Twisted Timber and the Dogs - Fini

That would be a good name for a band!  Next up was the gap/stop.  The Split-Top Roubo has a few, what I consider, advantages over a solid slab top.  Mind you, this is from someone who is mostly knowledgeable from reading and a bit of doing.  The main and most advantageous aspect to building the split-top is being able to handle all the operations without help.  That's not to say help wouldn't make the job of flattening the top easier, but it is less convenient to have to schedule the help.  The other aspect is that the gap/stop can be flipped from the flush position to being proud of the top and acting as a stop for planing.    We'll have to see how much I really use that.  I tend to want to do the major stock removal, which is where one would employ the stop, at the machines.  I really believe the forefathers of woodworking would have gladly used machines to do the "menial" tasks.  But, then what would have happened to apprenticeships and how would that have impacted the future of woodworking?  Something to ponder.

I was getting my gap/stop from a twelve foot 2" x 12". After setting up the support at the bandsaw, I ripped the 2" x 12" in half.  I had to be careful feeding the board to avoid binding or stressing the blade.  

After ripping, I used my custom made winding sticks to evaluate the twist.

  

They're simply two pieces of 1" x 4" mdf.  One has an edge painted black with a Sharpie and the other is the factory white.  I have another piece about ten feet long that I use for setting up infeed and outfeed support.

  

I find if you use and place infeed and outfeed support correctly, it's not that hard to get the twist out of a board without loosing a lot of thickness.  

If you can have one of the supports at the crux of the twist you can begin the cut with the downward pressure at that point.  

I was a little off from the crux of the twist, but not too bad.  You can see the progress in these photos.

Once jointed, I set up and sent the board through the planer.  The entire process only wasted 3/8" of the thickness.  I went from           1 13/16" to 1 7/16".  

That left me enough to get the entire gap/stop from this half of the original 2" x 12".  I went back to the bandsaw and resawed the board and again ran the two halves through the planer.  I got to each being 5/8", which was perfect.  There was enough material to get the five center dividers from this board, too.  

This shot is from the next evening before I started working again.  The old growth Fir is dry through and through.  That has really been the joy in working with this old wood.  It just doesn't move.  

Here you can see what I find so special about old growth Fir.  This old tree experienced some good droughts in Eastern Oregon.  There is one section that had 4 growth rings within 1/16".  

To keep things aligned during the glue up, I used the method I'd seen David Marks use on DIY Woodworks.  For each divider, I tapped in two small brad nails and clipped them, so a nib was sticking up.  Before applying glue, I aligned and pressed the assembly together, so when I did apply the glue the pieces fit and stayed in place as I applied the clamps.

The final step in the build for me was to make the sliding dog hole and all the dogs.  The sliding dog hole was made the same way I made the other dog holes.  After gluing up the board, it was simple to cut and fit to the Benchcrafted vise hardware on the bandsaw.  

This seemed to be as good a time as any to go ahead and do the final flattening on the top.  The finish I'd already applied made it easy to see my progress.

After creating a bunch of shavings, I had a dead-flat top.  I took six passes diagonally and six more with the grain.  I didn't worry about tearout, and there are still some planing marks, but it is flat.  

I'm really happy that I installed the floor sweep on this side of the shop.  Most of the mess I make on this side will always be able to be swept without putting dust into the air. 

The process I used to "mass produce" dogs was first milling some stock to be close, but a little oversized for the holes in the bench.  I ripped the stock first at the band saw, jointed, edged and thicknessed at the jointer and planer, then crosscut to length with the tablesaw sled.  

A stop block on the bandsaw stopped the long cut on the dogs and the little "chin" was cut using a square piece of plywood for a guide.

I had some of the dog stock left and ripped some strips at the bandsaw.  I only needed one side to be smooth for gluing, so I left the other side rough, figuring it would help keep the dogs in place.  I cut the spring pieces to length with my 2" chisel and also put the inaugural chisel marks in the top at the same time.  By clamping the dogs in the vise at an angle, it was extremely quick to put the angle at the bottom of the dog where the spring would be glued and screwed to the dog.  A one man assembly line later and the dogs were done.

 And THAT, my friends, concludes my participation in The Woodwhisperer Guild's Roubo Bench Build.  This was, as always, more time consuming than I originally thought.  I'm still getting the processes of building more efficient within my shop.  This build changed the location of my bandsaw and opened up some other idea for changes.  I'll get into those when I make a firm decision.  

This is the completed bench:

 And this is me actually using the bench to build my Br'all.  A full tutorial can be found on my friend, Chris Wong's website Flair Woodworks.  After all, EVERYONE needs a Br'all!

 The beautiful wooden plane pictured is made by my buddy Scott Meek.  He's a very talented plane maker.  This smoother is heaven to use.  Be sure to support your boutique tool makers.

If after following this blog for the last few months, you're still jonesing for more of that bench building fever, check out these other fine people doing their versions of a woodworking bench.  If I've missed anyone, my apologies.  Contact me and I can add your site to this list.

The Village Carpenter

High Rock Woodworking

Better Living Through Woodworking
The Wood Canuck

And, of course, you can sign up for The Woodwhisperer Guild and learn from Marc Spagnuolo.  Marc is taking the Guild through the building of this lifetime woodworking bench.  With his usual easy delivery and thorough understanding of the process, he makes this very large project easy enough for the beginner, who has a very basic tool selection.  

I hope you have enjoyed the building process.  Woodworking is what I want to do until I die. It is what gives me peace and is my passion.  If you think you may be interested in woodworking, contact me and I will try to get you pointed to a resource near you and/or online.  Thanks for taking the journey!

The Deadman Lives - Part 11

I thought I'd get a lot more done this week, but NOOOO!!! I've had an issue with the master bath shower door installation.  I'm up to four corrected shipments, once the part arrives tomorrow.  Luckily, it wasn't my error.  After I'm done with this bench, finishing the master bath "semi" remodel will be my priority.  I get to make several lamps for that project and I'll, of course, take you  along.

This week I got the bench assembled and applied two coats of polymerized tung oil.  These photos are with the oil still wet.


This particular oil is my favorite finish, as it's super easy to apply and looks wonderful.  I've used straight tung oil and a tung oil varnish before, but this applies and dries differently.  It also provides the ability to build a finish, if you wish.  I like it for the bench because I can reapply without any prep work and because this is a work bench, the surface prep was extremely minimal.

All this week I spent laying out the design and position of the dog holes for the deadman.  I got to use my favorite power tool, the bandsaw, for the design and then moved to the drill press for all the holes.

I used a forstner bit for the holes and set my depth stop to only allow the point of the forstner bit to penetrate the back of the deadman.   I then came back and finished up from the back side.  Both the drilling and clean up of the design were much more difficult than I expected.

The growth ring are very tight and, while I don't know why, this particular piece was harder to pare with my just sharpened chisel than the Osage Orange.  Here is what I came up with after a coat of oil has been applied.










This week, I'll get started on either the gap/stop and/or the dogs.

Leg Vise Complete - Part 10

At the close of the last post, I had just started in on the guide wheel brackets.  This week was all about finishing the last piece to the leg vise.  Because of what I wanted to do with the brackets, there needed to be a specific sequence to the process.  After cutting the slot for the wheels, I cut the curves for the wheels and a 1/4" slice off the front of the brackets.  I then cut the front profile.

After that, I adhered the off-cut back on and that allowed me to cut the side profiles.  Again, I repeated the "chevron" pattern.  Some time spent with my 2 inch chisel and some of my rasps and files and the brackets were cleaned up.

Next I tapped for the set screws for the wheel pins, installed the Orange Osage pins I'd made and put a slight bevel on the round.

When I went to tap for the bolts that hold the brackets to the legs, I spaced and used the wrong tap.  I went too big and messed up the holes.  Luckily, the world makes a product called PC Lumber that set up in about an hour and let me re-tap for the bolts.

From here is was a matter of assembling the vise and adjusting the glide for smooth movement.  After I'd achieved a fairly smooth action on the leg vise, I mounted the leg vise's screw bushing.  This fits the screw like a glove and keeps everything precisely tuned.  I used my router plane to inlay the bushing and it is purposefully not a tight fit to allow adjustment.  Sorry, but I didn't get any photos of this procedure.  I always have too much fun using the router.
Here are a few photographs of the completed leg vise.

I'm extremely excited to know that this week I'll finally be getting rid of the sawhorses I've been working on as a bench for the last couple years!

Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...Everyone must build Roubo

If you've been paying attention and you know the bloggers I do, you know that for one reason or another workbenches are "it" right now.  Kari Hultman of the Village Carpenter has started her version of the Andres Roubo workbench.  Erik Gilling of Better Living Through Woodworking and Chris Adkins of High Rock Woodworking are just two off the top of my head that are building along with me and we're building along with The Woodwhisperer Guild, headed by yet another bench builder and entrepreneur, Marc Spagnuolo.  It seems everyone is taking slightly different approaches to the bench, but the one thing they all have in common is they are the Roubo workbench that Chris Schwarz popularized in the woodworking community with his books on workbenches.  Be sure to check out their blogs, you can even view Marc's progress on his woodworking blog that is housed on his free site The Woodwhisperer.

This last week I finally got back into the shop.  I'm now in the process of building the parts and assembling the Benchcrafted leg vise.  The first step was after I finished fitting the glide to the roughed out chop, was to figure out the location of the of the hole for the vise's screw and the mortise for the guide rail.  I just clamped everything in place, leaving about 1/16" on the top of the chop that I will flush after the complete install.

I transferred all the marks to the chop and drilled for the screw.








For the glide mortise, I started by using my Triton router with an edge guide to make  the initial slots on either side of the leg.  I drilled the waste between the two slots with my drill press and cleaned everything up with my chisels.



After checking alignment, I drilled the hole through the leg for the screw and laid out the design on the chop, which is a continuation of the design used for the glide.  The design is based on the chevron design found in the art deco style.  You can barely see it laid in this picture of the chop.

The wheel and screw are actually fastened to the chop with machine screws and required tapping.  Luckily, my Grandpa had given me his tap and die set.  It was nice to finally be able to use it.

I mounted the hand wheel and tested the clearance of the glide in the glide mortise.  After that, I cut out the design for the chop and cleaned it up with my chisels.  My chisel of choice is my 2".  It's probably the most used blade in my shop.  The weight and size make it very easy to yield for many operations.  

I made some 3/8" dowels on my Woodrat from the Osage Orange, drilled the holes to pin the glide and drove the dowels home.  Since Orange Osage is so hard, it should do well as a pin for this purpose.

Late last night I posed the question to my social media friends, should I inlay this nut or not?  Was there any reason I should other than that seems to be the thing to do. The overwhelming response was to do the inlay, but no particular reasons why it may be better to do so, in terms of integrity.  I decided to go ahead and do the inlay, thinking that besides being slightly better looking, it would put less stress on the machine threads that are only holding in Fir, which is considered a softwood.  Today, Marc Spagnuolo saw that I had decided to do the inlay and concurred on the possibility of this being slightly better in terms of strength.

The operation was again at the drill press using my large diameter forstner bit to hog the majority of the waste from the recess.  I cleaned the perimeter with a chisel and got to the final depth and a clean bottom with my router plane.  Here is the nut after the inlay process.  

This morning while I drank my coffee, I decided to do some detail work on the chop and glide.  The glide "stub" sits proud and rather than cutting it off flush to the surface, I decided to facet it, as well as cleaning up the final edges of the chop.  This is a detail I later found will need to be changed.


The last thing I did today was start to rough out the glide wheel brackets.  Once I get these done, I can finally glue up the base and set the tops on!

I'm pretty close to wrapping this project.  I still have dogs to make and the lower shelf.

TWW Roubo Build - Part 8: Builder's Block

I'd like to say I just haven't had any time in the shop this week, but the truth is I hit a wall.  Earlier this week I milled the stock for my leg vise, deadman and parallel glide.  All was going extremely well.  I had routed the groove that the deadman needs in the bottom of the top of the bench.  As you can see, I even had a knot explode on me.

No problem.  These things happen.  It wasn't catastrophic, just an annoyance.  No one is ever going to look under the bench and I believe the leg will cover the transgression.  I proceeded to figure out the design I wanted to incorporate into the leg vise and the parallel glide.  I cut the design out on the bandsaw for the parallel glide, cleaned everything up with my chisels
 and then proceeded to layout and drill the holes that are used to keep the leg vise from racking.  CATASTROPHE!!!

  I had horrible tear out.  Luckily, I have many friends on Twitter and other social media sites and I ran the situation by them.  Some felt I should just be OK with it and move forward.  "It's just a bench!".  My buddy Chris Wong of Flair Woodworks and Time Warp Tools thought I could simply do another, thicker glide and plane off the offending tear out.  My Hand Tool School teacher, Shannon Rogers, explained the forces that the glide encounters doing it's job and suggested that maybe Fir was a bit too soft to handle the situation.  My first reaction was to follow Chris' suggestion to go thicker and stay with the Fir.  A little background might help here.  I'm a bit obsessive compulsive in certain things of my life.  I really wanted to build the entire bench out of Fir.  If I was to introduce a contrasting wood, I would have done the end cap of the wagon vise in that wood.  I envisioned me sawing apart the end cap from the bench, which is now glued in place, simply to appease a compulsion that would gnaw at me endlessly until I succumbed to the somewhat psychotic demand.  Ultimately, I am choosing to move forward with the glide being made from some Osage Orange I have on hand, which over time will fade, but is fairly close in color to the old growth Fir I've used on the rest of the bench.
While I had the part dimensioned and the mortise fit, I laid out the cuts I need to make on the leg.  
I will wait to do those until I have the new part, just in case the dimensions change a bit.  Only time will tell if I have to start tearing things apart to make them either match or properly contrast.  YES, I'm weird, but I'm OK with that.

The Woodwhisper Guild Roubo Build-Part 7

It seems some parts of this build go quite fast and others, not so much.  The fitting of the tenons is something you really want to sneak up on.  So, I tend to cut everything a little fat, then pare, test, pare, test, pare.  Except for the haunch for the long stretcher that was cut deep enough to accommodate the extruded "V" shape that the deadman runs on, all the joinery was originally cut using my Excalibur for the tablesaw.  That particular cut was going to take me outside of my comfort zone on the tablesaw and the litmus test on anything you do on power tools should be, "if it doesn't seem safe, DON'T DO IT!"  There are many ways to accomplish the same thing. In this case, I got to use my Doc Holliday saw from Bad Axe Toolworks.

In this first shot, you can see I used a flip-stop to enable repeatable cuts and I drew a line on the fence to make it easier judge to where I needed to cut after the initial shoulder. 

           

This next shot is the view of the nibbling out of the waste.  Again, I didn't find the time savings of installing the dado blade to be worth it.  I'd rather cut the shoulders of the tenon with my Freud Fusion blade and so made a series of cuts, broke off the waste and pared with my 2 inch chisel. 

Although I don't want to fill the splits in the legs with epoxy, you can see here that it may prove inevitable.  When I go to glue the ends with the short stretchers, I will use the West System epoxy and make sure they are set to dry with the split upward.  I'll also use some blue tape to keep any epoxy from coming out of the split.  After the glue up, I'll reassess whether I need to fill the cracks.  Most of what I'll be concerned with is the aesthetics.  If I get too much epoxy visible in the crack, I will fill it completely.

Once all the short stretchers were cut and were a snug "slip fit", I did a dry fit and squared them up to enable me to take the measurements of the long stretchers directly from the piece.  

If you are a follower of Marc Spagnuolo's The Woodwhisperer, you'll be familiar with this process known as relative dimensioning.  

These two final shots are a couple views of the base dry fitted.  Although the entire project is built to be "knock down", it is quite the feat to both assemble and disassemble.  The mortise and tenon joints on the long stretchers will be mechanical held together with hardware that came in my Benchcrafted kit.  Therefore, these joints were slightly more loose than a "slip fit".  

After the first assembly, I checked for square and found I needed to slightly move the position of the tenons that let the top sit on the base by about 1/16 of an inch.  To do this, I had to get on the bench and lift each end out of the mortises and carefully slide each long stretcher from the legs, all the while trying to avoid letting anything crash to the floor.

After seeing the piece as a whole, it seemed to me to be beefy enough to not need a fifth leg.  Luckily, there is the The Sagulator.  I entered the dimensions of the bench with 200lbs of dead weight in the center.  Even with that, the bench should only deflect by .003" and the threshold on The Sagulator is .020", so I'm well within engineering tolerances.