a door once). With the bench, though, they become very useful. I got a piece of glass, some spray adhesive, and a bunch of cheap sandpaper in 100 and 220. I also picked up some 400, 600, and 1200 wet/dry. I polished the soles, lapped the blades, sharpened them up.

The knob on my Bailey #5 is broken, and the screw is bent, so I need to make a replacement and try to find a suitable screw. I haven't got around to it yet, but I have been using it without any problem. I put a slight camber on the blade, and I have it set heavy to try to take the place of a scrub plane. Using it is a bit of a workout, but it does the job. I have one of my block planes set as a heavy smoother, and the other block plane set as a fine smoother. I polished rubbed some paste wax onto all the polished metal to try to reduce rusting caused by my grimy mitts.




With these three planes I can take a rough hewn board down to a glassy smooth, square board.


Leevalley is running a great deal on some mortise chisels. Only through the 15th, so if you want some, get on it quick. I lightly flattened the backs, polished up the bevels, and they cut great.


I felt a hankering for a couple of longer knives, so I ordered a Mora #2 and a Lauri 4.8" blade from Ben's Backwoods. I love the Mora #1 blade shape and length, but the handle is too small to be comfortable for heavy cutting. The #2 has a nice big handle.