What's Coming Up The Roots

OK sorry for the delay in posting but I was sick one day and then got backed up with work and I am still getting the hang of my posting schedule.  So let me start there with explaining what I hope to do with these posts.  My plan is to post 7 times a month, 4 Sunday posts and 3 Wednesday posts.  The mid week post will be a smaller post usually on some random topic I can think of and demonstrate.  And the weekend post will be a following of what ever project I am working on at that time.

So what do I have planned.  For people other then myself I have a few refinishing projects to do, some of which are already started some of which are still to begin.  One cool project that is both for myself and for others is a hall bench.  I am sure as time progress more projects will arise.  However the projects I have planned for myself really get me excited.

First every month from September to December I plan to build one hand plane a month.  Three wooden planes in the krenovian style.  I have recently finished reading David Finks book Making & Mastering Wood Planes which I would recommend as a read to anyone interested in wooden planes.  I plan to make three wooden hand planes.  Which three I am not entirely sure of yet but I would like to make a smoother for sure. I would also like to make a jack plane, I do own a jack plane already but because jacks are so versatile that multiple jack planes allow for multiple plane setups that allow for more efficient productivity.  The final plane I am not sure of yet, I am considering a spokeshave,  yes a spokeshave is a plane, or some specialty plane such as a rabbeting plane or a grooving plane.  However it is the fourth and final plane that is really exciting to me and also a little terrifying.  I would love to make an infill plane either a smoother or a jack plane.  Not sure if this idea is foolish or brave, maybe a little of both but I am excited to give it a go.

Besides that plane making I plan to make a tool box based on Tom Fidgen's cabinetmakers toolbox featured in his book Made By Hand.  Also inspired by Tom is a dedicated sharpening bench, and the final project for myself that I plan to build over my Christmas break is to build a traditional workbench... with a twist.

I hope to bring everyone along on my woodworking journey over the next four months and beyond.

This week sees the end of my most recent project, the project that started this entire blog.  The cabinet door comes to a conclusion.  This past week so the panel get its final surface prep with the use of smoothing planes, card scrapers and sandpaper.

Resawing the face frame stock down to 3/8"

After the door was all prepped for finished I moved on to the face frame for the cabinet, a very easy task in comparison to the door.  I started by resawing some maple stock and then dimensioning it to the appropriate size.  Then like on the door cut some mitres and then shoot the mitres on my shooting bored (have I mentioned how much I love that bored).  Then a little glue and its also ready for finish.

Planning to final dimension

The finishing process started with finding an appropriate stain that matched the existing vanity.  After finding the perfect colour I applied it using a foam brush.  I let it soak in for about 10 minutes then using a clean Cotton rag I wiped off all the extra.  The final step is to apply the polyurethane.

The Finished Door and Face Frame

So with that I come to the end of the first project I have blogged about.  Till next time

Cheers

Hans Christopher

Patience Equals Perfection

So it has been a week now since I announced that I have made the move to hand tool only woodworking and I am loving it.  The transition is a little cumbersome, having to find homes for some of my machines was difficult but worth it.  The amount of space I have now is amazing plenty of bench top room to work and another whole surface just to put pieces done and do some assembly.

So what has gone on inside the shop this past week, a fair bit but unfortunately not as much as I had hoped.  Lets take a look shall we.

The first post of the blog had me explaining the process of making a bead molding for a door frame I am working on.  This week sees the completion of all the parts ready for final fit and finish.  I began with the raised panel.

Cutting the rabbets to define the tongue to go into the rail and stiles and the edges of the raised profile.

Using a molding plane cut the profile in the long grain and end grain of the panel.

Using my Veritas Bevel Up Jack Plane with a 50 degree iron i smooth panel.  Then using a card scraper I clean up the tea rout and the finally hit all the profiled areas with some 180, 220 and 320 sandpaper.

A few notes about the raised panel.  For my first raised panel it's not bad, saying that there is lots of room for improvement and I look forward to showing everybody how I make a profiles using molding planes.

The next part of the project was getting the mitres on the rails and stiles to fit nice and tight.  I cut the mitres using a sliding compound mitre saw (I made these cuts before I went all hand tools) and they came out poorly.  The mitre was very close to a perfect 45 degree however every cut had a bevel making a tight mitre very difficult.  Luckily using hand tools I knew how to correct this issue.  I used a shooting board and my jack plane to shoot the mitres to get some nice fitting joints.  However I did have to build a mitre shooting board first, not a hard process.  If people wanna learn how I made the shooting board leave a message in the comment section below, and saying please helps.

A ugly open mitre (looked worse in real life)

Shooting the mitre

nice tight closed mitre (looks better in real life)



And the nice shooting board I made so worth the 3 hours it took to make

While using the shooting board something to remember is to be patient.  The first couple of cuts I made i had the plane set real heavy and tried to rush resulting in a very harsh and sudden stop of the plane, hurting my wrist and marring the work, so as with all woodworking patients pays off.

So starting tomorrow I can begin the final assembly and then all that is left is to put stain and finish on it.

And a few more pictures from my trip to Italy.  Enjoy.

Till next time cheers.

Hans Christopher

A Good Place To Start

OK so let me say this first,  I suck at blogging.  This is my third attempted now at writing a blog and I have no illusions of this going better then the previous attempts, and that's all I am going to say about the blogging.  Now on to the meat of the issue woodworking.

I recently finished a bathroom renovation that turned out pretty well, pictures should follow soon if the blogging thing goes well.  The last part of the project is to build a medicine cabinet that matches the vanity.  The cabinet is just a simple particle board box that is existing from the bathroom, my job is to build a new solid wood door that matches the profiles of the doors on the vanity.  I have never built a raised panel door before and I have never done such a project using so many hand tools. Should be interesting.  This is how it's going.

One aspect of the rails and stiles of the door is a bead detail.  I believe that normally when making a bead or a round with hand tools someone would use a molding plane of the specific radius.  I do not own any molding planes yet, I hope to own some soon.  So I made my bead using a block plane and some sandpaper and inlaid it into a grove I cut into the rails and stiles.  The first step was to layout the 3/4" diameter circle on both ends of the maples stock I am using, this was done using a simple pencil and a drafting circle template.  After drawing on the circle I added some lines to act as visual reference.  The first line is in the centre of the stock and the second lines are at 3/8" in from both edge and down each of the stock.  These lines represent the large chamfers I will plane first to start to establish the circular profile.  With that said it's time to make some shavings.

Using my block plane set for a fairly aggressive cut I begin to shape the round profile.  I first plane the chamfer between my two  3/8" marks.  Then I keep making more chamfers that are less and less severe.  At this point I am also not trying to get right down to my circles I drew earlier.  Working with hard maple, that actually had some beautiful section with some curl (lucky me), using a low angle blade and a heavy cut can tearout a bit, so the next step is to reset the block plane to take a very light cut.

With the plane now taking a lighter cut I find it much easier to tame the tear out.  Now I can work my way down to the circles I laid out.  Also with the lighter cut the facets left by each plane pass are smaller helping to create the round profile.

With the profile more or less set it's on to the final steps.  To remove all the little facets if work through progressively finer sand paper.  I start with some 120 and work up to 220.  I'm not entirely sure on my finish for this piece yet so I might sand higher if I chose to use an oil finish.  However because this is a bathroom piece I am thinking that using a finish that acts as a sealer would be a good choice.  I recently purchased some general finishes water based varnish and I think this would be a great time to try it out.

With the profile all done its on to the tablesaw to cut the profile off of the maple strip I was using.  The grove I am putting the profile into is only at 1/2" wide.  So when I set up the fence on the saw I am trying to line it up so I am left with a half inch thick strip with a 3/4" profile.

So with that the profile is done.  Next is to fit the profile into the rail and stiles and after that its on to the raised panel.  But that is for another time.

Cheers