Thursday, February 28, 2013

a dangerous addiction...

last christmas my parents and robin gave me 3 tools, which are made by a small little company in Maine. Called Lee-Nielsen Toolworks.

These were 3 chisels in 1/4, 5/8 and 1/2 size. Which do more or less everything I will ever need from a chisel. But they are so beautifully made and lightweight. I haven't touched my Crown or Fuller Chisels than and terrible neglected them. There is just no point in using anything else anymore. Which brings me to my current dilemma.

The more I work with power-tools  The more they annoy me, because of all the noise and dust they generate. So I try to use hand-tools, whenever possible.

Don't get me wrong. I love my bandsaw, table-saw  mortiser, drill press, planner and drum-sander and don't want to miss them. Especially the table/band-saw. Since I can't cut or draw a straight line, even if my life depends on it. But something is just really justifying in using a plane or chisel to fine-tune and optimize joints. And I really dislike my 'el-cheapo' router-table, since every-time I use it, I worry about my fingers. It's just such a flimsy tool...

And since I got spoiled by using Lee-Nielsens terrible overpriced tools, I can't help myself, but wanting more and more. I don't need a full chisel set, since I barley ever have the need for anything bigger than 1/2" Chisel. But there handplanes are just so beautiful and well made...

Needless to say, I splurged yet again and order a Small shoulder plane and a Dovetail Saw. (Which I will most likely return, since as I mentioned I can't draw or saw a straight line....) But I hope to learn how to cut a dovetail in 30 days with a handsaw or just have to face the truth and stick to tenons.

Now the good part is that there is a very low risk of me acquiring a lot of handplanes, since they are

a) way to expensive
b) I make my money with software development and woodwork is an attempt to get me away from the pc and make some money to keep us in nice furniture.
c) I don't have a workbench, which means I won't be able to use any bench-plane.

Speaking of workbench, I actually attempted a while back to build one, around 2-3am in the morning over several weeks, using left over pine and fir from the doghouse. And it was a gigantic disaster. It warped, was to light and lacked any form of vise. Which meant I kept using clamps to awkwardly hold pieces in place.

So I would love to build a nice workbench sometime around the end of this year, except that hardwood is ridicules expensive and you literally need several hundred board-feet of maple for the top. I run some quick calculation and came up with a number of ~1800$ to build a workbench, just in wood and an end vise.

Maybe I can keep left over parts from my cutting boards and patch a top together over time, which will look funny. But aslong as it's flat and heavy should work.

Speaking of nice furniture,

at this point in time I have enough projects on my 'honey do list' to keep me busy for the next 1-2 years. From building a small reading table, over building 2 nightstands, a bed and headboard, refinishing the kitchen table again, turning chair legs to fix the broken chair to building planting boxes for the backyard...

I guess I'm going to generate a lot of sawdust and maybe a piece or two of furniture...

making progress with the stereo rack...

at this point I spend close to 5 days just prepping wood, cutting it down to size, cutting and mortising tenons etc...

Tonight I finally managed to test fit the first shelf (roughly, way way togo before the tenons are all precisely squared)

dry fitting the shelf to get an estimate if my crazy idea will work...

gluing up the shorter legs...

24 hours togo, before these are dry

The sad part is, I have about 40 clamps at this point in time and keep running out of them. And have honestly no idea yet how to get my hands on 4 more 50" cabinet clamps, to glue up the legs to the tenons. I just refuse to pay 80$ for such large clamps, which I barley ever going to use. For my cutting boards I need 20" clamps max, which 'only' cost 40$ a piece....

But once the shelf is done, it should roughly look like this (from the architecture point of view, haven't decided on chamfers and so yet.)
rough design, no details added. Since it would take to long
The design itself is done, using google sketch-up. Which is a fantastic and easy to use software for 3D designs and basic modeling. The best part is, that it's completely extendable by using the programming language ruby and provides me with plugins to calculate how much wood I need and how it has to be cut.