This Week in Wood » Hand Planes

Back to the desk (Standing Laptop Desk)

glennth — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:54:16 +0000

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 THE DESK (movie title?).

The only woodworking left to do was to build the desk. I wanted a thick drawer front with half blind dovetails in them and full dovetails in the back of the drawer. The half blind dovetails were not all that hard (other than cutting them out in maple vs the drawer sides in a form of pine). I clearly need to work on them more as they were not perfectly tight but as I’ve learned with my dovetail practicing (many posts ago), this does get better as more are cut. I like this for drawers so I expect to see more of these. Here is a shot of the dovetails:

In addition to the dovetails, I needed to fit the drawer and ran into a problem. I had cut a groove and made some wood clips but unfortunately, the wood clips were too wide and hitting the drawer which is full width. I switched out the wooden clips for desktop attach clips I got from woodcraft. They went on very easily and freed up the drawer slot. After a little hand plane work on the slot and the drawer, I got a nice fit. Here is a shot of the drawer sliding in it’s slot after all that work.

I’ve used a plywood bottom (seemed too costly to use a 1/4″ glued up panel – both costly in time and money) so it’s a cheat I can live with. I’ve glued it up and tomorrow I start doing the finish sanding getting ready to apply a finish.

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Back to the desk (Standing Laptop Desk)

Standing Laptop Desk – Top is on

glennth — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 02:27:08 +0000

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 of the clips after I made them and then installed on the underside of the desk.

I did have to create access holes for tightening the screws in the clip. I’ve made grooves for the clips to travel for expansion and contraction. Here is a picture of the desk with a stool for size reference. I’m pretty pleased with results. My next part of the project is to make the drawer (and of course, make it fit and look good). I intend to have half blind dovetails for the drawer front and full dovetails for the back.

Frame Glue Up

glennth — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:55:28 +0000

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 going with.

Overall the frame is square and stable which in a desk frame is what you need.

I still need to work on the drawer rails and the drawer itself. I’m going with wooden slider rails with a groove in the slide that matches up to them. Also I’m going to push the fates and try a half blind dovetail for the drawer front. This should be real challenging.

For the top, I’m planning to reflect a coffee and side table in the same room. The coffee and side table have moulding pieces around the field of the top. The moulding is simply angled on the bottom (thick at the field and thin on the edge). I’m going to do this by angling the outer edges and do it without moulding. I’ll use hand planes to get the angle that I want. I’ve already glued the top up but still need to square it up and smooth/flatten the top.

Notice that from the dry fit, that I’ve added the front lower drawer rail and the lower middle support cross member. I was thinking about adding another member going from the lower middle to the lower back but the frame already seemed very stable and strong so I didn’t feel it needed it.

Double Mortises

glennth — Thu, 20 May 2010 05:09:27 +0000

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

glennth — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:55:01 +0000

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. Between then and now though I saw in a video podcast somewhere (sorry I can’t remember to give proper attribution) that pointed out that small mallet blows on the chisel is the way to go – don’t power through the process. This has caused me to be more satisifed with the process and the results. Yes, it takes a bit more time but it ensures that I get a better fit.

I inadvertently (think before you start!) cut tenons first on the apron. I did the mortise first for the support struts. I will definitely go with the mortise first from now on. The reason is that I can make the hole fit the width of the chisel and then cut the tenon to fit the resulting hole. Doing it where you have to cut a hole to fit a tenon means that you have to use a too small chisel to cut the hole – much more challenging and more prone to errors.

Here are a few shots.

Wood Prep Shots

glennth — Sun, 16 May 2010 03:51:26 +0000

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 for locations of mortises. I have the aprons (and drawer front) ready along with the struts for the bottom of the desk (need those because of the height of the desk). Once I have the frame together, I will work on the drawer and the top.

Progress on my standing laptop desk

glennth — Sat, 15 May 2010 16:38:50 +0000

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 just by my wood choice – maple. This stuff is hard.

I’ve had to saw boards to length. Crosscut turn out to be easy because the length of the cut is usually short.

I’ve had to saw boards to width. Ripcuts have turned out to be the major time sync in this project. Ripping a board that is 40″ long takes a while.

I’ve had to mill boards to thickness using hand planes. This has probably been the second major time sync. Getting things flat and smooth has taken some time. In fact, this is the one area I cheated on. No I didn’t get out my power planer but I did get out my random orbital sander as when I’ve gotten the board to thickness, I was tired and at least for these flat surfaces, I’m willing to use a power sander to get the finished surface.

I’ve used a saw and a hand plane to get the taper in the legs. This turned out easier than I had feared.

As of now, I have all the pieces of the desk platform and desktop ready to start cutting to final length and doing the mortise and tenons which will hold legs, aprons, and support pieces together. That will be when the pictures get interesting.

I’m actually enjoying this quite a bit. I’m a bit of a workout hound (I lift weights 3 days a week and do aerobic exercises 2 times a day) so I really am satisfied when I’ve gone to the shop and come out very tired after an hour or so of sawing or planing. Also, I’m finding that I am more motivated to go to my shop because I can go and do 15 minutes of work or 4 hours of work. With power tools, I often found that with setup you really could never do a short time in the shop.

I fully expect to keep a few power tools as part of my working tools (especially the sander) but I think that hand tools have become the dominant component of my woodworking.

Shop minutiae

glennth — Tue, 04 May 2010 02:58:35 +0000

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 better sense on how a blade feels when it dulls down (of course, I still am struggling with grain direction and tear out).

After a lot of planing, I needed to do some sharpening. I’m doing a nice, consistent job and making it quick too. Nice to see that I’ve really improved my sharpening to a consistent state.

When you see various experts working on projects, they leave out many of this kind of minutiae that has to go on during projects.

Standing Laptop Desk – Tapered Legs

glennth — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:22:27 +0000

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 of each legs will be inside vs outside. Once that was done, I needed to determine the amount of the leg to leave at the foot. I determined a one inch square tapered from the outside (close to 2 inch square) over 12 inches. I then marked these out and sawed some of the waste away. After that, I used my hand planes use rough, medium, smooth plane setups to remove the rest of the material and get a near finish ready surface.

Here are shots of 2 of the legs. Since this picture which I took on Tuesday, I have finished all the legs. I want to do a bit of fine tuning then it’s off to cutting the top aprons and the bottom braces and getting them ready to do mortise and tenons in the appropriate places.

Prepping Legs

glennth — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:19:08 +0000

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 make them (in making them square and such), hopefully no less that 1 3/4″ x 1 3/4″.

I’ve used my hand saws to cut dovetails and even a few 2×4′s. This was the first time I’m ripping and crosscutting to rough out a piece for a project. I’ve currently gotten 2 legs roughed and can attest that this is a great workout, especially with this maple. I’ve watched several videos from Chistopher Schwarz and also Logan’s Cabinet Shop which have given some great suggestions on how to approach sawing. It doesn’t make it any easier but I think it’s helping me avoid mistakes.

Here is a quick shot of the two legs in rough form (2 faces square and straight – I’m waiting till I have all 4 ready to prep them the rest of the way). To this point, I’ve used a crosscut saw to get them to length and a rip saw to get them to the right rough shape. Then I’ve used a Jack (set to rough planing), Jointer (set to medium) and a Smoother plane to get 2 faces square. It took me about 3 or 3 1/2 hours. I’m pretty satisfied with my progress. I should have a few more hours tomorrow to devote to another leg.

Project Wood

glennth — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:06:05 +0000

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 dovetails – never done those before so should be fun) will be maple. The top of the desk will be 41″ high for standing or sitting on a stool. The primary purpose for the laptop is to work with me playing my guitar and learning songs.

See my previous post on the Standing Laptop Desk for a general idea of what it should look like.

Here is a shot of most of the wood stickered waiting to be prepped.

Mortise and Tenon Practice

glennth — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:27:16 +0000

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
Keeping the mortise inside the marking lines is simpler than I thought (probably due to sharp chisels)
Using drill bits to plow out material sounds like a great idea but is much harder than I thought. In order to accomplish this, you need to have a center line in addition to the other marking lines for the mortise. Getting that center line exactly centered is quite a challenge. That of course doesn’t say anything about how challenging it is to get the drill bit to start in the middle too.
Shoulders are super important to get a really crisp/tight fit. It can be tuned a bit too.
Square in all directions is harder than it sounds

My first few were pretty bad. As you can see from above though, I finally did pretty well. My next one wasn’t so good though but I was able to tune it up and get a pretty satisfactory fit. I’m going to keep practicing though and hopefully get a really consistent fit. My next project (see earlier post) will have quite a lot of these joints so I need to get it tight.

Expecting New Tool – Low Angle Jack

glennth — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:13:06 +0000

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 Angle Jack Plane.

I already have a Leigh-Nielsen Jack Plane. I’ve got this one set up as a rough tool. I wanted another plane about the size of a Jack for doing slightly finer work, much like a Jointer Plane but not as long. Some boards are just too small for using the Jointer but smaller planes like Block Planes are too small for the board.

Another way would be to get a different blade but I also wanted the benefits of the low angle plane so I figured it would compliment my other hand planes.

Hand Plane for shooting board

glennth — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:56:28 +0000

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 up a little bit more fine for cleaner “shoots”. I’ve found that plane is reasonable comfortable and has a reasonably high side for decent stability when shooting. My thoughts on having a dedicated shooting plane is that I could have it set up and not have to change it for different work (i.e. non jointing work).

One option is the Lie-Nielsen Iron Miter Plane pictured below:

Lie-Nielsen Iron Miter Plane

I think the benefit of this plane is that it has large sides to the hand plane giving it a greater stability than non-dedicated shooting board planes. One miter benefit is that it may be slightly more comfortable than a standard plane. This plane is probably the most expensive option for this job.

Alternatives include low-angle bench planes like the Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Jointer Plane or the Lee Valley/Veritas Bevel Up Jack Plane (which has a reasonably hide side versus the Lee Valley/Veritas Bevel Up Jointer Plane which has essentially no sides). Here is a picture of the Lee Valley/Veritas planes (B or the middle plane is the Jack I mentioned above):

Lee Valley/Veritas Bevel Up Bench Planes

The Lie-Nielsen low angle planes have lower sides. The Lee Valley/Veritas bevel up planes look to have similar sides to standard bench planes so may have increased stability. Also the Lee Valley/Veritas bevel up planes appear to be less expensive so that makes this option attractive.

Based on this analysis, I’m leaning mostly toward the Lee Valley/Veritas Bevel up Jack Plane due to both functionality and cost. If any readers have opinions on this, I’d love to hear agreements, disagreements, or maybe alternatives via the comments.

Lie-Nielsen Tool Event – Wrap up

glennth — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:13:14 +0000

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 smaller “event” than I had envisioned. They had tables set around a small room (might have been 40′x30′) with a lot of Lie-Nielsen tools. I’ve seen many photos of similar displays but it is impressive to see them in person. It was really cool to see the hand plane collection in particular. I was able to touch a few planes that I may consider getting in the future.

The two planes that I was in particularly interested are the Iron Miter Plane and the Tongue and Groove Plane.

The Iron Miter Plane was very nice in heft and feel. It comes with a “hot dog” which is basically a grip that can be moved from one side of the plane to the other for use on the right hand side or the left hand side. I’ve seen older miter plane designs that have a knob instead of this grip. I’m not sure which would be better in day to day use. It seems to use the same bed angle as the low angle planes which would make it very effective for shooting the end grain. As an alternative to this, I would consider getting the Low Angle Jointer Plane. My reasons for not going with the Low Angle Jointer Plane include the sides of this plane are not as tall as the standard Jointer Plane (which I already own) and the fact, that I already own a jointer plane.

Lie-Nielsen Iron Miter Plane

Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Jointer Plane

The Tongue and Groove Plane had a nice heft though seemed reasonably complex to use with the fence and the fact that the plane does two jobs instead of one in cutting the groove as well as cutting the tongue.

Lie-Nielsen Tongue and Groove Hand Plane

I did watch a session on hand planes and what makes a good hand plane. The instructor was from the local woodworking program (the Port Townsend School of Woodworking) which I have considered (vs the Northwest Woodworking Studio mentioned in many previous posts). The instructor was sharp and did not have the arrogance of some woodworking instructors that I have met. I didn’t really learn anything from the session though it was full of information. I think this could have been useful if we had been given a schedule of these sessions in advance. I could have been there for the sessions that interest me versus just landing on this session.

I did also see (in use) the Shapton Glass Stones. I don’t know how long my Norton stones will last but these are stones I would consider replacing them with. I also saw something that could prove more useful than standard sheets of sandpaper for flattening plane bottoms and plane blade backs. This was Adhesive Backed Sandpaper on rolls. The only weakness (that I discovered later when I got home) was that these don’t seem to be available in high/polishing grits.

I got value from this event but it probably wasn’t worth spending the 5 hours of driving that I needed to get there. If this was more local, I’d go again in a heartbeat (i.e. at the Local Rockler or Woodcraft stores).