This Week in Wood » Saws

Guitar 2 – Scarf Joint

glennth — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:13:30 +0000

OK, I’ve begun the 2nd guitar in ernest. I started with the neck.

When building a guitar neck you need 3 basic elements.

The neck body. This is where the fret is on up to the 14th fret.
The headstock. This is angled down from the neck body by about 15 degrees and is where the tuner machines are placed.
The neck block. This is underneath the neck body at the opposite end from the headstock and contains the bulk of the material that make up the tenon which joins the neck to the guitar body.

I started with the headstock. The raw neck blank is at least 30″ long. You cut an angled cut and smooth the surface so that you can have a tight glue joint. I cut the joint with a hand saw. Given the neck is maple, this took a lot of effort to do at all but more importantly get close to square. I used hand planes and scrapers to do this smoothing and final squaring.

My next step will be the neck block. Here are some shots of my glue up of the headstock from the scarf cut. In the second shot, you can see the tight joint I was able to get. I did use wax paper to keep from glueing my glue calls to the neck.

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Guitar 2 – Scarf Joint

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.

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.

Small Epiphany – Dovetails

glennth — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:33:57 +0000

In my daily (ok, not daily but nearly so) practice of hand cut dovetails, I came together with a finished practice joint that was very tight. I still had one small gap (I’ll talk about that in a bit) but the sides were very tight.

In the cutting of the sides of the tails and pins, I’ve been struggling with keeping the cuts parallel and plum. I’ve also struggled with how close to the marking line to cut. I think that I’m starting to understand the required technique. I feel like placing the blade so that one side touches the edge of the marking line (from the inside of the material to be removed) is the best place. Also, I’ve found that using a square to make sure the marked line for the sides is perpendicular to the bench top works best. I’ve done this several times now and have got increasingly tight sides where it’s not too tight (too tight splits out the dovetails). I’m very pleased.

Now as to the gap, this is from the chisel line. I’m still struggling with how to chisel out the wood to the marked line. I haven’t found a similar epiphany for this. I’ll keep at it and hope to find the thing that gets me the tight and great looking joint. I’m open to any suggestions from any readers.

Unremarkable Shop Time

glennth — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:00:57 +0000

I know that I haven’t been posting recently. My problem is that the time in my shop IS happening but it’s kind of dull and tedious (at least from a blogging point of view – I’m actually enjoying the time).

You see, my situation mandates that I have a strongly adhered to budget for my hobbies. By my situation, I of course mean that if I don’t have restrictions on my behavior I will soon become the poorest person in the state of Washington with the most woodworking tools. That would of course also mean I don’t have any money for actual wood to do any woodworking. In fact, I’m living with some of that behavior right now. Over the last several months I bought a few tools and am now waiting for my actual budget to catch up. On April 1, I again have some money to buy some wood for my next project (a standing laptop desk for my guitar area – see previous posts).

In the mean time, I have been using some scrap wood to practice dovetails and mortise/tenons. I had some poplar, pine, and oak. I have on average spent an hour in the shop most days each week. It’s allowed me a lot of progress. My progress is of course great interest to me but may not be to any who read this.

I’ve been learning lots of things. For instance, marking lines to follow is crucial. In the past, I’d grab the nearest pencil and make my mark. Now I grab a mechanical pencil, sharpen it, then make my mark. Also, I’ve learned that while all the videos and articles and even classes on making dovetails (and this also applies to tenons) show how easy cutting things by hand can be, they leave out a crucial cautionary note. Cutting is easy but keeping the curf of the cut parallel or even better exactly on the marked line, is quite challenging. This is in fact, the heart of all this practicing.

I’ll keep working on all this skill building practicing and by the time I get to April, I will be more confidant in my abilities to produce a great piece of quality furniture.

New Tools

glennth — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:53:21 +0000

I suppose that a woodworker may never have enough tools so it’s never really news when a woodworker gets some new tool. I feel like I’m approaching a place where I can get increasingly choosy about which tools I get and when. I have a nice selection of saws, chisels, hand planes, measuring and marking tools. As I move through my practicing of various hand tool techniques I do find a small tool here and there that would be useful in simplifying the task. My observation in these tools, unlike my previous power tool life, I am finding that these tools are simpler and more basic.

Here is a shot of my new tools:

On the top left is a divider. In practicing my dovetails, I am getting increasingly happy with my cuts and fits of the joint but have noticed that my rough guesses at where to make pins/tails and how wide to make them is looking non-uniform. While I feel that hand cut parts should have some non-uniformity to them, I would like a closer sense of symmetry just from an artistic point of view. In watching various dovetail experts, I noticed that Rob Cosman uses dividers to get symmetry in his joints so that was my motivation.

Far right is a new crosscut carcass saw. All my shorter carcass/dovetail saws are rip so I needed a crosscut for things like tenons.

In the middle is a goose neck chisel for cleaning out the bottom of mortises.

Lastly on the left/bottom are some Veritas bench pups which give me another bench tool for keeping material in place while working that material.

If I head towards making guitars as I fantasized in a previous post, I expect that I will need a few additional tools but hopefully not many. Everytime I make a tool purchase means that I don’t have the funds to purchase wood for actual projects.

Re-sawing by hand

glennth — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:17:14 +0000

As I move more and more of my woodworking to using hand tools, I have to try and experiment with different elements and techniques of hand tool applications. My latest attempt is re-sawing boards which is most commonly done with band saws.

I have an increasing collection of saws. I have a bow saw that I bought a long time ago (when hand tools were really just a glimmer in my eye and I was still power tool bound) and thought that this would be a great tool to start re-sawing boards with. I found this wasn’t the case. I’m not sure that it’s due to an improper tool choice as it may be to incorrect technique. I found that in using the bow saw, that the blade was hard to keep parallel to the face of the board. It wanted to turn (probably with the grain of the board which was not entirely parallel to the face) and I couldn’t get a straight cut.

After that attempt, I moved to a western style hand saw. Specifically a 26″ rip saw. This worked much better and I was able to get a nice straight cut.

After the board was re-sawn, I planed it smooth and it looked pretty good. Here are some shots:

I think this is a good sign as I keep moving forward with improving hand tool techniques.

Dovetail practice

glennth — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:29:35 +0000

Just a quick post. In addition to the mortise and tenons, I have continued on with my dovetail practice. I hope I’m reaching a significant milestone because I cut one of my best dovetails yet. It was tight (except for one small corner) in all places. A joint like that would be one that I could be very proud of in a real project.

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.

More dovetail practice – oak

glennth — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:20:15 +0000

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have taken a path to practice hand cut dovetails. In the first round, I worked with poplar.

Now, I’m down the path of using oak. My first attempt (back before Thanksgiving) was a disaster. I had forgotten how easy it is to split oak and I did split the oak when I tried to force together joints that were too tight (by quite a bit).

Today, I took the lessons of my previous attempt and to it slow and didn’t use force on either cutting the dovetails or fitting the dovetails. Getting the joints tight enough to not have gaps seems harder with oak but after a little patience, I succeeded in a decent first attempt.

I’m using a Lee Valley/Veritas dovetail saw. I think my biggest issue is cutting a square/straight cut. I am having to adjust them by parring them down and that does not give me the best fit. I will keep working with the oak and hopefully, this practice will be able to be applied to other hard woods as well.

Any readers who have had more experience and success that have any advice, I would love to hear from you.

Woodworking with my son

glennth — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:26:25 +0000

Xander, my elder son, is ten years old. He’s in a gifted program which he goes to one day a week. Part of this gifted program is that he must do a year long research project which culminates in a presentation at the “Experts Fair”. He’s picked How to be a Video Game Designer and How to create your own Greek Myth in the past. This year he has chosen How to I make a project using Woodworking.

He’s begun the research by getting books from the library that are targeted at kids. He’s gotten very excited about these projects in these books. All of them are simple and typically use but joints and often don’t even use glue but use nails and screws instead. Simple!

Today, we began some education that I can give him. We covered Hand Saws. I went through European style saws including crosscut, rip, carcass and dovetail. We also covered Pull or Japanese style saws. He liked the European style saws best though the big rip and crosscut saws were hard for him and he preferred the smaller dovetail and carcass saws. I showed him how to hold saws and start cuts. It’ll be a while before he’s totally comfortable but he had fun.

Next he wants to try a few power saws.