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.

Bringing the lessons home.

One of the topics that's been in the back of my head for a while is how to be more efficient in the shop, and part of that is figuring out how to be more space-efficient. I don't plan to be in the huge shop forever, and I'm in the middle of brainstorming some space-efficient ways to do most of the same work I do now, in a smaller space. (This isn't really such a feat: 3500 sq ft is a LOT of space.) One part of the grand plan is to build most of the fixtures in a movable way, so that setting up shop next time around won't take so long.

Investing some time in the home shop is another part of the grand plan. In short, I want to take the lessons I've learned from working in a 3500 sq ft space, and see just how much I can do with 35 sq ft. Long-term, (in a year or three) I'll move the rest of the big shop into a smaller space. But the point of the home shop is that even if the work I do by day isn't always exciting, I want to be able to do stimulating work at home. After writing the Space and Mind entries, I tore apart my work area at the shop (again) and it's been flowing a LOT more smoothly since then. The home shop is next.

My work space at home has been languishing. I set it up while Ariel was in the middle of nursing school, which proved to be a bad idea. Ripping drawer parts by hand while she's trying to study for a test? Yeah, not a great plan. But she's been out for a year now. In the meantime, the space has been collecting crap: Bike parts, unfinished projects, and a box of stuff that has yet to go to Goodwill. And the placement of the bench by the front door made it a de facto crap catcher.

Yeah. Not pretty. Since those photos, I've cleared it out, and I'm the process of making it into a more productive area.

One part of building up the home shop is to start making a few hand tool jigs that I got to see first hand when I was at school. We had a chair maker visit the school from France, and he showed us some of the jigs they used there to make certain tasks easier. The first of these will be a clamp that's used to help saw tenon shoulders. We were always taught at school that the easiest way to cut clean, square shoulders was to use the table saw. So when the Frenchman came by to show off his stuff, I was very impressed. And I think it's going to prove to be a good project for use at home.

Step one will be to break this big hunk of 12/4 hard maple into 3"x3" billet stock...

Undoing past mistakes

The home front has been pretty quiet lately. Ariel had a test to study for last week, so I spent last Sunday in the shop. This week I was able to get back to the bench at home and get some work done. Some, but not much. It's amazing how slow some of this seems to go sometimes.

Since I brought the small chest of drawers home, it's been wobbly. It's solidly glued up, but it still rockes back and forth on the bench whenever I did anything. The reason why is pretty simple: it came from a big beam of poplar that I resawed a couple of years ago. Every other board from that beam had given me huge hassles. It had been kiln dried, but when it reached equilibrium, it had some wonky internal tension that all came out when I cut it up. So, the sides of this case, 2 years later, were giving me a hard time. 

This week, I started fitting the two drawers that I've dovetailed so far. I got about 10 minutes in before I realized that I had a problem. Somehow, the inside of my nice, square case was tapering in, and the drawers were getting wedged. It turned out that the side was bowing inwards from front to back. More hassles with the wonky lumber.

To take care of that, I stood the case on its side, and slid a jack plane carefully in between the drawer dividers, so plane the inside of the side flat again. Once I was done with that, I planed the bottom flat, too, figuring it was high time I got around to doing that.

So, lots of shavings produced, but it was a one step forward, two steps back kind of day. At least the case sits flat now.

Such a small bench...

So, the workspace at home is expanding in a mildly containable way. Next to the bench is a rolling stack consisting of a small festool vac, with a vacuum attachment set, a Bosch jigsaw, and a festool drill, in a larger-than-stock container, so that I have room in there for a belt pouch, some bits, etc.

On the bench is the carcase for the new chest of drawers project, all of the drawer stock, and various other things. There's a tool chest on the shelf, along with some cauls, and a roll of chisels that belongs in the tool chest. (The chisels belong in the chest, the roll does not) But I need to make a rack for the chisels first, so that they don't rattle around and bang into each other.

Last night I ran into one of the home woodworker's main problems... night-time. I started futzing, and sawing a small piece for the chest of drawers when I was reminded that it was getting late, and I was being very noisy. And by the way, are you going to sweep all that up?

Grumble, grumble.

The other problem I'm running into is real estate. it's only a 4.5' bench. So space for projects is very limited. Space to work while keeping projects on the bench? Even more limited.

More as it comes.

The despicable art of compromise. No new benches for now.

So, I did some soul searching about the proposed new bench projects. The short version is, I'm putting them off until I feel more secure in the idea that it's reasonable to build two new benches. That day won't come for a while.

Ready to bring home

The home bench project... I spent weeks poring over all of my workbench books, and sketching out versions of modified, shortened shaker style benches.  I really wanted a bench with a lot of storage, to hold all of the household tools and project "stuff." But the point of having a bench at home is to get my hand skills back up to snuff, and try a few new things that have intrigued me for a while now. I'm more interested in getting right to work than I am in detouring further into new-bench fantasies. So I decided that the best solution was to simply chop down the bench I had at the shop. The work is done, and the most noteworthy part of the exercise was using Chris' huge old Oliver sliding table saw. It's a terrifying machine that gives me the willies. But it's incredibly capable, and it's impossible for me not to be impressed. Cross-cutting a 2.5" thick, 24" wide maple top is not a small thing, I don't think. This machine thinks otherwise.

Shape of things to come

And the shop bench... well, when the shop is more profitable, the shop will be able to afford a new bench. I have many ideas. In the meantime, while my regular bench has been chopped and taken home, I do still have an 8' Sjoberg Elite that I can use. I thought it was nice when I bought it. It has since been moved to my shop equipment shit list. I have a list of issues with this bench, not the least of which is that it's been pretty unstable. At this point, it's moved back to something more closely resembling flat, so I feel reasonably comfortable in resurfacing it. But 2 years ago it was warped enough that re-flattening would have taken out something around 1/4" to 1/2" of the overall thickness. Had I done so, and then allowed it all to stabilize again, I'd have lost another 1/4" in flattening it now. I've thought about touching it up and selling it, but the truth is that I have better ways to spend my time. So I'll make it work, until I feel good about building something better.

I could bash this bench all day, but it's possible that I'm just being an overly fussy prick about something that will still do the job. It's big, it's heavy, and it's thick enough to support the massive Emmert, I think... It's long enough to be useful, and it does have some pretty hefty bench dogs. And now that it's a few years old, the wood may have seasoned enough that it will be pretty stable. I can hope, anyway. For now, I'm planning the Emmert install... and working on more profitable things in the meantime.