debor054

Up until now I have been struggling with work holding on my little bench and its poor excuse for a face vice, especially if I need to hold a wide board for dovetailing for example. My usual solution is to stand the end of the board on something below the vice and pinch one side of the board in the end of the vice and use an offcut to minimise the vice racking and hope it holds... Far from ideal! Therefore, with my last dry (it hasn't stopped raining over here in the UK) scaffold board, I decided to make a poor mans version of the Moxon Vice  (Utube). Life started out by rough cutting the board to length. Raised beds function really well as saw horses. While sawing the board the cross cut saw started to bind indicating that there seemed to be a lot of internal stresses inside the wood. I had to finish the cut from the opposite side, at least its only a rough cut.   The next step was to rip the board into two pieces using my 5 ppi rip saw.   Again the saw started to b...

I am finally motivated enough to get myself back in front of the bench and actually build something - about freaking time! As you (regular readers) may well know, one of my 2012 resolutions  was to ' sell some of the things I make '. Well this has been achieved by selling my Rustic Stool  and has given me incentive to make a few more to sell. Mainly, to recoup some of the money I have tied up in timber . The session began by discovering my bench top was no longer flat, maybe due to the arrival of Spring and the warm weather we have been having lately or my bench repairs  I did a short while ago? Either way, before anything else could happen it was time to warm up with my trusty no#6 foreplane and a straight edge. Once the top was vaguely flat, I also remembered I had yet to re-drill the dog holes to make the bench usable. A few minutes later I was ready to finally begin work ... no I wasn't. As I haven't been doing much wood work lately, I knew things would need...

As mentioned previously , my poor little bench recently decided to give up the ghost and collapse on me. Until, I get round to building a proper bench, I have decided to make some 'improvements / repairs' so I can at least carry on working wood. It's been ages since I have actually built anything useful!.... Anyway, the first thing to do was to lower the bench height by a good few inches. I have always found it hard to get some weight squarely over the plane and pushing sideways rather than downwards increases the lateral forces being exerted on the poor little bench frame therefore increasing the racking. The bench felt quite a bit more stable immediately the legs were shortened.  Next, add some bracing... I had some pieces of wood  that were perfect for the job! With the four braces added and reduced height, I could really feel the bench frame start to stiffen up. One of the biggest annoyances with this beginners bench has been work holding. All the dog holes are some s...

Another post ...at last!... Sadly again without in any real useful or interesting content. Lately (as regular readers can probably tell), I have been lacking motivation in the wood working department - for a number of reasons.  Firstly,  I don't have any wood around that's suitable for any of the things I'd actually like to make - such as a tool chest. My ' Timber Investment ' is still drying out in the shed and wont really be ready for anything other than really rustic work and gardening projects for a little while and I am too tight to purchase more premium cost wood from the timber yard. Secondly, in my quest to escape the timber merchant , I have been trying to process the raw billets of Oak and Walnut with a lot of frustration! While my little bench was fine for pre planed wood, it's simply not man enough to handle the rough 'scrubbing' of the billets down to usable dimensions. The poor thing racked so violently, it almost fell to pieces! The base ...

 A trip to the local timber yard over the weekend led me to find a cheap budget range of timber . Four 3m lengths of 2"x2" (50mm x 50mm) B grade Pine at a little over £1 per meter. I had to cut each 3m piece into 1m + 2m to fit it in the car.  While the timber is less than straight and quite knotty, its (hopefully) perfect for me to build my long awaited saw bench. I have been wanting a decent saw bench for ages to cut stock to rough length outside using my panel saws.  It will also serve to chop mortises on while sitting down and as a 'workshop stool'. Some online research led me to the following sources of information: here , here  and here  . I figured I would follow the same basic traditional design using slightly different joints and measurements with the entire thing made from 2"x2" timber. The whole project is basically an exercise in precision sawing practice, thank god for my new tenon saw . While the saw bench is a tool, I wanted to approach it al...