Spring pole lathe prototype build and workshop spring reorganization

Having thought about it for quite some time, I have started building a prototype of the St Roy copy of the old German spring pole lathe. So far, I have done the layout for both sides and ripped the long side. The progressive rake sharpened panel saw excelled at the task. The mortises for the rails and stretcher have already been chopped on that side as well. If there are no big surprises, I should try turning a large wooden screw real soon. I also plan to turn new matching London pattern handles for all my chisels and oval handles for the old pig stickers. If I enjoy turning, I may also build a treadle lathe at some point in the future... I have plenty of space in the workshop now that we moved a few things around.

The other project this weekend was the annual reorganization of the workshop space. As my winter tenants have moved back out with the spring, we finally had a reason to totally clean the shop. We removed the last traces of IKEA furniture and replaced them with massive wood antique storage. The second workbench was moved under the window and can be used for joinery thanks to the holdfast. The third workbench will still see some use but I'm seriously considering decommissioning it and replacing it with a massive roubo-style bench... it was always a bit small and light for anything more than detail work.

On the furniture side, I have finally taken apart an antique table I wanted to renovate for quite some time. At some point, a previous owner had decided that nailing the top panel to the apron was the best idea ever. Needless to say, the panel split in four at the glue joint due to the seasonal wood movement. I have successfully removed the split panel with minimal damage and removed the long nails. Those were modern-style nails so I chucked them out, but there were quite a few small forged nails on the underside of the panel... it looks like somebody got tired of the wooden top and decided to permanently attach waxed fabric to the table at some point in the past. I have saved all those small nails as I may want to use them for another project ;) The old glue has been scraped and the panels marked. The next step will be to join the planks by pairs and glue them back together with hide glue. I will make the six table buttons while the glue is curing, then refinish the table bottom prior to attaching the top

Sawbench part deux

So the workbench was finished tonight. In the end, I couldn't be bothered to saw the ogee with a coping saw so I chopped it with a bevel down wide chisel... it's faster and there's far less clean-up afterwards. I am now seriously wondering if there was any reason to finally buy the coping saw ;)

It looks like I finally have the muscle memory required to do a single-plane kerf! There was zero clean-up required after sawing the bench legs to height... the bench now sits flat on the floor.

As I had some free time left at the end of the session, I worked on cleaning up the 5/4" Jernbolaget chisel. The first inch of the back is now pretty close to mirror polish and the bevel is now perfectly polished. I will need to make a new handle as it had been seriously abused in its previous life.

After that, I did a pretty informal benchmark of my back saws. It looks like the 11 PPI dovetail saw I tuned with progressive rake is twice as fast as it siblings... even the ones with a lower points count. I still need to tweak the set a tiny bit more before I can call it perfect, I think the left set is wider than the right set. Once I am happy with this setup, I will perform the same tuning on all the back saws.

Sawbench build

Tonight I revisited the "$5.87 sawbench"  and almost finished building one in a single session using only a very basic set of hand tools (cross-cut panel saw, carcasse saw, flush saw, jack plane, 1" chisel, 3/8" chisel, brace, 2 clamps). The only thing left to do is to finish chopping the decorative curves on the long brace, flush the short braces and cut the legs to my exact dimensions. It will basically be a ten minutes job tomorrow evening.

The most shocking aspects of tonight's build are that I can finally let the carcasse saw do its job without interference and that I have become very fast at chopping cheeks/tenons/notches. I found out that I had a far better result cutting shoulders if I didn't actually pay attention to the sawing after establishing a proper knife wall, starting with no weight on the saw and letting gravity do its job. For the cheeks/notches, where the tutorial above use a saw followed by a router plane to remove the waste for the braces, I simply chop the waste away with a very sharp 1" chisel then pare the last 1/16" with the same. The result is a perfectly true and smooth joint in less than a minute usually... even when there's a knot in the way.

Another modification I had to make to the instructions was replacing the cut nails by screws... I would love to use cut nails but they are unfortunately not available around here and I have been unable to find a British seller willing to ship them across the channel so far.

I will probably to build the matching second saw bench in one session soon. I will then possibly make the updated stacking design before deciding which pair will be given to a colleague interested in starting woodworking.

On the appliance front, I updated my shooting board this weekend to include a miter stop... hand cutting the angled dado was way easier and faster than I expected. As I still had a fairly big off-cut on the floor and some 3-ply laying around, I also made a paring board which was very handy for tonight's sawbench braces. The next appliance in the list would be the sloyd style bench hooks.

Blades honing, stock preparation and the joy of dovetails in nice wood

I finally received the large pack of green polishing compound I ordered at the end of my holidays and it does make a huge difference to the sharpening results. Just for fun, I stropped the blades of my #4, #5 and #7 planes with it and it really is night and day with regards to the resulting planed surface. The surface after the #7 is almost already good for finishing, even when I do take thick shavings. All of a sudden, I can also traverse wood without getting any blowout... it's like magic.

I have been milling some more of the riven beech stock to make a dovetail box, with the freshly re-honed blades it was quite fast and almost effortless. I am also getting the craziest patterns on the wood. As I can now suddenly traverse without any issue, removing humps is a breeze. Which means I can now finally use the boards I rived way back on my first attempt without losing my sanity :)

So back to the dovetail box... by sheer accident, the wood has been thicknessed to imperial measurements. The sides are milled at exactly 3/8" thick while the back and front were milled at exactly 1/2" thick. Honest guv'nor, I didn't plan it. I did cut the first tails and matching pins... it's an almost perfect fit at the first attempt. I still have to clean up the base of the pins and tails to have an air-tight fit. Right now there's a 1/64" gap bothering me. Chopping out the waste on this wood is a joy, compared to the tenuous sawing required for softer woods.

Spring clean up and fun projects

I have been able to spend a large amount of time in the workshop in the last two weeks, the result is that a lot of the projects I had on the back burner have been dealt with.

I have restored my 1871-1875 Disston and Sons rip panel saw, cleaned the plate, reassembled it with all screws aligned, jointed the teeth and resharpened it with a progressive rake. It rips like a champ and may have another century of service in it.

I have finally made a saw till to store my hand saws, which has created some space on the shelf under the bench. That space has now been taken over by bench planes, at least until I build a plane till.

I have built a new saw vise, which will be rebuilt in hard wood at some point in the future. It was a fun project that allowed me to practice cutting curved slopes with a chisel and blending curves with rasps, on top of half-laps, dadoes, larges bevels and rounded edges with planes.

I built a new square shooting board, laminated planks and a through dado to hold the stop. I incorporated a rounded gullet at the bottom of the fence so that the occasional dust wouldn't be a problem for the plane.

I disassembled, cleaned, lubricated and refinished my trusty old Ulmia dual marking gauge. It can now be operated without resorting to a mallet, which is a marked improvement. I also refiled the marking pins.

I fixed the old wobbly combination square... it was a combination of factors: the hook holding the blade needed some filing to re-establish a good contact and the skates needed some filing to realign.

I finally got around to fixing the spare #5 plane with the broken yoke... it took me days to chase the old pin out but only 10 minutes to put the new yoke in, lubricate all moving parts and resharpen the iron. I may copy Christopher Schwarz and engrave one side of that plane at some point... it isn't a priceless antique after all.

As I was in a sharpening mood and I was waiting for the glue to set on the tool chest sliding tray, I started sharpening and testing some of my wooden planes. My new sharpening setup works fine, usually taking a couple of minutes before I'm back to work... but thick old steel irons are a different beast. The ward skew iron from my panel raising plane took me the best part of half an hour... most of it at the grinding wheel to remove two chips. As it was so hard to grind, I don't expect that iron to require frequent maintenance.