While I was working on the guitar (see previous post), I’ve had a nearly completed desk in my shop. It’s been quite handing with having another surface to place tools, work items and such on. However, it’s been nagging at me to get it done. Well, this week I was able to get BACK TO [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Hand Planes’
Standing Laptop Desk – Top is on
I worked very hard and got the top flat and smooth along with square. This process really honed my hand plane skills which I’m pleased with (of course, all the work on maple means I need to sharpen the hand planes now). I decided to make my own wooden clips. Here is a shot [...]
Frame Glue Up
I finished the frame pieces and dry fitted them. I’m pretty happy with the results though similar to most woodworkers, I can see every error and blemish in the project and that frustrates me. I believe that I can fix a few of them after the glue up so that is the plan that I’m [...]
Double Mortises
OK, as a newb to hand cut mortises and tenons I’m pushing the envelope by doing double mortises. I know, it’s crazy. All in all though, I’m pretty happy with the results.
Standing Laptop Desk – First Mortise and Tenons
OK, today I finished my first mortise and tenons on the Standing Laptop Desk. Only 20,000 more to go. OK, maybe not that many but looking at it from the beginning makes it seem that way. I’ve shown some practice mortise and tenons in previous posts but I was still kind of frustrated with them. [...]
Wood Prep Shots
Here is a shot of all the hand processed maple boards that I have for my standing laptop desk. As you can see, I have the top glued together (still need size but I want to wait till the desk frame is together). I also have the legs with taper and now they are marked [...]
Progress on my standing laptop desk
The next post should have some pictures. Having never built a project entirely by hand, I had no accurate idea of how long any particular step was going to take. Once I got started I realized that any guess I had was far off (by orders of magnitude). I think I compounded the time problem [...]
Shop minutiae
As I go through this standing maple desk project, I am sawing, planing, and sanding. Soon, I will be drilling and chiseling too. As I plane this hard maple (I really got reminded how hard it was today when I needed to cut a small piece of plywood in modifying a jig), I’m getting a [...]
Standing Laptop Desk – Tapered Legs
I’ve been making progress over the week. It’s been very slow going. After roughing the dimensions of the legs, I wanted to get them more exactly square, plummed. This takes a long time. After that, I wanted to get the tapers done. This took figuring out which legs will be the front and which part [...]
Prepping Legs
As I’ve indicated in past posts, the Standing Laptop Desk is an experiment of sorts. I am planning on doing the entire project using hand tools (no power other than muscle). I decided to start with prepping the legs. The legs will be 40″ long and as close to 2″ x 2″ as I can [...]
Project Wood
OK, I’ve finally gotten the wood (actually I got it last week). I got, hopefully, the right number of board feet of maple for a Standing Laptop Desk with drawer. The entire desk will be maple except for the drawer. The inside of the drawer will be pine and the front face (with half blind [...]
Mortise and Tenon Practice
I’ve been practicing Mortise and Tenon joints for the past couple of days. I’ve found some things out about hand cut Mortise and Tenon joints. Shallow mortise/tenons are easier to keep square Conversely, deep mortise/tenons are much harder to keep square Deep mortise/tenons can be tuned a bit to make square after they are cut [...]
Expecting New Tool – Low Angle Jack
Having your hobby live on a tight budget, you have to save and buy up. This can take month and requires a great deal of patience. Well, my patience is paying off. I had saved up so that I could buy a few tools. One that I’m very excited about is a Lee Valley/Veritas Low [...]
Hand Plane for shooting board
As I mentioned in my last post regarding the Lie-Nielsen Tool Event, I was thinking about a dedicated hand plane for the shooting board. I’m currently using my Lie-Nielsen Jointer Plane which is set up for medium planing work (versus rough/aggressive or smooth/fine work). This works though I’ve found that the plane should be set [...]
Lie-Nielsen Tool Event – Wrap up
As I mentioned in my last post, I headed up to Port Townsend. It turned out to be a 2 1/2 hour road trip (each way, including the required ferry ride) though I was able to catch up on a lot of podcasts during the ride so it wasn’t totally wasted. It was a much [...]
