what remains should be plenty strong since it’s better reinforced and doesnt have as much torque applied to it. the dud end stays in place and is held beneath the bench through 3/4” dog holes. the only other modification (other than breaking the original product) is to remove the rivet at the other end (vise grips to the rescue!). to use it you just remove the moving clamp, pass it up through the dog holes, and reaffix the clamp. to make it easier you could probably rig a swinging pin on the bottom (fixed end) so you could make it pass through the top.

Got this pile of lumber at a yard sale for $20. actually i forgot (!) to pick up 4 of the longest, cleanest boards, which i’ll do tonight. it’s old mahogany trim that was ripped out of an Eagles club. lots of paint and nails on it. by mass about half of it is more usable ~3/4” stock that is about 6’x5”. the other half is thinner angled trim – presumably from door frames. it’s going to require a lot of work – and this is my first time using reclaimed stuff – but the wood underneath is straight grained and dry, and i estimate about 75 bdft – a bit less once it’s all cleaned up and useful. this will be my winter project i guess!

I got this old stanley #5 about 6 months ago and over the course of that time have learned about how to sharpen it, tune it, and use it. it’s my only other plane other than another old stanley block plane. Since i dont need to mill lumber from the rough, i set it first to take off several thousandths. i gradually got better at tuning it and most recently have been able to use it as a smoothing plane. check out these fine babies:

the point i want to make is, the plane bed isn’t terribly smooth (some old scratches), and its even very slightly bowed upwards near the mouth. but it works. it makes things square and smooth, and it works!

anyway, I looked at some jigs, most significantly the ones one these pages:
http://www.woodsmith.com/issues/147/videos/setting-up-and-using-the-router-jig/
http://thecraftsmanspath.com/2007/09/25/loose-tenon-joinery-budget-alternative-festool-domino/
http://www.garagewoodworks.com/jigsfixtures.htm
and came up with something similar.

(a side note: i have bought 1 sheet of MDF in my life, and i hope its the last. while I like how uniform, smooth, and flat it is, the dust is one of the most annoying things i’ve ever encountered. not only is it a physical irritant, but it coats the whole shop with mud. ugh. I’m testing out particleboard from the borg… i know, not as smooth and uniform, possibly still as toxic, but at least the airborn particles are bigger, so they stick around for less time and dont travel as far… anyway, i’ll see how that works out.)

back to the jig: so I set to work a couple days ago, happily gluing up multiple layers of PB to build up beefiness. but when I came back the next day it was all out of square! doh! what a moron: why glue when you should screw? the top needs to be 90.0º to the face, and to keep it that way it’s got to be adjustable, ie, screws. the table saw trimmed off the excess, and now i have a slightly uglier, but much more functional and reliable router mortising jig:

a couple things to note about this design. on the positive side, i think i did something smart by designing the “window” in the top to not open flush to the face of the jig

that little bit keeps whatever piece you’re milling underneath and square to the top.

I did go overboard and make the face too long, however. the face should be long enough to hold your workpiece stable and square, but not too long to prevent you from being able to clamp it!

so that has to be trimmed down a bit.

==========================

to make it even more reliable, a router edge guide was in order. being a cheapskate, i wasnt exactly going to shell out $30 for the freud model, so I made my own:

i always thought the slots for the edge face would be difficult. not with the help of this guy, which was my first ever router jig:

amazing how jigs build upon each other and tasks become increasingly easier to accomplish. also note my ghetto router table. it works, but it is not winning any beauty contests. to justify it, i leave the fixed base in there, and the router (freud 1700) has convenient above the table height adjustments, so no need for a plate…

another thing to note is the bit chucked in the router:

its a solid carbide 4-fluted 3/8” wide, 7/8” long end mill from Enco. cost about $10. got the idea after reading this blog post. it seems to work very well – nice and sharp, plunges quite smoothly, and shaves off nice little bits to leave smooth and square sides and flat bottoms. the 1/4” width is just over $6! what a deal! I’d like to hear if anyone has anything to say about this end mill vs. router bit debate. are more or less flutes better? any brand preference?

========================

finally, a shot of the two as they were meant to be used:

some accessories for this jig are a stop block for aligning mortises in adjacent workpieces, a 90º fence for routing end-grain mortises, and possibly some stop blocks for the top to make exact replicate mortises.

as far as routing regular tenons, i think i’ll go with pat warner's jig that (cleverly) uses guided rabbeting bits.

some final thoughts: interesting how some things I thought would be easy are hard – like maintaining 90º alignment in a particle board joint. on the other hand, I thought routing those tracks for the edge guide was much simpler than i expected… and nothing even has to be square – it’s all self-aligning! the router will be parallel to the edge no matter what! sweet.

which works really well. The walnut, as i said before, was free, and quite warped/cupped/bowed. pretty much everything. So I needed a sled to help the planing/jointing/4-square process:

built on particleboard, which isnt the best, but it did well enough considering that after using my table saw to do its most accurate, precise work demanded of it yet with the help of a micro-adjust thin-rip setup,

what i got was warped pieces!

pretty

but not straight. So what’s the lesson?

plane smaller pieces?
not use such curvy lumber?

any suggestions?

I didn’t want to be running 1/2” thick pieces through the planer or router/jointer – they’re really flexible! so… i dont know.

the other piece i’ve milled is the base:

which i selected for that awesome symmetrical grain pattern.

One last thing. I changed the plan to be based on 1/2” square beams, as opposed to the 3/8” i had originally. I have been struggling with Sketchup and how to scale up the size of the lumber without actually expanding overall object dimensions (ie, the lamp remains the same size, just the framework is thicker). “Scale” is making a real mess of things! I’d like to say, take a piece with lap joints at the end and keep it the same length, just different width/thickness.this appears to be a completely non-trivial process. Any advice other than settle on dimensions at the get-go?

i dont think i need to write a review about it, since so many abound and it’s not a new machine. but my initial impression of it is that it’s about as solid as it can be for its size. this makes me happy.

http://toolmonger.com/2009/05/01/its-just-cool-life-in-the-future/#comment-911841

Finally got the hang of sketchup. turns out the key is to make everything into components otherwise it really really sucks! anyway, i made this design, inspired by some other folks’ lamp designs i found.

The joinery is essentially all lap joints of some sort or another. Frame members are all 3/8” or 1/4” other than the obviously thicker pieces, so relatively thin stuff for me. I’m wondering how I’m going to be able to plane/sand/scrape those. The top is removable for getting at the lightbulb. Here are some pics with and without the rice paper lampshade. I still have to figure out what sort of bulb i want in there and the proper fittings for it.

i can also send anyone the SKU file, but i dont have a way to post it here.

I really like Randy Price’s design in walnut here: http://lumberjocks.com/projects/12365

but wanted something like that crossed with a japanese lantern… sort of. I havent decided completely.

I drew up this quick and dirty sketchup model to help me decide on overall shape, dimensions, and proportions.

I like the rectangular look of it. The shade will be framed in dark wood, and might have a pattern based on Randy’s across the face of each side.