Tom Caspar

Kubb Carrier

2011-04-11T15:58:00Z

Kubb Carrier

I designed this tote box to hold the set of ash and walnut Kubb pieces that are featured in the June/July 2011 issue of American Woodworker.

The box is made from 1/2" Baltic birch plywood, Honduras mahogany and standard 1" corner brackets. It has a plywood bottom. I glued 1/4" thick mahogany strips to the bottom to protect the plywood from moisture and damage. The sides of the "base" are just 1/4" thick strips, too. Here's a photo of the box from the underside.

If you'd like to see complete plans for this box, please add a comment below. I'm considering publishing it as an article in a future issue of American Woodworker. I think this would be a nice tote for tools, too!

Tom Caspar, Editor

Spice Cabinet Secret Drawer

2009-07-07T13:30:00Z

What's behind the door of Al Hudson's William and Mary Spice Cabinet?

A beautifully-proportioned set of small drawers.

Behind the drawers, there's a very cleverly designed secret drawer. To access this drawer, you must first remove two drawers from the cabinet. Then you pull on the false divider between them. Neat!

This cabinet was featured in AW#143, August/September, 2009, in a story about making line and berry inlay. To give you a sense of scale, the cabinet is 18-5/8" tall, 12-3/4" wide and 11-1/4" deep. The drawers removed from the cabinet are 3-1/4" high and 5-3/4" deep.

Would you like to see the complete plans and how-to information for this project in American Woodworker? Let us know your thoughts by adding a comment below.

Thanks!

Shed Doors 6: Hinge Mortises

2009-04-26T19:08:00Z

Last summer, I added a small shed to my old garage. I hung some temporary plywood doors, and built the real doors in the shop here at American Woodworker. Here are links to the first five parts of the story: Shed Doors 1 and Shed Doors 2 and Shed Doors 3 and Shed Doors 4 and Shed Doors 5.

The doors are ready to glue together, but first I have to cut mortises for the hinges. I chose to make the mortises by hand, the old-fashioned way. Is that a nutty thing to do? Well, we'll see.

The tools needed are pretty simple, and I have the pleasure to own some very nice ones:

A 6" Starrett square, my favorite layout tool;

A Tite-Mark marking gauge, which has a precise micro-adjust mechanism;

An old Greenlee 1-1/4" butt chisel;

An old Stanley Everlast 3/4" chisel (both of these chisels hold their edges quite well);

A Calvo brass mallet, which is beautifully balanced.

And last, a secret weapon, which I'll share with you later in this blog.

The first step is to mark one end of the mortise. I prefer to use an edge tool to score a line rather than draw a line with a pencil. A scored line is much more accurate. A marking knife would work, too, but I just use the corner of my chisel.

I mark the other end of the mortise with a pencil, though-about 1/8" shy of the hinge's length. I'll score an exact mark later.

I use the marking gauge to define the width of the mortise. It also makes a fine scored line.

Next, I establish a shoulder at the scored line. By paring towards the line at a shallow angle, I can pop out a small shaving. Then I stand the chisel up on the line, bevel towards the waste side, and strike it with the mallet to deepen the shoulder. Another paring cut makes the shoulder about 1/32" deep–good enough for now.

I do the same thing along the length of the mortise, paring at a shallow angle up to the scribed line.

Then I deepen the shoulder with a mallet blow on the wider chisel. A wide chisel really helps to ensure that the line stays straight, which is why an old-time carpenter would always have one in his tool kit.

The fastest way to remove the bulk of the waste is to make a series of closely-spaced cuts with the wide chisel. The bevel faces away from the waste, and the chisel is slightly slanted back. To get to this depth, I hit the chisel twice. On the second blow, the chip breaks off by itself. The whole operation goes very fast.

Here's the tool that's going to give the mortise a perfectly flat bottom: a router. A router without a plug. Hand routers are quite old, but this is a new one from Lee Valley. I've got a couple of old Stanleys, but this tool is better.

First, it has a depth stop, which the Stanleys don't have. (I'll show you how that works below.) And second, the cutter is much easier to sharpen. The Stanleys have a one-piece cutter, shaped like an L, which is tough to hone accurately. The Lee Valley cutter is actually two pieces: a cutter and a shaft. The cutter is screwed on to the end of the shaft. To hone the cutter, you just unscrew it and mount it in a device that makes it easier to hold. Now you have a unit that's as easy to sharpen as a chisel.

One thing about a hand router–you don't go for the final depth in one shot, the way you would with an electric router. With a hand router, you lower the cutter bit by bit, one shaving thickness at a time.

Here's the first pass. I'm just taking off the high spots of the rough surface left by the chisel.

For the next pass, I lower the cutter by turning the brass knob on top of the tool. The nut engages in a groove in the cutter's post, forcing it downwards. A quarter-turn of the nut lowers the cutter enough to take off another shaving. I shave the entire bottom of the mortise, staying within the shoulders I defined earlier, then lower the cutter again.

You keep doing this until you reach the final depth. There are two jam nuts on the threaded post, underneath the depth-of-cut adjusting nut. They automatically set the maximum depth of cut.

When I make the next mortise, I'll raise the cutter back up, and just keep lowering it until I bottom out on the jam nuts again. That's pretty slick. I'm not sure why the brains at Stanley didn't figure this out: I'm going to see if I can retrofit my old routers with similar jam nuts.

Once down to full depth, I place the hinge in the mortise and scribe the other end with the chisel. After chopping this shoulder, the mortise is done.

Here it is, a perfect fit, with square corners and a flat bottom. Start to finish, the whole job only took about 15 minutes. I'll grant you that an electric router would be faster, but not half as much fun. I wonder if John Henry felt the same way?

Shed Doors 5: Raised Panels

2009-04-21T23:24:00Z

Last summer, I added a small shed to my old garage. I hung some temporary plywood doors, and built the real doors in the shop here at American Woodworker. Here are links to the first four parts of the story: Shed Doors 1 and Shed Doors 2 and Shed Doors 3 and Shed Doors 4.

I've made the frames, and now it's on to making the panels. I was lucky enough to have one huge 4/4 board, 13" wide and 12' long–enough material to make all four panels. (Knowing I would use this board, I designed the doors so they would have 13" wide panels-not 14"!).

Here's the lumber storage and rough-cutting area in our shop at American Woodworker. It's a luxury to have this much space, but even so, I've found that the best setup for cutting roughsawn boards is to use a mobile sawbuck, like this one from Ridgid, a 12" slider, such as this Milwaukee, and a vac, such as this monster from Oneida.

Sawbucks are designed for jobsites, of course, but theyr'e so easy to move around that they're ideal for a shop, too. The outriggers stretch out to accomodate just about any size board, and can easily be pushed back in to make the unit more compact for storage.

After cutting the board to make four panels, I stood the pieces up behind the doors to decide which sides would be the faces, and which pieces would go on the left, and which would go on the right.

Hmmm...This is the kind of decision best not made in haste, isn't it? I left the doors standing like this for a few days, and shifted the panels around now and then before making a final decision.

I noticed that my plan wasn't working for how the grain would run in the lower rails. Here, the peaks point inward, visually compressing the door. That looked kinda dumb. Fortunately, the rails are interchangeable, so when I actually glue the doors, the peaks will point outward, spreading the door.

I guess I like a door that says, "Open me," instead of one that says, "Close me." If that makes any sense. This stuff can drive you nuts!

Of course, the panel boards were cupped and twisted, so I resorted to an old chestnut to flatten them out. I put them on a dead flat 10" wide sled, made from laminated 1/2" MDF. I put playing cards under the high corners so the board no longer wobbled, taped the cards in place, and ran the whole assembly through the planer.

Darned if it didn't work. Once the top side was flat, I removed the sled, turned the boards over, and continued planing. The panels started out at a full inch thick and ended up at 3/4".

The grooves for the panels are only 1/2" wide, so I routed a very wide rabbet all the way around the face of the doors. I used a large diameter bit made by Freud that cut the rabbet all in one pass. In width, that is-it took a number of cuts to get to the right depth.

Here's the result. The rabbet is 1-1/4" wide and 1/4" deep. This method sure beats using a dado set, the way I used to do it, because it leaves such a smooth surface. The outer blades of a dado set leave score marks, which must be removed with a rabbet plane or by sanding.

One big complication: the top panels have curved edges. This bit doesn't have a bearing on top (which is why it can make such a wide rabbet), so I had to make a curved fence to guide the cut. No problem. I traced the curve of one of the door's upper rails on a piece of MDF, cut and smoothed it, and used that as a fence. The top of the door nested against it perfectly. I also place a piece of 1/2" plywood under the curved board to raise it above the bit.

Of course, this plan wouldn't have worked if the curve was elliptical. It's circular, laid out with a huge trammel. I'm not sure how I would have handled an ellipse-but then I didn't have to. Maybe I'll paint myself into that corner next time!

After shaping, I finished the panels with a smooth plane. But not just any plane. After saving for years, I had recently bought this baby-a Lie-Nielsen 4-1/2. Oh my. This is hand tool heaven.

Shed Doors 4: Curved Rails

2009-04-14T00:30:00Z

Last summer, I added a small shed to my old garage. I hung some temporary plywood doors, and built the real doors in the shop here at American Woodworker. Here are links to the first three parts of the story: Shed Doors 1 and Shed Doors 2 and Shed Doors 3.

I've cut the mortises and made the tenons. And the doors go together! Those are moments worth savoring, aren't they?

Now it's on to laying out a curve on the top rails. This is a bird's eye view, taken from the next-to-last step of a six-foot ladder. I've clamped the two doors together, and the top rails are at left. (I've omitted the middle rails for now.)

What I want to do is to draw one continuous arc across the top rails. First, I have to find the arc's centerpoint. Step 1, I marked a point in the middle of the two doors representing the high point of the arc. Next, I laid a 2-ft. rule from that point to the end of the rail, the low point of the arc, and drew a straight line. I marked the center of the line (that's what the black pencil at left is pointing to).

I've illustrated the next step at the top of the photo, on the other door. I put a square on that pencil line, and laid a yardstick on the square to increase the length of the square's long leg. The point where the yardstick intersects the middle of the door is the center of the arc (that's what the pencil at right is pointing to). I made a trammel this length, drew the arc, took apart the doors, and bandsawed the top rails.

After sawing, I sanded the arc. I'm using a sanding block that has a face that's very slight convex, perfect for the this kind of job. It's just an ordinary shop-made block, with a flat piece of cork glued to a piece of plywood. I made the cork convex by sanding it with a narrow block. It's very easy to do. The curve of the block doesn't have to match the curve of the rail–in fact, it's best if the block has a smaller radius.

I've made three set of blocks like this, with matching convex and concave shapes, and slightly different curves. They've come in handy many times. I don't think you can buy anything like that, can you?

I had cut the grooves for the panels in all the other rails way back when, in Shed Doors 1. And now I needed to cut the same groove in the curved rails. Hmmm.... This wasn't going to be so easy.

I used a 1/4" slot cutter with a bearing, making two cuts to form a 1/2" wide groove. This operation really requires a starting pin to safely begin the cut, and I couldn't find mine anywhere. Sound familiar? So I made one from a square piece of maple, rounded one end with a file, and jammed it in one of the holes in the router table. It worked OK, but I'm still looking for the real McCoy!

Together again. I hope that curved rail business makes sense now. The curve adds a nice touch-but it's going to complicate making the panels.

That's it for now-panels in the next blog.

Shed Doors 3: Fitting Tenons

2009-04-04T08:57:00Z

Last summer, I added a small shed to my old garage. I hung some temporary plywood doors, and built the real doors in the shop here at American Woodworker. Here are links to the first two parts of the story: Shed Doors 1 and Shed Doors 2.

OK, the last step was to check the thickness of the tenons, to make sure they're theoretically correct. They're too big to insert into the mortises, so I can't yet be sure if they fit right.

Next stop, the bandsaw, to rip and crosscut the tenons to fit the mortises. Guided by a fence, a bandsaw can make a very straight and smooth cut. The walnut block on the right is a stop block clamped to the bandsaw's table.

This fence is made by Kreg Tools, and it's one of the best I've used. It's particularly easy to adjust side to side, to hit those pencil lines right on the money. In this picture, the fence is in the Low position. Turn it 90 degrees, and it sits about 3" tall.

Once the straight cuts were done, I just moved the fence out of the way and cut the waste between the tenons. I drew the layout lines on both sides of the tenons so I could flip the workpiece when making these crosscuts from both directions. For once, I was thinking ahead!

Here's some hard-learned experience. In making the crosscuts at the haunches, I cut off a waste piece before making the final cut, using the fence as a guide. If you don't do that, and cut right to the line, the waste can get trapped between the fence and the blade. It's not like a tablesaw kickback, and the waste piece won't go flying, but it could cause a nasty kink in the bandsaw blade.

With the tenons fully cut, it's time to test their thickness (and the accuracy of the bandsaw cuts). Well, of course some were too tight. What do you expect? I could have gone back to the tablesaw to shave them off usign the dado set, but I prefer to use a rabbet plane for this final fitting.

This plane is from Lee Valley, and it's a beaut. It's heavy, wide, and has lateral adjust (unlike the Lie-Nielsen, which is also a fine rabbet plane). A few strokes, and I'm in business.

One last step, and that's beveling the ends to make the tenons easier to insert into the mortises. That's a big advantage when the glue goes on and the blood pressure rises.

I often use a block plane or chisel for this, but I didn't have to worry about grain direction with a 10" mill *** file. That's the best tool for this job, on this wood.

In the next post, I'll be making the panels. See you there!

Shed Doors 2: Big Tenons

2009-03-30T09:48:00Z

Last summer, I added a small shed to my old garage. I hung some temporary plywood doors, and built the real doors in the shop here at American Woodworker. Here's a link to the first part of the story: Shed Doors 1.

I've mortised the stiles, and now it's on to the rails' tenons.

Maybe I've got waste on the brain, but I thought I'd remove most of the tenon waste first, before making the precision cuts. I went through the same extra work by pre-drilling the mortises.

First thing, I set up the resaw blocks on our 16" bandsaw. Nothing fancy here–the blocks are just a shop-made tall fence and a small box. The piece of maple clamped to the fence is a stop block.

Here's the cut, the first step in removing the tenon's cheeks. This piece, by the way, is eight inches tall, so this is a substantial cut. No problem with a 3 hp motor and a 1" carbide-tipped blade, but it wouldn't be too bad on a 14" machine with a 1/2" blade, either. The block on the left side of the rail keeps the rail absolutely upright and tight to the fence, in case you were wondering.

Step 2 in hogging off the waste is a cut on the tablesaw, using a crosscut sled. I elevated the rail by placing it on a piece of melamine so the cutoff wouldn't get trapped. That's why the stop block is elevated, too. This cut is about 1/8" shy of the actual shoulder.

Here are all the cutoffs. Better that they're a bunch of pieces of solid wood than clouds of sawdust, right? Anyway, that's what I told myself after going through these last two steps. One can always rationalize. And I love messing about with tools.

Next stop, the tablesaw again, but this time with a dado set. The first thing I did was to cut a test piece, face side down, to test the height of the blade.

Here's the test piece sitting on one of the stiles. The stile's face is on the left side. I know the dado set's height is right when the face of the test rail is flush with the groove. Well, maybe that sounds complicated, because the rail is backwards, but it's easier than measuring!

With the dado set OK, I cut all the tenons with the rails face down. I set the tablesaw fence to serve as a stop, so all the tenons are 2-1/2" long.

Next, I flipped the test piece over and made a cut from the back side, then measured the resulting tenon with a dial caliper. Well, I didn't get it nuts on the first try, of course. I had to fiddle with the blade's height to get it right–just a little bit under 1/2".

More about the tenons in the next blog. Isn't this exciting? Gee, only a woodworker would think so.

Shed Doors 1: Huge Mortises

2009-03-27T20:00:00Z

I built a shed last summer, as a small addition to my turn-of-the-century one-car garage. I've been a woodworker for umpteen years now, but I've never done any carpentry work before. Go figure.

I couldn't resist the challenge of building custom doors for the shed–a pair of tall, skinny ones with frame-and-panel construction. I had a bunch of 8/4 cypress left over from making the trim, and the weather was turning cold, so I thought, what the heck, I'll make them this winter. Meanwhile, I slapped together some doors from plywood and hung them with barn hinges.

They work for now, but man, are they ugly.

Here's the story of making the real doors. Each one is about 7 feet tall, and only 18 inches wide. That means dealing with some big stock, and making stout, substantial joinery. Gotta build for the ages, right?

After milling the lumber to size, I cut a groove down the inside edges of all the stiles and rails. I used a magnetic featherboard to hold the pieces tight to the fence, and roller stands on both sides of the saw. Those big pieces can really be unwieldy!

Now on to the mortises. They're 1/2" wide (the same width as the groove) and 2-1/2" deep. That's a heck of a big hole, so I removed most of the waste using the drill press and a 7/16" bit.

I clamped two guide boards to the drill press table to ensure that the stile stayed perpendicular and remained centered on the bit. I also made a holder for a vacuum hose, which was really slick. Virtually all the chips just disappeared as I drilled. Neat!

Here are the holes, with the layout lines. The squiggles indicate where the mortises go, of course. With so many lines, it's easy to forget which lines to drill between!

You can also see in this photo that the rails will have double tenons, rather than one huge one. This makes for a stronger joint, even at the expense of some glue surface area. One huge mortise can really weaken a stile.

Here's the mortising setup, using a 1/2" chisel. With most of the waste already removed, this operation was a breeze. I determined the 2-1/2" depth of the mortises by the length of the chisel-that's as deep as it would go!

This machine, by the way, is really sweet. One of my favorites in our shop here at American Woodworker, in fact. It's a Powermatic, about 5 years old. Its best feature is an X-Y table, which has two huge benefits.

First, you can literally dial in the distance from the chisel to the fence. The crank at the bottom of the photo moves the whole table in and out.

Second, to reposition the workpiece after each cut, all you have to do is turn the big crank under the table. This moves the table side to side. There's at least 8" of travel–plenty for any mortise.

One last thought–the groove helps position the chisel, so you don't get staggered holes. That's why I generally cut a panel groove before cutting the mortises.

Next stop–the tenons. I'll write about them in another blog.

Unplugged Woodshop: Some Video!

2009-03-23T16:20:00Z

If you want a genuine taste of what woodworking was like before power tools, check out this silent film, from 1923, on wooden clog making in Sweden. Amazing!

Here's the link:

Making Clogs

[Many thanks to John W of the local Society of American Period Furniture Makers for passing this on.]

-Tom C

Ted's Altar 2

2009-03-10T12:36:00Z

Drawings can only get you so far when you're designing a piece. Sometimes, when I'm stuck, I leave the drawing board and make full-size parts. Here's a sample joint I made before building Ted's Altar.

To give you a sense of scale, the top piece is 1-1/2" thick. The stubby leg is 3-1/2" thick from front to back and 3" wide.

Here's a view from the back side. This tenon is supposed to be secured by wedges, but that didn't quite work out in this sample. Here, I spaced the wedges to divide the tenon in thirds. That looks nice, but the whole point of the wedges was to spread the sides of the tenon so they would lock against the slightly inclined shoulders of the mortise, like a dovetail. These wedges didn't succeed in bending the tenon, though. In the real altar, I moved the wedges farther apart, so the outer sections of the tenon could bend.

Here's the joint taken apart.

Making the leg portion was straightforward. I started with a rectangular blank and cut two notches on its end. I removed most of the waste on the bandsaw, then finished with a dado set. Next, I ripped shallow bevels on the front of the leg (to make the dovetail shape) on the tablesaw. I used the same method for the larger bevels on the back of the leg. I cut notches for the wedges by hand.

OK, now how about the top? The full top on the finished altar is going to be about 24" wide and 60" long–a massive piece of wood. I could have cut its mortises by hand, but I realized that there was a way to machine all of them, instead. The solution was to think of the top as having three sections: two that are as wide as the piece in this sample, and a large, main section. After machining these narrow pieces, I could glue them to the main top. If I picked the wood carefully, and used rift-sawn pieces, the joint would be nearly invisible.

Machining these notches was a cinch. Both are made using a dado set. The angled notch required some paring with a chisel to clean up the corners, but that wasn't hard. Done deal!

Changing of the Knives

2009-03-10T01:32:00Z

How did you spend your weekend?

Well, I put in a couple of hours getting ready for a new project here in the American Woodworker shop. I hadn't changed the knives in our jointer for over a year–can you believe it? Our jointer's cutterhead has segmented and indexed carbide knives, and they just go and go and go.

But everything gets dull eventually, and these were due. Each knife has four sides, and "changing knives" is simply a matter of loosening each one, cleaning off the pitch that accumulates on the knife's cutting edges, rotating the knife one turn, and fastening it back down to the cutterhead. An indexing mark on the knife lets you keep track of which edges are dull and which are new.

Sounds simple, right? Well, it is. But with four rows of ten knives each, and all the cleaning in between, this took me the better part of two hours. I could have removed and re-set a standard set of jointer knives in half the time, but there's no fussing with knife height or outfeed table height with these indexed puppies. I'm not sure if that's a big advantage or not-I like being a precise machinist now and then.

I still prefer carbide knives, though, even if they take longer to change. First, you don't have to do it so often. And second, you can joint any material that you can cut on the tablesaw, such as MDF or fiberboard. Quite the deal!

If you have any opinions or questions about carbide cutterheads, please leave a comment below.

Selma's Desk 2

2009-03-07T18:50:00Z

This Danish Modern desk (see Selma's Desk 1) has a beautifully-constructed top. It's a clever combination of solid teak and teak veneer.

The top has 5-1/2" wide breadboard ends, as shown above. The main portion of the top is composed of bookmatched veneer laid on veneer-core plywood. A 1-1/2" wide piece of solid wood is glued to the front and back of the plywood, so the main portion looks like it's entirely made of solid wood. The grain of the solid wood pieces and the veneer is so skillfully matched that you have to look twice to see the glue line.

Building the main portion of the top from plywood solves a number of problems. First, It minimizes the amount of solid wood necessary to build the desk. Second, it guarantees that the top will remain flat. And third, since plywood won't expand or contract, the breadboard ends may be glued to the main top with a simple butt joint. If the top were solid wood, the joint between the top and breadboard ends would have to be designed in a manner that would accommodate wood movement, since the grain of these pieces runs in opposite directions.

If you have any comments or questions to add to this blog, please scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page, below the ads.

Ted's Altar 1

2009-02-25T00:30:00Z

I'm a P.K. A preacher's kid, that is.

My father, who passed away a year ago, was a Lutheran pastor. Ted didn't know a lick about woodworking, but he was a great admirer of contemporary furniture design. A couple of years ago, I built this small altar to honor his ministry.

It's all made from one gigantic piece of 8/4 cherry. The board was 12 ft. long and about 16 in. wide. I could barely move it by myself.

Designing and making an object from one board can be a real challenge. If the board has knots, cracks, sapwood, and so on, you've got to work around them. It gets to be something of a game. And I cheated a bit here-I'll tell you about that later.

That huge board had been sitting in my woodshed for almost twenty years, waiting for the right project to come along. It was roughsawn and dark with age. My first task was to figure out what the figure was like underneath, so I could decide how to cut it into manageable pieces.

I didn't want to lose any thickness, so running it through a huge planer was out of the question. (Gee, I don't have one, anyway.) So I grabbed my scrub plane, sharpened its curved iron on my grinder's fine wheel, shoved the iron back into the plane, and went to work planing the entire board.

Just enough to see the figure, that is. Not to make it flat. Planing diagonally across the grain, it only took about an hour. I needed a workout anyway, I figured.

And of course I discovered knots, cracks and sapwood. Great.

I started laying out all the pieces of the altar. My design inspiration was an engraving of an 18th century woodworker's bench, below.

This illustration is cribbed from The Workbench Book, by Scott Landis. The original drawing appeared in L'art du Menuisier, by Jacques-Andre Roubo. This bench has come to be known as "Roubo's Bench."

I thought a cabinetmaker's bench would be an appropriate model for celebrating the son of a carpenter who lived over 2,000 years ago.

Back to that huge board: I used chalk to lay out all of the altar's pieces on top of the board, avoiding the cracks, knots and sapwood. Oops! I came up a few pieces short. What to do?

Well, I said this was a bit of a game. I could have simply cut up some other board for the missing pieces, but that would be too easy. Plus, I wanted all the wood to be the same color under a natural finish, and the chances of finding another board that would exactly match the monster were remote, to say the least. So the monster had to provide everything.

I decided to resaw some of its best chunks into thick veneer, and glue the veneer onto the sapwood. On all four sides, as it turned out. All of the stretchers under the top are made this way.

Crazy, right? But I did it anyway. And now, it's impossible to tell. Orienting the veneer the right way made these pieces look exactly like solid wood.

If you're still with me, stay tuned for another post on this project. If you have any comments or questions to add to this blog, please scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page, below the ads.

The Unplugged Woodshop: Tom's Torsion Box Workbench

2009-02-24T00:55:00Z

If you love hand tools, you gotta have a good, solid workbench. No two ways about it.

But if you have hardly any tools to start with, how are you going to build one?

I designed this bench on a dare. Sometime back in the mid 90's, a student said, "I'm just starting out. All I've got is a miter saw, a cordless drill, a router and a pair of sawhorses. Can you recommend a bench that I can build? Oh, and it has to cost less than $250."

Right.

Well, I got to work and built a bench that I'm quite proud of. In fact, I parked my antique cabinetmaker's bench for 5 years, and only used this one. It worked great. I'd put it up against any bench on the market.

If I were to do it over again today, I'd just make one change: substitute MDF for the plywood in the top. MDF is much flatter. And if the guy building it had access to a tablesaw, I'd recommend ripping the MDF on the saw for the web inside the top, to really make sure that the top is flat. Unlike a solid-wood top, you can't flatten this one after it's built.

Here's the article I wrote nine years ago for American Woodworker. If you have any comments or questions to add, please scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page.

Tom's Torsion Box Workbench

This rock-solid workhorse is simply four easy-to-build 2x4-and-plywood boxes.

By Tom Caspar

Quick, cheap, solid. You can’t ask much more from a workbench, and this one delivers it all. Made of out nothing more than ordinary construction lumber, this durable, 250-lb. heavyweight has all the features of a master cabinetmaker’s bench: a gigantic face vise, a slick tail vise and a rock-solid base.

You’ll spend a measly $150 at a home center on lumber and hardware. Add $70 to $150 for a face vise (see Sources). We used a cool-looking, top-notch model, but any big vise will do.

Tools and Materials

If you have limited tools, don’t worry. It’s perfectly possible to build this bench using nothing but a pair of sawhorses, a circular saw, hammer, drill, combination drill bit, router and flush-trim bit, hacksaw and socket set. That’s it. A few more power tools (a miter saw, drill press, tablesaw and belt sander) make the job a lot easier, though.

The materials are nothing special, just 2x4s, 2x6s and two sheets of ordinary underlayment plywood (the kind with 1/8-in.-thick face veneer). Be picky when choosing your solid lumber. Look for boards that are straight, free of large knots and have full-width edges. Reserve your straightest boards for the top frame.

Preparing the Plywood

Start by cutting out the plywood panels. Factory edges are good enough, so you don’t have many cuts to make. The few corners that have to be absolutely square are already done!

1. Draw the outlines of all the plywood panels (A1, B1, C1 and C2) on two sheets of plywood (see Fig. C and the Cutting List).

2. Build a temporary cutting guide to fit your circular saw (Photo 1). It’s easy to make by nailing together two overlapping 1x6s cut just over 6 ft. long (you’ll use these boards later as parts of the bench). The edge of the bottom board shows you exactly where the saw will cut, so you don’t have to do any complicated measuring. The top board guides the saw. Nail some extra pieces of 1x6 under the overhang of the top board for balance.

3. Place the cutting guide directly on the lines and cut all the panels.

4. Mark the screw holes (see Fig. D) on one side of an end panel (A1) and a center-section panel (B1).

5. Stack all four end panels on top of each other and drill 5/32-in.-diameter pilot holes all the way through them (Photo 2). Gang up the center-section panels and drill through them, too.

6. Countersink both sides of all the screw holes. (The countersink on the back side removes torn fibers, so you get a tight glue joint.)

7. Paint one side and all four edges of the panels black. This covers up the crazy figure and disguises the screws. A roller works great.

Building the End 2x4 Frame

The method for building each section is basically the same; you glue and screw plywood panels to a 2x4 frame. Once you get in gear, you’ll bang out your bench in no time at all.

1. Cut the top and bottom 2x4s (A2). Measure the length of the legs (A3) directly from the plywood panel (Photo 3). Gang the top and bottom 2x4s at one end of the panel. The remaining distance from the 2x4s to the end of the panel gives you the exact length of the legs. Measure the spacers (A4) by the same method.

2. Cut the legs and spacers. Select the best looking wood for the face of the front legs. Mark “Front” clearly on the good face so you won’t be confused in the heat of assembly!

3. Select one leg for the middle. With a combination square set to 3/4 in., draw a centerline down the length of its narrow edge, on both sides. Draw a centerline all the way around the middle of each top and bottom piece (see Fig. D). Line up the centerlines when assembling the frame.

4. Nail the frame together on a flat surface (Photo 4). The floor will do. Make sure all the top edges are as flush as possible, so you have an even surface all around to glue the panels on. One nail at each joint is enough. (The nails only serve to keep the frame together long enough to glue on the panels.) Predrilling the nail holes through the outer members makes alignment much easier.

Assembling the Ends

It’s time to get out the glue and go to town. You’ve got a lot of screws to drive, but there’s no need to feel rushed. Once the panel is positioned the glue will stay wet long enough to run in all the screws.

1. Place one end panel on top of the frame. Nudge the frame square so it lines up with all four edges of the panel.

2. Tack down the panel to the frame with 4d nails at each corner. Turn the assembly over.

3. Run a large bead of glue along all the exposed edges of the 2x4s.

4. Place the other panel on top of the frame, align its edges with the frame and screw it down (Photo 5).

5. Turn the assembly over again, pry off the tacked-down piece of plywood with a hammer and pull out the nails. Then glue and screw the plywood back in place. Scrape off the glue squeeze-out before it hardens.

6. Make the braces (A5) and drill 5/8-in.-diameter holes for the threaded rod (Fig. A). The thick braces spread out the enormous pressure of the nuts over a large surface.

7. Drill holes for the threaded rod through the plywood panels (see Fig. A). Rather than drill all the way through from one side, drill from both sides using the brace as a guide. This ensures that both holes are aligned so the rod will slip right through. Offset the brace 5/8 in. from the panel’s edge (Detail 2).

8. Cut all the feet (A6 and B4). Bevel the bottom edges to protect them from splintering. Drill deeply countersunk pilot holes for the screws so the screw heads can’t scratch your floor. Screw two feet onto the bottom of each end section.

Building and Assembling the Center Frame

This frame has two important differences from the end frames you just made. First, it’s got holes for the threaded rod running through the 2x4s that you can’t afford to forget! Second, the frame is slightly shorter than the panels. When you assemble the whole base, any warp or twist in the center frame’s end 2x4s won’t affect the tightness of the joints (see Detail 2).

1. Cut the rails (B2) 1/4 in. shorter than the width of the plywood panels. Then cut the stiles (B3).

2. Drill 1-in.-diameter holes in all the stiles. The holes are oversized to allow a threaded rod coupler to pass through (Fig. D).

3. Nail the frame together, then tack a panel to it. Check your alignment. The frame’s top and bottom edges are flush to the panel, but the ends of the frame are inset by 1/8 in. on both sides. Glue both panels, one at a time, as you did with the end sections. Attach the feet.

Assembling the Base

Two lengths of threaded rod (B5) bind the three base sections together with tremendous pressure. This large-diameter rod is surprisingly inexpensive, easy to disassemble and can’t possibly come loose.

1. Cut the threaded rod with a hacksaw (see Cutting List). File a small bevel on the cut ends to enable the nuts to thread easier. Join two pieces of threaded rod together with a coupler and slide the long rod through the holes in the center section.

2. Stand the center section on a level surface. Slip the end sections over the threaded rod and slide on two washers (Photo 6). Tighten the nuts.

Assembling the Top

Select your straightest 2x4s for this frame so you’ll get a relatively flat top. Put the best of the best in the front.

1. Predrill the pilot holes in the top and bottom panels (C1 and C2). Note that the holes in the upper surface of the top aren’t simply countersunk, but counterbored deep enough to accept wood plugs (the plugs cover all the unsightly screw heads). The easiest way to do this is to use a combination bit made for a #10 screw (see Sources). It will counterbore a 3/8-in.-diameter hole for the plugs and drill a pilot hole at the same time.

2. Nail the frame together, but leave off the back stretcher (C3) and all of the spacers (C6 and C7). Tack the top (C1) to the frame with 4d nails at each corner. Note that the front of the top overhangs the front of the frame by about 1/8 in.

3. Glue and screw the bottom panel to the frame. Make sure it overhangs the front of the frame just like the top panel. Then turn the frame over and glue and screw the top.

4. Attach the back rail and spacer with deck screws. The spacers bring the back rail up to the same height as the top, making a large, level surface.

5. Trim the front overhang with a router and a flush-cutting bit (Photo 7). Glue wood plugs in the screw holes and sand them flush.

Building the Front

The front of the bench is a sandwich of 1x6s and 2x6s that can be ripped individually on a tablesaw to match the thickness of the benchtop. This sawing removes the rounded edges on the top of the construction lumber, so your sandwich will have square edges on top and look like one gigantic solid piece when glued together. If you can’t get at a tablesaw, this isn’t absolutely necessary, but a flush front makes mounting the vise hardware much easier.

1. Cut one 1x6 and two 2x6s 6-ft. long (the length of the bench). Rip all three boards about 1/8-in. wider than the thickness of your benchtop.

2. Choose the best 2x6 as the outer board. Cut the spacers that form the dog holes (D2, D3 and D4) from the other 2x6. Drill two pilot holes for the deck screws in each spacer (Detail 1).

3. Starting at the right end of the bench, glue and screw the first spacer (D2), then clamp the handscrew around it to position the second spacer (Photo 8). Glue a small block (D8) on the left side of the handscrew to fill the void below the second spacer. Continue on down the line and cut the last spacer (D5) to fit.

4. Glue and screw the 1x6 (D1) along the top of all the spacers, completing the three-part sandwich. Drill pilot holes for the lag screws with an extra-long bit (see Sources) and install the front rail on the bench (Photo 9). Clamp it in place so the top edge is proud of the benchtop. Level the front rail with a belt sander.

5. The jaws of the handscrew are too fat to fit in between the boards of the front rail. Use your router to make the jaws thinner, working from both sides (Photo 10). The final thickness of the jaws should be about 1/32 in. narrower than the opening in the front rail. The area you must remove is larger than the base of the router, so don’t take it all off at once. Leave some areas uncut to support the router, then knock these bridges off with a chisel after you’re done. Finish leveling the jaws with a block plane. Bevel the end of the right jaw with a small saw and chisel (same as the bench dog, Fig. E). This bevel improves the holding power of the handscrew, especially when the jaw is tilted backward at its maximum capacity.

6. Shim the right jaw of the handscrew with several layers of foil tape (the kind used for ventilation ducts) until it slides smoothly in the front rail opening (Photo 11). Then install the handscrew and secure it with a screw. Chances are, as the construction lumber dries out and shrinks you’ll have to remove the handscrew and peel off some shims to keep it sliding well.

7. Glue the vise face together (D7) with cauls and plenty of clamps. Cut the pieces oversize and trim the glued block on a tablesaw, if you can. Turn the benchtop over and install the front vise hardware with the largest and longest screws you can manage (Photo 12).

Source

(Note: This information may have changed since this story's original publication date.)

Woodcraft Supply, woodcraft.com, 800-225-1153, Quick-release front vise hardware, #17A11, $215 (shown here); Handle for all three, #17E52, $6.99; Handscrews, 12-in.-long jaws, #819462, $25.99.

Amazon.com, Combination bit set, #B0041FIR1E, $22.99.

Sears, sears.com, 800-549-4505, Extra-long, 1/4-in. drill bit, #00966060000, $7.59.

Shopping List

Cutting List

The story originally appeared in American Woodworker October 2001, Issue #89

Thrifty Construction
Rugged boxes made of nothing but 2x4s and plywood add up to a high-performance bench that costs peanuts to build.

Ingenious Tail Vice
Hold any project with no awkward clamps to get in the way.

You Don't Have to Be an Expert
Got a hammer, drill and circular saw? That's virtually all it takes to build this awesome workbench.

1. Cut panels from construction-grade plywood with a quickie shop-made cutting guide. Even if you're off by a bit, these cuts are going to be accurate enough to build the bench.

2. Drill pilot holes through a stack of four panels at once. This is much faster than laying out and drilling one panel at a time.

3. Measure the length of 2x4s directly from the plywood panels. The 2x4s should be fairly straight, but you don't have to machine them any further. All you do is crosscut.

4. Nail the 2x4s together with a single nail at each joint. The joints don't have to be super tight or perfectly fitted. The strength of the box doesn't depend on complicated joinery.

5. Screw and glue the plywood panels to the 2x4 frame. You won't need dozens of clamps because the screws do all the work. Painting the plywood black disguises all the ugly screw heads.

Oops!

Here's a goof that's really no big deal. In a rush to glue up the plywood panels on the 2x4 frames, one of the joints opened up. After all, it's only held together by a single nail. But the strength of the box isn't compromised at all, because its incredible rigidity comes from gluing plywood to the 2x4s, not the tightness of these joints. No sweat.

6. Join the knockdown base with humongous threaded rod. Nuts pull the sections so tight that the base is solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. After all, a workbench base can't be too strong, can it?

7. Rout the plywood top flush with the frame to make a large, even surface for the 1x6 rail. Select your best 2x4 for this front piece. It's one of the few in the bench that must be perfectly straight. It pays to dig through a large stack of 2x4s to find this gem.

8. Assemble the front rail one block at a time. Two outer blocks trap one angled jaw of a wooden handscrew: the bench's tail vise. Each succeeding block is spaced 1-in. apart, exactly the width of a combination square blade. These spaces become mortises for the bench dog.

9. Clamp the front rail to the benchtop and drill pilot holes for the lag bolts. The bolt heads are recessed so you have a completely smooth bench front.

10. Rout the handscrew jaws so they're just a bit thinner than the opening of the front rail. Clamp a guide board to the handscrew and support the router with a T-shaped ledge and bridges of uncut wood.

11. Install the handscrew. Shim its moveable right jaw for a perfect sliding fit. You can easliy raise or lower the height of the jaw to hold even the thinnest board on your bench.

12. Tilt the front vise by adding washers as shims to compensate for racking. To securely hold any board, a vise should first close at the top. As you tighten the screw, the face of the vise straightens out, applying even pressure over the entire surface of the board.

Fig. A: A rock-solid foundation

A workbench that shimmies and shakes is a giant headache, especially when you use hand tools. It's supposed to stay still! The solution is having a heavy base that won't budge or twist out of shape when you push against it. Our hefty base weighs 125 lbs. and doesn't give an inch in any direction.

Fig. B: Exploded View

Fig. B: Detail 1

Spacing of blocks

Fig. B: Detail 2

Tight connection between base sections
The 2x4 frame of the center section is slightly undersized to guarantee a tight fit between the bearing surfaces and the end section.

Fig. C: Plywood Cutting Diagram

Using factory edges for many of the plywood parts means fewer cuts and guaranteed square corners. All you need to cut out the parts is a portable circular saw and a shop-made cutting guide.

Fig. D: Construction Details

The plywood panels are glued and fastened to 2x4 frames with drywall screws. Predrill the screw holes as shown below, nail the frame together with a single nail at each joint, and you're set.

Fig. E: Bench Dog

The dog leans slightly backward when you grip a board in the tail vise. Bevel the head to keep its gripping surface upright. The wooden spring keeps the dot at any height, free your hands to adjust the tail vise.

Fig. F: Top View

Position the top on the base as shown.

The Unplugged Woodshop: Sharpening Essentials

2009-02-23T19:27:00Z

In the first session of my class, The Unplugged Woodshop, everybody learns how to sharpen a chisel. The fussy way.

When I first taught this class, years ago, I noticed that most folks were trying to take notes. Not easy to do when you're trying to follow a complicated process.

Now, students just watch and do. I created a handout that summarizes all the major steps, and each student puts it in a plastic sleeve for protection. Here's a handout for you:

1

Lap the back. Start with 120, 150 and 220-grit sandpaper mounted on a flat surface. Continue with medium, fine and superfine stones. Once a chisel or plane iron’s back is lapped, you won’t have to do it again.

2

Renew a chisel’s bevel using a 60-grit grinding wheel. Grind at 25 degrees. Do this whenever the honed bevel exceeds one-half the length of a chisel’s tip. Grind a plane iron at 30 degrees.

3

Flatten your stones before sharpening. Use a glass plate with 220-grit wet/dry sandpaper and plenty of water. You can also flatten stones by rubbing them against each other, alternating sides.

4

Set up the honing guide. The chisel should project 30 mm. (about 1-3/16”) to create a 30-degree honing bevel. Use the same distance for a plane iron. This creates an approximately 35-degree honing bevel.

5

Hone on a medium stone (800 or 1000 grit). Press down equally on both sides of the chisel’s tip. Draw the honing guide to the center of your body.

6

Feel for a wire edge all the way across the chisel’s back. A wire edge is a small, raised ridge of metal. Once you can feel the wire edge, stop honing on the medium stone. Continue honing if you can’t feel it.

7

Remove the wire edge on the superfine stone. Firmly press the chisel’s back flat against the stone and push it back and forth three or four times.

8

Hone on the fine stone (1200 or 200 grit) until you feel a new wire edge. Remove the wire edge on the superfine stone.

9

Hone on the superfine stone (4000, 6000 or 8000 grit). You won’t be able to feel a wire edge from this stone. Hone the bevel 4 strokes, flip the chisel and hone the back 4 strokes. Repeat this back-and-forth process three or four times.