Why the slow down

In the last while,

* I've build a small tool shed (for the boat parts and heavy tools)
* Wired up some new light fittings
* Built a built in wardrobe
* Gone on holidays

So now I'm back building, hopefully there will be more to report..... And a few more pictures.

Planing Oak

I actually got some work don on the boat today. I took some of my rough Oak boards and planed planed and thicknessed them ready to mark and cut Frame and Frame 4.

It takes a lot of passes to get the cup out of the boards, but at least I can record the exact setting of the thicknessor so that each piece is the same thickness.

When running 7 inch wide oak through the thicknessor (A Woodster pt85) I can turn the handle about 1/8 of a turn each pass, and take off about 1/4 mm. Any more and the machine grinds to a halt. (Previous Posts)

I guess it is a little unfair asking a hobby machine to deal with 7" wide oak boards. But if I go slowly it copes. The finish would drive a cabinet maker to drink, but then I'm making a boat to sail, not to stare at.

I've sort of decided to redo the transom frame. Now that I have a table saw I reckon I can do a better job of the bevels. But that's another day.

I set up the table saw fully last night. The Easiest way of getting the side extension tables level with the main table is to take off the guard, lower the blade right inside the saw, flip it upside down on a large table and attach the side extensions there. They cannot but be level with the saw table. Worked a treat.

The forecast is poor for tomorrow, so I will probably settle for simply marking out the frames and then try to cut them after work during the week.

D

More Toys - A drill driver

I have lived from some time with a cheap and cheerless 18v portable drill. Pretty good when the battery was charged, but the battery didn't last very long, and I drained a battery just doing the floor of my "boat shed".

Then I came across this Makita cordless impact driver set . It's a world apart from my old toy cordless. The quality is obvious in just handling it. The impact driver easily belts screws into solid oak without any of the usual ruining of the screw heads. And I got it up in the US for less than half the price of buying it in Europe. Add a €20 transformer and off you go.

By the way - why are power tools so much cheaper in the US? Who's making a small fortune on the ones sold here in Ireland?

A boat shed

Not so much for putting the boat in, but rather somewhere to put some of the accumulation of tools and parts for the boat, to free up the kitchen.

I couldn't find anything the size I want so I built one myself.

Meet Vic

The internet is kind of like a big Club, where you can go and find other people who are interested in the same sort of things that you are. Chances are someone's done what you are trying to do, or something similar, and wrote about it.

Or you can post a question on a forum, and (in among the wise cracks) someone will have the gem of knowledge that you need.

Only, you don't need to go there every Wednesday night at 7:45 pm. You can wander in when you like.

Recently Vic cam acros my little page, left a comment, and a link to his page. He's a little more ambitious that me, and his pages make great reading, so have a wander over here and leave a comment to say hi.

Comments are always appreciated on blogs. Means we're not talking to ourselves.
8-)

Trend Grabit

As sure as black cats have black kittens, sooner or later you will strip the head of a screw. hopefully you will have a Trend Grabit around. It's got a reverse cutting drill bit to drill out a hole in the screw, and a reverse threaded cone to dig into the hole and unscrew the screw.

One thing to bear in mind. You do have to drill out a hole in the top of the screw, even thought the screw may appear nicely drilled by your previous attempts to screw it in, the hole that the grabit makes is the correct shape for the threaded cone to grab.

There's a series of pictures here http://www.trendmachinery.co.uk/grabit/

On Power Tools

How woodwork has changed since the time of my grandfather. He would have cut lap joints with a saw and pared them to an exact fit with a small rabbet plane. The process would have taken less time for him, with his years of experience, but would still take more than a few moments.

Finding my collection of power tools expanding beyond the space to store them in my back yard shed, I was faced with obtaining a half height tool shed to place in some space under the kitchen window. Unable to find one to suit, I thought – I’ll build one.

In making the frames I needed to cut some lap joints. Since I was working in rough treated timber, a rough lap joint was more than adequate, so out came the Black and Becker Router.

I set up a batten to guide the router on a scrap price, and this gave me a marker for how far from the batten the cut would be.

I set the router depth to approximately half the thickness of the wood, and a few moments later I had half the lap joints cut.


In order to get the thickness right for the other sides, you must remove exactly the thickness of wood that remains on the first pieces. Place the router on a piece of board. Sink the router until the bit just rests on the board and lock it in place. Place the tongue you have just cut on top of the depth stop, and slide the depth pin down to rest on it. Lock the pin in place. You can now unlock the plunge on the router and reset it to the pin.



Routers may be noisy, dusty, dangerous things that can ruin a piece of wood in an instant, and ruin whatever flesh gets to near the whirring bit in less time still, but they do make life quick and easy.

Wear a dust mask and eye protection. Really Do.

A table saw

I started out trying to mount my circular saw upside down to a piece of plywood. That has a few problems.

• No mitre slot
• No parallel guide - you can clamp a piece of wood in place, but that's fiddly
• No blade guard - That's a biggy. I'm fond of each and every one of my fingers..
  

Either you mount the blade through the plywood, so the guard is always open, or you mount the base plate of the saw through the ply wood, but then the spring loaded guide tries to lift your work piece. No fun.

Given that you can buy a cheap circular saw for about €150 it makes little sense to try to save money this way. Sure it will have limitations, it's not a precision high end machine, but neither is your circular saw mounted through plywood.


I eventually settled on the SIP 01321 for €150 form McQullians in Dublin (no web site). The one I bought comes without a stand.

So far I have simply assembled it, but there is one or two things to be aware of.

Adjusting the blade to make it parallel to the mitre slot
The saw is held in place by 4 bolts. You loosen these, with a socket wrench, it's inaccessible for spanners, and then you move the blade, and then you tighten them. It's very hit and miss. I was expecting some manner of screws or micro adjuster. But then this is a €150 saw.

The mitre guide is a little sloppy
You can move it about 1/2 a degree either way. I see a few grub screws in it's future. Tap holes into the side of the mitre bar, place grub screws in, and adjust them to get a perfect fit for the mitre bar.

The Fence is not rigid.
The fence locks parallel to the mitre slots. This is GOOD. But a small amount of force can move the end of it up to 3/4 cm (1/3 of an inch). I imagine the simplest solution to this is to place a piece of wood perpendicular to the fence, and clamp it at the edge of the table.

The table is not flat.
If you place a straight edge across the table, there is light visible in the middle. Not a lot, but light none the less. I'm not sure how much trouble this will cause. I'll update this as I start using the saw.

The angle guide is a gross approximation
But I kind of expected that. It just means that I always need to check the actual angle of the blade, even for vertical. The stops for vertical and 45 degrees are too coarse to be useful.

Once I start cutting things, I'll post a little more about how many of these short comings are problems in real life and how many are just niggles.

D

It scrubs up well...

Ok, it's not shiny and polished, but then I don't really need to start a tool restoration hobby. I wanted a usable tool.

I took it apart, brused of the dirt with an old toothbrush, and soaked it in vinegar overnight.

A little more work with a toothbrush, some 320 grit carbide paper, and some machine oil, and voila:

I bought a new blade, as even after spending a half hour with 120 grit paper, I was making little impression on the back of the old blade. I could sharpen it enough to plane pine, but it was looking like a career to flatten the back properly so that I could get it scary sharp.

I priced a new one at about €85 + postage, so I guess this is a bargain.

The base is flat. Or at least, sufficiently flat that I cannot tell the difference.

Some Old Planes.

I have been given a few old, once loved planes, that have spent a few uncared for years. They once belonged to my grandfather, a Carpenter of significant skill. Now they are badly rusted.

Believe it or not, the blades are still sharp enough to cut your hand on. Of the three planes, there is a stanley bailey ~5, #4 1/2 and a Record #4.
Since I have a Stanley Bailey #4, I am planning on restoring the #5.

It appears to have been welded together, I have no idea of it's history, but one have cleaned it up a little I will have some idea of how salvagable it is.

Fitting Joints.

Some people, through years of practice can cut a perfectly fitting joint with a back saw. I can't.

In order to fit a joint, a simple method is to mark out the joint on a flat sheet of plywood, and to set up the joint against the lines. This makes it easy to see if the joint fits, and if the joint angles are correct.

So as you can see here, the cut is neither square not a straight line.


This can of course be fixed quite easily with a small block plane. One thing to point out is that the more time that you spend sharpening a tool, the less time you spend cursing it later.


You should check the angle of the joint and check that it's square every few strokes of the plane. The light visible here shows that I still have a little work to go.


As you can see the joint fits a lot better after a little cleaning up.

Maybe I'm learning..

Yesterday I cut Frame #2.

The bottom members are relatively easy as they are pretty much just 3" boards. Of course I managed to mess up the end of one of them. It's just not square. However this time I made the cut about 1/8" away from line so that I could tidy it up with a block plane afterwards. So now instead of moaning about ruining another board, I'm off to sharpen my planes.

Maybe, just maybe I'm learning.

Read the plans CAREFULLY.

There's nothing quite like the realisation that the piece of wood you have spent so much time on is just plain wrong. You know the sort of thing, cutting two left hand side pieces.

The little section in marked in red in the bottom left is actually part of the side piece. I read the plans as if it were a chine, or longitudinal member. So now I have two side pieces which are each about an inch short.

Oh well. It's all learning and practice I suppose.

The plans for the boat come from Glen L.

Planing square

Ever try to square a side of a board with a plane. It can be a bit more difficult that it looks.

If the board is off to one side, one thing that worked for me was to offset the blade of the plane. (Please forgive the block diagram). Now the plane will take off more on one side than the other. This let me take off the the bulk of the material quickly.

Don't forget to reset your blade to square as you finish off the job.

New Planes

Christmas brought some new planes. Wooden ones from Rutlands. The Jointer plane blade doesn't sit quite right. One side of the blade is lower than the other and no amount of pushing the top of the blade left or right will fix it. I suspect that the throat is not square with the base of the plane.

Since the plane is made of wood, a few minutes with a file should fix that.

The blades will need a little work to sharpen them up, a sheet of glass and some carbide paper is your only man for the job : ScarySharp.

Yep. I know that I opened them early, but that's a traddition in this house that goes back hours.

A shim in time saves recutting.

When cutting this frame, I was a little careless with the jigsaw, and the angle of the blade wandered. At one end the cut was perpendicular to the face, at the other, the bevel was almost 15 degrees off square.

Since this piece will be supporting weight from above, and will be under compression, and will have some nice bronze screws through it holding it all together, I reckon shimming is the way to go.

A ScarySharp block plane (see previous post) makes short work of getting a really flat edge, square to the surface of the board.

The shim was cut with a circular saw with a fine cut blade (lots of teeth) and a parallel guide. Works wonders for cutting a narrow strip.

Since I'm using Balcotan PU, I can get a strong end grain to side grain glue joint. All I need is LOTS of clamping pressure.

None of my clamps were of any use in this, so I put a block of wood behind my shim, tied a cord tight around it and the notch in the far end of the frame piece (with a small piece of wood there to prevent marking) and twisted it very tight with a screw driver. This method has been in use for centuries. It's cheap and versatile.

The shim was glued in place oversize, and then I trimmed the ends to fit.

I think that this counts as a rescue.

Next I will try shimming the other frame piece that I messed up, but that will be more difficult as I want to just shim the damaged part, which means cutting a notch. The only downside of Balcotan PU, is that it's pretty intolerant of gaps.

Shimming it.

From my previous post on routers and tearout, you may remember that I kind of messed up a perfectly good frame piece.

I am thinking of Cutting off 1/8 inch and shimming it. Clamp and glue another peice to it and sand /plane it to size. If the glue is truely stronger than the wood, it should be fine. Since I'll be using Balcotan PU, the end grain joint should not matter. And there I think there will be screws in place to hold it all together anyway.


And one last peice of reason is that it should be under compression most of the time anyway.

This time I think I'll try it out on a peice of scrap first to see how it goes. It if works, then I may be able to do the same thing on one of the transom frame pieces that got cut a little short.

That piece is cut a little short at the top. Since that part will be under compression and out of sight, shimming may be the way to go.

- To err is human, to mess up in style you need power tools.

Keeping Nyala in Style

A book that I came across that you might like. Keeping Nyala in Style
It's the story of a couple who bought and restored an old wooden boat. It's written by the woman, to disabuse us of our stereotypes.
She details many of the things that she learned along the way, along with illustrations and photos, from fitting bulkheads to the curves of the hull to cutting the joints for the frames for cabinets and beds.
I've already used some of her ideas for building a wardrobe in the attic. Ok, so that's not boat building, but it's all practice.

Fuller Stepped Drill Bits

Today I had cause to try out my Fuller stepped drill bits. I won't repeat my earlier post, and I have not got a cut through photo to post yet, but they do make life so easy. The drill bits come for different lengths screws, so for any one drill bit, the length of the narrowest part of the drill, ie for the pilot hole, is fixed.

But the length of the shank and the depth of the counter sink can be set so easily. This means that you can set the depth that you want to countersink the screws to exactly, just under the surface, or deep enough to plug.

Drill one hole and then pop in the screw, no trying to drill two concentric holes and a countersink.

They are not what you would call cheap, but given that I have about 1000 bronze screws which all need predrilling, that equates to a whole lot of saved time. Even if I figure that time saved at minimum wage, I think I'm well in the black.

Routers and Tearout

And I really should have known better. Really. This is starting to read like a "Mistakes not to make when building a boat." - Actually I may use that as a title if I ever write a book. I certainly won't be short of material.

I forgot that Routers like to cut the grain, but they really like to lift the grain. So the bottom peice here has nice big lumps missing.


When you find that the direction of spin of the blade will lift the grain - see diagram opposite.


Flip the thing over so that the as the blade of the router rotates, it cuts the grain, rather than trying to lift it.

Of course the really annoying thing is that I knew this, I really did. In my hurry to finish the frame, I forgot. And then when cutting seemed not to be working quite right, rather than take five and put my brain back into gear, I pressed ahead and messed up.

The damage is done to the part of the frame that sits on the keel.


If you can't be a good example, be a dire warning.