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.

Goings On

Today one of the guys I work for sent me home with this pile of Yellow Pine flooring left over from a job.  After I plane the backs of the boards smooth they will probably be a heavy 1/2" or 5/8" thick.  Some of these will be 11" wide after I take off the tongue and groove.  Some are as narrow as 6", which is still plenty wide.

I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, or where I'm going to keep it.  My tiny basement room is already plenty crowded, and a couple of these pieces are still 16 feet long, which wouldn't fit down there even if I could get them down the stairs and around the corner in the first place.  I might make a bookshelf or something, but I don't really need any furniture right now.


Below you can see a couple of new things.  In the middle is my new bowsaw.  I have been frustrated with my coping saw for a while now, and instead of spending $15 on a new one that probably wouldn't be much better, I decided to go ahead and get the Gramercy Tools bowsaw kit, which consists of the two brass pins and one of each of the three blades.  For $25 and three hours of work, I have a good small bowsaw that is miles ahead of  my crappy coping saw, even though I haven't added handles yet.  I made it from Oak, and left the frame a little hefty, so it's not quite as elegant as the Gramercy frame, but I don't have to worry about snapping the frame by over-tightening it.  I also left the frame quite rough, not even taking off all of the original finish from the Oak's previous life as a cabinet door.


At the front left corner you can see a crochet of sorts (one word that I have seen these called, and the only one that is coming to mind right now).  So far the only use it's been is a resting place for my brace.  Normally used to secure the end of a board for edge planing, with a dog in a hole on the front bench to support the board.  The rear end is supported by a dog or a clamp in my case.  It works okay, but I can't say I'm overwhelmed.  Peter Follansbee seems to like these, but he has a screw through his.  I might try that.  I've also seen one of these used to support a board for dovetailing on a portable bench, but the wood kept shifting on me.  Maybe the angle on mine is too open and doesn't pinch the wood enough.