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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The Right Plane for the Job

You have to hand it to Kari over on The Village Carpenter. When it comes to tools, she really knows her stuff. In a comment she left me she mentioned that Lee Valley produces an updated version of the Record 43 Plow Plane that she owns. She felt it might work for me rather than the Stanley #50 I was considering purchasing.

I live exactly 1.2 miles from Torontos downtown Lee Valley store and given that I call the place "my own little porn shop", I thought I knew everything there was to know about every plane, saw, nut, and drawer slider that this company offers. Wrong again.

When I first read Karis comment, I thought she was telling me about the new Veritas Skew Rabbet Plane and for the life of me, I couldnt figure out why she would think that plane would work for the application I needed it for. I have no idea why I thought that, no idea at all. This incorrect thought kept popping in and out of my head all day long until finally I sat down to investigate what she was talking about. Ahhhh. Now I get it.

What Kari was turning me on to - ok, let me rephrase that. What Kari was suggesting to me is the Veritas Small Plow Plane. Having checked it out, she is right, as it is exactly what I need. Working on small projects means working with thin stock, and this plane comes as a set with 5 blades; 1/8", 1/4", 3/16", 5/16" and 3/8", all for $279.00 CAN, including the plane.

This plane has now been added to my Lee Valley Wish List which, my wife was shocked to discover, now scrolls for two pages.

Thanks Kari.

Peace,

Mitchell

Monday, February 10, 2014

Looking for my next project

I just got the good news that my brothers wife is pregnant and they are expecting at the beginning of January. Ive been looking for a good time to make a rocking chair cradle and this looks like it. Its going to be a big project but I dont plan on starting it for a couple of months. In the mean time I would like to start working on something but I have no ideas right now. Ive thought about making a bread box but I have no space to put one in. My wife wants some shelves in the playroom but that is going to be an expensive project and Im not sure that I want to put the money into it right now.

What projects is everybody working on right now? Please post them down in the comment section.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Oxford Frame for Robin

Last week while my class of 7th graders was in the school library, one of the library chairs broke. All by itself - "I swear!"

Later, I spotted the chair pitched in the dumpster behind the loading dock. As if it wasnt enough that the chair was a middle school casualty, now the wood it was made of was going to be wasted. Finding this unacceptable I did what any good scrounge/woodworker would do - I climbed into the dumpster after school and shoved the carcass into the back of my truck.

Heres what was left of the chair when it arrived at the shop:

Now Robin, our school librarian, is amazing. She is always doing great things for our kids and school, so I wanted to use this salvaged wood to make some kind of thank you gift for her.

I took the chair apart to see exactly what I had to work with.

After picking two pieces with interesting grain, I cut of the ends to remove the dowels left over from the original joints.

I had been thinking about making some kind of box, but at this point I changed plans. The long, relatively slender pieces just didnt lend themselves to the kind of box I had in mind, so I decide to make a picture frame instead. I sketched up a rough plan for what I call an Oxford frame. I have no idea where I came up with that name, or why it is (maybe) called that.

Next I resawed the two pieces into four, and ganged them together for thicknessing with a scub (just for the few odd high spots) followed by a fore plane with a cambered iron and then a jack with an uncambered iron. (One of the screw hole cross-sections seen in the second picture is still visible on the back of the finished frame - a neat clue to the salvaged nature of this wood.)

After deciding which faces would show, I used a square, a marking gauge, and a marking knife to lay out the half-lap joints. I used a chisel, held by the blade (sort of an icepick grip) to cut vee shaped grooves for the saw to follow. The outside of each groove is the vertical knife cut, while the inside (waste) is the angled cut from the chisel. This really helps me make clean, square crosscuts by hand.

After that, it was just a matter of cross cutting (done with a LN dovetail saw filed for ripping...hey, it works!) and then using a mallet and chisel to pop out the waste, followed by paring it clean. I havent gotten around to making a bench hook yet, so I am always just using two dogs to cut against. It has been working so well that I may never get around to making that hook.

A quick test fit, then it is off to the stopped rabbets for the glass, mat, picture and backer.

On the shorter pieces, rails in this case, the half-laps are cut in the back the same as the rabbets. This gave me enough room to drop a router plane into the gap created by the lap and then it was easy enough to plane the rabbet using the fence on the plane and lowering the blade after each pass.

On the stiles however, the laps are in the face so this technique wouldnt work. There may well be a way to cut stopped rabbets with a router plane, but I couldnt figure it out. So I reverted to the craftmanship of risk and did it with a chisel freehand. So much easier! Next time I am leaving the 71 on the shelf and just doing it with the chisel and marking gauge.