New Bench ... Completed

The new bench is done. The drawers are installed, the vise is up and working and it is in place.

The Veritas Twin-Screw vise was a true pain to install. 8/4 Hard Maple is pretty heavy, especially when you have a 7-1/8" x 30" piece of it, then try swinging around 2 of these clamped together. When drilling the holes for the screws to go through I realized why I need a bigger drill press -- it is hard to drill a 3-1/2" deep hole with a drill press that only has 2-3/4" of quill movement. Stopping in the middle of each hole to move the table up wasn't much fun, then the table tilt bolt decided to loosen up and the table shifted. All in all, I'm amazed the holes came as close to parallel as they did. Attaching the back jaw to the table was very easy, the included bolts work like a charm. Attaching the screws to the back jaw also went very easy. Then came attaching the screws to the front vise, and bam! I sheared off one of the bolts that holds the vise screw in place. Did I overtighten it? No, the head was yet to touch any material in front of it, I was still about an 1/8" from the bolt being in place. I ended up drilling it out, plugging the hole, and using one of my own bolts. With the vise up and running, oh wait, the screws didn't want to turn, so it's up but not running... I loosened the bolts on one screw and it worked much better, guess those holes weren't as parallel as I thought. I just left the bolts slightly loose, it seems to work pretty well now.

This project entailed a couple firsts for me. The biggest was installing a bunch of real drawers. The drawers are made of 1/2" pine. I dovetailed the fronts to the sides, then put the back in with a sliding dovetail. The bottoms for the smaller top drawers are 1/4" mdf. The bottom drawers have 3/8" BC ply for bottoms.

Building this bench was quite fun overall, and ended up being pretty cheap (other than the vise). The vise was $190 but is well worth it. I used the bench to build the drawers, and when cutting dovetails on long boards it is awesome to be able to just but it in the middle and slide it down close to the jaw. I ended up using Rockler plastic bench dogs, 4 for $3.99, instead of the more expensive veritas ones. I haven't been able to try out the Veritas ones, but I think they would be a big improvement.

I finally finished building my router plane. It is made out of a laminated piece of maple, 1-1/2" x 3-1/2" x 9", a Veritas 1/4" router plane blade, a 1/4-20 thumbscrew, washer and wingnut. It's based on the $5 router plane plans from Popular Woodworking's August 2005 edition. I've already used the tool and think this will likely be a tool I commonly reach for.

The New Bench... Continued

The base assembly is done for my new bench and the toolbox is finished except for the drawers.

This is my first attempt at mortises with a forstner bit. Went really well. You just need a good fence and it goes really quick. I didn't bother squaring the mortises, I just rounded the tenons.

Starting the New Bench

I'm starting on building a new bench based on the "Power Tool Bench" from Popular Woodworking's Benches and Toolbox special publication. This bench will be a huge step up from my previous one - a Veritas Twin-Screw Vise, about two to three times the weight of the previous bench, and a bunch of storage underneath.

As I am gonna be spending close to $200 on the vise I wanted to keep the rest as cheap as possible. I've been storing up supplies for close to six months now. The top, pictured left, is a 2-1/2" thick maple table top I got for free. It had some stains and wasn't very level but after about 3 hours of work it was good to go. I'm only using 54" of it's 7 feet of length, so I have about a 30" x 30" piece left over for another project. The drawer slides were a closeout at Lowes -- for a dollar and a half a pair. I'm using the 3.99 for a pack of 4 plastic bench dogs from Rockler. The toolbox is constructed from a sheet of 3/4" sandiply (the $25 a sheet stuff I got from HD).

Making Saws

About a month ago I picked up a Foley Retoother, which led to the production of a few saws. First I tried making a small 8" dovetail saw. What a pain to bend over the back, I need to find a better way to bend the brass. I made the handle out of some cherry I had lying around and finished it with three coats of shellac. The saw has 12 teeth per inch, which is the highest count bar I had for the retoother. It is filed crosscut, although my next one will be filed rip.

Then I decided to move onto something a little bigger. I made a 20" panel saw. I made the handle out of bloodwood. What an awful wood to shape, it just explodes for no reason creating "long, weapons-grade splinters" that really suck. The saw has 10 teeth per inch and is filed crosscut, 12 degrees of fleam and 8 degrees of rake. It cuts excellently.

Shaker Table

My second furniture making class is finished - and so is my Shaker Table. I still need to do a little sanding and put a finish on, but all the real woodworking is done. This table has 8 hand cut mortises and about a dozen and half handcut dovetails.

A Panel Bevel Cutting Thing-a-ma-jig

For my furniture making class I had to cut a bevel on the underside of the table top. Most of the guys in the class did this by hand with a bench plane - I didn't feel like even trying this so I made a jig to do it on my table saw. Here's a few pics... and yes, "Panel Bevel Cutting Thing-a-ma-jig" is a technical term.

Dust Collection Done... New Shop Tour

After about two months of work the dust collection installation is done, I just have to install the connection to the new planer. Since so much of the shop is newly done I figured I would update my shop tour on my website, view it here. At some point in the near future I'll post more about the installation of the dust collection system.

A Stickly DVD Rack

This DVD rack is based on the drawings of the No. 72 Stickley Magazine Rack from Robert Lang's book. I built it out of Catalpa with maple ply sides. It's basically my first piece of nice furniture I have built.

A Sawbench

I finally built a sawbench today like the one from the Autumn edition of Woodworking Magazine. I cut a few corners and screwed the legs into the bench top rather than doweling them, I also ended up nailing the whole shelf together using my brad nailer and then tacking it into the sawbench. Chris Shwartz has a very good write up on how you use a sawbench, and I have to agree with him, once you have one you will wonder how you ever worked without one.

Dust Collection Progressing

After nearly two weeks the dust collection project is progressing nicely. The cyclone is up, the filter is up, nearly all the ductwork is installed. I still have to install the ductwork out on the end of the line for the jointer and table saw, close off the table saw for the dust collection to work, and setup the jointer for dust collection. I've powered up this thing and tried it with my bandsaw and miter saw so far. The bandsaw collection worked great, the miter saw setup needs some more work.

A Bandsaw

Today I finally got a bandsaw. I've been looking around and had pretty much settled on getting the 12" Craftsman Bandsaw. Selling points were the low price and the 7" resaw height. It was on sale this weekend for $249, additionally the sales clerk threw on the 2-year in home repair for free. Assembly was a breeze, all it required was putting the stand together, attaching the upper trunnion, and mounting the table. I had this baby up and running in under an hour. So far it appears to have good power and will be a much loved addition to shop. More to come as I give it a work out after the dust collection installation is finished.

The cyclone is up

After a few days of work the Grizzly cyclone collector is mostly up. I still need to install the filter. Installation went mostly uneventfully except for a few problems, all spurring from the fact that I wanted to mount the cyclone with the filter facing the opposite direction shown in all of the instructions and photos. The impeller and motor mount is not symmetrical front to back so when you mount it to the wall reversed you need a thicker lower mounting plate. The filter mounts also don't work that way, so I am fabricating new ones. Other than those few problems the installation was quite easy.

I'm now working on the ductwork. I have the starter from the cyclone plumbed until the compound miter saw and the other vertical drops for the router table and sander finished. I still need to plumb in everything for the table saw and jointer, but I have to order a few wyes before I can plumb those in.

Upgrades for Dust Collection

I am currently in the process of reorganizing the shop to prepare for the new dust collector. To optimize the dust collection I have move some of my equipment around. The biggest of the changes was reworking the electrical so that I have a 220V outlet for the dust collector, and while I was at it I figured I would rewire the table saw for 220V. Well, over the weekend I finished up all the electrical work.

Yesterday I leveled up the table saw and now the bench has been moved to it's new position as an outfeed extension for the table saw. I'm planning on replacing this bench later on with a slightly better version, ok, a waaaay better version.

Now that I have opened up some space on the side wall I can move some of the equipment around and open up a space for a new sharpening station.

Getting ready for dust collection

I've had a permanent shop for about a year now. Prior to that I was storing the fire engine red router table in my closet, the benchtop table saw under the futon, the CMS in the entryway, and most of the smaller tools in the craftsman tote. I got my Ridgid table saw in November last year and since then have added a Rockler router table for my PC690, a drill press, and the table top jointer. However, in all this time I've only upgraded from one shop vac to two. About two weeks ago I was cutting some purpleheart and by the time I was done my sinuses were totally full. I wasn't 100% that day to begin with, and may have been coming down with a cold, but within 2 days I was at the doctors and was diagonosed with bronchitis. That's when I decided it was time to tackle dust collection. Why had I put it off for so long? Because I thought I could, and it seemed like a big task to undertake.

This weekend I started taking on that task. The first job was to figure out how to rearrange my equipment to make dust collection easier to plumb, and to find what unit to get. I just ordered a Grizzly 2HP Cyclone Collector, and I think I have figured out where to move everything to. I'll be going into more detail on the actual dust collector installation and plumbing and all that jazz in coming entries, today I just wanted to post on a few improvements to my table saw. I've decided I'm building a new bench, a modified version of the "Power Tools Bench" from Popular Woodworking. This is going to sit behind the table saw and work as an extended outfeed table as well as a bench. In order to avoid losing too much precious floor space I had to shorten the outfeed table on the saw. Ever since I installed the original outfeed table I had created a problem in that I couldn't tilt the blade more than 42 degrees before the motor hit the framing of the outfeed support. I figured I might as well fix this while I was at it. I also have wanted a small storage tray right near the table saw, and wanted to fill in the area to right of the table so that thin sheet goods can be lined up with the fence rather than sliding underneath it. The product of all these ideas was a small tray with a flip up cover, and a smaller outfeed table. It created 10" of extra table all the way around the table saw, giving me a 54"x40" table to work with. As usual, I went a little overboard with the details and crafted a stylish walnut handle for the front of the tray cover.

Welcome to the BLOG

I figured this would be an easy way to do quick daily updates of stuff that gets done in the shop. Hopefully over time this will evolve into something that is useful for other woodworkers.

I'm still maintaining the website, I just wanted this as an easy way for more often updates.