Poor Mans Moxon Vice

Up until now I have been struggling with work holding on my little bench and its poor excuse for a face vice, especially if I need to hold a wide board for dovetailing for example.

My usual solution is to stand the end of the board on something below the vice and pinch one side of the board in the end of the vice and use an offcut to minimise the vice racking and hope it holds... Far from ideal!

Therefore, with my last dry (it hasn't stopped raining over here in the UK) scaffold board, I decided to make a poor mans version of the Moxon Vice (Utube).

Life started out by rough cutting the board to length. Raised beds function really well as saw horses. While sawing the board the cross cut saw started to bind indicating that there seemed to be a lot of internal stresses inside the wood. I had to finish the cut from the opposite side, at least its only a rough cut.

 

The next step was to rip the board into two pieces using my 5 ppi rip saw.

 

Again the saw started to bind and the wood actually split apart about ten inches before I completed the cut. Thankfully, the split was pretty accurate and not far from my marked line. After a quick assessment with the winding sticks it was time to get the boards flat and smooth.

 

For each board, I used my no#6 Foreplane to remove the rough saw mill marks and get a face basically flat and wind free before finishing it with my new Lie Nielsen no#7 Jointer plane. After the face I made one of the edges straight and square to the reference face.

Lastly, using a marking gauge, I marked all around the edge of the board before flattening the other face side to thickness and making it parallel with the first side. One thing I have learn't is always plane this second side across the grain towards the unfinished edge. If any spelching occurs, it will get cleaned up when completing the final edge. Finally, I made the last remaining edge square and parallel to the first edge.

With both boards basically four square, all that remained was to cut and square the ends on the bench hook.

After flattening, I ended up with one board being 1 1/4" thick and the other 1 3/8" thick. I glued a piece of 2"x2" timber as a cleat to the thinner of the two boards, this would be the back vice 'chop'. I thought that the added cleat would make up for the slight lack of thickness.

The last remaining step to get a functional vice was to bore the holes in each end to accept the F-clamps.

With the vice essentially finished, all that was required was to soften the corners with a block plane and give the whole thing a light coat of Linseed oil to provide a bit of protection. I used a pair of holdfasts to attach the vice to my bench.

 

The distance between the clamps (width of board the vice is capable of holding) is just under 24" and I didn't think to make sure it was over 24" when cutting the ends square as the thing looked more than adequate for my needs. With hindsight, 24" is a good minimum capacity, as a lot of furniture uses 24" wide boards.

One last note, the vice might be handy for work away from the bench as it fits really nicely on my Saw Bench. If the sun ever shows up, maybe some dovetailing in the garden?...

Rabbet Joint Box

While making the simple bevelled wall board for my 'Ships Clocks' a few days ago, it occurred to me that the very same design might make a good (albeit chunky) box lid. 

My stock (scaffold board Pine - of which I have a lot of it!) wood is around 1 1/2" thick, the simple design allows me to use what I have without having to waste most of the wood making it thinner. It also saves me a lot of sweat with a hand plane!

It also occurred to me that I have never made a simple Rabbet jointed box...

I completely forgot to take any pictures during the build as things progressed pretty quickly. A rough description of the steps I took are below:

Box Carcass

• Cut four pieces (2 long , 2 short) of cheap (pre-planed) Pine to length on the bench hook.
• 'Shoot them' to exact lengths with square ends on the shooting board.
• Mark and cut the shoulder line of each rabbet on the short sides of the two long boards (the front and back of the box) again using the bench hook - 2 rabbets per long board.
• To form the actual rabbets, I first tried using my small shoulder plane with a wooden baton clamped in place to keep me straight, but this proved to be quite slow. For the three remaining rabbets, I simple used my dovetail saw to cut down the end grain (much like sawing a tenon), finally cleaning the joint up with the shoulder plane. In retrospect, I should have (been brave) tried to remove the waste with a chisel which would probably been even faster than sawing.
• Use a plough plane to cut 1/4" grooves in the bottom of the boards for the base to fit into.
• Cut a thin plywood board to size for the box bottom.
• Glue the carcass together.
• Plane the edges and joints flush and generally tidy it up.

The Lid

• Approximately cut to length a piece of rough scaffold board.
• Assess the board for grain direction and use winding sticks to check the 'wind' and straightness of the board. Pencil in notes on the board as to what work is likely to be required and where.
• Plane one face flat using my no#6 and mark it as a reference.
• Hand plane the adjacent long edge straight and at 90 degrees to the first face and mark it.
• Use a marking gauge to mark all around the edges of the board to get it to uniform thickness again using the no#6 to remove wood fast.
•  Use a marking gauge to mark the second long edge parallel to the first.
• Precision cut the board to the required length and ensure it is square.
• Mark bevel lines all around the board using a marking gauge. Used my no#4 plane to create the bevels, being careful to finish the short end grain sides first.
• Fit small brass hinges and apply some wax finish...

While the box does look rather like a coffin for a small dog or a cat, it was very enjoyable to make with most of the project being completed in a single day. Rabbet jointed boxes come together pretty fast! Not as nice looking or as strong as a dovetailed box, but I did learn from it and at this stage that's the most important aspect for me.

 

 

More 'simple' projects to follow ...

Wall Mounted Ships Clocks

Wow it's been nearly two months since my last blog post! Will anyone still be reading this?

While I have been back home from my yacht delivery for a few weeks, I have been busy building a new wooden garden fence and spending my time with Bible study. Finally, the other day the lure of the tools enticed me back to my wood working room to build something. Nothing complicated, just something quick and dirty to get me started again.

A simple bevel edged board to wall mount my beloved ships clock & barometer. These little treasures of mine have been with me on all my sailings, including three single handed Atlantic crossings, so they mean a lot to me. It will be nice to still enjoy them now I'm a 'land lubber'.

Anyway, I'm back - I haven't forgotten the blog and there will be more small projects to come, I promise.

Dovetailed Box

After attempting my first dovetails around November last year, I haven't built upon the experience or attempted any other dovetails since. The Small Pine Chest was (and still is) my favourite project so far and I think I got very lucky with some quite tidy joints for a beginner.

I decided it was time to attempt to repeat the experience, almost knowing ahead of time that the first time was a fluke, and so to prepare for disappointment.

The idea for this project came from a small piece of Oak I had which was an offcut from the first ever thing I made. I decided it would make a nice lid for a box, and this with a length of 6" wide Pine board formed my stock.

I wont bore you too much with the starting process, needless to say that the bench hook, tenon saw and square, chisel and knife saw to cutting the pine to length, before using my no#4 plane and shooting board to shoot the ends clean.

Having all my components to size, I started to get a feel for the finished box.

After cutting to length I noticed a slight cupping of the boards and so dealt with this by planing across and diagonal to the grain with both my no#6 and no#4 .

Time to get my tools sorted for dovetails....

I used my new Veritas 1:6 dovetail template to make short work of marking out the tails, doing two boards at a time.  It's certainly more accurate and less fiddly than using a bevel gauge. Time for some chopping...

After a quick sharpening session, I decided to remove all the tail waste using only chisels. Previously I think I removed the bulk of the waste using a fret saw. Once complete I marked out the bespoke Pins one board at a time using the side of my no#4 plane to mate up the boards accurately.

Maybe as a result of watching to many Utube dovetail videos, I tried to make the effort to not be overly slow and meticulous about making this box. I certainly didn't fuss to much with cutting the tails knowing the pins are marked from the tails and should correct any innacuracies. Obviously you get faster and better with time, but I don't want to spend a week making a simple box.

Ok .. first dry fit... not as good as they should be cosmetically but it's certainly a strong box! Lesson learn't my board ends are slightly off square and hence my baselines are different either side of the board when marked out with the marking gauge. It's not a lot but enough to create gappy joinery. On with the show...

I thought it was about time I did my first ever grooved bottom and do the box bottom properly. 

Ta daaa....The debut of my new Record 44 Plough plane. After sharpening the 3/16ths blade and a quick practice with a small scrap of pine, I went for it. The groove was cut to (just over) 5mm deep, meaning I had to allow 1cm in length and width when cutting the bottom piece. I decided to put the grooves all the way through the pins and later hide the resultant holes with a skirt.

Time to cut some thin plywood for the bottom... 25cm x 17.5cm.

And do a dry fit....

The box holds together really tightly, it could probably serve it's purpose without glue.... I hate this bit!

Panic over - I managed to get it all together with a lot of banging with a leather faced mallet and a scrap of wood. Unfortunately, the sight of the joinery closing up nicely with the added gap filler of glue led to me applying slight too much pressure....Doh!

Not to worry - it's not the end of the world and I can probably doctor those small cracks when the glue is dry. The next step was to plane the old varnish from the box lid, trim it to size and add a decorative small bevel.

With the box out of the clamps I used my Stanley 102 block plane to trim the proud pins and tails before smoothing with my no#4.

The clamps and glue had helped to close up the dovetails, still not perfect and the odd one was a little gappy, but overall I'm not too disappointed as a second attempt. In the true spirit of 'full disclosure', the following pictures show the pins and tails of all four sides.

Basically at this stage the box is almost complete and I had a change of mind (partly due to laziness) about fitting a skirt to hide the bottom groove in the bottom half pins. Instead I thought I would keep it simple, try and match the grain as best as I can and plug the holes. 

I used a chisel to 'rive' off small pieces of  pine and trim to fit before glueing them in and finally using my flush cut saw to trim them off. I think they look fine.

So aside from having any hinges (which I'll fit at a later date) and a coat or two of Boiled Linseed Oil (BLO), I was done. All in all I am quite pleased with this project both in terms of how it turned out and the time it took me to do it. Being only  my second attempt at dovetails and my first ever grooved bottom made it interesting from start to finish without it becoming too epic.

More Stools pt4

We're almost done ...

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Ok so where are we ... Two stools, with all the joinery cut.

Both are structurally complete with all the components dry fit in place. The next step   is to round over all the sharp edges and put some shape into the seat ends and the centre brace ends.

I used my t(rusty) old Stanley 102 block plane to break the aris of all the edges and my no#4 to bevel the seat ends. I made sure to sharpen before starting as this is all end grain work.

Sand paper and a file was also used to smooth the edges where appropriate. The final shaping isn't complete as there will have to be further 'clean up' after gluing to finish it.

I also planed the components and done any final tweaking to make sure the joinery was tight.

Time for Glue Up...

I hate this stage! No matter how many times I do a dry run rehearsal and get everything ready, I always seem to get stressed and panic and it never goes smoothly. Regular readers may recall I had a nightmare when glueing the original stool. Glueing the smaller stool first, the same happened again!... The bloody glue makes the joinery (particularly the seat top to leg joint) really tight and everything starts to dry way to quickly! I had to really use a fair bit of clamping pressure to get all the joints up snug. It's a 'head job' because you spend all your time trying to make joinery nice and precise and tight, only to realise sloppier joinery would lead to a better final finish. The joinery didn't look as nice after glueing as it did during the dry fit...At one stage, I thought about aborting but it felt like I might struggle to get it apart in time. Leaving the stool to dry for 24 hours and having a limited number of clamps, I fearfully, began the glue up of the larger stool the next day - Friday 13th!

Luckily, the glue up of the larger stool went smoothly. Not having enough clamps, I only dry fit the center brace of each stool during glue up to keep the legs square. I will do these on both stools together after the main glue up is complete.

While the larger stool was in clamps I used my flush cut saw to trim the leg tops and side brace ends of the smaller stool and then again used the Stanley block plane and some sand paper to smooth the joinery.

Time to cut the legs so that the feet sit properly and the stool is level...
I used the kitchen work surface after checking it for flat to stand each stool on, before shimming each leg using folded paper to get the stool level. I used my combination square level to check both dimensions, before using a small block of wood and a ruler to mark around each leg.

I used my marking knife and chisel to further mark each cut and make the cut more accurate using my carcass saw. A quick chamfer of each leg using my block plane and sand paper to stop the end grain splitting if the stool is moved sideways on carpet for example and I am basically done.

I finally spent some further time cleaning up and sanding before rubbing each stool with a coat of Boiled Linseed Oil. I may experiment with some liquid wax finish as well.

So ... two stools finished. I think I prefer the look of the smaller stool. I definitely wont make any further projects two at a time. I seem to lose focus and miss being able to concentrate on the details of a single piece. Not to mention progress is obviously a lot faster... and more enjoyable.