Using the French chair maker's vise on the hayrake table.

Using 80-20 for most of my jigs saved me a lot of time, but I still needed a fast way to cut shoulders on the 45 degree tenons. Given that it was only one table, it didn't make sense to me to spend a lot of time engineering a way to treat it like a production run. So, I used the French chair maker's vise that I built back in July of 2012:



It's really simple to use. The top surface is reference-flat. The material is clamped lightly in the vise, and the shoulder line is lined up with a gauge stick that's set to the height of the saw blade in a side-cutting saw that's also part of this arrangement. Once everything's in alignment, the material is clamped, and the saw cuts both shoulders to be in exactly the same plane. Clever, simple, efficient. Gotta love that...

 

 SO how accurately does it cut? Very accurately, as long as the gauge stick is right on, which is the current problem. As pretty as this picture is, I actually need to make a new gauge stick. The tenon sticks up above the vise, I'm actually cutting on the wrong side of the line. The joints all came together fine, but the tool should be working more accurately than this. (To be fair, the blade was pulled out farther than normal for these shoulders, so there may be some error introduced there, but even still... I need to give this some attention.)



Clean shoulders will make or break the look of a mortise and tenon joint, so they have to be done right. For this particular table, this was the most efficient way to get the job done that I could think of. For multiple tables, I might set up something on the table saw (if it was set up, which it's not, yet) or with router templates. But for one table, (8 angled joints) the chair maker's vise is such a quick and intuitive tool that it just made all the sense in the world to cut the shoulders that way.

Joinery's done... chamfers are next. 

Resolving issues of compatibility: Adding a cast iron router table to the SawStop.

The cast iron router table on my Delta Contractor Saw has been a big player, and a large part of that is due to the ability to use it in conjunction with the table saw fence. I've seen a lot of people put a router table into the extension wing on the right, but having it on the left side of the fence makes more sense to me from a feed-direction point of view: the cutters on the router bit will push the work against the fence, making for a predictable cut. That's especially good for running rabbets and dadoes. With the router table on the right, (in the extension wing) the router bit would potentially push the work away from the fence. Less good, I think.

Moving into the new shop meant giving up one of the table saws. The fate of the Delta is yet to be decided, but I had a second cast iron router table stashed away, so I decided to put it on the SawStop. But in order to do that, there were 2 main compatibility issues to be dealt with: First, the router table is 27", front to back, which will fit many table saw tops on the market. (including the SawStop Professional, and contractor saw.) But the SawStop Industrial saw (which is what I have) is 30", front to back, so there would be some gaps to fill. Second issue, none of the mounting holes for the stock table extension on the SawStop Industrial would line up with the mounting holes on the router table.

A flash of insight hit while I was planning the move, and so I started looking on eBay for some 80/20 profiles to fill the gaps. For those of you who are unfamiliar with 80/20, it's basically industrial T-track. Most of the Kreg, Woodpeckers, Jessem, and Incra stuff in the woodworking glossy pages these days are tinkertoys by comparison. So, off I went to eBay, and what do you know... the profile I wanted even came in Black. Batman would be happy. And, it matches the color of the saw. I'm really not that fussy, function is more important, but the option was there, so I took it. Most importantly, the 80/20 profiles give me the option to mount router table fences or jigs in a very robust way.

To bolt the router table up, I would need to drill and tap some holes in both the router table, and in the saw table: some to bolt the router table to the aluminum profiles, and some to bolt that whole sub-assembly to the table saw. I've done this kind of thing before, and cast iron is pretty forgiving to work with. It's soft-ish, and drills and taps very smoothly. So, I did some head scratching, and made a layout block from a scrap of the profile, to be used with a transfer punch.

In the above shot, I'm actually laying out holes for alignment pins, to help align the table during installation. They also helped hold the weight of the whole thing while I was bolting it up. Holding up 40-odd pounds of cast iron, in alignment, while futzing with a socket wrench, is not fun. The pins made it easier. Installing the pins:

I used a doweling jig to lay out and drill pilot holes in the table top, and tapped them by hand:

The assembled saw... Router table installed, fence bolted on, and the whole thing leveled out to be co-planar with the Festool MFT, with a leveling base that I fabricated this week. At some point in the near future, I'm going to build a bridging piece to go between the saw table and the MFT, to complete the out-feed surface. That piece will have grooves for a miter sled, the MFT will not.

I've gone back and forth on whether or not to make a more solid, leveling base to support the MFT in a folded configuration. My decision was ultimately came down to this: If I need the extra space for any reason, the MFT can be folded up and moved out of the way, but a more permanent base can't be. I'll invest in the diagonal supports for the MFT legs to stabilize it a little bit, but basically, this is my working setup.

The basic premise...

So, this is the gizmo I've been working on. It's in a mostly-done state right now, still needing to be burnished and waxed.

What you're looking at is a stoutly made, fully enclosed vise, made with a veneer press screw. The entire top surface is reference-flat, and at 90 degrees to the inside surfaces of the vise. The purpose of this device is to assist in cutting co-planar tenon shoulders, regardless of the angle that's required. The basic theory is this: clamp the part to be cut into the vise, and align the shoulder scribe lines with the top edge of the gauge stick. The saw will then be used to cut the shoulder, sliding back and forth across the top surface of the vise. This will ensure that all shoulder surfaces are 100% in the same plane. In the photo above, the part being cut is at a simple angle. I will also make a pair of pivoting pads, so that parts may be set up for compound angles.

Why did I bother with this?

The tenon shoulder is the most critical, visible part of a mortise and tenon joint. If one of them is poorly cut, there will be a gap, or the specified dimension will be changed. On a table stretcher, for example, the distance between legs is defined by the distance between tenon shoulders. If you're just bracing table legs, maybe this isn't such a big deal. But if you're making another part that will form a drawer enclosure, that dimension is more critical. If you're making a dresser, and you have many such parts, you really want them all to be the same. When you're fitting the joint, mortise walls can be pared back, tenons can be trimmed and shimmed, but cutting the shoulder is a one-shot operation. It has to be done right the first time.

Cutting square tenon shoulders is a snap with a table saw, and it's not much harder with a hand saw. Cutting simple angled tenon shoulders is pretty easy, too, though grain direction on porous wood can throw the saw off track if you're not careful.

Cutting tenon shoulders at a compound angle is possible on a table saw, but it's a hassle, and it took some interesting jiggery to make it work when I was learning to make chippendale style chairs in school. Cutting a compound angle joint with a hand saw is probably easier with a hand saw in that regard, but even still, there's a lot of care required. I suppose in a production environment, and given reference faces, I should just use a Domino machine and have done with it. But in a home shop environment, how do you set up for compound angle joinery and make it easy? Well, the gizmo at the top of this post is the answer.

This isn't my design. This is something that was shown to me when I was in school, that was brought over by a french chair maker. There's a companion jig that provides a way to clamp a piece and plane a reference flat surface, which will then be mortised into.  That'll possibly come next, but for now, this seemed like it would provide more capability.

Kreg fence micro-adjuster

This is another gizmo that has been a game changer for me.

Kreg makes a lot of gizmos and other bits and pieces to go with their L-shaped T-track profile. They use this profile for miter gauges, production fences, and even a band saw fence. I like the simplicity of their system, and of the stops that they've come up with. And I like that it's modular, because that makes it easy to modify things

I figured out a while ago that I could make a long miter bar by using a 4' hunk of Kreg's production fence and bolting it onto the miter head in place of the 2' section that it came with. The reason I wanted to do this was simple: I wanted a quick and easy way to cut things accurately to length. The only real problem with this is that the miter bar that hooks onto the head is aluminum, and it's a bit flimsy when you're working with a 4' miter fence. Bah. Eventually I made my cross-cut sled, and that helped.

That said, I still worked with the four footer on the miter bar for a while, and in my quest to find a more accurate way to adjust the stop block, I decided to see if I could re-purpose the micro-adjust that they offer for their band saw fence. I drilled a hole in an inch of t-track, slipped a square nut into it, and hooked it onto the micro-adjuster, and voila, it worked. It's not perfect, but it makes minute adjustments to the production stop a lot more accurate than doing it by hand.

I used to use Kreg's adhesive scale on the fence. But eventually I started making cuts on both sides of the blade, and I found that it gave an illusion of accuracy that wasn't really there. It was good for quick work, but parallax gets in the way, and my ability to micro-adjust rendered it a moot point.

At some point I want to get a steel bar made for the miter head, with a dedicated, non-adjustable 90 degree head. Once I have that, I'll take the time to dial in my setup a little more. For now, this has enabled me to blur the line between accurate and precise work in the machine room, both in terms of my ability to cut stock, and my ability to cut joinery on the table saw.

Yet another table saw sled

I've seen some pretty over-the-top, over-wrought ways of cutting an accurate 45 degree angle. It doesn't have to be that way. In fact, it really shouldn't. Your energy should be spent on building things that are useful in a context other than just your shop. Furniture, screen doors, whatever. But you should still focus on accuracy when you can.

This one took about an hour and a half to build, including clean-up.

First step was fitting the Ipé rail to the miter slot in the saw table. I used the micro-adjuster on the fence for this, to get a good, close fit. I also used it to trim the sides of the dado in the MDF to fit. When you can reliably adjust the fence by .002", it's easier the adjust the fence than to mess with shims for a single dado.

(truth be told, I was too lazy to pull out the dado set. 6 passes with the saw blade cuts 3/4" just fine, plus fine tuning to fit the rail.)

Once the rail is in, I put the sled on the table saw, rail in the miter slot, and trimmed the left edge to get my reference edge. (The distance from the edge of the plywood to the edge of the dado is slightly more than the distance from the slot in the saw table to the blade, so that a zero-clearance fit can be made with this trimming step.)

The fences for the sled are pre-drilled, and the holes are counter-sunk on the under-side. Why? MDF doesn't stay flat when you drill into it, it deforms upward around the screw, making a lump that will prevent the fence from settling all the way down onto the sled floor's surface, and gluing up properly. You could screw it down, take the screws out, and re-flatten the surface, I suppose, but this is faster and easier, and doesn't depend on the MDF holding the second set of threads.

Glue is smeared on the underside of the fence, which is then put down. First screw goes in at the business end of the fence. Then you fine-tune the 45, then drive a screw down at the other end. Check the angle again. If it's off, take that second screw out, adjust the fence, and put another screw into a different hole to fix the position. Then drive the rest of the screws, driving that 'off-angle' screw last. Be as precise as you can about getting the 45 as close as you can... it's the whole purpose of the sled, and the only critical step that will really make or break this project.

Repeat for second fence.

I used brass inserts in the fences so I could bolt down the toggle clamps. It's just easier than holding the work down by hand.

Quick tip: improvised honing jig, Derek Cohen style.

I needed to adjust the bevel on my Japanese chamfer plane yesterday, and I was in a hurry to get it done so I could catch the train. So, I threw together this simple scrap wood honing jig. The wood wears down on the bearing edge, so the sharpening angle changes a little bit, but it was a quick and dirty way to get the job done, and it worked well. It's also a simple way to sharpen some of these hand-hammered irons that aren't perfectly flat or square, or small irons, because you can make these jigs as big or small as you need.

The source material for the idea is on Derek Cohen's website. He's big on making shop jigs and tools and so forth, and this is just a good idea. It works better for the scary sharp (sandpaper on glass or MDF) folks, because the wood block won't wear down quite so much if it's riding on the glass or MDF, next to the sandpaper. For woodworkers on a budget... this is a fast and easy way to get things done.

Cutting table, chapter one: the racetrack

So, since Saturdays are designated as "My day" shop project days, I took yesterday to get going on phase one of the cutting table build. This will take a few Saturdays to get through, but will be beneficial in the long-term.

The general idea came from this post by a guy named Steve Jones over on the Festool User's Group website. He came up with a more efficient way to process plywood, that I really think makes sense. In short, the concept is that a Festool track saw is a lot lighter and easier to handle than a full sheet of plywood. Since the two need to be moved past each other in a directed fashion, why not move the lighter of the two? It makes a lot of sense to me... especially since full sized sheets are heavy and awkward, and I'm more likely to bungle the process or damage the parts in the process of dealing with them as a result.

In the case of this particular project, the top and bottom of the torsion box that I'm building for the table have full-sheet dimensions: 48"x96". Since the parts coming out of the process are basically the same size as they were when they went in, and we only have one cart for full sheets of plywood, I didn't have any other place to put each sheet after it was processed. So, I did the only thing I could: I dropped the blade on Chris' Oliver table saw, cleared everything off, and started race-tracking the parts around our huge outfeed tables. I have a pair of long trestles that are designed for supporting plywood when it's being fed into or out of a saw, so I used them to help slide panels to other surfaces, too... like the contractor saw, which is on the left in the above picture. And at the far end, near the double doors, is the plywood cart, holding incoming sheets. It was an interesting day.

For this phase of the project, the chief frustration was my dado stack. When I originally got set up, I bought a Freud Dial-a-dado. The short story is that there's a large aluminum adjusting knob that adjusts a threaded spacer between the outer plate, and then next inner one, to make minute adjustments to the width of the dado that's being cut. In theory, it's great, because it means no fussing with shims. In practice, it has proven to be a royal pain in the ass. As the steel arbor nut is tightened down against the aluminum adjusting knob to hold the stack securely in place, it grinds in, turns the knob, and throws the adjustment way off. So, the nice, precise adjustment mechanism becomes instantly imprecise, and it took me roughly an hour to get the proper width dialed in and secured. I was not happy.

The big eureka moment of the day was figuring out how to make sure that the dados had consistent depth. Since the outfeed table isn't as level as I'd like, and plywood can warp, it's hard to keep the sheet from lifting up away from the cutter. The solution was to take the insert out of the saw, round down the front edge, and adjust the leveling screws to get the front edge re-aligned with the table surface. Why does this work? The depth of cut is gauged against the top surface of the insert, and the problem comes when the plywood isn't in contact with that surface. Rounding the front end of the insert and re-aligning it had the end result of lifting the center of the insert up. So, it was always supporting the plywood, and the depth of cut was maintained.

Evolving a better crosscut sled

Over the past 4 years I've gone through a few versions of cross-cut sleds.

The kind we used at school was very plain, and while it worked, it was not what I would call optimal. It was basically like this one that I made for my contractor saw a few years ago. Big fences, mounted as square as possible to a huge piece of MDF. Setting up repetitive cuts meant clamping a huge L-stick to the fence, which was a huge pain in the ass. Clamping it up meant using one hand to hold up the stick in place, one hand to operate the clamp, and another hand to hold the tape measure, to make sure the stick was being clamped up in the right place. 

My first attempt at a miter bar was intended to solve most of the problem. The L-stick would have a wooden bar mounted to it that would hold the stick up in a horizontal position, and a knob would thread onto a bolt through said stick, and the bolt would engage with a T-track to clamp the thing down. In short, I could use the knob to set the position AND clamp the setting in place, while I measured with the tape measure using my other hand. Voila... I no longer need to use three hands.

This is the most recent version, and it's the first one I'm really proud of. The Kreg rails add several important advantages: Kreg's production stop is AWESOME, the adhesive scale that sticks to the rail means I don't need a tape measure anymore, all that metal adds mass, which helps the sled slide very well, but most importantly, because they bolt onto the fence, I can loosen the bolts and shim the fences to be perfectly square if I need to.

I made the floor of the sled out of 1/2" ply, ran dadoes for the rails, as well as for the fence, to make sure everything was positively square. Each side was made separately, and then joined when I mounted the fence, and the bridge in the back. I finished the whole thing with sanding sealer, so that the plywood wouldn't distort when I waxed the underside of the sled.  (Wax works wonders... the whole thing slides like it's on marbles that are rolling in a puddle of WD-40.)

I wanted to use a replaceable zero-clearance insert, and the easiest way I could think of to lay one in and have it sit flush with the rest of the floor was to lay one whole layer of the same material. So, I made the insert,  installed it, and then used contact cement to lay down the adjacent panels. With the replaceable insert, I should be able to use the sled for dados, and mitered cuts, too.

Finished Contractor saw station, and adjustability versus custom fit.

So, I mentioned this setup in the last post. And here it is.

Front to back, this is now a shorter, more normal sized station to work at. It's also currently the only remaining router table that's set up in the shop space, so that's something I'm going to have to remedy soon. Before this re-work, there were 2 router tables built into this station. Ironically enough, there was only one that was actually usable with the fence we had mounted up, so I guess this isn't really such a change in status, but I still want to have more than one router table station, since there are three guys who use this shop.

I had to build the extension wing to replace the router table that had been there previously, so I made it out of some scrap plywood that we had lying around, and some extruded T-track and miter slot stock. The T-track is in there to use with a jig that helps hold fence settings. The miter track is there in case I feel the need to build a sled for cutting long parts. I've had the idea in the past, but never followed up on it... I figured this was the time to lay the groundwork for that project. 

Re-assembling the contractor saw also reinforced the philosophy that I was taught in school, which is basically that most tools, as they are out of the box, are still basically kits for something better. In this case, the whole fence assembly basically mounts to the table saw with two oversize holes. They provide a lot of slop for the fence to be adjusted around, and aligned with the surface of the saw. Realistically speaking, the extension wing would be drilled by hand to provide mounting holes that would line up with the bracket that bolts up to the table saw, and this would, in theory, help fix the whole assembly in place. But, as long as I was re-aligning the fence, I figured I'd do a better job of it than the factory had this time. There are also a series of counter-sunk holes in the bracket, which most likely correspond to a number of other table saw models. In this case, they didn't line up with any previously existing holes... all I had to work with were the two big sloppy ones. So once the fence was as well-aligned as I wanted it, I pulled out a box of transfer punches, and I marked the edge of the cast iron table for drilling and tapping. The fence is now held on, and held in alignment by two large bolts, as well as four 1/4-20 countersunk screws. In the future, I plan on doing something similar to the router table, but I want to swap it out with the other one first.

Some people I know would be aghast, and mildly outraged that the factory hadn't already done all of this. I'm not. I understand that the factory has a price-point to meet, and that this particular fence is actually optional equipment, and not what would normally come with the saw. As equipped, the factory did provide me with everything I needed to put together a functioning, usable saw. In this case, I felt that my own modifications would add a little bit in the way of fit and finish to the saw... and the fence does slide a lot more easily now that it's re-aligned.

This is one of my concerns with an emphasis on optimization and efficiency, I think. The pursuit of efficiency is essentially an ongoing process of trying to find quicker or cheaper ways to manufacture something that's still good enough. What that means is that once the process is dialed in to make something that's really well made, a more efficient process that saves the company money will generally be found by cutting corners, or compromising standards. In this case, it's a hell of a lot easier to drill two sloppy holes and let the end user align everything during the assembly process than it is to lay things out precisely and give it that custom fit. Sloppy adjustable holes will pass QC a lot more easily than a table saw where one of the holes was a little bit off. But the reason I bothered to drill and tap in this case is to make the whole unit non-adjustable. I don't like adjustable fit. I have some miter gauge heads that are also adjustable to get them precisely to 90 degrees... or back to 90. But the end result is that they can be knocked out of square pretty easily, and they become unreliable.

It's not that these things can't be made to work. It just means more effort is required on my part to make it happen.

Un-stuck

So, the solution to the contact cement thing was much easier than I'd thought.

Turns out, I needed two things.

-Someone else to help lift the vinyl sheet.
-A series of sticks to place underneath between the sheet and the board, once the cement was dry enough to work with.

After that, remove a few sticks, flatten out a section. Remove a few more, and so on...













And Voila, brand new drafting board. The parallel rule came from the board I had on the desk, and all I had to do was add a longer cable.

Re-arranging...

So, one of the things I noticed recently was that I had filled all the spaces around my bench and on the shelves with stuff I rarely used... so my work space was filled with dead weight, rather than usable space or usable objects. So, I've been working to address that, starting with building a huge cabinet to hold all the drawer boxes and other things that are basically storage for once in a while things. Then I pulled the wall shelves down and put up newer, bigger ones. I did notice tonight that my first instinct was to fill them right back up again, but it's mostly the top shelf, which is out of the normal "active" work area, so I guess that's ok. I'm still moving things around, and working on making it a usable space, but it's moving right along.





























The real progress isn't visible yet, because there's still a lot of junk in the picture. Once everything is actually cleaned up, there should be more available space to store parts and bits of things, so they won't be directly in the way when I'm working.

I'm also debating the virtues of getting rid of the table that's against the wall, since it's primary role in life is to act as a crap catcher, in the hopes that my workbench doesn't get hopelessly overrun with crap. That's usually a futile mission anyway. But one of the things I like about that table is that it started life in the mobile robotics lab at MIT, where genius kids did amazing things... and using it now to hold piles of junk just seems like a misuse of something with such a cool history. Or, maybe it's just a tool, and I'm over-romanticizing its significance in the grand scheme of things. I'd like to put it to better use. But I can't think of a really good use for it just yet... other than to use it as a bench, but I already have two or three of those kicking around.

The real problem may simply be that I have an affinity for collecting things that are cool, or at least cool in my own mind, to work with and it's reached the point where I simply have too much stuff for one guy to be able to use productively. So, either the table will continue life as a crap catcher, or I'll move it into the finishing room... or do something else with it.

Practice what you play, play what you practice.

So, I currently have one active shop project, and a small commission project on deck. (bookcase) But, for whatever reason, I opted to work on the shop project first.

The shop project is a pair of tables for a sliding miter saw. The taller is a general utility table, to hold the other end of a long board as it's being cut to length... regardless of how long it is. This table is also built to be the same height as the table on the Laguna band saw, so it can be used to support the other end of a long piece, say, if I'm cutting something really long, (or really heavy... like a log, or a big 12/4 beam) and I need something to carry the heavy end so I can focus on the cut as it's being made. At just under 2'x'3', this rolling table will be a lot more practical to use in the machine room to carry around piles of parts as they're being made. So far, I've been using the 4'x4' assembly tables we made, and they're really too big to be practical for that sort of thing.

The saw table is sized so that the working surface of the chop saw is on the level with the utility table... which is also the same height as the band saw table. I don't know how this could prove to be useful, having the band saw and chop saw tables at the same height... but weirder things have happened. Either way, it's an integrated system, which makes me happy.

I chose to make the table frames out of ash, because it's strong and cheap, but I took the time to make mortise and tenon joints for the project, and pin them together. It's a pretty good, simple way to join things, but I wanted to see just how strong a joint it would be, so I made a test piece, with a scrap of leg stock, mortised it like I did the legs, and tenoned in two scrap pieces of stretcher stock. I clamped it up, without using glue, drilled it, and pinned the joints together. I took the piece, to see how strong it was, and put it on the floor. I put some weight on it with my foot, and eventually stood on it. (I'm somewhere just south of 300 lbs.) No worries. These joints are much stronger than I realized. No wonder this is how they used to frame large structures.

(Old churches, and large halls were timber framed, which is basically large beams of wood with oversized joinery cut in the ends, and then when assembled, the joints were drilled and pinned with trunnels, or "tree nails." Unlike the stud-framed 'balloon' style of framing, timber framed buildings have stood solidly for centuries.)

Last night I glued everything up and pinned it, and threw on a coat of poly and oil finish, mixed with tung and linseed oil. Tomorrow I'll go in, put the casters and surfaces on the tables, and hopefully have time to figure out how to mount a fence to the chop saw table. I'm expecting that there will be some monkeying around involved, but it will be worth it to have a fence to enable me to make repeatable cuts at a fixed measurement.

I'm pretty glad to finally be able to talk about something other than just setting up the shop, and all the tools. Granted, these tables are for the shop, to hold tools and things, but even still. It's a furniture project of sorts, and it does involve cutting and using joined pieces of wood.

Regarding the title of this particular post, I got a comment from Josh, (Jimmy Callahan's assistant) that "You guys make such nice things... just to hold your stuff." From a carpenter/electrician/contractor standpoint, I think he's right, this is probably a bit much just to hold a chop saw. At the same time, I think it's a worthwhile project to get back into the swing of things, so to speak, and practice my trade. Realistically speaking, it's only taken 2 or 3 days to do, and the wood didn't cost too much, so it was more of a diversion than anything else. But I expect these tables to last for a good long time, be versatile enough to hold a lot of different things, and do a lot of work. Given the demonstrated strength of the joint, I think they'll hold up just fine. But at the end of the day, it was also an excuse to do the very thing I went to school for... build fine furniture, and other quality things.

And in the end, it was good practice, too. For such a simple project, I still made a couple of small mistakes... stupid mistakes, really. (Aren't they all...) So, it's a good project to keep in practice, and get my head back in the game. For months now, most of the work has been with a framing gun, or an impact driver, or cordless drill... not much joinery involved. It's been a while since I've been able to do what I do, and I clearly needed the practice.

It's like they say in the big leagues... practice what you play, and play what you practice. So they're not just shop tables. They're also an opportunity to keep my skill level up, after months of shooting 2x4s together to set up shop surfaces... and show anyone who happens to be visiting just what kind of work I do.

AND, I get a nice set of useful things in the process.

Shaving horse is finally done!

I finally get to post finished pictures! So, the thing you see in the picture is basically a very large clamp, developed over the years for chair making. Because there's a lot of work with a drawknife and spokeshave, and because there's a need to keep repositioning the work as it gets completed, this particular way of holding a long piece of work is pretty popular. Sit on the seat, use one foot to push on the treadle, which in turn clamps down on whatever is being held in the clamp, and pull back on the draw knife, or spoke shave. Becuase the natural reflex is to push off of hthe treadle when pulling a tool, the harder you work, the more tightly the piece of wood is held in place.

This particular design was developed by a guy named Brian Boggs, down in Kentucky. I took a class with him ayear and a half ago, and I'm still really excited to do the kind of work he taught us about, but this post is about the horse here, and not about building chairs just yet.

One of the nice things about shave horses in general is that they're designed to hold the work at an angle, to make working a stick into a spindle a little easier. The design I learned on was basically a bench with a hinged board attached to it, and it held the work at a much lower height. At the end of the day, my ribs felt a little weird, becuase I was folded in half at about the bottom of the ribcage, to get my shoulders low enough to make efficient work possible. And after a while, my lower back felt the strain, as well. One of the advantages of this particular design, though, is that the jaw is adjustable from below, instead of from above, which means that while you sit, the top of the work will always be at more or less the same height, regardless of how big the piece is. That means I can work while sitting upright, or leaning slightly back while working. AND, the seat actually positions the pelvis in such a way that the natural curvature of hte spine is restored, meaning the lower back isn't quite tso uncomfortable after long stretches in the saddle. In short, it's a much different animal from the one I learned on. That class was the last time I found myself on a shave horse, and I noticed almost right away that I felt a lot more comfortable working on this one. Or, rather, I remembered very clearly how uncomfortable I was, last time I was working wood in this particular way.

Last shot is a picture of my shop mate Don, taking the horse for a ride, so you can see the thing in use.

I have a few more things to build before I can really dig into making chairs. But they'll be coming soon enough...