Precision Matters

It's getting to the time when I have to worry about how precise things are cut. Up till now the table saw did an ok job, but now I need it to be more precise, especially the miter gauge. So I set out to increase the precision of the miter gauge. What should have only taken a few hours turned into a two day ordeal and ended up costing a lot more than I had expected, bugger. Above is the miter gauge, and it wobbles left and right a little, it's really only a fraction of an inch, but it's enough to be a problem. To do that I'll drill some holes cross wise and install some set screws. This will allow me to fine tune it and as it wears down I can turn the screws a few more turns to take up any slack.

Precision is a must, so I measured it out.

Used a set to make the divot for the drill bit.

Divots made.

Setting it up,

I tried to make sure I had it as level and square as I could.

I managed to snap 2 drill bits while drilling the holes.

I had to buy 2 taps as well, this set cost me $60, and I snapped the one I needed within just minutes... grrr.

Here it is, all busted in the hole.

Busted!

I managed to get 4 holes drilled and tapped. I used a file to get rid of any burrs, and put the set screws in place. There's very little play now!

Lots and lots of wood dust.

I have a couple of bottles I put the glue in from a big one gallon container. After a while there gets to be little glue boogers, and it bothers me, so I pull the bottles apart and rinse them out really well. Probably not strictly necessary, but hey, it's what I do.

What an exciting moment! I took all the boards I had been gluing together outside and arranged them as they would be once they were glued together. I wanted to see how it looked, and I think it looks really good! I spent a couple hours cutting them to the same length. This proved to be a lot trickier than I had been expecting since the boards now weighed a pretty decent amount. Oh well, I figured it out.

If you look closely, you can see the boards aren't perfectly even. The closer to even I can get them, the less planing by hand I will need to do, so through the thickness planer then go!

Now they are all cut the same length and very close to the same thickness, it looks really good!

Here I am marking out the lines for the dog holes. I use a marking knife because it allows me to make a much more precise line and will get much closer to the ruler.

Another view of the lines for the dog hole.


I used a combination of chisels and this narrow hand plane. Some of the dog holes came out pretty straight and square, some of them look like I may have been drunk when I was making them. Since I don't drink, I'm really not sure what the excuse is... oh wait, that's right, I'm a novice at this.

I briefly toyed with the idea of using the table saw, or router or something else to make the dog holes more uniform. I ultimately decided to leave them as they were. This is one of my first major projects, and while the holes may look like a toothless beaver made them, they should work just fine.

As my Business Communications teacher would say, what a serendipitous event. The board is way too heavy for me to support with my left hand while manipulating the drill press with my right. As luck would have it, the bench right next to the drill press was the perfect height to hold this monster board! The board has to weigh at least 10 lbs, possibly more.

I'm drilling the holes for the bench stop bolts to go through.


Here's one of the custom bolts I made for the bench stop. I brazed the nut onto some 1/2" all thread. Here it is ready to be brazed.

I was in a bit of a rush, so I didn't photograph the finished product.

Here I'm using some of my newly made 24" long cauls to keep the top as even as possible while the glue dries.

About half way there!

Just a little more!
The fun part about doing this is having to think outside the box. If you look at the longer cauls you'll notice some of the really short ones beneath them. I was having a problem getting the boards to line up properly and it occurred to me to put these under the longer cauls. This allowed me to focus the pressure exactly where I needed it, rather than have it dispersed over the entire width of the top, which wasn't necessary.

With the cauls off, and top all glued together, I begin the long task of using my hand plane to level it out. The top weighs approx 100 lbs (I'll have to try and weigh it later) so manipulating it isn't really easy. I started out with it clamped to the top of the bench I had been using. The bench top was less than flat and cause me some difficulty, so I came up with a different solution.

I have it placed on top of 2 saw horses and am using the bench as a stop. Ultimately I'll spend more than 10 hrs hand planing the top and the bottom and have to sharpen my plane several times. I found out that putting some bee's wax, or parafin wax on the bottom of the hand plane really decreases the friction you have to push against. Thank you internet for that useful bit of information!

Well, the top is now planed to nearly flat, there's less than 1/64" variance in it, and for now I'm pleased with it. I'll be starting on the bottom of it now! Woohoo the end is in sight!!!

Another Bite of Elephant.

To help keep the boards from winding (fanning out like a pinwheel) I decided to use dowel pins.

Here's some of the boards after they've been drilled. If you notice the little arrows, that's to help me keep track of which edge I measured from. Since the boards aren't all exactly the same width this is important if I want them to line up at all.

I decided rather than having to find the center of each board and mark it, I'd find the center of one board and set up a jig. Really helped to speed things along and has proven very useful.

Fine dust is always a problem in a wood shop. The older I become the more I think things through, and that much dust in my lungs just doesn't seem beneficial. Since I don't have $200 I wanted to spend on a commercial air cleaner, I decided to try and make one out of some stuff I had lying around. This is some air filter mesh from the paint booth I built for painting my motorcycle. The red stuff is actually air filter oil. It's different from say motor oil as it is far stickier, I figured this would increase the amount of dust caught.

Very crude system, but by having the fan blow up, sucking the air from below it, I protect the fans motor and hopefully catch dust in the process. I've used it a few times when I couldn't open the garage door while running the tools, due to it being super windy outside. It is better than nothing, but having never used one of the commercial ones, I can't really make a comparison. I may try and make a better one in the future.

I glued together the first 7 boards I had drilled, and found out that using a 3/8" bit and 3/8" diameter dowels, it was just too tight and the dowels snapped before going through all 7 boards. This unfortunately resulted in the boards not being as straight as I'd hoped, however they weren't completely unusable, so not a big deal.

For the next set I decided to get a slightly bigger bit, and a 10mm is .5mm bigger than 3/8", I also picked up some more dowels as I had run out. I like the little plastic case the bit is in, it helps to keep it from getting damaged and allows me to hang it on a peg when I'm not using it.

I'm getting ready to cut some more boards up for the top. The tops thickness has been changed several times due to cost and mistakes I've made. At the time I took this picture I as cutting the boards to 3.25" hoping to make the final thickness 3".

Here's one of my home made dowel pins. You can buy them from the store, but they come in only one length and diameter and I wanted mine longer and wider, so here we go. I rounded the edge so as I'm pounding it through the holes it will be easier to align.

I went to the lumber supply store again and unfortunately they didn't have the nice quality Beech I had been using. At first I was a bit annoyed about that fact, however they did have some "Custom Shop" grade boards which were a lot cheaper than what I had been getting. This allowed me to afford to embellish the top a bit, so I bought some beautiful Black Walnut (board on the right). I also bought some Hard Maple (board on the left) to use for the board that goes between the legs to keep them apart, and have also decided to use it for the ends of the bench. Here they are when I brought them home.

Here's a pic showing the "Custom Shop" grade Beech. I had to go through a pallet of boards just to find enough that would work for what I wanted. The boards were spit, warped, bowed, twisted, and just about any other defect you can think of. But at $1.70 BF versus the $2.50 BF I was paying for the nicer stuff, I was able to afford the Walnut and Maple you've already seen. Since I was able to find enough boards to finish the bench, all's well that ends well, right. It will however mean more work on my part to ensure I get the boards I need out of the lot and a lot more waste.

Here's my cut list, if it just looks like a bunch of illegible writing, well you're right ;) I made this up so I could determine how many BF of what wood I'd need, and it came in handy as I chopped up the new boards to ensure I was able to get all the pieces I needed.

I only chopped up the Beech since I did know the exact dimensions I needed for it, however I left he Maple and Walnut long until I was sure what dimension the top would finally end up. In retrospect, it's a good thing I did.

The Beech all cut to rough length and stickered until I can get to cutting it to final dimensions and glued together.

Here's what is hopefully the last of the Beech I'll be cutting for the top, and the Black Walnut which has been cut for framing the two long edges. In case anyone is curious, the only reason I'm using Black Walnut for the outer two sides of the top is for vanity purposes. I think it will make my bench look nice :)

I'm getting ready to glue the Black Walnut to the first of the Beech. There is a lot of dust due to the planing process, and since dust would cause the glue to not stick to the board, I take the time to wipe the boards down. There's nothing special about the cloth, it's just a clean, lint free, cotton cloth. If you look closely, you'll notice there are no holes drilled in these boards, I decided to align them a different way using cauls, which I'll show you in just a bit.

I've also started marking which way the grain is going so when I glue the boards together the grain is all facing in the same direction. I didn't do this on a few earlier boards and it caused so really nasty tear out and would make it difficult, if not impossible, to make a nice smooth finish. I'd love to say that I've learned how to read the grain by just looking at it, but I haven't mastered that trick quite yet, though I'm improving.

I think the Black Walnut makes a very nice contrast with the much lighter Beech :)

Introducing the caul! It's the boards on the end that have the black duct tape on it. As you can see I sandwich the boards being glued together between a top and bottom caul, and this helps to keep them nearly flat. I will still have to plane the boards once the glue is dry to get them perfectly flat with each other, but this gets them super close. It was definitely worth the couple days I spent cutting and gluing the cauls together. I made several different lengths of cauls so as the top starts getting wider I can keep them level.

Originally they were designed to be used with carriage bolts and wing nuts, but I was a goof and bought bolts that were too short, but didn't realize it till the glue was already on the boards, so a quick fix was to use a pipe clamp.

I really didn't want to keep using clamps on the cauls, and I couldn't find bolts the size I wanted, so I made my own using threaded rod.

The rod goes through the bottom of the lower caul and has a nut and washer on it. By putting another nut and washer above it and snugging them down the threaded rod will not spin when I put the wing nut on. This is very important as you snug the wing nut down, as the rod will want to spin if it isn't held securely.

The cauls don't work perfectly, there is still some small mis-alignment of the boards as they are glued up, but the cauls have helped to seriously minimize this deviation. I use the duct tape to keep the glue from adhering to the cauls, and it works quite well for this.

Back to Woodworking, Sorta.

I purchased the above chisel so I could modify the cutting edge a bit. I'd read about angling the blade to better reach corners and for better paring, so that's what I decided to do.

I marked the back of the blade so I had something to follow, and then used a bench grinder to slowly grind it to the angle I wanted.

Here it is mostly done. I didn't grind it to a perfectly sharp edge because the grinding wheel moves fast enough it would have overheated the metal and caused it to lose its temper. As it was, I held the blade to the grinder until it had started change color, but I don't think I had actually managed to keep from ruining the temper.

While working on the chisel I also planed a 4X4 down so it was the same size as the bench legs I had made. I wanted to practice making the tenon joints, and decided to use this scrap I had lying around.

Here it is, pretty much the same size as the bench leg. I really like my new planer!

Here's one of the mortises I had squared up. I think it turned out nicely, but as I later find out, it wasn't squared up well enough.

I used the dado blade to cut the tenon. I made it bigger than the mortise so I could trim it down.

Looking good so far.

Here's the planes I will be using to trim the tennon.

I finished trimming the scrap piece of 4X4 and acheived what I felt was a satisfactory fit, so I cut the legs.

I clamped scrap pieces of wood on the edges so when planing it wouldn't spinter the edge.

Back to the chisel. I used a combination of different grits of sandpaper and this spiffy diamond plate to put a rasor fine edge on the chisel.

Back to the bench. I wanted to start working on the bench top. I needed to joint one edge square so I could rip the board on the table saw. I screwed a 2X4 to my current bench to hold the board on its edge, and also put a stop on the end. This allows me to focus on handling the planer.

The stop is just a piece of oak I had lying around. It conveniently had a beveled edge. I screwed it on the bench so that the bevel leads toward the bench. As I push forward on the planer the board is forced against the stop and the stop also forces the board against the bench. I read about a similar item on another bench, and have plans to put something similar on the finished woodworking bench.

It looks like all the previous experience I obtained hand planing is paying off. I'm far from perfect at it but I feel it is really pretty good. It's not perfectly square, but it is only off by a degree or so. If I was gluing the boards edge to edge I'd need to do a better job, but to run it through the table saw it has proven sufficient for the job.

I ran the boards through the table saw and came up with 7 that were 3.25" wide. Ultimately I want a 3 inch thick table top, so I'm cutting it a bit wider.

Here I am getting ready to run the boards through the planer. The boards are already just a touch under an 1" thick. I decided I'll make all the boards 3/4" thick as it makes all the math easier on me. There are times I really wish we had adopted the metric system, but oh well.

Yay the boards are all planed! The best part is I even figured out how to reduce or eliminate board snipe, so they are nearly perfect.

I decided to clean up and call it a night, I was getting hungry and the temperature was dropping. I took the boards inside and stickered them. I'm really hoping the board doesn't twist before I can get them glued together. I'll be glueing the top together in sections. I'm hoping by doing it in sections I can keep everything aligned and it will turn out how I want it to.