This weekend, I finally managed to spend some time in the shop – at temperatures well below zero. Working with steel tools is not really a pleasure when they’re freezing cold. Since I don’t have time for a  proper project at the moment, I figured that I could just as well venture my first steps in dovetail land – the result of which you see on the right. (As if you hadn’t already seen first dovetail attempts often enough…)

I’m not completely unhappy with the joint, but without doubt there’s a lot of room for improvement. I’m really puzzled about the size of the gaps – given the amount of force (i.e. the mallet) it took to drive the parts together.  I was closely following the tails-first approach, described in detail by Tom Fidgen in his book; at least, I now have kind of an idea about the workflow, and the critical parts in particular.I especially liked the method for laying out the tail spacing and size with a divider, that was easy, fun, and resulted in precise markings.

I’m less happy with the precision of my sawing – but part of it is contributed by my leg vise which I haven’t presented here yet. The board that I used for the vise has warped since I installed it and requires a touch-up with a selection of planes. Consequently, the vise definitely lacks precision and doesn’t grip firmly enough for precise sawing (I can’t even saw precisely enough when the workpiece is properly secured.  But  that’s a different problem altogether). And there’s definitely some practising to be done with the chiseling…

At least, I got my hands on wood again, and a lot of fun it was, too. So much for now – thanks for reading!

My new workbench hasn’t seen much progress in the last three months. However, I am now the proud owner of two brand-new holdfasts, forged by me, myself and I.

Again, I took a class at the “Haus der Eigenarbeit”, where I previously took the handtool woodworking class; this time, it was an introduction to forging (or blacksmithing? I’m not 100% sure about the right word here). Basically, we spent a day in a blacksmith’s shop, under the guidance of Marten Schmid.

My holdfasts were produced from a piece of round 18 mm diameter (that is slightly less than 3/4 in) mystery steel. Forging a holdfast actually is not too difficult, even I managed to do it with satisfying results. Provided you have access to a massive anvil, a forge and some hammers, that is.

First tests show that the holdfasts hold remarkably well – and because they are forged, they hopefully won’t break.

And now, please excuse me – in the last months, billions of blog posts waiting to be read by me have accumulated. I hope I will have more time for woodworking in the next months, some projects are waiting…

Thanks for reading!

I have done some practice with my bow saw, and finally managed to make the saw cut where I want, not where it wants. I had previously  equipped this saw with a japanese blade, and consequently, the saw was cutting too fast for me. After some test cuts, I found out how to make the saw not only cut fast, but also to cut where I wanted – the key was probably not to apply any pressure at all, but to let the saw work with its own weight and only steer it gently. Of course, that is a rather common insight, but, considering the large and quite heavy frame as opposed to a japanese saw, some practise was required to put this into practice.  With this new-gained skill, I was able to cut those massive tenons considerably faster than with my Ryoba.

Excavating those mortises was also sped up considerably with that large auger bit – but fine tuning and fitting the mortises was still a lot of work. Four more mortises remain – those in the bottom side of the top. And after those, I’m not going to do mortises of this size ever again. That is, until the Schwarz syndrome relapses.

After finishing the joinery, I did a final smoothing of the base using my large jointer with a rather fine setting and my smoothing plane and drawbored the side trestles together. Drawboring is quite impressive: tap-tap-tap-THUD, and you realize, that this joint is not going to loosen ever.

I faced a problem when I wanted to assemble the complete base: I had no means to pull the whole assembly together. The joints of the long stretchers were rather tight and I didn’t want to buy 1.20m long clamps for this single purpose. The father-in-law came up with this simple and brilliant mega-clamping solution:

As mentioned before, I was not inclined to joint the three beams for the top by hand. A short trip to the local cabinetmaker and his massive jointer solved this issue. I had the feeling that this guy was a bit amused by my project, especially with the low-quality carpentry wood that I use… Anyway, he kindly offered to help me with the glue-up, using his large hydraulic frame press (I’m not sure about the technical term, what I mean is something like this)
An hour later, I came back with a jointed, glued and thickness-planed top, ready for assembly.

So far so good, thank’s for reading!

Among the symptoms are the inexplicable longing to build an old-fashioned workbench, manic internet researches, long contemplations of the question English vs French, a manic lust for softwoods such as Southern Yellow Pine,  as well as profound dissatisfaction with the current workbench situation of the affected woodworker. In severe cases of the Schwarz syndrome, it is reported that the patient wishes to build the aforementioned workbench entirely with handtools.

The only remedy so far seems to be to give in and tackle the project, although there exist some reports about relapsing patient. The best example for multiple relapses seems to be The Schwarz himself.

I happen to be infected with the Schwarz syndrome in a severe form. In my case, the severe form is a direct result from an acute lack of power tools, which I decided to make a virtue out of necessity

Anyway, I decided to do something against the symptoms, and set out to build a Roubo-influenced bench. I took a trip to the lumberyard and acquired a bunch of left-over “Nordische Fichte”, which is probably the same as siberian spruce. In particular, I found four 1-meter beams with a cross section of 9 by 13 centimeters, which I declared to become legs, a long board with a cross section of 5 by 15 cms which had “long stretchers” written all over it and three 2m-beams with a cross section of 9 by 13 (btw, 9 by 13 translates to roughly 3.5 by 5 inches), those looked very much like becoming a top.

That whole bunch being leftovers, I paid a ridiculous price for the wood (leaving some room for, uhm, tools, maybe. Or a fancy leg vise. And holdfasts. And…)

I decided to build a split top, such as in that gorgeous Benchcrafted Roubo, and for this purpose, I had to add an additional stretcher in the side assemblies. For the short stretchers, I decided to use the two beams of 8 by 8 cm (3 by 3 in) pine that I had stuffed away in my workshop. All the lumber was thickness-planed and jointed, by the way, but all edges are chamfered.

When I arrived in my workshop with the wood, I set out to crosscut the legs and the short stretchers with my bow saw. I settled for a total workbench height of 82 cm (32 in), copied from the old, wobbly workbench, and a total depth of 55cm (21 in).

This took me some time and a lot of sweat (sweat and sawdust is a dreadful combination). After crosscutting, I cut 2 in thick and 2 in long tenons in the short stretchers, this time, I used my Ryoba. I can cut more precise with this saw, that is probably a matter of practice. (One day, I’ll take some scrap wood and spend an afternoon practicing with the bow saw…)

From the tenons, I marked the mortise locations in the legs and set out to excavate large amounts of wood. I used a brace with the most suitable bit that I found (a 8mm general purpose bit which was in fact rather unsuitable for this task, but I already placed an order at feinewerkzeuge.de, which is known to have certain remedies for this case…), my largest mallet and an assortment of chisels and bored and banged away.

During this, my mortising speed improved considerably, I went from one hour for the first mortise (fine tuning and test fitting included) down to 20 minutes for the last (read eigth) one. All joints ended up to be nice, square and tight (disassembling them results in a very satisfying “plopp” kind of sound). Here, I called it a day, left the two side assemblies in the workshop and headed for the lake.

Dry fit of the first side assembly

The plan for the next weekend includes:

• do the joinery for the long stretchers
• assemble the base: I think I’ll go for drawboring the joints, since I don’t have long enough clamps, and assembling each joint separately with drawboring looks like a promising approach. But I’m wondering how to make sure that the base stays (that is becomes) square during assembly. The book is a bit unclear about that – when I assemble each joint separately, how do I ensure squareness? Any advice would be very welcome!
• source an additional 9 by 13 beam for the top
• pay a visit to the local carpenter/joiner and kindly ask if I can use his power jointer for the top. I’ll be very happy If I can avoid jointing the beams for the top by hand, in particular since I have to remove the chamfers…

So far, thanks for reading, and excuse the poor photography! The only picture-taking device in reach was my mobile phone. Next time, I’ll bring my DSLR again.

The article from Popular Woodworking can be downloaded for free, and I highly recommend it. After something like two hours in my shop (at something like 35°C, feel free to convert this here), I ended up with an almost-functional gauge:

For now, the pin is still missing, since I didn’t have a broken drill bit, and I didn’t want to break one for this purpose. The wedge is still not the final version, that particular detail making it a captive wedge is missing (I blew it away with the chisel, and I didn’t have the time to make a new one, this lake and the beloved one were calling for a bathing expedition).

And since the pin is stil missing, I couldn’t really test drive the gauge, but of course, I did some dry runs. The gauge really fits greatly and naturally in the hand, and the one-hand adjusting really works fine. So, in conclusion, this was a fine and quick afternoon project, I can highly recommend it.

Oh, and I changed the header picture of the blog, the moonlit, snow-covered one was not really suitable for this time of the year…

The second picture accentuates the wrongly-tapered leg, but hides the splintering on the end-grain side of the top. Note to self: Take care when shooting end-grain.

And finally, a close-up view of the multi-coloured top. This was joined from some scraps (the bicolor-shavings from the last post came from here). This shot doesn’t hide any mistakes, in fact, the joining was much easier than I feared. I wonder if anyone can guess the three different woods I used here. The winner will be allowed to buy himself some ice cream.

In conclusion, I did learn a lot from this little project. There are some things that I would do different next time, as well as some things that I’d avoid. This was the first time that I worked with hardwood (as in hard wood), and that’s really quite different from the pine or fir projects that I’ve done before. Much better, though. Of course, the stool is not a design masterpiece. For example I’d build the stretchers much thinner next time, but then, that was not the focus of this project. And it’s pretty, anyway.

So much for this project. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to build next. There are some entries on my to-do list, but I haven’t decided yet.

So far, thanks for reading and remember to guess the wood the top is made of!

Now, I have finally found some shop time again, and I almost finished the project from the woodworking class. As you might remember, this project is a basic stool, with mortise-and-tenon base. On the last evening in the woodworking class, I glued up the base and managed to get it (almost) square. For the top, I collected a lot of scraps (cherry, walnut and oak), and joined them together. I closely followed the steps in my woodworking bible (the Tage Frid book), basically, I used a shooting board and joined consecutive edges with top and bottom down, respectively, to minimize gaps. This worked out a lot better and easier as I expected (and feared), and after glueing, I couldn’t find any gaps. The bicolor shavings in the picture might give you a vague impression of the finished top. In fact, it looks much better than I ever expected.

Pretty, aren't they?

For the finish, I planed and scraped the whole thing, and added two coats of boiled linseed oil. The BLO brought out the colors really nicely, especially the walnut got a very deep shimmer (my English leaves me here…)

Pictures of the whole thing, as you know by now, in the next post, which will be written when the BLO is dry.

One question that I still haven’t decided on is how to fix the top to the base. I think I’ll just use two dowels through the stretchers, to allow for some wood movement. (Although that won’t matter much, considering the scale of this project).

So far, thanks for reading!

Please don't note that gap on the top of the right stretcher...

We are six students, and each of us is building a small stool, essentially to have a good go at mortise-and-tenon joinery, as well as on dimensioning and jointing lumber with handtools only. It is officially allowed to cheat with a thickness planer and a table-saw, at least after you have dimensioned at least some of the components. Until yesterday, I managed to resist the temptation. But I had to cut three more legs for me and three for another attendee, and I figured that I should use the valuable time with the instructor to learn some joinery and the small tricks rather than for ripping and jointing, and I had a go at the jointer, the thickness planer and the table saw. That was not the first time that I used these machines, but those that I used before were a lot smaller and less professional.

I must confess, however, that I severely disliked the table saw. Not only did I have to wear hearing protection, I was also not too happy with the potential to rip and crosscut my fingers as well. More importantly, you have to spend most of your attention on the machine, and not on the piece of wood that you’re working with. If I rip, crosscut and plane a  board by hand, I know every inch of it in the later phases. If I do that with the machine, all I do is check the sides for squareness – I don’t get the feel for the wood, if you know what I mean.

Anyway – back to hand tool woodworking: We do learn a lot (well, some) of the small tricks, that make joinery feasible, more on that later on. Probably the most important lesson that I learnt so far is to just do it, and not to worry too much – in a quite general sense, be it edge jointing, cutting tenons or bashing out mortises. It’s of no use to be afraid of getting an edge square, you need it square, and so you should just do it. And if you’re alternating out of square in each direction, because you don’t master your plane, well, just do it long enough. The same with sawing to the line, or getting the mortise walls straight, and parallel… Nobody expects you to do it right the first time.1

By now, I have the joinery for one corner of the stool finished (see pictures below), and my homework for the weekend are the other three corners, so that I can continue next time with the lamination of the top..

A quite good fit on the shoulder, at least for my standards

update: cool, wordpress now offers slideshows. So, sit back and enjoy.

Thanks for watching!

The plan for my lunch break today is to do some careful filing to fit the sides to the sole, I brought my small needle files for this. And next in line is to file the “undercuts” for the double dovetails- this process is a bit difficult to describe, but the instructions that came with the kit do a very good job here.

This weekend, I’m going to do some rough work instead of fine joinery – the birch that I mentioned has been taken down by now, and requires some cutting, splitting and so on. For a nice overview, see closegrain.com, Steve has made a nice job of describing possible ways of processing. Furthermore, a taken-down aspen tree is awaiting the same treatment. We need a fence around the raised bed that we are building (raised bed in the sense of gardening, just in case you were wondering), and maybe I can use some of the lumber for this purpose, at least those parts that are not pretty enough for woodworking. I hope I find a froe buried somewhere in the shed, otherwise, I have to improvise somehow. And if I’m lucky, I find the time to do some greenwood turning.

So much for now, thanks for reading!