Side Table

Side Table / Woodworking — No Comments
26
Nov 17

Legs

Okay, winter’s here.

And of course that leaves us with the eternal question, why is it always the show face that chips out?

But at least the CA glue did the trick. And on with cutting more leg joints and then apron joints and then test fittings…

Chop, chop, chop…

Swear, swear, swear…
And then recut the mortice so the leg comes up above the apron to be trimmed.

At least the joints are tight enough. I can just about get a 0.10mm feeler gauge into parts of the joints when they’re set; I can’t get the 0.20mm one in.

So that’s all the leg joints cut, now, time for the halving joint for the aprons.

Looks okay, it’s the right way round at least (don’t have legs going up on one side and down on the other…)

But it’s a bit gappier than I’d like. Still, it won’t be structural, there are bolts going through each apron to anchor the tabletop, and there won’t be stress on the joint as a result.

Ha! It doesn’t collapse!

Then a half-hour or so flattening the tabletop with a scrub plane across the grain. That’s such a fun job, it really is…

And then I discovered I don’t have the stainless steel inserts I thought I had and I’ve had to order more because apparently nobody has them in Dublin. Gah. I’ll try the local shops tomorrow but I don’t think walking in will lead to better results. But you have to try. Worst case scenario, I have to wait a week or so and work on another project in the meantime, which is doable. Best case, I find them and the ones on order will do the next one of these (I have the rough-cut bits for more than one of these tables).

Side Table / Woodworking — 4 Comments
11
Nov 17

Guides and tests

Well, made a dog’s breakfast of the bandsaw boxes I was playing at. Couldn’t make the turn needed and the blade came out the side of the blank. Oh well. Now I have two paperweights (and one successful box, out of four blanks). I’ve ordered a one-eighth inch blade off Tuffsaws, that should get here next week and I can try again. I’ll prep new blanks tomorrow for that.

Bit of a waste, those 🙁

Meanwhile the older replacement y-lever for the #5½ arrived and I replaced the existing y-lever with it and it’s been a lot nicer to work with since. And no surprise. This is what the more modern y-lever looks like, two pressed steel parts riveted together:

Unfortunately, the rivet on mine isn’t as tight as it should be and even glue didn’t stop the inevitable end result (and if you’re thinking this would interfere with setting the plane you’d be right):

Meanwhile, back on the main project…

The bridle joints involved are a bit of an oddity; nobody really cuts them often enough to get good at them, at least not off the saw, so these are Richard McGuire’s basic jigs for helping to cut them (and the test sticks in the backgrounds, just a spare bit of poplar that I’m using up).

Four cuts, four jigs and the japanese saw reappears.

Okay, doesn’t look too awful…

Ah. Right. Hm. Odd. No gaps but also torqued right the way over. So check the guides again and yup, the shoulder of the cut was just not tidy enough so out with the chisel and a bit of tweaking and another test joint gets cut…

Ah. Bother. Okay, one guide still needs a wee bit of tweaking and we cut another test joint…

and…

Right. That’ll do I think.

Next step, a 12 degree guide and then on to cut the actual leg&apron joints.

 

Bandsaw Boxes / Side Table / Woodworking — No Comments
03
Nov 17

Flattening and boxes

So, started off flattening the apron. This went pretty well after I switched over to the #5 and sharpened it up a bit. The narrower blade means less pushing effort and that seemed to help a lot. And then it was time to thickness down from an inch to 3/4 of an inch.

This is not my favourite activity. And honestly, if they made an induction motor benchtop thicknesser I’d have bought one already, but unfortunately they’re all universal motor things — and lunchbox thicknessers, even if you fit them with helical blades and all the fancy doo-dads, are just too damn noisy to run in a housing estate. You’ll wind up triggering a torch-and-pitchfork party of your very own if you do that round here once too often. So until I have a larger shed and room for a larger, possibly older, floorstanding planer/thicknesser, I have to do this part by hand. At least Sid makes the task easier with his ridiculous level of camber…

Anyway, the board was a manageable size, so push hard and on we go. And switching over to the #5 for the last mm or so to arrive in a controlled manner and…

Flat and at thickness. I gauged out for the two aprons and set it aside and ripped down the middle a little later on with the bandsaw (using the new tuffsaws blade – makes a rather surprising difference, those things, much cleaner cut and less drift).

Then on to mucking about…

So the glue-up was messy and there are steps all over, but apparently that’s to be expected. Next step, sand the badgers off everything with my handy dandy disk sander. Which I don’t have one of. Bugger. Well…

Sod it, I started this thing on a bandsaw, might as well keep up the machine operator vibe…

Didn’t want to keep all of your fingers, did you?

Hm. Not terrible for a first try. Slap some shellac on it…

And some felt for the inside lining and call it done:

Well, not absolutely awful. Okay, so it is if you look close – there’s no room in there, the edges aren’t parallel, the drawer’s a bit gappy, and so on. But it was fun to try it and I have some ideas for a nicer one. Need more practice though, I keep getting lost in the sequence of cuts on these things. Well, in that vein…

This one might be interesting, I used the new tuffsaws fine-tooth blade. Much smoother cut, but I don’t think the bandsaw will ever be a precision tool. Hell of a lot friendlier to the nose when you plug it into the dust collection though…

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