This Week in Wood » Saws

Rip Saw Bench

glennth — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:54:37 +0000

Over the last few days, I decided to build another saw bench. I have already built 2 in the Christopher Schwarz style.

I’ve found these saw benches to be absolutely great…except for ripping. The flared legs get in the way when ripping, especially a narrow board.

So I needed something that didn’t have flared legs and a split top sounded like a good idea. I searched the web for ideas and most of them are similar to what I came up with except that I built my bench from 2×4′s and 2×6′s rather than 1by material. It makes my bench heavier and maybe more solid.

As you can see it has a split top and a side apron. I doubled the thickness of the top so I can drill holes for hold downs and have them actually work. I also put a shelf but made it split like the top so I could rip in the middle if needed.

I spent a bit of time to make sure that the current bench and new bench are level so they can be used together on a long crosscut.

Overall I’m happy with it and think it will serve me well.

Of course, now I have 3 saw benches and really don’t have room for all 3. I’ll have to find a new home for one of the old saw benches.

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Rip Saw Bench

Panel for doors

glennth — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 18:09:53 +0000

After my last post, I had a nice fail and didn’t correctly determine the length of the rails for the doors. The old adage of measure twice and mark once only works if you have decided the length of a particular item correctly. For this project, I’m not using a plan so my determination was flat out wrong.

It took me a few days to get the rails fixed up and ready for the panel.

Next I needed to size the panels from my glue ups. Sizing was simply but keeping everything square was more challenging and requires a great deal of patience.

My next step will be to size the outer edges of the panels for the groove inside the rail and stiles. I’m going to keep it simple and not do any details on the panel or rail and stiles since this is a shop cabinet. Also, I don’t have any moulding planes so I’ll leave details for the next set of doors I need to make.

As an aside, i got some new shoes today and my wife wondered if I took a picture of them.

This picture is for Kathy!

Rail and Stiles

glennth — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:46:37 +0000

The panel glue up went well. Now it’s on to the Rails and Stiles for the door.

As you can see, this is a very common door construction. Some details you can’t tell from that image include a groove on the interior of both the Stiles and the Rails. I have seen 2 common options for joining the rail to the stile. One way, the simplest, is to simply create a small tenon that matches the groove in the edge of the stile. Another way is to create a longer tenon which is matches a deeper mortise that is actually inside the groove on the stile. I haven’t decided which will be the way to go for me. The first is probably not as strong but if the door isn’t large or holding up items (common to a wall hanging tool chest), then strength isn’t the issue. I plan to have the door not holding any tools so the only strength needed is for the door to hold together while hanging. The size is 30″ H x 18″ W.

I’ve cut the Rail and Stiles from 1×3 pine stock. I’ve squared one of the edges so that I can dial in the precise lengths of each board.

After I dial in the precise lengths, I will create the grooves and decided on a shallow or deeper tenon on the Rails.

Basic Glue up

glennth — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 23:46:35 +0000

A basic glue up is a skill every woodworker needs to master.

The first step is to get the rough material to the rough size. For hand tool users, this means hand crosscuts and hand ripping. For power tool users, this means table saw work.

The next step is to joint the edges to be joined. For power tool users, they will often need to do all the thicknessing work before jointing using a power planer followed by jointing with a jointer. For hand tool users, I’ve found that thicknessing can be done after the jointing (though note: you will have to flatten the board so you really aren’t avoiding any work).

For me, jointing takes 3 different planes. Using hand tools, I’ve gone with the jointing method where you place the 2 boards to be joined together and when they are jointed, you open the two boards like a book and glue them together. The first plane (above), is a #5 Jack which is tuned for roughing. I have a scrub but have found that the wider base on the jack gives batter coverage on 2 boards being jointed together. The purpose is to quickly clean up the edges and get them flush. The second plane is a #7 Jointer which is tuned for a medium cut. The purpose for this plane is to straighten the length of the 2 boards. The last is a #4 Smoother. The main purpose of this plane is to create a small spring joint (making the middle of the board a smidge, technical term, lower than straight allowing lighter clamping pressure on the edges and the main clamping pressure in the middle).

I’ve also found that biscuits, dowels, splines and other edge jointing methods are not needed for most applications. In fact they complicate the glue up process and at least for me, ensure a less than great joint.

I apply glue to the 2 edges and rub them together and then clamp. I do make sure not to over tighten the clamps and make sure I alternate the sides where I apply the clamps.

These will be panels floating inside a mortise and tenon frame for the doors on my Wall Hanging Tool Chest.

Now I have 2 panels ready for the next steps.

Now That’s Hung!

glennth — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 23:29:17 +0000

When using hand tools, you’ll probably find that crosscutting is pretty simple. The main reason is that when you crosscut, you are making a relatively short cut. On the other hand, ripping is a manually intensive job. Unlike the crosscut, this cut is along the length of the board.

For instance, I need to make some cleats for the Wall Hanging Tool Chest. Cleats are simply boards that have been cut at 45 degrees which enable the boards to interlock when one is attached to a cabinet and the other to the wall.

This kind of rip cut is even harder because you are trying to maintain the 45 degree angle along the entire length. Let me tell you – that is hard! And I failed. When you fail, it’s not a total loss but it takes a lot of effort with hand planes to clean up the cut. I think I improve because I come up with different strategies each time or subtle improvements for strategies that are mostly working.

Making the shelves also requires ripping but this is a simpler job and for me, much more successful. Now only 4 more!

Clean up of the cleat or the shelf is basically the same and is a matter of running a hand plane across the edge monitoring the progress with squares and straight edges.

Now that it’s complete, you can see the finished core cabinet (still need to make doors). The bottom shelf is fixed and will be open and not covered by the door. The upper shelves are adjustable with standard shelf pins. It turned out quite nice (you can even see the v-groove detail in the back!).

Of course, what good is a cabinet if it doesn’t hold things.

You can see my collection of hand planes. I have one or two more that I’d like to have and there is a little bit of room for them. Next it’s on to the doors.

Guitar 4′s Neck

glennth — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 03:43:37 +0000

I’ve been sick for a few days so haven’t been to the shop. No worries though, it was just a cold.

Today, I started working on Guitar 4′s neck. Starting a neck, you start with a simple blank and then trim off a small piece on one end at about a 15 degree angle. You then take that piece and smooth the surface where you cut it, ensuring flat, square surface with no round over. The piece is then glued on back to the blank except kind of backwards, creating and angled piece that sort of resembles a hockey stick.

I’ve found that the cutting and squaring is pretty simple though I tend to use more of the board that I ought to. The problem in making up the initial part of the neck for me, is the glue up of this angled back piece. The piece wants to slip and slide around and takes a lot of effort to keep it lined up.

Once this is glued up, you then cut off pieces from the other end and glue them to the bottom of the neck for the heel block. This heel block is where the tenon that attatches the neck to the guitar body will be created.

Over the next week, I will show more pictures including the shaping of the neck.

Guitar 4 – Alignment looks good

glennth — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:25:20 +0000

Today, I took the back with the braces and joined it to the sides. I first had to finish shaping the braces and then create the slots in the kerfing for the braces. All this was exactly the same for guitars 2 and 3.

I spent a great deal of time during glue up getting the alignment of the center lines to match for the sides and back. The problem is that glue allows some slippage and the go-bars in the go-bar deck can cause some pressure that is not directly down when the go-bar is being bent into clamping position. It took a bit and some minor adjustments but I think I got it.

The important piece is that the center strip down the back should be exactly in the center of the edge joining the bottom edges of the sides. In this picture, you can see pretty good alignment.

Guitar #3 gets Sides joined to Back

glennth — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 04:37:24 +0000

Today, I worked on attaching the sides and back together.

The first step is to shape the braces on the back. About 550mm from the edge of the guitar, the braces are pared down to about 2-4mm thickness. Once that is done, you determine where to cut the cross braces and the center brace so that you can fit it inside the sides. For the cross braces, there are 2 methods that can work. For Guitar #2, I cut away dado’s for the cross braces in the kerfing and the sides. For this guitar (#3), I cut the dado’s only in the kerfing. The difference is that once the sides and back are glued up, you can see the braces in technique #1 and you should get a smooth fit for technique #2. Once this is done, then you want to ensure the braces are to the edge of the sides (for technique #2) and the center brace goes from heel to heel block.

Once you have a good fit, it’s time to glue up the back to the sides. This MUST be done in the form so that the glueing process doesn’t distort the sides. It is also critical to keep the center lines on the side and form lined up to the center line on the back. This will affect the appearance of the guitar drastically. For the glue up, I’ve again used the go-bar system.

On this guitar, the next process will be to work on the top and get it glued on – closing up the guitar body. I do still have to work on guitar #4 though so that is likely to be my next task.

Guitar body 3 – the back get’s braces

glennth — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 23:30:03 +0000

I showed all the little bits of progress that I made over the weekend in my last post. Today, I worked on taking the braces I made and applying them to the back which will be part of the guitar body 3.

The first step is to mark/verify the location of each of the braces, making sure they are square to the center line of the body. Once, you have the marks, you need to chisel out sections of the center brace (which is a very thin piece covering the center line of the guitar but has it’s grain going perpendicular to the center line giving a lot of extra strength to the center of the back) to match the width of each of the braces. The goal is to make the fit snug for each of these braces. The next step is to mark each brace with the curve of the radius dish (in my case, it is a 15 foot radius dish) and then cut and sand these to match the radius exactly. The final step is to glue and clamp making sure to follow your layout precisely.

To clamp the braces in place, I use a go-bar deck. The go-bar deck consists of 2 wooden decks separated by about 22″ with metal supports. The clamping pressure comes from 1/4″ fiber glass rods (with rubber tips) that are about 24″. These are bowed between the braces and the upper deck giving clamping pressure across curved or uneven surfaces. This is a very common clamping technique for guitar builders.

I wanted to show the curved back and how the braces match and re-inforce that curve.

Back on Sides!

glennth — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 01:21:12 +0000

I had a crown done on Monday and surprisingly it made working on my guitar challenging. Today (Thursday) is the first day I’ve gotten back into my shop.

Today I had several small things to do and thought they would fill up my time.

First, I had to trim the ebony accents on the wedge and then fine sand the edges of the side where the top and back will be glued on. The ebony was really thin so trimming with a chisel was a piece of cake. Sanding was also short because the rough sanding had already been done.

Next I needed to finish the shaping of the braces on the back. I had already shaped the peaks or tops of the braces before glue up but now I needed to taper the braces down to where they meet the side. In my build of a guitar, I am thinning the ends down to about 2.5 mm thick with it going back into the brace over 40 mm. The shape of these braces can affect the tonal quality of the back. I am far from an expert on this but so that I can continue to learn about the shapes necessary to make a guitar, I continually tested the tone on the back as I shaped these braces. In the end, I felt I got a full bodied sound with some sustain (though it was not really an extensive sustain). The same testing will need to be done on the top and will even more critical to the resulting sound of the guitar.

I was done with my small projects and it seemed that I had plenty of time to attach the back. In doing this, I had to do a few things. First, I had to lay out the sides on the back so I could trim away the center brace where the neck block and heel block are in the sides. I then had to mark where the cross braces meet the sides and trim away a shallow dato so that the back joins the sides in a tight fashion.

In this shot where you see the back being glued down, you also get a real solid sense in my design idea where the end wedge meets the center strip on the back. I’m really pleased with how this looks.

I have a few small things to do and then I need to move on to the top. I need to scrape away any glue squeeze out and I need to sand the inside of the guitar. Then I need to create a creation certificate and glue it on the inside of the back (right under the sound hole). The top will be the next really interesting element and be a huge milestone.

Sticking out 2 Necks

glennth — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 02:59:44 +0000

OK, I’ve moved from issues to being in good shape. The glue-ups of both necks turned out great.

My next step was to thickness the headstock. I used hand planes to do this. Given that both necks are maple, it took awhile and I had to monitor grain direction to make sure we had smooth surfaces. I’ve selected the laminate pieces of wood for the headstock. The top of both will be a blood wood followed by a light wood (maple) and closing with a dark wood (for the birdseye maple neck it will be ebony and for the other, it looked like mahogany though I’m not sure.

After that, I marked out the neck for the fret boards and the end of the tenon and cut them both to length. My last item for the day was to cut out the channel for the truss rod. I’m position the adjustment at the headstock end.

The pictures below show the progress (except for the truss rod channel).

Scarf Joint – Attempts 2 & 3

glennth — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:26:22 +0000

In an update to my last post I told you all how the joint of my first attempt did not turn out. Fortunately, I ordered an additional Birdseye Maple Neck Blank so I could try it again having learned that I need to verify the joint on both sides of the neck. I also ordered a standard Maple Neck Blank.

I made sure that I got a nice tight joint on both neck blanks and in glueing them up, I got tight joints on both sides of each neck. I had a little trouble with the Birdseye Maple Neck Blank but it looks like I recovered from it. I guess practice makes perfect because my last attempt was the regular Maple Neck Blank and it went great.

Here are some shots of the glue ups:

Birdseye Maple

Regular Maple

Both joints side by side (Birdseye in the front).

I still cut the joint by hand but I’d like to get a new blade for my band saw and try it that way next time (I got the blade today when I went on a shopping expedition with Xander). I then planed, scraped and sanded the joints tight and smooth. On my shopping expedition, I got the band saw blade but I also got some veneers to try on the 2nd neck’s headstock after I get it to the proper thickness.

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.

UPDATE: Well, the top of the joint looked great but the other side was pathetic. Clearly this glue up technique (clamping the neck body down to the bench) didn’t work for me. I got a new blank and so I’ll try it again and use this piece for the heal block. I also got a plane maple neck blank so I will try 2 necks at once and pick the best out. Right now, I will focus on getting the tightest joint I can. I’m close but stopped for the day so that I can redouble my effort tomorrow.

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.