Woodworking 101--Tools and Tips

[Craptain]

Thanks Jim and Andrew. It will probably be winter before I start but definitely will post pics.


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I might even see you before then.

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[R_einan]

Glad I'm not the only one working on an end table




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Looks nice zach, please share some details! How did you choose to attach the laminated top to the legs/aprons?

Jim - that repair is pretty hard to see in the pics, that's an idea I'll have to remember for my next oops.

 

[R_einan]

After Jim's suggestion of making the table top have some mechanical movement, and looking into the methods for achieving that, I decided to make something instead of buying something. So I made 4 cleats out of some of the scrap walnut I have laying around. Plan is to dado the long side aprons and install 2 cleats per side to hold the top down and still allow for some movement.

 

[jimreed2160]

R--That is a clever solution to your top movement problem. I think you will be happy with it. Great job.

 

[jimreed2160]

New toy

The FedEx guy just huffed and puffed this thing to my doorstep today in the 90 degree weather. It is a Morgan quick release vise.

The seller said it did not move well. It looked like it was in good shape but rusty so I took a chance on rehabbing it. The quick release cover was stubborn so I wedged the vise on my table and got out The Persuader.

Those screws gave up quicker than a (insert nationality slur here) conscript soldier and soon I was able to view the insides.

Wow. That is a bronze casting for the capture threads. Once opened, the vise worked well. It is probably just stiff with rust. After a good cleaning this guy will work like new and the 7 inch jaw will be sliding like a fat (insert slur here) on ice.

Looks like the falltime projects are stacking up. By the way, I was going to work on the fall front hinges while I was in the shop but after ten minutes I was covered in sweat. Maybe tomorrow morning.

 

[R_einan]

Nice vise Jim, that's a lucky score there.

Legs came out of clamping and I started finish work. The pieces had a light coat of natural danish oil before assembly, finish coat will be amber shellac, top is hand rubbed.

 

[shortykorte]

I might even see you before then.

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Look forward to it.


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[jimreed2160]

R--That is some incredible walnut.

 

[ztorres]

So I need some opinions. I have a customer who wants four cutting boards that are in the shape of Iowa. This isn't the difficult part. What I need input on is what type of wood would look the best with this setup.

The text will be in a script [cursive] font instead. The way I plan to burn this logo in is by using carbon paper to transfer it to the board. This is for a LPGA tournament hosted here in Iowa, so I want to have the most perfection possible. The customer doesn't care what kind of wood is used so long as it doesn't take away from the logo and quote. So my question is what type of wood would look the best and be very elegant? I realize that I am going to want to avoid dark woods like Walnut because that will take away from the burning. I also was wondering if milk paint is food safe. The customer did not specify whether they would like color or not, and I am not sure if it is possible for a cutting board.


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[RagTopTA]

New toy

The FedEx guy just huffed and puffed this thing to my doorstep today in the 90 degree weather. It is a Morgan quick release vise.

Thats a really cool vise. I dont know much about them but have wanted one for some time since I mess with wood a little bit. I hit an estate sale last weekend and got a 10" Yost. I had to detach it from the woodworking workbench. No one even seemed to notice it was there. Got it for $20. Now trying to find info on it. Is there a woodworkers vise thread ?

 

[rlitman]

So I need some opinions. I have a customer who wants four cutting boards that are in the shape of Iowa. This isn't the difficult part. What I need input on is what type of wood would look the best with this setup.

The text will be in a script [cursive] font instead. The way I plan to burn this logo in is by using carbon paper to transfer it to the board. This is for a LPGA tournament hosted here in Iowa, so I want to have the most perfection possible. The customer doesn't care what kind of wood is used so long as it doesn't take away from the logo and quote. So my question is what type of wood would look the best and be very elegant? I realize that I am going to want to avoid dark woods like Walnut because that will take away from the burning. I also was wondering if milk paint is food safe. The customer did not specify whether they would like color or not, and I am not sure if it is possible for a cutting board.


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Instead of paint, I would do an inlay. Something you could cut out using a router and templates. Then, you could use aniline dye to stain the inlay. Or use corian for the inlay.

 

[jimreed2160]

Zach--I vote for maple cutting boards. Good luck with your project.

Ragtop--Nice score on your vise. Yost is known for high quality. BTW, no points can be awarded until we see pictures and can confirm your score.

The Yost company started in 1908 in Meadvile, PA. They were awarded a patent on an Emmert type patternmakers vise. After a few decades, they moved to Muskegon, MI and then later to Holland, MI. They still make several types of ww vises today.

WW vises, yes I have a few, are not very popular with the general public and GJ is no exception. All of the vise love goes to machinists vises.

 

[jimreed2160]

Desk

So the punch list items continue with work today on the fall front. I organized my screws and that was good. But when I got them out I found that I was short and did not have enough brass screws to attach the hinges. In addition, I discovered that the screws I had were magnetic and thus only brass washed. Luckily there is a HD nearby and I found exactly what I needed. Also made sure I will not run out any time soon.

I carefully finished opening up the shank area with my drill and then got out the soap. Hint--Everyone has soap. Go look in your bathroom and you will find a sliver of soap in the tub holder. I'll bet it is too tiny to use for bathing. So get one of your many empty pill containers and stash this little piece of soap in it. The pill bottle will protect it and your little sliver will provide lube for 100's of screws.

They all went in without incident.

Then I was able to turn it over to address the finish for my recent patch. Careful inspection showed that the finish was thin and needed a little touchup. So I buffed it a bit and hosed it down with satin poly.

This project is moving by baby steps but at least it is moving. Stay tuned as I correct more mistakes and make actual progress.

 

[jimreed2160]

More desk

The finish is dry enough for me to attach the escutcheon.

BUT I drilled the dang holes too big!

Good thing I have some toothpicks handy.

Good tight fit.

Now I can bring it inside to finish drying and work on the supports.

One of the support trim pieces needed to be trimmed. I used a handplane to take off a sliver. Then I installed the brass knobs.

They look pretty good and work well. I installed the dowel pins to keep them from falling out. Now they are good to go.

The next task is to build the writing surface cover. For that I need a 33 x 7 piece of cherry. Need to scrounge the wood pile. Stay tuned for more fun.

 

[RagTopTA]

Zach--I vote for maple cutting boards. Good luck with your project.

Ragtop--Nice score on your vise. Yost is known for high quality. BTW, no points can be awarded until we see pictures and can confirm your score.

The Yost company started in 1908 in Meadvile, PA. They were awarded a patent on an Emmert type patternmakers vise. After a few decades, they moved to Muskegon, MI and then later to Holland, MI. They still make several types of ww vises today.

WW vises, yes I have a few, are not very popular with the general public and GJ is no exception. All of the vise love goes to machinists vises.

Very cool! thanks for the info! I see several different numbers on the front.

 

[ztorres]

So I decided to go with some Hard Maple and Cherry for the cutting boards. As for the end table that I am making, the top will be glued to the front "apron" and then there are runners that have extra large screw holes. This will allow the top to move from front to back with seasonal changes.


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[Bigmichaelkim]

Hello,

Can anyone help me identify this wood? I am in the process of trying to learn the different species of wood and generally I am noticing that harder woods are harder to plane. Pine is a joy to plane and in fact so far is my favorite wood to work on, anywho, this wood planes very oddly however I don't really get shavings as more of curly dusty wisps. You can hopefully tell what I am trying so poorly to explain in words by the pictures. The wood in question is the darker shavings. Thanks in advance


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[raskal]

in case you're interested in seeing a rocking chair get built with hand tools only

https://www.facebook.com/GoingViralcom/videos/1860454680942889/

it's 4 minutes long

 

[jimreed2160]

Rag--Thanks for the pictures. That is a nice vise. I did some more research on Yost. It appears that that mention of "several decades" extended for awhile because I saw them in a WWII mfg directory and they were still in Meadeville. The fonts on your vise take me back to the 1940-50 timeframe.

Zach--Maple and cherry love each other so I predict your cutting boards will be a hit.

BigM--I sure hope you can get a good vise or make a bench stop. Those jaws will leave marks. The wood looks close grained but the color is strange. Is there an odor? Maybe a nutwood like butternut. Or some exotic. Do you have much of it? Looks like it would be good for turning.

Ras--Thanks for the video--it was an early morning treat. Wish I had those skills. The chair looks very comfortable but I wonder if the back will hold up without splitting over time. No prob as he could whittle in a few Dutchmen.

 

[Craptain]

Big Mike. That looks like Teak. If so it is a very expensive wood to be learning on. One of the clues could be where you got it from.

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[ez-duzit]

...sure hope you can get a good vise or make a bench stop. Those jaws will leave marks...

That was my first thought when I saw the photo--needs a ww vise.

 

[Bigmichaelkim]

Big Mike. That looks like Teak. If so it is a very expensive wood to be learning on. One of the clues could be where you got it from.

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I got it from an estate sale for 5 bucks. And if it is teak, is this considered a hardwood or softwood? I was planning on making the vise jaws for my woodworkers vise out of this material but if the wood is considered an exotic I would keep it for some other project. The wood does have a more pleasant smell than anything, can't really tell.


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[KMScott]

Hey Jim, thought I'd share a few projects I built before getting into bench vises. I was angry at the change taking place in 2000 and sold most of my machines that built Plastic Injection Molds and bought heavy wood working machines. Flew to Cleveland and loaded the biggest truck I could find with rough cut lumber from a saw mill out side of Cleveland. I think I bought over 5,000 bd ft. All hardwood except for some soft maple.

I am a Toolmaker with some experience restoring old furniture when I was a kid so I know the main rules in building furniture. I really enjoy reading all your pages here on your woodworking post and learned so much. My methods would not pass the the woodworking how to do since all my projects were built on a Bridgeport and CNC knee mill. I did run the boards through my 8" Jointer ( to me the most valuable machine in woodworking) Table saw, Planer and Drum Sander.

I enjoyed building all my furniture for my family, every piece I drew up on the computer and everything was mortised and tenoned the way I thought it should be. For 6 years I had a ball working wood in my shop till I ran out of wood and money since I could never make $$'s building furniture. Shucks the entertainment center took me 8 months. I really had fun and maybe will get back into it after I am done with the vise stuff.

Thanks for putting so much time into your post and just wanted to say thanks for sharing your skill. Kevin

 

[ztorres]

Here is the first cutting board for the LPGA tournament. I haven't burnt the logo or quote in yet


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[Craptain]

I got it from an estate sale for 5 bucks. And if it is teak, is this considered a hardwood or softwood? I was planning on making the vise jaws for my woodworkers vise out of this material but if the wood is considered an exotic I would keep it for some other project. The wood does have a more pleasant smell than anything, can't really tell.


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Teak is considered a hardwood but it is not overly hard. For vise jaws I would look out for some maple. Hard enough to hold firmly but not so hard as to damage the project. Unless you are heavy handed.

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[pstemari]

Hell, balsa is a hardwood . Fortunately, teak is a bit harder than balsa.

The technical definition is that trees with leaves are hardwoods and trees with needles and cones are softwoods. It's usually true that hardwoods have hard wood and softwoods have softer wood, but there are both soft hardwoods, eg balsa, and hard softwoods, eg southern yellow pine.

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[RagTopTA]

Rag--Thanks for the pictures. That is a nice vise. I did some more research on Yost. It appears that that mention of "several decades" extended for awhile because I saw them in a WWII mfg directory and they were still in Meadeville. The fonts on your vise take me back to the 1940-50 timeframe.

Thanks for the info, very good to know. I know the previous owner was a wood worker and was in his early 90s. Going into a nursing home now so they were having an estate sale. Wish I could have brought his main work bench home it was big horse show shaped. but no room. I was marked $150. Now I need to figure ouit how to mount it to my work bench!

 

[ztorres]

Here is the boar with the logo burnt in. That took about 3 hours to draw on then actually burn in.


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[jimreed2160]

BigMike--If it has a nice smell it could be walnut but the color looks more like teak. It would make good jaws and that would be a good project for a small piece like that.

Zach--The cutting board came out nice. Your time and effort paid off.

Rag--Be careful when you mount the vise because it is easy to make mistakes. I know because I made most of them--at least once.
Here is how I would mount it. I like vises on the right corner because I am right handed. If you want to use the bench dog (good idea), then mount the vise on the end like a tail vise. In that case it would be on the left hand side of the end. You can work the vise with your right hand and also clamp boards in front of you on the long side of the bench.

Mount it so the rear has a wooden face and that face is flush with the bench--on top and on the face. You may have to build up some standoffs on your bench so it mounts correctly.

If you are careful, you might have to patch only a few places. Good luck.

 

[jimreed2160]

Desk

The task today was to find a piece of cherry stock for the writing surface. It had to be 7 inches wide and 33 inches long. I went into the shop early and was prepared to spend the day going through all the lumber.

But my luck stepped in when I went to the first stack. There was a perfect board partially hidden by a piece of plywood. It was 7 inches by 36 inches and was 3/8 thick. Perfect.

I marked the opening size with my trammel and checked the stock for square.

I cut it to length and left some stock. Took me four or five trips inside/outside to trial fit and cut. The side of the carcass was not straight. I finished up with my LN#140 skew plane.

The board had an edge bow to it that was quite pronounced.

But the LN #7 took care of that. Since both edges were not true, I worked a little on one and then flipped it to work on the other. The wonky edge made the board wobble while I was working it.

Since this piece sits on top of the surface, I decided to chamfer the leading edge. This required a #72 chamfer plane.

This is an uncommon plane but I really like it and use it in almost every project. Here is a shot of the sole.

It is easy to set up. First you set the blade depth to pull a thin shaving.

Then you adjust the frontpiece to depth. The lower it is, the wider the chamfer will be.

Then you run it down the board. I like to register the top side and work into the cut. Once you reach the desired chamfer, the lower part of the sole will contact the edge and the plane will stop cutting.

You can make chamfers with a block plane or even a bench plane. I like the #72 because it is idiot proof and I need all the help I can get.

I was pretty aggressive with it and ran the chamfer about 2/3s of the way down the edge.

Here is the opening. I am waiting to finish this part before I re-install the back. The lower compartment will be "hidden".

Here it is with the piece in place.

Whew! This has been a long time coming. I am still working out details of the trim but I hope to have this thing finished by the end of the week. Thanks for looking.

 

[jimreed2160]

Kevin--Thanks for joining us. Thanks for your kind words. And thanks for the story. Those are some great projects.

One of my first vise projects was a basket case Prentiss #18 vise with a missing jaw. It was from about 1918 and looked it. I tore into the restoration and Kevin bailed me out. One of the jaws was missing but the vise was used afterward and the screws were really messed up. The only jaw was in pitiful shape.

I was able to use my milling machine to drill out the screws so I could pick out the threads with an awl. Then a miracle occurred--Kevin made me some new jaws!!!

This little swivel vise never looked so good. Kevin's jaws were far superior to the OEM ones.

My hat is off to the master craftsman, KM Scott.

 

[KMScott]

Jim, your vise came out real nice, I should have made you a set of smooth jaws. You guys here are the Craftsman, I like rrich1 sled he made and will use his design for one I need for cutting aluminum plate on my table saw. I want to add a toggle clamp for smaller pieces. It is to scary how I cut my aluminum now. Keep up the good work all you woodworkers because many of us enjoy your projects. The wood burning pattern on ztorres plaque is awesome and looks just like the customers picture, great job.

 

[jimreed2160]

Kevin--There are many tricks to cutting metal on a woodworking saw. One time I needed some feet for a Stanley #66 scratcher. I had a brass bar and a brass cutting blade for my table saw. But these little pieces were small and so was the bar stock. I ended up hot gluing the bar to a piece of wood so it would be easier to manage and that took some of the pucker out of the project. A sled would have been just the ticket for that project.

Good luck with your sled.

 

[Shiftless]

Here is a Buck Brothers 2 inch toothing plane iron I picked up at a flea market while visiting relatives in the high desert town of Carson City NV.
CRSINMICH filled me in on some details but does anybody else have something to say about it?
If somebody wants to build a wooden plane from scratch, this is what you need.

I will list it in the classifieds

 

[Shiftless]

Logo stamp

 

[jimreed2160]

Shift--Good score on the blade. I have a few of the planes around so let me know when you want to make one. These blades work better scratching, so the angle is really steep--like 80-85 degrees.

 

[jimreed2160]

Desk
Progress is being made. This morning the glass people called and I picked up the bookcase with glass. WooHoo! It has been a long wait. It took two strong young lads to load it and one geezer to unload it. I used my dolly but still had to lift it up to the table. It is heavy and hard to handle. I unloaded it upside down and put it on the table the same way.

It was a real struggle. And then one of the hinge pins fell out. I noticed that the other was missing.

But I found it in the driveway. And then I remembered that I specifically put these hinges on it so that I could remove the doors for transport. BUT then I forgot. I need to write up documentation for my granddaughter. I built this desk mostly to plans I found in a book. But I did make mods and most of those were around making it mobile. I once had an Eastlake walnut wardrobe that came apart for transport so I borrowed some of those ideas for this desk. I wanted something that I could transport myself--even at an advanced age.

The glass looks great.

I also stained the writing surface and have almost worked out the idea to make it removable. That will involve having pencil holders that move somehow. I am still thinking but have time as I need to make the holders.

My enthusiasm is still hot and I can see the end in sight. Stay tuned.

 

[R_einan]

Here's a deal, found these on amazon today, screaming deal on 60" parallel clamps. Figured one of you gents would be interested.

Jet 70460-2 60" Parallel Clamp 2 Pack https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000UBIXD0/?tag=atomicindus08-20

 

[jimreed2160]

R--I have never used those Jet clamps but most of the review are very positive. Long clamps are not used often but they are great to have around for those tabletop projects. I hope you got 4.

 

[jimreed2160]

2nd attempt

It is oppressively hot here and the frequent rain storms just add to the humidity. So I have been trapped inside for a few weeks but snuck out this morning to try again on the 4" soaking tube. As you may recall, tube #1 had a slow leak. It is not a total loss because the old tube will be recycled into some sort of shop storage. I kept bumping over the pieces so today was declared tube day.

I was very generous with the goo and hope that this one will be tighter.

While I had the table set up, I decided to spray some poly on the desk writing surface.

The grain is outstanding but the pictures hardly show that.

Now I need to get busy on those pencil holders.