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 [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Hand Planes’
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 [...]
Off to Port Townsend
Today and Tomorrow Lie-Nielsen Toolworks is at Edensaw Woods in Port Townsend. They are supposed to be showing attendies how to use and tune our tools to make us better woodworkers. I own a few Lie-Nielsen tools so I felt it was worth the long drive time (and a ferry ride too) to see what [...]
Finished – Shooting Board and Bench Hook
OK, after my initial hick up. I’ve created 2 shooting boards. The first is a 90 degree shooting board. This is probably the one that I will need the most often. Notice the high fence and the runners that the hand planes can ride. I also created one type of 45 degree miter shooting board. [...]
Bench hook vs Shooting board
OK, in my previous post on Shooting board, I said I was putting runners for the hand plane to ride against. That worked well. My issue came when my plans called for me to lower the fence on the shooting board. The reason for this idea was to combine the notion of a bench hook [...]
Shooting boards
A shooting board is simple and I have 2 standard boards and 1 miter shooting board. In using them recently, I discovered that running the hand plane (I use my jointer plane) against the board and on my bench, mars up my bench severely. This is unacceptable as I don’t want to have to resurface [...]
