Woodworking Projects and Plans: dovetail

Some time ago, I purchased a roller ball, inserted in a cylinder and having a screw for fixing it into the wood. I tought to a sharpening guide like Record 161, and today, finally, I decided to realize it. Construction is easy and requires little time. Necessary:

Two hardwood pieces cm 12x4 ca., one piece cm 10x4 ca., 1 cm thick. Two M5 or M6 brass coutersunk bolts and their wing nuts and washers.Bore together, onto half line, one 12 cm piece and the 10 cm piece, so to have a 8 cm distance between the holes. Countersink holes in the 12 cm piece.

The bolts are blocked by gluing the third piece.

When the glue is dry, the roller ball is screwed at center, under the guide. That is! This guide can hold skewed blade and, having only one point touching the surface, allows to sharpening cambered blades, like scrub plane blades.

For setting the wished angle it is useful to have a reference board, by which is possible to find the searched value simply laying the front of sharpening guide on the board edge.

Cutlery Tray

At the request of my girlfriend, I have been busy making a wooden cutlery tray out of Pine - my first commissioned piece!

As with the small toolbox I used box joints for the sides and chopped mortises with a chisel for the dividers to fit into. This time I made sure I used an aesthetically pleasing number of fingers for each side of the corner joint.

Unfortunately, my clamps were not big enough for glue-up, so another online trip to Axminster tools was in order to buy three Sash Clamps. Also unfortunately, the three clamps and some glue I was buying didnt come to the £50 required for free postage.

Soooo ... I was forced to purchase one of these.

I have a feeling that I will be using this little shoulder plane a lot, it will definitely be handy for my next intended project - a Coffee Table using Mortise & Tenon joints.

The major lesson learnt from this project is not to use too much glue. The squeeze out stuck the wooden blocks I was using to the project and I had to separate them with a chisel. The small scar on the facing side in the photo will be my reminder. Luckily, the cutlery tray has been made to fit tightly into a sideboard draw and the mark wont really be seen.

Im learning so much and gaining confidence with each small project, another few projects with increasing complexity and size and I will be ready to buy some decent wood such as Oak. It can be quite frustrating using Pine, especially Pine that has been rescued from the dump!

Minggu, 13 Maret 2016

Small Toolbox

My second project, a small toolbox / bench tool organiser.

This little project started as an excuse for me to try my hand at mortise & tenon joints and finger (box) joints. Again its made from scraps of Pine I had laying around.

While its pretty small, it serves to keep all my most frequently used things such as squares, tape measure, marking knife & gauges, bradawl and chisels close to hand. Its also big enough to hold my bench backsaws.

All in all Im pretty pleased with how it turned out in terms of the joints. My one niggle is the glue line along the bottom. I am using Titebond polyurethane expanding foam glue which is a nightmare to use and impossible to get off your hands (even with nail varnish remover). I guess I should have put a proper (glue-less) base on the box using grooves instead of getting lazy and simply glueing and screwing on a bottom panel.

Oh well... It served as a good learning experience and the box will be handy.

Sabtu, 12 Maret 2016

Dovetail Plane

Some time ago I purchased a German old plane set, all in good conditions, except one clearly lacking of some pieces. It had two holes on the upper side as well as two others on the lateral face.
Someone added a self-made metal fence; a nicker for cutting cross grain and the angled sole indicated it as a dovetail plane

It remained for some time on the shelf, until I decided for its functional as well as aesthetic recovery. On the upper side was the mark "Paul Kuhn-Leipzig" on the heel the number "106".
So I wrote to Wolfgang Jordan, author of the excellent website
http://www.holzwerken.de/ here is possible to find a lot of info about European continental old woodworking tools.

Magically I received the info I needed: just a dovetail plane and unlike most dovetail planes it had an adjustable depth stop (very useful however). Wolfgang sent a picture from a 1911 catalog he has.

Grathobel is the German translation of dovetail plane; the n° 106 (on the bottom left in the draft) is indicated as dovetail plane with double wooden fence and nicker.

More usefully, Wolfgang sent me some pics of another fully equipped n° 106 coming from a private collection.

Bingo! Now I had all info for restoring the plane.The business sole side showed a substantial wear and I replaced it with a Wild Olive wood insert, cut so that the end grain was exposed.

For the purpose I chamfered the sole edge and created a groove at table saw for the wood insert tongue and groove joint.

Of course were very few chances to find the original plane hardware, so I had to adapt that I found. I used brass knobs for reproducing similar original nuts: I had to bore and thread them. From window hardware scraps I created brass slotted plates for holding the bolt heads.

I utilized Ash wood for the fences; the sole fence defines the dovetail height, while the lateral fence acts as a depth stop and determines the width (see draws)

The final result satisfied me, from aesthetic point of view as well as the functional one.
The plane cuts without hesitation and with a clean result along the grain as well as across the grain. A workhorse which immediately impressed me and, I am sure, will be one of my best tools. Pics of the plane restored follow: