The Taylor Garage

This weekend I took a break from commenting, to actually get into the garage and do some woodworking. I started Saturday morning with just a bunch of boards, but now I have a few pieces assembled that are starting to look like more than a random pile of wood.

The plans for this crib call for a ton of dowels (something I’m starting to lament). Given the first few holes I drilled, I knew I was going to need some help making the reciprocating holes in the second pieces of wood. Since there is a Sears Hardware right across the street, I headed there first in search of help.  I wasn’t able to find any dowels centers, so I decided to drop a couple of bucks on these:

That’s a pair of 3/32 inch drill bits, with 1/4 inch chucks. Since I’m using 1/4 inch dowels, I figured I could slip these guys into the holes I drilled, marking the second piece with the bit tips.  It sounded like a good plan, until I tried to actually fit the bits into the holes. Things were a little snug, to say the least – I wasn’t willing to force them in.  So this learning experience brought about a trip to my local Woodcraft store. Since this was my first trip to a Woodcraft (or any woodworking-specific store), I made a little list of things I wanted to peruse and likely buy.  Atop that list was a set of dowel center pins:

The set came with four pairs of varying sized pins.  Luckily for my project, there are a pair that fit into 1/4 inch holes as well as a pair that fit onto 1/4 inch dowels, allowing me to mark two sets of wholes at once. I picked up a handheld countersink bit (something I’ve wanted to get for a while) and a set of cabinet scrapers, from E. Garlick & Sons:

I’ve done quite a bit of sanding for this project so far (the crib rails), so I’ve been willing to try anything that would ease the amount of time I spend with grit in my hands.  These cabinet scrapers certainly fit the bill.  Right off the bat, I put them to use smoothing the outside of the butt-jointed legs of the crib.  Not only did it remove the slight lip caused by my less-than-perfect clamping, but the scraping left an amazingly smooth surface behind – a bonus I really had to experiece to believe! And, oh those wispy, sexy shavings:

Now armed with smooth boards and the proper marking devices, I began to assemble the pieces that will form the base of the crib.  The first part I worked on was the back of the base. It consistes of two horizontal board, doweled to a pair of legs, framing a sheet of plywood to cover the back.  The front is a matching frame, but without the plywood sheet – there are drawers planned for that space.  Here’s a view from what will be the inside of the piece:

And a picture of the front frame:

Given I’m assembling the first parts, I’ve offered myself the first opportunity to make a large mistake – which turned out to be an offer I couldn’t refuse*. Any one notice how there are about two inches of space on the front frame between the bottom of the legs and the bottom of the frame?  That same lift is supposed to be on the back piece as well, but I was in too big of a hurry when I started assembling.  Like I say – Measuring twice doesn’t help if you only think once.

As things stand right now, I’m willing to live with the aesthetic mismatch of the piece as it stands – especially since that part will be against a wall. Aesthetics aside, I had to deal with the fact that the piece of plywood covering that hole had to be arrange just so in order to fill the gap. If you look at things just right, you can see the slivers of light that make the gaps:

If I had made the frame properly, there would be about one inch above and below the frame to ease attaching the plywood.  As it is I have only adhered the sheet at the ends. I figure that I need to do some kind of sealing along those “gaps,” as well as putting in some angle brackets along the length of the plywood, to further secure the piece. If anyone has any suggestions on how to fix this problem (besides reworking the whole piece), I’m all ears – please leave a comment.

The sides of the frame were a little easier to assemble, being two frames of oak secured to a piece of plywood:

Each of the oak pieces will be drilled for dowels and attached to the legs (that are already part of the front & back assemblies).  On top of this will sit the massive 66″x33″ piece of 1/2 inch birch plywood.  Of course, that is all predicated on me clearing out enough floor space in the garage to actually assemble this.  That will likely prove more difficult than the slip-ups I’ve encountered so far.  I guess I better get to cleaning…

*No horses were harmed in the typing of this blog post.

Warning – This post is the culmination of several different thoughts/ideas, spurred on by a single Tweet.

Being new to both woodworking and blogging, I’ve been wondering how to get both more traffic to my blog and how to get more involved with the growing online community of woodworkers. I take part of that back – I’m not interested in raw numbers of visits, unique users, or page views.  I don’t have any banner ads, referral programs, or an online store.  To be honest, I’d rather have 10 people who visited and commented on a regular basis than have 100 unique IPs view my homepage.

They key to this desire is that I know I’m not the only one.  Many of the woodworking blogs I visit seem to have a similar level of participation. I know for a fact another woodworking blogger does feel this way – Stuart Lees over at StusShed had this tweet earlier – “How do you get reader participation in comments?” I replied to him that I wish I knew the answer, which in turn spurned my writing this blog post.

I understand how much community interaction can spurn creativity and growth.  In fact, a post by Tom Iovino over at Tom’s Workbench was the impetus for me to starting to write here.  So here is my personal goal and my challenge to all those who read or write woodworking related blogs:

Comment.  Comment everywhere.  The blogroll on my site isn’t just a list of blogs I could find, it is a list of woodworking blogs I check on an almost daily basis.  I enjoy reading them, but how many more posts would there be if I commented? I know that I would post more often if I knew I had a group of people who were checking in daily for updates. So I’m going to be a vocal member of that group of people, for the other blogs out there.  So for the next month (through Labor Day in the US), I’ll be commenting on every new post at the woodworking blogs I follow. 

Imagine the woodworking community we can build if we all participate like this. I know I wouldn’t mind the comments

Despite the electron smashing power of most of my shop, I think I fall into Rob’s Category #2, The Power Tool Woodworker Who Uses Hand Tools. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on building up my hand tools in the plane department. I certainly don’t have the kind of money to be splurging triple-digit dollars on brand new Lee Neilson planes, so I went where any frugal, computer-savvy shopper goes these days – eBay & Craigslist.

Over the last six weeks or so I’ve discovered that if you are patient enough, you can find what you’re looking for on a tight budget.  My first forray into a “serious” hand tool purchase was this Stanley #190 Rabbet plane, which I scored for $25 after shipping:

To be honest, this was a bit of an impluse buy. I don’t know that I really need a rabbet plane and I’m pretty sure it didn’t need to be my first plane purchased.  But the auction was ending that first night I was looking and you’d be hard pressed to beat the price.  This one is the plane that (so far) needs the most clean-up work.  There’s some rust and dirt to clean off and the japanning (which I think is just a fancy word for black paint, but I’m not sure) is mostly gone. I imagine that this will come in handy once I start using some “real” joinery, like rabbets, mortise & tenons, or the occasional  1 1/4″ dado!

My second winning bid was for a set of two Stanley #110 Block planes. I think these were the big steal, coming in at $18 for the pair, including shipping:

Unlike my rabbet plane, I know I’ll get immediate use out of at least one of these guys. The first task will be paring some end grain off a few boards that were cut just a little longer than their mating pieces in Briana’s crib. There are an endless number edges I’ll be chamfering on that project as well, I’m sure.

My latest plane pickup (arrived just this week) is the big dog, a Stanley #7 Jointer plane:

This one came in at a cool $72 after shipping, but that’s a great pound-for-pound value (and this thing is heavy).  Once I get around to building a laminate-top workbench (somewhere down around 4 or 5 on the project list), I’m sure this guy will be a huge help.

Despite the shoddy appearance of the rabbet plane, all of these tools actually have very flat soles. There’s hardly any light that peeks beneath a straight edge held against the soles, so just a little TLC is in order to get them dead-on.  For the blades, I have a combination wet stone to do the sharpening:

I sharpened my first blade tonight, one of the block plane blades.  I figured that they were a decent size to work with (fit easily in my hand); plus I have two of them, so if  I screwed up I wouldn’t be in too big of a bind. I think that it turned out alright, but if anyone has any techniques they’d like to share – please leave a comment; I’m sure there’s plenty I have to learn in this arena.  The satisfying part about laboring with the blade and the stone is the result – a whole new way to create “sawdust” in my shop:

These are my first shavings ever, from the end grain of a 3/4″ red oak board that was lying in my scrap pile. It didn’t take much effort to create an incredibly smooth surface.  Between that and the curls, I’m definitely hooked on planing, something Mrs. ShopOwner is undoubtedly pleased with, given my recent flurry of spending…

Continuing on with the crib construction: This evening I drilled the holes in the crib rails for the dowel joinery.  The plans called for two 1/4″ inch dowels on each end of each rail.

I marked the lines on each rail before I rounded the sides on my router table. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been if I had to mark the lines after cutting the curves!

One bonus of having a floor-standing drill press is I can lower the table down enough to stand a 26″ piece of wood on its end, still having it fit beneath the business end of the drill press:

I dropped the table down, secured each rail on end with a wooden hand-screw clamp, then clamped that rig to the table:

This was looking like a solid setup, until I started drilling some holes. One disadvantage to buying a really old tool is that not everything works as well as it did when it was new.  The biggest problem I’ve found is that the clamps/hold-downs don’t grip as well as they should.  Both the table and the head unit will rotate around the pole, even when the hold-downs are tightened.  Because of this problem, not all of my holes lined up perfectly.

My rationalization: as long as I “perfectly” drill the reciprocating holes, this shouldn’t matter.  But that means I’ll need to figure out a way to really clamp those parts down so they don’t move. I can’t afford to screw up this next set of holes or the rails will look really shody.

That’s just the beginning of the tool maintenance I need to do before proceeding with the crib.  I also need to gussy up a block plane I recently bought.  There are some corner pieces I’ve already glued together that need some TLC on the edges. I can either sand and sharpen a block plane, which will fix many pieces going forward, or sand and sharpen just the pieces at hand.  I think I’ll choose the former – better ROI.  Not to mention my recently discovered disdain for excessive sanding…