The Subversive Workbench

Make a flat table

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A little while back, there was a post or /r/woodworking/ detailing the build of a table that had fake breadboard ends. I commented “don’t bother with breadboard ends if you aren’t going to do them correctly. Done wrong they hurt rather than help the table deal with humidity.” Last week, another user who saw the comment asked the obvious question. “If you don’t have the tools or skills to make proper breadboards, how do you keep your table flat?”

It turns out keeping a table-top flat isn’t that hard, if you know a few simple things.

The most important thing is to know that flat sawn boards always cup away from the center of the tree. If you look at the end grain you can figure out which face of your board was originally facing the inside of the tree and which was facing the outside of the board.

This means that if you want a single board to remain flat, all you have to do is keep the inside center from cupping inward and the outside edges from cupping outward. It might be easier to imagine with with a more concrete example. Imagine you’ve found a single board wide enough to use for your table top. You make your legs and skirt, and are ready to attach the top. You could just place the board down with the inside facing up, and screw it down in the middle. The screws keep it from cupping upward, and the legs and frame keep the edges from cupping downward. You don’t need worry about the edges cupping upward, because they never will.

This isn’t ideal because the table isn’t very securely attached to the legs and frame, so you need find a way to attach the edges to the frame. A lot of tables these days are just screwed on at the edges, while the table won’t explode, it might just pull some of its joints apart and eventually fall to pieces.

While not every location or environment is going to have the same amount of seasonal humidity change, it is dumb to pretend like your furniture will never move. A good practice is to plan for half an inch difference between the width of your table top between winter and summer or if the table is moving from one place to another. It is extremely important to remember If the board can’t cup, it will expand linearly.

You need a way to firmly attach the table to the frame and legs, while allowing each side to move a quarter of an inch. If your design allows it, a simple fix is to use washers on your screws and make an oval hole in your frame for the screw to go through. This allows the top to expand and contract and as that happens the screw slides along the oval hole. This is fantastic, but most table designs will need something different.

Above you see three different types of table connectors. These are not the only options, but they what you should be thinking of. The metal ones on the left and the wooden ones on the right work similarly. When used at the end, they slide along a groove, and when used on the side they move in and out of a groove. The middle one screws into the top of the frame and then into the bottom of table top.

Wait! I hear you say. I can’t make my table top out of a single board. This means it is time to glue some boards together. If you follow one simple rule, everything will be fine. Glue up your boards so the inside faces all face the same way. If all your boards face the same way then they will act like a single board and you can apply all of what I said above.

You will occasionally, see people recommending that you alternate sides with each board, unless you want a wavy table top, do not do this. There is an exception to this rule. If you are capturing the ends of your panel in a groove, then the groove will serve to hold the entire board flat. This means if you are using breadboard ends or frame and panel work, then you can glue up your panel however you want.

References:

I didn’t come up with any of this. I have experience with wood movement, but others are due more credit than I. Everything I’ve written here is better explained in chapter 5 of With the Grain by Christian Becksvoort.

Let it move!

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, I wrote an article about seasonal wood movement. It was full of interesting things, including pictures of several articles around my house that have moved around and changed shape. Some of them were falling apart, while others withstood the test of time.

Why? Well, wood moves in mysterious ways. Luckily, we can predict enough about wood movement to either deal with it or use its movement to our advantage. (Though mostly just dealing with it.)

Types of Movement

The wood moves in two ways regular expansion/contraction and warping.

Expansion and contraction occur across the grain. The more grain the more it will expand and contract. This means boards get wider and a little thicker but not longer. The simplest way to deal with expansion is to just orient the grain in the same direction. This is why the grain on a box wraps around the sides. The sides expand and the box gets taller, but since boards don’t get longer the box doesn’t get wider or longer. (A clever reader might think to ask how we can safely put a top or bottom on a box… more on that later.)

Warping is less predictable and less easy to work with. It is also harder to explain. The easiest way to think about it is the rings in the wood really want to be straight. If you look at the end grain of a board and the rings arc across the board, then the board might cup such that the rings tend to straighten out. If you look across the face of a board, and see arcing rings, then the board might bow. However the rings in boards do all kinds of crazy things, so we find boards doing all kinds of crazy dances, but the most common and prominent type of warping is cupping. After a board has warped, it is pretty much warped for good. At that point, the easiest fix is to get out your jack plane and make it flat again. Still, there is some really important joinery to prevent warping. Dovetails will keep cupping in check and continue to work as the boards expand and contract.

The Basics of Handling Expansion

There are basically two ways to handle expansion. You can either provide space to allow the wood to safely expand, instead of pushing other parts of the project out of place, or you can put the boards together so that their expansion happens at the same time and in the same direction. Sometimes you have to do both of these things. Table tops are made by gluing boards together along their side faces. This results in all the boards of the table top expanding in the same direction. Then the top is attached to the apron and legs. While top could be screwed directly to the apron, but when the top expands it will put a lot of pressure on the sides of the table. This can be done successfully, but the screw holes in the apron need to be oblong to allow the screw to move with the expanding table top. Alternatively, a grove can be put along the inside of the apron and L shaped brackets screwed to the table top. In this way, the brackets slide in and out (though not completely out) of the groove.

The Basics of Preventing Warping

The two types of movement happen together, but luckily most warping be prevented through clever joinery. The trick involves capturing the end of a board such that when it expands, the expansion is force along an axis so the board remains in the desired shape (usually straight).

Since boards always cup so that the side of the board that faced the inside of the tree cups toward the outside of the tree, sometimes the board only needs to be constrained along one side. Imagine a box made such that the sides were all configured with the inside of the tree facing out. If you rabbeted the sides of two of these boards, then added a single nail or screw in the center of each joint. The nail would hold the centers of each board against its neighbor. This combined with the rabbets and neighboring edges would keep the boards from cupping. Another couple nails could be added to add structural integrity and you’ve got a solid box that will last a long time. Since the grain on the sides of such a box is all running the same direction, the expansion will also run about the same. This means that glue could be used instead of nails and screws.

We can’t always orient the faces of the boards so that we only need to constraint one side, and some times constraining both faces gives us other advantages. When using frame and panel construction, the panel has both faces constrained, and the panel is held in place by the frame. This way the panel won’t warp; the expansion is accounted for; and the panel doesn’t need any fasteners or glue. (In fact, in such a construction, glue or fasteners hurt, rather than help with handling expansion.)

More to come…

The first draft of this article was over 1900 words long. The second draft was over 2700 words long. That is eleven pages of text. Everyone I talk to says that they don’t want to read a blog longer than 750 words (and the final draft of this article still weighs in at over 1000 words). This article is the introduction to a topic that easily expands to cover a variety of woodworking joints, techniques, and example projects. So my plan is to punch up the first quarter of this article to make it an interesting and useful article in its own right, and since you are reading the conclusion, I hope you’ll agree that it was just that.

Next week we’ll be talking about mortise and tenon joints. How to make them, how they are used, how they react to expansion, and prevent warping.

Part 0 - Seasonal wood movement is real.
Part 1 - Let it move!
Part 2 - Mortises and Tenons
Part 3 - Dovetails
Part 4 - Making Panels
Part 5 - Undecided…

A very interesting look at woodworking joints and a lot of their variations can be found in this small book Woodwork Joints: How to Make and Where to Use Them by “A Practical Joiner”. This small book was published in 1915, and shows all kinds of interesting joints and explains how they are used. That said, It doesn’t really talk about wood movement very much.

Seasonal wood movement is real.

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I am pretty active on /r/woodworking, and at least once a week someone comes along and posts pictures of their first project. I always open these posts with a little bit of trepidation. On one hand, these people are super excited to share their first project and some are really cool. On the other hand a large number of them have cross grain glue ups or fail to account for wood movement in some other way. When this happens I cry a little on the inside, because no one on /r/woodworking/ wants to discourage someone just starting out, but the sooner they learn about wood movement the better off they will be.

So someone takes it on themselves to inform the person that their project might explode or otherwise fall apart. It is a tricky thing to balance, because you want to say they did a good job, but if the thing they made falls apart 6 months later clearly they didn’t do a good job. Also you want to say it in a way that they will take it seriously next time.

Despite all this, there are also the wood-movement deniers. These people respond saying that they think that given modern climate control wood movement is not the issue it used to be in the past. I’d like to think that I can inform them otherwise with this blog post but I have my doubts.

Modern climate control systems regulate temperature, but do not actively regulate humidity. In fact, they can even exacerbate seasonal humidity changes. The big factor for wood movement is relative humidity, which is the percentage of water in the air relative to the maximum amount of water the air can hold. For example, when the relative humidity reaches 100%, it usually rains.

The absolute amount of water that air can hold is related to air pressure and the temperature. Lower air pressure also lowers the amount of water the air can hold, which is why the L’s on the weather map generally mean rain. Higher temperatures can also hold more water.

What does this mean for wood?

In the winter, colder weather means there is less water in the air, so when your furnace warms up your house, the relative humidity drops like crazy. This is why all the wood in my house is shrinking. The warm dry air circulating through my house has been pulling the moisture out of my furniture for the last two months. Gaps have appeared in the Adirondack chair I made for my daughter six months ago. Our floors have become extra squeaky, and the poorly laminated legs of our dining room table are literally pulling themselves apart.

In the summer, warmer weather means more water in the air. Even if you don’t live in a part of the country that gets uncomfortably humid, warmer temperatures means the air is is going to hold more moisture than in the winter. The moisture levels in the air and the wood it surrounds really want to be equal, so our furniture pulls moisture out of the air and is happy.

The top of this table is forever misshapen because its maker (luckily not me) did not properly account for our warm, humid summers. Air conditioners have special tubes so that they drain condensation outside, instead of making pools of water. Many people think that this means that the air conditioning regulates the humidity in the house. While ACs do tend to remove some moisture from the air, they don’t lower the humidity anywhere near what is common in the winter, especially if a house is heated in the winter.

By far the most problematic piece of furniture in our house is the cheap factory made table in our dining room. The other things move some, but move with a little more grace. Don’t be fooled by the non-believers, wood movement is real. Luckily, the way we imagine furniture is based on seeing stuff that follows centuries of wood movement best practices, so it isn’t too hard to design/build stuff that handles movement like a champ.

Two great books that discuss wood movement

I receive no form of compensation for recommending these books. I plug them here purely because they are great books and deserve a spot in your shop library.

“With the Grain: A Craftsman’s Guide to Understanding Wood” by Christian Becksvoort - It is a fantastic book about just about every aspect of solid wood. It has a lot of really great information about wood movement for different species of wood.
“The Essential Woodworker” by Robert Wearing - This book is a great introduction to joinery and hand tool wood working. In several places it discusses wood movement and techniques to work with it.
Part 0 - Seasonal wood movement is real.
Part 1 - Let it move!
Part 2 - Mortises and Tenons
Part 3 - Dovetails
Part 4 - Making Panels
Part 5 - Undecided…

Fine Furniture is for Chumps!

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Recently on the Wood Talk podcast, there was a discussion trying to define the term “fine furniture”. I found this discussion extremely frustrating, because at no point did anyone think to ask if we should even care.

Why did anyone ever think to call what they make “fine furniture” in the first place? The answer is marketing, implying that their products were better than the competition, and thus worth paying a premium for. Well, the days of cutthroat competition between fine furniture makers ended many years before I was born. The only real competition the average woodworker has is cheap factory made furniture, like IKEA. The average woodworker only has two modes: “slap something together” and “do your best”. Most anything made in “do your best” mode is going to be more expensive and much higher quality than the IKEA equivalent.

Let’s stop this “fine furniture” nonsense and get back to making cool stuff out of wood. If we ever want to see a new age where high quality hand made furniture is the norm again, then we need to stop being divisive and let our work speak for itself.

Dutch Tool Chest - Part 5

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

At this point in the build, the wood working is pretty much done. I still needed to build the lid, but the rest of the carcass was ready for finishing. I used almost no sand paper on this project before finishing. A smoothing plane and a card scraper make an amazing pair. I smoothed most pieces after they were rough cut and spot scraped before painting. I ended up scraping the entire back, because the result was so pretty and smooth. For finishing this chest I used yellow milk paint, clear shellac, and wax. The paint colors and protects the wood, but dries a pastel yellow. The shellac protects the paint and brings back the bright color of the paint. The wax protects the shellac and give the chest an amazing feeling when you run your hand across it. Shellac and wax make an amazing finishing combo. If you’ve not used them, give it a try! While I had the chest on its front and painted the back. I took a few moments to shellac the bottom of the chest. This was just to give it a little more moisture protection, since hopefully after there are tools in the chest nobody will ever see the bottom. At least the chest falls over, it’ll look good on the bottom.

This chest is mostly pine. The runners on the bottom are white oak, and the battens across the fall fronts are also white oak. Some of the dividers in the top section are poplar, and some are red oak.. basically, whatever I had around. While I was at the lumber yard to grab a white oak board to use for the runners and battens, I happened upon a three foot long two and a half inch wide quarter sawn white oak board for cheap. I had been on the fence about whether to breadboard the lid, but when I saw this board, I knew I had to give it a try.

You see I’ve been scared to try breadboard ends for a while. It requires a bunch of techniques. The ends need a groove and three or more mortises, and panel needs a wide rabbet which is cut to make a tongue and three or more mortises. As mentioned before, I can do grooves with my plow plane. I can make pretty mortises either with a chisel or with an auger. But I had never made rabbets by hand. I figured it was time to bite the bullet and give it a try. My first thought was that I would do it like I do dados. Saw out the side, chisel out most of the waste then plane the bottom smooth (or smooth enough). For my first rabbet this is exactly what I did. I would love to have a moving fillister plane like the Veritas skew rabbet plane, but I’m holding off on that for a bit. After I cleaned up the rabbet with a plane. I decided to try something a little different for the second rabbet. Instead of sawing, I used my rabbet block plane and my wooden rabbet plane to plane out the entire rabbet. This worked, but keeping things lined up was tricky. For the third and fourth rabbets, I clamped a batten to the panel and used it to keep the planes lined up. The last two when surprisingly fast. I will still get the skew rabbet plane at some point in the future, but until then I will no longer be scared off by making rabbets.

I’ve had this experience several times over. The first time I do something, I hate the process, the results, or both. The second time I make some improvements, and the third time I’m happy with the results. The best advice I think any budding woodworker can get is to not be scared off by something that seems hard to do with your current tools. Give it a try, you’ll be surprised with how good it can turn out. On woodworking forums, you’ll often see people posting pictures of their first dovetails. I did this too. It was just two boards held together with dovetails. I made a few more test joints like this, then I heard Shannon Rogers rant about this on the Wood Talk podcast. He said to just build something.. a box, a few drawers, really anything with dovetails. He said the first couple might not look great, but they’ll likely work well enough, and by the time you finish they’ll look good and you’ll cut them decently fast. He was absolutely correct, and this advice applies to so many more techniques. Instead, of being afraid of the technique you need to use, just build it. The process of doing the thing for real will improve your skills so much more than doing a small test version.

Finally, after everything was painted, shellacked, and waxed, it was time to add the hardware. I threw together a small mobile base from a 2x4 and four casters. Which makes the large chest easy to move around the shop. Almost all the rest of the hardware for this project is blacksmith made. The most expensive were the strap hinges, but not too expensive. The hasp and padlock were also blacksmith made. I really like the padlock and it was way cheaper than I expected. It just looks so cool, and adds a really nice touch to the project.

I’m really happy with how the chest turned out. I holds a ton of stuff, and the fact that it was designed to fit my tools means it just works so much better than my old chest. I’ll still keep my old chest, and I’ll keep using it, but just for less commonly used stuff. I may teach a class at the local makerspace soon, and in that case I’ll probably load it up with some tools and use it as a traveling tool chest. The rest of my shop has already started to feel the effects, since there are fewer things just lying around.

References:

Chris Schwarz- The original design for this chest is Chris’. If you are interested in learning more about this chest, then you should totally read the October 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking. He also has post plans on his PWM blog. That said, read the article, watch the episode of The Woodwright’s Shop where he builds one, and then design it to fit your needs. Recently he also wrote about a ruler trick to make laying out dovetail pins easier.
Rob Cosman - Rob Cosman made a video about a nice trick for laying out dovetail pins.
Shannon Rogers - Shannon’s site is http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/ go check it out. Lot’s of great stuff to learn, and he is totally right about it being more useful to just do the thing instead of pseudo-practicing.
Paul Sellers - I use a hand made Paul Sellers dovetail marker.

Hardware

I purchased all of the hardware myself, and received nothing from these retails for linking to them here.

Hinges, hasp, and padlock - Van Dykes’ Restorers.

Chest handles - Lee Valley.

Screws - Blacksmith Bolt.

Dutch Tool Chest - Part 4

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Most of the time people choose not to finish the insides of tool chests. I mostly agree with this. The one exception I make is that I think the inside should be shellacked. The reason is simple. If you touch the nice clean wood in your chest with your dirty hands, you will likely have a dirty spot on the inside of your chest forever. If you apply a coat or two of clear shellac, then the dirty spot is not nearly so big a deal. At this point in the build, I took the time to apply two coats of shellac to the inside sides and top sides of the shelves. The bottom sides of the shelves were also shellacked, but since they aren’t visible and less likely to be touched. They didn’t get as much attention. I didn’t sand or do any more work to the shellac, but I’ve already noticed since finishing the chest, that the inside walls of this chest stay cleaner.

Next I cut the grooves for the locking battens and added the fronts to the chest. Nothing particularly special here. I didn’t glue the fronts on, just screwed them only I may go back and glue them in the future, but given the structure provided by the shelves. I don’t think I’ll need to. I have a vintage 3/8 inch beading plane, and I beaded the front-falls. Someday I’ll buy some new or vintage beading planes to make 1/8, 3/16, and 1/4 beads, but these smaller beaders are quire hard to find, so I’ll make due with my 3/8 for now. I could have made scratch stock or used my screw scratcher, but I like the results from a good bead plane better, and I have the 3/8 and it is still a good size.

For the back, I used some 1x10 I had left over from making the shelves and two 1x6s. I used my Veritas plow plane to make all the tongues and grooves. This little tool makes a huge difference. Before I got it, I was uncertain about the viability of using only hand tools, but having a good plow plane and some good saws takes care of 90% of what you need a table saw for. The 1x10 only got a tongue and a bead, since my plan was to use it as the top most back board.

Next I rough cut the back boards, then fit them to the back. For the front boards, I had screwed them on and then used a flush cut saw to trim them to match the sides. This works well but is time consuming and tedious. For the back. I put the each board in place, then drew a line along the side of the chest. I then cut it to length with a carcass saw and shot it on a shooting board. The end result was a perfectly fitting board. I screwed it on and moved on to the next board. It is tempting to pre-cut all the back boards then screw them on, but I prefer the results of custom fitting each board to the back. It isn’t any more work, but every board fist perfectly.

The last board for the back is a short one, so I needed to rip it to width in addition to crosscutting it to length. I drew my line the same way as the other lines, then clamped up the board and started ripping. I sawed until I was about 8 inches from the end leaving plenty of room for planing to the side of the line, then went to flip the board and saw from the the other end, when I realized that I was sawing on the wrong side of the line. I was super annoyed, and decided to call it a day. I was tired and had hoped to get all the boards on the back, but I couldn’t bear fixing the mistake right then. A few days later, I came back, finished the cut, planed it smooth and re-grooved the board. The lesson I learned was to always pay close attention to which is the waste side of a line. I often mark an X on the waste side. I will be more careful to do this in the future.

With the front and back on, I started moving my tools into the chest. Once I added a tool rack and put in dividers so that my saws and planes don’t bump into each other. This made me super happy. As I was doing these final touches on the inside, I realized something. I use my birdcage awl to make a lot of pilot holes for screws. For the longer screws I pre-drilled the holes, but the birdcage awl is so fast for shorter holes. If my tool shop burned down, I would totally order a new birdcage awl first. (That or I would sift through the rubble and find the now handleless awl and make a new handle for it.) If you don’t have one, go buy one right now! The narex one is quite nice. (I didn’t get paid for that comment. I just like my narex birdcage awl.)

Next time… lid + paint + hardware!

References:

Chris Schwarz- The original design for this chest is Chris’. If you are interested in learning more about this chest, then you should totally read the October 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking. He also has post plans on his PWM blog. That said, read the article, watch the episode of The Woodwright’s Shop where he builds one, and then design it to fit your needs. Recently he also wrote about a ruler trick to make laying out dovetail pins easier.
Rob Cosman - Rob Cosman made a video about a nice trick for laying out dovetail pins.
Shannon Rogers - Shannon’s site is http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/ go check it out. Lot’s of great stuff to learn, and he is totally right about it being more useful to just do the thing instead of pseudo-practicing.
Paul Sellers - I use a hand made Paul Sellers dovetail marker.

Dutch Tool Chest - Part 3

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

At this point, the dovetails were cut, the shelves were flat, the dados were routed, and I was ready to start the glue up. On this chest, there are 8 glued joints. The most important are the bottom two with the dovetails. Gluing up dovetails isn’t really tricky. In this case, I failed to think about clamping before I started the glue up. I have a lot of clamps, but only two of them open their jaws up wide enough to swallow this tool chest. So I had to find some tricks. I used the trick where you use two clamps and have each one grab a side of the glue up and grab each other in the middle. I really hate doing this, because most clamps are just not made with this thing in mind so they don’t work well, but it works in a pinch. While I was gluing in the shelves I stumbled onto another trick that works much better (more on that in a minute).

To provide some support I slid the top shelf in place while gluing up the bottom. I glued the dovetails, added clamps, and a diagonal clamp, to square up the bottom. Squaring up glue joints is really important. My old tool chest leans just a tad, because I failed to square it up when gluing in the bottom. I had hoped I would fix this when I put the back on, but instead I just made the two sides of the chest parallel. So it leans, but at least it leans nicely. It only takes an extra minute or two, and makes a huge different. In this case I used a band clamp, which made thing really easy.

Now that I had a giant U shaped wooden thing. I clamped the top shelf in and hung the shelf over the edge of my workbench, so I could clean up the dovetails. My tails ended up protruding a tad beyond the side of the chest, so I used a flush cut saw to trim them even. Next I planed everything smooth, and removed the scribe lines. When I see pictures of projects dovetails on the internet with the scribe lines visible on the finished project it really bothers me. It isn’t hard at all to plane these lines away, and the final project is so much nicer.

For gluing in the shelved, my first thought was to build a gluing jig. I found a scrap and drilled a pair of one inch holes in it. I planned to make a few of these and have the two clamps grab the jig in the middle. This worked but wasn’t as helpful as I had imaged, because the first clamp still wants to fall down while I’m messing with the second clamp. This caused me to think of clamping the jig to the shelf, so I could tighten the first clamp then tighten the second clamp. It worked! I also realized that I didn’t need the jig at all. I could just attach a small clamp to the shelf then have a clamp span the distance between the small clamp and the side of the chest. So 18 clamps, some glue, and the shelves were assembled.

Next time… the chest gets a front and back.

References:

Chris Schwarz- The original design for this chest is Chris’. If you are interested in learning more about this chest, then you should totally read the October 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking. He also has post plans on his PWM blog. That said, read the article, watch the episode of The Woodwright’s Shop where he builds one, and then design it to fit your needs. Recently he also wrote about a ruler trick to make laying out dovetail pins easier.
Rob Cosman - Rob Cosman made a video about a nice trick for laying out dovetail pins.
Shannon Rogers - Shannon’s site is http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/ go check it out. Lot’s of great stuff to learn, and he is totally right about it being more useful to just do the thing instead of pseudo-practicing.
Paul Sellers - I use a hand made Paul Sellers dovetail marker.

Dutch Tool Chest - Part 2

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

One of the important things I learned from my first tool chest was to make sure that the sides aren’t cupped. This should be obvious, but it can sometimes be the difference between flattening before or after the board is cut to length. This chest’s sides were flattened after they were cut to length, and the result is much nicer.

After the sides were ready, I cut the dovetails. I used dividers, and didn’t plan on london-pattern pins but ended up with ten tails and london-pattern pins. This was twice as many tails as I had planned, but I’m happy with how it turned out so I’ll not be as conservative about the number of tails in the future. I used Chris Schwarz’ ruler trick for lining up my tails for laying out my pins. This allowed me to easily use Rob Cosman’s saw kerf trick for marking the pins. All these tricks, made for some very pleasant dovetailing. The only issue in all of it was that I accidentally marked the pins in the wrong direction on one side of the chest bottom. Luckily I caught this before I made the pin cuts.

I gang cut my tails, that is I clamped the sides together and cut the tails on my chest sides at the same time. I am unsure if this actually saves any time. The dividers save a ton of layout time and make things consistent. Sawing ten tails takes at the very most 5 minutes. I think next time I’ll try not gang cutting and see if the results turn out better. It isn’t that I’m unhappy with the result, but that I don’t really have any reason to believe its better other than a hunch.

I don’t have a Moxon vise for dovetailing, and each time I cut dovetails, I think about building one, but then I just clamp my board to side of my workbench, and it works just fine. Someday I’m sure I’ll have a nice moxon vise, and I’ll probably find it super useful, but for now I’ll probably not think about a moxon vise until I cut some more dovetails.

With the tails and pins all ready, it was time to cut some dados for the shelves. I measured from the top where I wanted the first dado would be so the top section of the chest would more or less have the same depth as my old chest. Then I found my largest molding plane and used it to layout the second dado. For the third dado, I used a couple large clamps to find a good size for another small shelf.

Before I built my old dutch chest, I’d never made a dado with hand tools. It is surprisingly easy. The first step is to draw a line where the top (or bottom ot the dado will be, then hold the board that will fit into the dado against that line and draw the opposite line. This is one thing I like a lot about hand cut dados… They are always the right size. Using power tools, it is a lot more finicky. Next you chose one of your cross cut saws and cut on the waste sides of each line down to your desired depth. Then use a chisel to remove most of the material. If you have a router plane it makes the job of smoothing out the bottom of the dado a simple task. If not you can make do with a chisel.

I cut the dados while talking with my brother on the phone. This is one of the most surprising and wonderful things about working wood with hand tools. The shop is generally rather quiet. What little noise I made did not interfere with our conversation at all.

Next time… I glue all the things!

References:

Chris Schwarz- The original design for this chest is Chris’. If you are interested in learning more about this chest, then you should totally read the October 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking. He also has post plans on his PWM blog. That said, read the article, watch the episode of The Woodwright’s Shop where he builds one, and then design it to fit your needs. Recently he also wrote about a ruler trick to make laying out dovetail pins easier.
Rob Cosman - Rob Cosman made a video about a nice trick for laying out dovetail pins.
Shannon Rogers - Shannon’s site is http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/ go check it out. Lot’s of great stuff to learn, and he is totally right about it being more useful to just do the thing instead of pseudo-practicing.
Paul Sellers - I use a hand made Paul Sellers dovetail marker.

Dutch Tool Chest - Part 1

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Every project begins with sawing your first board. This project is no different. I measured the height that I wanted and then drew a line across the board. I then measured 3 inches up and 3 inches down and drew a line making the angle for the top. After cutting the two resulting boards to length, I had the sides of my tool chest.

This tool chest will replace my existing dutch tool chest. I like the overall design but was unhappy with certain aspects of my old chest. The changes I wanted to make were all in response to problems with the old chest.

The first problem was the width. The old chest is just wide enough to hold my #4 and #5-1/2 planes in a row with a single 1/4 inch divider between them. I made the new chest 4 inches wider. This will give me a three and a half inch wide space to put miscellaneous tools.

The next problem was that a small dutch tool chest has to be set down on top of something to be at a usable height. If I had a bigger shop and an extra saw bench, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but as is the small chest sits of the floor most of the time and is too low. The new chest is a foot taller, and sits on a frame with casters. This means that I don’t have to bend over to access the top section.

Additionally, the old chest is just too small. It is built according to Chris Schwarz plans, and he designed it to be a travel chest. One that he could put the tools he knew he would need for the trip he was taking. I need a chest that will hold most of my tools in my shop, so with the extra height, I made three lower shelves instead of one. Additionally the top most shelf was created specifically for my molding and joinery planes.

Next time… dovetails and dados!

References:

Chris Schwarz- The original design for this chest is Chris’. If you are interested in learning more about this chest, then you should totally read the October 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking. He also has post plans on his PWM blog. That said, read the article, watch the episode of The Woodwright’s Shop where he builds one, and then design it to fit your needs. Recently he also wrote about a ruler trick to make laying out dovetail pins easier.
Rob Cosman - Rob Cosman made a video about a nice trick for laying out dovetail pins.
Shannon Rogers - Shannon’s site is http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com/ go check it out. Lot’s of great stuff to learn, and he is totally right about it being more useful to just do the thing instead of pseudo-practicing.
Paul Sellers - I use a hand made Paul Sellers dovetail marker.

Core Tools - The Jack Plane

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

If you are going to have just one plane, you should have a jack plane. It can do the job of the other planes. It is most commonly used to thickness and flatten boards, but it can also joint and smooth boards.

Thickness and Flatten

Despite the fact that they often look straight and flat in the lumber yard, boards are rarely as flat as you need. They cup, bow and twist when the humidity changes. So you need a jack plane to get them flat again. While flattening you can also take the opportunity to remove some of the heft of the board and get it close to its final thickness.

For flattening, the mouth of the plane is set wide open, and the iron is ground to have a curved cutting edge instead of a straight edge. This allows the blade to scoop out wood as it cuts.

The first step in flattening is to figure out where the board isn't actually flat. If the board is twisted, then you'll need to focus more of the plane's cutting on the corners that are twisted up. If the board's face is cupped, then you want to remove more wood from the edges. If the face is bowed, then you want to remove more from the middle. Once you've established where most of your flattening work needs to be done, you can use a pencil or piece of chalk to scribble on the board in the areas to focus on. The nice thing about planing is that you're removing the top layers of wood, so scribble away.

The typical image we have of someone using a hand plane is of them running it along the grain and slicing out a long wispy curl of wood. It turns out that this is not the only way you can do it, and long wispy curls don't do much to make a board flat. So flattening a board starts with the plane moving 90 degrees to the direction of the grain. It is amazing how quickly and how much wood this technique removes. Don't worry too much if your plane is leaving visible tracks, the primary focus is to get things flat. The subsequent steps exist to remove the tracks.

Once you've covered your board with lovely cross-grain planing marks and have a board that is quite a bit flatter, it's time to change directions. Start by planing in a direction that is 45 degrees to the direction of the grain. Instead of short clumps of wood shavings, this will give curly shavings, and the board will start to get smoother. At this point your board will be noticeably flatter. As you're working diagonally, you might want to retract the blade some and take shallower cuts.

Once the board is covered in diagonal tracks, change directions again. This time go 45 degrees from the grain in the opposite direction (that is 90 degrees from your existing tracks). Again you may want to retract the blade some more. With each step the track marks will be shallower and the board flatter.

The last step in flattening is to plane in the direction of the grain (like you imaged you would be all along). Again you probably want to retract the blade some more. Plane until the board is flat and smooth.

The real last step is to check for flatness again, and if it is flat you're done. If it isn't flat, grab your chalk and go back to step one, but you don't have to start out quite so aggressively.

All in all, this process goes a lot faster than you might expect. The cross-grain work at the beginning removed a lot of wood quickly, because it exploits natural weaknesses of the wood. The diagonal cuts tend to mostly remove the weak ridges left behind by previous steps. The straight cuts will remove the diagonal tracks quickly because of the same cross-grain weakness of the wood in the ridges. Now you're ready to flip the board over and do the same to the other size!

Jointing

Jointing is the process of making the edge of a board smooth and square to the face. A jointer plane is typically much longer than a jack plane, but the jack plane is long enough to joint smaller jobs without any problem. It can be used on larger jobs in a pinch. For jointing, you want the mouth to be fairly tight. Some people like to use a curved blade and others like a straight blade. Most of the time boards, are thin enough that it makes little difference.

Smoothing

Smoothing what old-school woodworkers did before sand paper became available and popular. Smoothing planes are smaller, have a tight mouth, and a straight blade (which might have a very slight curve at the edges to prevent tracks). The jack plane can easily be configured such that it is a large smoothing plane. Planing goes along the face with the blade extending the smallest amount that gives an extremely thin shaving.

The Jack of all Trades

This plane gets its name from the phrase that dates back to at least the early 1600s, because it can do the job of three planes quite well. Some people purchase a second blade so they can easily switch between tasks. Having planes optimized for specific tasks can be great, but if you are getting started or want to invest in a set of planes, you will not go wrong with starting out with a single jack plane.

How do I get one?

There are two main options when buying a hand plane. You can buy vintage or buy new. Stanley made some great hand planes up until WW2. You can find them on ebay, at flea markets, at yard sales, at estate sales and at tool meet ups. You can get some great deals, though you should expect to put in a lot of work to get them into good working order. If you go the new route, then you'll pay more up front and pay less in time later.

In the model numbering system that Stanley introduced over a century ago, you want to look for a #5 bench plane. They all also make a #5-1/2, which is wider and heavier. Both planes work great. Which you choose is entirely up to you. Heavier means you might get tired more quickly, but you might like the weight and wider blade.

Here are a couple options from companies whose planes I've purchased in the past.

Lie Nielsen - $245 - Low angle jack plane. Lie Nielsen is the premiere tool company. You will pay more, but get tools built at the highest possible level around. Made in the USA. The cool thing about this plane is that Lie Nielsen sells extra blades pre-ground for use in different planing tasks.

WoodRiver - $195 - #5-1/2 jack plane. WoodRiver makes a line of very high quality planes modeled after the Stanley Bedrock series of planes. I own this plane and it is one of my favorites.

Woodriver - $170 - #5 bench plane. This is the narrower, lighter version of the plane above.

The Modern Joiner

stefan+subversiveworkbench@rusek.org (Stefan Rusek) — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Joinery and cabinet making was once one of the most important professions on the planet, but today it is nearly a lost art. In the early 20th century in the US and in the mid 20th century in Europe, people stopped buying furniture made by hand, and the joiners were replaced by people working in factories. Joinery was replaced by techniques that lend themselves to quick mass production. This has had two obvious impacts on modern furniture. It is cheaper and less durable. The low prices in some ways make up for the lack of quality, because when it breaks we can simply buy a new one. This unsustainable cycle has infested many other aspects of our lives.

The Organic Woodworker

There is in its infancy a movement to abandon the unsustainable practices in our lives. Industrialization has brought some amazing things, but at the same time we are starting to see that in the long-term, it also brings a lot of unexpected negative consequences. We are learning to combine modern and historical practices to create a new sustainable future.

I used to not eat organic. This was mostly because I didn’t know what it meant. I spent some time abroad, and the word for organic in Polish, ekologiczny, got me thinking. As I learned what organic meant, I learned it was not about being hip or trendy (though in some places it is both) but about farming in a way that is sustainable in the long term. Instead of destroying the ground and requiring fertilizers made from fossil fuels, organic farming is about ensuring that the food can be produced indefinitely without harming the planet.

If we apply the same the principles of sustainability to how we work with wood, we would embrace many of the practices that were common place for hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of years. Many pieces of furniture built a hundred years ago are still in good shape today, and with care could easily last another hundred years. Two years ago, my wife and I bought a factory-made dining room table; it will last another five years at the most. We don’t have to build 200 year furniture to be better stewards of the planet, but a table that lasts thirty years (but uses about the same amount of material) would certainly be better than six disposable dining room tables.

Where do we go from here?

My plan is to try to be part of the solution. I will make quality furniture and try to buy from others who are making quality, sustainable furniture. I will document my activities and endeavor to teach others how to do the same. Does this mean I will abandon all power tools? Maybe, maybe not. I certainly have a few that I plan to get rid of and others that I might acquire, but I don’t want to be part of the never-ending replacement/upgrade cycle that surround them. Quality hand tools survive for a very long time and with care they can last longer than the furniture they were used to build. The goal is not simply to move backward in time, but to find a balance that will take us into a better future.

This brings us finally to the point of this blog. The Joiner’s Workbench is dedicated to helping people learn to work wood. There will be a special emphasis on the tools and techniques for working wood by hand. Sometimes I will focus on a limited set of tools, sometimes a project will use a fuller set of tools. Some time will be spent on just how small the full joiner’s tool set is. Whether you are looking to learn or gain inspiration for your next project, I hope you find this blog interesting and enjoyable.</p>