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11 December 2023 at 9:19 am #821761
Thanks Phil, you’ve added a voice to my thoughts re tapers.
I can’t use hide glue as it’s an ‘external’ and potentially very wet environment, albeit that the droplights will be painted/varnished depending upon side.
15 January 2019 at 7:33 am #554513Agree with Debra – can all be done with hand tools.
I did some 1/8″ thick cuts from a piece of 12″ x 4″ x 1.5″ sapele, to repair a friend’s small veneered table (which was wafer thin veneer over chip, latter of which had got damp and badly blown).
I don’t have a bandsaw, so doing it by hand was hard-ish work, and to be fair a bandsaw would have been a good deal quicker. The downside by hand can be that you have to allow more thickness so that you can plane out the kerf marks once done, and of course it takes a keen eye and careful hand to get it square and parallel etc.
To give you a sense of what I was doing, here’s the WIP – the caul clamps are made of the same sapele that I cut down to make the ‘veneers’. Routed out the blown chip with the Stanley 71.
(Why did I bother with a chipboard table – it was left to him by a relative so had sentimental value).
My first ever go at restoration – not brilliant but saved the item.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by Richard Kelly.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.2 January 2019 at 10:51 am #554183Might I suggest going to a DIY or flooring specialist and buying a piece of hardwood flooring?
I found that B&Q sold roughly one foot by 6″ wide or so by 1/2″ thick ‘samples’ and I bought a few in oak for just those sort of ‘one-off’ tasks you mention.
It’s not without effort as I had to plane smooth the ridges from the back and also remove the thin layer of varnish from the front – but the alternative was ordering from timber merchant as they only kept smallish sizes in stock, and an order would be 2m or so minimum.
16 August 2018 at 8:45 am #550259Mark – can’t tell where you are located but in the UK there are plenty of timber merchants who will run ‘standard’ PAR timber through a thicknesser to any size you specify.
The only foible I have found is that they’ll only do metric!
Another alternative that I have used – for hardwoods where I want something not stocked locally – is ordering on-line from specialist suppliers who will again produce exactly what you want.
The downsides are (a) the cost they charge to machine it, (b) the need to be mindful of waste – so if you want 21mm thick and the standard PAR ends up 20mm, they’ll thickness down the next size up which will cost you, and (c) carriage charges for on-line are high obviously.
Having said all of that, as an occasional amateur, I have produced some pretty decent items in a variety of hardwood which has been sourced as above and leaves me without lots of waste pieces.
25 July 2018 at 9:50 am #549577I would endorse the comments about Auriou rasps – just used my fine one to round the corners of a inch-thich slab of walnut. No need to even sand afterwards.
I have two – one fine (R/H 7″ Grain 13) and one coarser (R/H 12″ Grain 10) and they suffice for all my requirements.
Sadly it appears that they are struggling – see my post entitled such.
29 December 2017 at 11:31 am #420907Been meaning to add:
Having set my sliding bevel, I at one point notice that the angle using the outside wasn’t quite the same as that on the inside.
Turned out that the wooden bit of the sliding bevel was neither parallel, nor were all faces square.
So, before you start, take a look and, if necessary, fettle your SB – to make both the wooden and metal parts 100% parallel AND square.
12 November 2017 at 10:34 am #364028Adding while I remember, although they’re obvious when written down…
(g) Don’t lever the tenons apart during what might be frequent test fits – the corner of the rail will bruise the leg, especially with SPF. Might not matter if it’s painted but we should aspire to create the perfect item and not rely on covering up our mistakes.
(h) The Router Plane is a very good tool to ensure parallel tenons – given we’ve taken the trouble to get parallel mortices!
(i) Don’t undo your sliding bevel until the project is FINISHED! e.g. it’s still handy to check the angles on those seat fixing rails, by which time you may have put it away!
(j) If you see my comment elsewhere about the mortise guide – which I’ve not attached below – I also used the same plastic wedges with the clamps for glue-up (with some hardwood packing of course to protect the legs)
(k) Try to register the mortice gauge always from the same relative face (e.g. outside face) of every rail. It’s easy to assume that because you checked it at the start and found it ‘centred’ perfectly on ONE rail that it won’t matter if you flip at some point. However, unless you’ve dimensioned every single one of the 8 precisely and perfectly equal, then tiny errors can creep in – potentially adding a little twist to the ‘A’ frames.To be fair, it’s a stool and perhaps some of my points are too fussy – but if I were doing this in cherry for a breakfast bar in the house, and not painting it, I’d want it spot on.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.10 November 2017 at 5:25 pm #362360All good questions Zeppos, and thanks to all for the compliments.
Time taken? Very ad-hoc work, and so very hard to be sure, but if I were to try to convert to working ‘days’, i.e. start at 9am and finish at 5pm, I’d say the frame (i.e. excluding seat) is 2-3 days’ work.
I’m a relative beginner, and so as a benchmark, I did one of the dovetail shaker boxes in 1 day, from complete start to glued up and hinged, although I’d say that was pushing it a bit and in softwood to be painted so I could chance my arm a little more – I wouldn’t really aim to work at that speed. The stool I did 100% carefully as I did not decide to paint until the end.
Lessons learned? The instructional videos are first class so it was hard to go wrong, but I’d proffer:
(a) Make sure that you select/orientate your timber so you won’t be chopping into or making tenons of, badly knotted parts (my wood was less good than I would like)
(b) Have a very solid method of marking parts (triangle method or whatever)
(c) Similarly remember that when you saw the tops of the legs to shape, you may lose your witness marks! (I did…)
(d) Make sure that your sliding bevel has a parallel sliding bit as the cheap ones may not be! And this will catch you if you use inside and outside of the slide interchangeably assuming it will give the same angle.
(e) I glued up two ‘A’ frames of the stool and set aside before then assembling the whole stool, in my keenness to have the frames 100% without twist.
(f) The mortice fence Paul uses is very valuable to get mortices parallel to the leg face. Have a look at my post on this where I found a way to create an adjustable one.8 November 2017 at 8:10 am #359076As someone fairly new to woodworking (1 year!) I find myself coming across this, but/and you can caveat all my comments below with that very limited experience!
My wood is stored in an unheated slightly ventilated garage and I too tend to have to pace my projects – meaning the cut to glue time may be weeks…
I don’t have an ‘answer’ per se, but I do tend to rough cut and dimension and then store the pieces indoors for a few days before final dimensioning, soon after which I try to do the joinery.
Then they stay indoors until I’m ready for glue up, and then again until finished. My limited experience is showing that (a) they’re staying fairly stable from dimension to glue up, and (b) they don’t show any noticeable sign of moving subsequently.
Some timber left in the garage does exhibit radical cupping, bowing, warping and winding and anything else I’ve left out. I’ve had to plane 15mm softwood down to under 12 for later (2 months) use.
I’m finding the hardwoods more generally stable, but they do move over time depending on how they’re sawn and the specific grain direction(s).
I’m no expert on wood types, but I wonder if, although you’ve endeavoured to get as close to rift sawn as you can for obvious reasons, the grain is wavy or interlocked?
The ratio of tangential to radial shrinkage for Wenge is about 1.6 so not extreme, although if the grain is a bit wavy that will give some twist – which since you say ‘square’ and not ‘size’ I assume is your issue.
What I do know from my engineering days is how the relative humidity affects the equilibrium water content of the wood: in our houses where we see a range from 25%-75%, the actual wood moisture content gets driven back and forth by 5-10% – which is a lot.
Your 11% sounds fairly normal for ‘delivered’ timber, and from everything I have read, it seems working with timber which is intended for interior use ideally wants it drier than that.
So, if there is any ‘answer’ perhaps holding it in the final environment before working it is a way to try?
1 November 2017 at 7:53 am #345661Thanks for replies – I have decided to add in some of the missus’ Black Acrylic as it is perfect.
I’ve done the waxing approach but don’t want to do that here as I have to sit on it – I’ve colour waxed a pine table in the past and it gradually came off on people’s elbows etc.
31 October 2017 at 9:00 pm #345442Understand Alan – the ‘graphite’ was the darkest as no specific black seems available, and I have indeed gone red underneath.
Let’s see if anything comes back re the chalk paint – I only raise the Q here as I’m replicating what I have seen on Paul’s videos etc., and obviously I could seek out something like blackboard paint.
24 October 2017 at 5:54 pm #339941[quote quote=339900]You do have what you have, but that’s not a problem thanks to Paul…you mentioned your S&J rip saw has been “reconditioned” and also that you’ve altered the rake…is filing away and re-cutting the teeth (to something closer to 5 tpi) out of the question?
If you’re most commonly ripping 4/4, 6/4 & 8/4 stock, it might be something to consider. If this instance of ripping 6/4 stock was a rarity, and you’re normally ripping 1/4 stock then definitely not. Just something for you to evaluate.
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You’re right of course – and every saw I own has been reconditioned – however, as you surmise, the ripping strips of walnut off is a 1 in 100 job.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by Richard Kelly.
24 October 2017 at 7:36 am #339629Understand your point, but I have what I have in terms of saws – I do have a 4tpi but it’s a cross-cut and I use that mainly for green wood, and yes, it flies through although with a coarse cut.
The one I used gave me a finish that needed minimal planing to smooth – so overall efficacy to which you refer might be equal!
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