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Wanted: Tardis


Timbo

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A productive day sorting the workshop. Yes, it's now a workshop, well almost. Of course, it's still a shed, but it's a workshop. Perhaps a shirkshop, due to me spending a very enjoyable day listening to the football on the radio in my sh workshop.

'Football' is not popular with Ellie at the moment. This is due to her being hit in the head with one yesterday. Visiting a children's play area with granddaughter Gracie, some idiot eleven-year-old child blasted a leather football, point blank into Ellie's head and knocked her almost senseless. Ellie was holding Grace up on a climbing frame at the time. While Ellie sat down I took over helping Grace down and the lad's idiot mate then booted the ball into my face. Ellie had been quite politic. I was not. Just a few feet away from me was a mother nursing a three-week old baby. GAME OVER!

Anyway, some serious workshop time! I picked up my table saw and jointer from Ben Gunn's on Wednesday. I had just dumped them into the shed, so now it was time to fit them...somewhere. The table saw was the easiest as I had designed the space in the shed around the saw. The jointer was another matter. It's a stupid shape, long and tall. The only place it would fit length wise was under my workbench but the shelving I had fitted underneath was not tall enough. In the end I removed the shelving under half of my bench and lifted it up higher. I could now fit the jointer under the bench.

I'm still condensing and trying to come up with storage solutions. I seem to have a hell of a lot of plastic cases. Everything you buy, from drills to screws and saws to jigs seem to come in a moulded plastic case. The thing is, none of them is uniform in shape and case is often quite large compared to the product it contains. I am starting to run out of ideas and places to store things. But I still had space under the table saw rolling bench between the table top and the bottom shelf. I also had a new thin space under the bench where I had fitted the jointer. 

So, starting with the table saw bench I made a shop drawer big enough to hold all of my drill bits and mortising bits. I had some pine boards, some off cuts of poplar and some 6mm plywood in my scrap bin which would do a quick but solid job. The poplar made some runners on the underside of the table. The pine board I butt jointed and glued and tacked into place with my brad nail gun, before clamping. Once the glue was dry I ran some screws into the joints just to make sure the joints were solid. I then glued, tacked and screwed on a drawer bottom. I was not looking for a perfect fit...something that was easy to use and with space for my junk was all I wanted. I finished off by planing off the edges, a good sanding to avoid future splinters and popping a pull on the drawer front.

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So into the drawer goes all of my drill bits, screwdriver bits, flat bits, hole cutters and general bits...oh and bobs!
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That little area under the bench is just big enough for a tray to house all of the fastenings I have accumulated. Currently, I carry a stock of three types of fastening. I prefer Turbo Gold screws from Screwfix for general use. Stainless steel screws of course for Royal Tudor we buy from Wroxham or I pick up trade packs of TurboUltra PZ Double Self Countersunk screws from Screwfix. I also keep a stock of pocket hole screws of various lengths and threads for quick easy joinery. These have the square Robertsons drive heads...I find them annoying. I also carry 18 gauge brad nails for my nail gun (a must if you are trying to do things one handed when it comes to glueing and clamping).

I'm currently looking for a supplier of more traditional screw fixings for various 'box' projects I've been asked to make. Ellie is more than happy to indulge my hobbies of boating and woodwork but they have to pay for themselves. Consequently, I have a steady stream of orders for trinket boxes, cantilever boxes, beer totes, cutting boards and my latest design a Sushi Set for my daughter. As with most 'home crafts' folks are quite good on 'ordering stuff', will be amazed at the amount of time it takes to make something and then splutter aghast when you tell them the price of making what they wanted. 

I should also say that I'm well known for spluttering at the prices affixed to some 'hand made' wooden items. The day before yesterday I was 'coughing' at the audacity of the woodworker who put a £25 price tag on a six by six-inch piece of oak that, if you squinted, could have been shaped like a lemon.

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So with the second drawer made, and the football results coming in, I started sorting through all of my various boxes and cases of fastenings. I discarded one bin bag full of cardboard and plastic and started on the next load, using the various plastic containers inside the boxes that the screws originally came in to line the drawer. I then sorted through all of the fastenings putting each type and size in its correct place.
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Today I move on to sorting storage for sanding discs and sanders!

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Tim, when I was small my dad made a ton of these for holding odd tools, made from plywood :-

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they are great as you can just move them around as needed, I guess you could also make a rack to store them in too, or just sit them up on a shelf out of the way. the only issue is they dont stack.

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Has the Broads Authority extended its remit to include plywood and router bits?

So today's moan...what is it with plywood being non-standard in thickness and router bits being made in sizes that bear no relation to any timber thickness?

So I have what is supposed to be 6, 12 and 18mm plywood. The 6mm is actually 5mm and 5.5 mm. The 12mm is 11.5 mm and 11.29mm and the 18mm is 17mm.

Now the corresponding choice in router bit 6.3mm, 12.7mm and 19.1mm.

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its not the BA its Imperial storm troopers, well its imperial measurements, 6.3 = 1/4", 12.7 =1/2", but then plywood was originally designated by the number of plys, 3 ply 5 ply 7 ply etc, and even under the imperial rule was not an exact size.

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I do wish we could go back to imperial measurements! All of the woodwork project plans are in feet and inches. The timber is in metric. The tools are in Imperial, although ones made in Germany are in metric and ones made in China are in 'a rough guess'.

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I just measure in what ever is the nearest be it metric or imperial. Back in the day we always measured in thou with reference to the wire size or if we had to make specialised tools.

Tim just go with what ever  floats your boat. Hardwood always used to be priced in square inches.

Regards

Alan

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Well, the first attempt has hit the scrap pile...

I used the 12mm plywood for the sides and 6mm plywood for partitions. I cut 6mm grooves into the ply and a 12mm wide rebate top and bottom with the table saw and then cut the ply down the middle to give me two sides. I then cut the partions to size and a top and bottom from 12mm ply.

Now the problems started. The grooved sides started to curl and roll up. I glued the whole thing up and put on every clamp I own. Nipped off to pick Ellie up from work and when I returned the whole thing had popped out of the clamps and looked as though it had exploded. 

Back to the drawing board. I think tomorrow I will make the sides out of 18mm ply and the partitions out of 12mm ply.

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7 hours ago, Timbo said:

I do wish we could go back to imperial measurements! All of the woodwork project plans are in feet and inches. The timber is in metric. The tools are in Imperial, although ones made in Germany are in metric and ones made in China are in 'a rough guess'.

Reminds me of when my old Dad was putting up a shelf in his garage. He measured the space with one Chinese tape measure - 39 inches, then measured the wood with another. When he tried to fit the shelf, he found it was 3 inches short. After trying this twice, with the same result, he eventually discovered that the "inches" on the second Chinese tape were much shorter than they should have been. 

Steve

 

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1 hour ago, SteveO said:

he eventually discovered that the "inches" on the second Chinese tape were much shorter than they should have been. 

you have just made it clear where our civils subcontractors buy their tape measures from, their as laid dimensions are never correct, and there was me thinking they just guestimated the measurements, we once had a case where 54 metres of cable was laid along a road only 45 metres long.

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A day of pottering as I was feeling decidedly jaded. With Dylan mooching around me the best course of action was listen to him...it's how he earns his dog biscuits after all. So after a good nap, and Dylan now leaving me alone...I could continue with the sanding station.

Back to the drawing board and I beefed things up a bit using 18mm scrap plywood for the sides and 12 mm scrap plywood for the shelves. I also decided to change tooling for cutting the grooves and went with routing the grooves instead of using the table saw. As a 'shop' project, after all, a 0.7mm gap in the grooves would not matter. When it comes to using this technique in a project I will be using timber as opposed to plywood so I can plane the stock to the correct thickness.

So, first of all, I Squared off the scrap of 18mm ply I was using for the sides on the table saw. I intentionally left the panel on the 'long' side so I could create a lip to retain the sander on top of the station and to give myself some play in laying out the lines for the grooves.

Next, I laid out my cut lines leaving 5cm between each shelf to take a full stack of sanding discs. I clamped the panel to my outside bench and then clamped a section of straight edged timber 38mm away from my cut lines. The 38 mm is the radius of my router plate. I could now run the router down the edge of the timber using it as a guide and get a straight cut.

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With my grooves cut, it was time to 'dress' the panel and bring it down to its final dimension before cutting it in half on the table saw. I now ripped some six-inch square shelves to fit into the slots from various scrap bits of 12mm (well anything from 10.8 to 12.1 mm) plywood.

Time for the glue up. I popped glue into the grooves and onto the shelves and assembled the unit, popping in a couple of brads with the brad gun on either side to hold everything while I got the clamps into place.

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I had just enough 12mm ply left to make the back of the station, so I cut this to size, glued and brad nailed it into place and added some screws for good measure.

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I gave it a good sanding rounding over the edges and popped a bit of filler into the glaring gaps in the ply (it was rough stuff used before), then I drilled and countersunk two holes in the top lip so I could fasten the station to the wall of the shed, I mean workshop...
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So that's another pile of gubbins condensed and up out of the way!

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3 hours ago, grendel said:

he did explain earlier that he always backed off the blades when not in use.

 

3 hours ago, riyadhcrew said:

Still got your planes sitting on their blades.............

Over lunch, I was watching Paul Sellers Woodworking Masterclass. Paul Sellers is a woodwork teacher and master craftsman specialising in hand tools. I was researching sharpening and setting up my planes. For fans of Paul Sellers forgive me but 'don't he go on'? For fans of Peter Sellers, look I'm really, really sorry... BUT

At 10:49 minutes into this video my head was about to explode when Paul Sellers says...
"Don't lay your plane on its side, it's not good practice it often readjusts your plane."

So...I'm going to leave 'em where they are...and not watch any more Paul Sellers today, thank you very much! :2_grimacing:

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T'was in the year 2017, August the 2nd, at around 10 of the morning that I began my expedition. It was a Wednesday, which was a pity. Somehow, I think a Tuesday would have been giddier. Still, I said to the Gentleman of the Royal Society of Geographers "I shall undertake this expedition for the betterment of man! Like your fellow Royal Geographer Crocodile Packman of the Broads Authority, I have had a vision!". Whereupon the venerable gentlemen of that august society did say 'Just a minute geezer, have you paid your membership? It's not like the Royal Historical Society you know, we accept anyone, well as long as they cough up the £125 a year membership fees!"

For fourteen days I slogged through the jungles of electric cable, slashed my way through forests of crap and grappled with ferocious shelves until this evening I made a discovery. A tantalising glimpse of the fabled Lost Bench Top!

 

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Lying on upon the mythical bench top you will observe in this Lithograph the epic planes of Grandfather! In the next magic lantern slide you witness the shelf of Router Bits and Accessories!

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Although I still have to climb the dreaded Hill of Crap Stuffed on the Table Saw!

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21 hours ago, grendel said:

I do like the artistically placed shavings on the bench top - it really makes the place look as though you are doing woodwork :-)

Set dressing G? Moi? Ah Lotus Blossom, I'd been having some fun with my two new nokogiri or Japanese saws. I became a convert last year, as they are so much easier to use one handed, although it took a while to get the 'knack than western style saws. 

I had been using a Ryouba multi purpose saw by Irwin Marples I'd bought from Screwfix. This saw has two cutting edges, one side is a rip saw and the other side is a cross cut saw. It worked well apart from one problem. The saw blade is detachable from the handle so that the blade can be changed. All well and good except for the button that releases the blade being positioned exactly under my thumb when I grip the handle. The result being I'm left holding the handle flat on my backside and the blade stuck in the lumber making a delightful 'doinnnnggggg' noise.

So I upped my game and invested in two kataba saws which have teeth just down one edge. One being a rip saw the other a cross cut saw. The blades for these are also changeable but fit into the handle in a traditional manner clamped between two sprung jaws.

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Oh boy! Sharp, fast and reasonably accurate for a bloke using his duff hand. As an experiment, and because I couldn't be bothered dragging out the table saw just after I'd cleared the workshop, I made the new shelves etc by hand. I ripped the lumber to width using the kataba leaving myself a 2mm edge that needed cleaning up with the plane. 

I chose to use the number 5 plane, because I nicked the edge on the blade of the number 4 earlier. I discovered this week that sawing and planing require practice...still I managed to get a flat straight edge on the lumber!

 

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So how sharp is sharp?
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Is it sharper than the harvest? Sharpened on cotton? Sharpened on silk? Sharpened on the breeze? Sharpened on beams of sunlight of a new dawn or sharpened on your own anger?

Setting up a newly acquired size 3 smoothing plane I took one look at the blade and knew it was not sharp enough. Even though on the chip iron it had 'sharpen to 25 degrees' printed on it...the blade was not at 25 degrees. So I began the sharpening process, taking out the nicks in the blade edge, grinding it to 25 degrees and going through the stones until I polished the bevel with the 1000 grit. I then set about putting on the thirty-degree micro bevel starting at 460 grit for just a few strokes and polishing with another few strokes at 1000 grit. I tested the edge gently, two strokes with my thumb. How sharp is sharp? This sharp!
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Ouch!

But...for the first time ever I have micro thin shavings using my new smoothing plane which is going to make a huge difference to the amount of time I spend sanding!

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7 minutes ago, grendel said:

oh Tim, you know that when testing sharpness you test it on somebody else, not your own finger, or at the very least test if it shaves the hairs on your arm, a bald arm is better than half a finger.

I remembers years ago I bought a penknife in Fowey, I have forgotten the price, but it was extra for the box of plasters, I guess we never learn.

Regards

Alan

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  • 1 month later...

A busy day in the Workshop today. I've been having a bit of a mare, erm...just getting a single plank 'square'. Whether I cut by hand or machine I could just not get the thing true. In the end, I set to stripping down, cleaning, lubricating and fitting a new blade to the table saw, dragging out a framing square to make sure the blade, fence and riving knife were all aligned. Finally, I brought out the digital angle box and managed to get the new at blade at exactly 90 degrees to the table.

So...what was I making? Something really simple. A coat rack. I don't have a single coat hook in the place. My coats tend to get draped over the backs of the furniture or hung on the unhinged stile of the door. This causes me a bigger problem in the shape of 'Dumpster Diving Dylan'!

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The local council still in the austere grip of the chinless and gormless, now only collect household waste bi-monthly. This results in rubbish accumulating in kitchen bins until Dylan empties the bin over my floor...or I get cheesed off and take my rubbish round to the local #0000FF coloured councillors house and heave it in his bin. His bins get emptied weekly I noticed!

So, I needed to be able to get my coats off the door so that I can close them and keep Fatty Arbuckle from dumpster diving! I had come up with all sorts of designs for my coat rack. Some with drawers for door keys and some with shelves. In the end, I realised the only place I had to put the rack was directly opposite my external door and there was no room for drawers or shelves. So a simple board fixed to the wall, with coat hooks in turn fixed to the board seemed to be the simplest plan. Yes I know you can buy these things ready made in B&Q, Wilko's and Screwfix. But have you seen the quality of the cheap ones and the price of the rest?

I already had some coat hooks that I had spare from kitting out Uncle Albert's flat. I also had a piece of Sapele that was highly figured and too thin for use on Royal Tudor, so now that I knew what I was making, how and I'd reset and cleaned my table saw it was time to get some work done.

First job to take some of the cupping out of my sapele board. The figuring on my board meant that the grain ran in about five different directions so I used a No3 smoothing plane, set to take very fine shavings, and tried to work at a diaganol just to get one flat side to my lumber.
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With one side reasonably flat I could now put the plank through my thicknesser so that I could dress both faces. Finally, I could cut my lumber to width and length on the table saw. The new blade cutting nice crisp 'square' edges!

I now laid out the locations for my coat hooks and drilled and countersunk where I would fix the rack to the wall.
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The knife? I've just got into the habit of using a knife to do my final marking on wood. It's more accurate and makes transferring your marks around the wood so much easier as the blade sits in a little knick while you move the tri-square into position.

One of the design elements from Royal Tudor has rubbed off on me. Rounded corners and edges. I've discovered that I don't belt my knees and elbows on the boat half as much as I do at home, so I'm incorporating that design element into the furniture I make for my home. To do this I grab a handy spray paint can and use it as a template to draw in my rounded corners.
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Now it's off to the bandsaw to cut fairly close to the line and to finally round off the corners on the disc sander. I'd previously marked the holes I needed to drill for mounting the rack and for the coat hooks themselves. Holes for mounting were drilled on the drill press and countersunk. The pilot holes for the coat hooks were drilled using the DeWalt hand drill and a hinge drill bit to make sure the holes stayed central to the holes in the hooks. 

Last bit of shaping on the rack was to run around the edge using the router and a round over bit. Now the bit that most people don't like...

Sanding time! I've recently discovered I can get a much smoother finish with a smoothing plane than with the sander. However the complex figuring on this lumber meant I reached for the orbital sander. I worked through the grits to 120 grit. At this point, I dampened the wood to raise the grain and carried on going through the grits. Between each step down in grit size, I would dampen the lumber to raise the grain and then take it back with a finer paper. I stopped at 400 grit and let the lumber dry thoroughly.

Now the bit I enjoy the most and some much-needed practice for what lies ahead with Royal Tudor...FINISHING!

All wood needs to be finished and choosing the right finish and method can be bloody confusing. Finishing is something that I've taken the time to learn and practise. As a kid, on the odd occasion I would get a school woodwork project to look half decent I would mess it up again with poor finishing.

My coat rack will be subjected to quite a bit of water as winter draws ever nearer and I will still be dog walking in all weathers. So starting with the basics, and something that can be used on boats!

 

 

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