Now that I’ve cut the skew, it’s time to reattach the sides so I can appropriately size the iron! So, I drilled a few 1/4” holes so I can use dowels to align everything. This way I can assemble the plane and properly fit the wedge, iron, etc…







Once it was all assembled it looked a little bit better. I tapered all of the dowels, that way it held together nicely.







Finally I took some time to start sketching out what I wanted the sole to look like. If I’m going to shape the iron I guess I should know what shape I want it to be!

Cutting the frog section was easy. Things got interesting when I was cutting the relief on the nose-piece. Two complex angles – thank god for bevel gauges.





I also started thinking about the slitter. I’ve seen people use old hacksaw blades, jigsaw blades, etc… I was digging around in my plane-parts bin and found a nice little iron that looked like it was almost perfect for a slitter. I grabbed some scrap beech I had and made up a quick peg. Once I get the body of the plane finished I’m going to cut a 3/8” x 3/8” mortise to position the slitter.







But first, determining the shape of the sole!

While that amount of wood is expensive, that wasn’t the hardest part. You see, the design calls the panels to be a solid 3/4” with coves to reduce the thickness to 1/4” to fit in the frame. The problem is that I had no way of cutting the cove (without using a router table). I tried:

1. My Stanley 45
2. A cove-cutting molding plane
3. A rabbet plane followed by a round molding plane

Unfortunately, all of these resulted in unacceptable levels of tear-out. At that point I was stumped.

So I started doing some reading on all the different ways to make a raised panel. I came to the conclusion that what I really needed was a panel raising plane. I began perusing all of the usual sources for old planes but quickly noticed that almost all of the available options were out of my price range.

With a purchase out of my league I decided to try to make my own. Rather than making the whole thing, I thought it might be easier to adapt an existing plane to suit my needs. Some shopping around found me an old jointer on ebay that was in rough but serviceable shape. I feel a bit guilty butchering an old plane so I made sure to acquire one that was damaged too far to be restorable, but not so far as to render my plans impossible.

The plane itself is a Casey & Co (of Auburn, NY) plane (identified only after much scrubbing). From some research I’ve done it appears that Casey & Co was only in business for one year (1857) before being bought out. The body is cracked in several places but I think I can salvage uncracked parts.

I began by scrubbing it down with soap and water. It looks like this thing sat in someone’s unheated barn for 20 years. After scrubbing I rubbed on three coats of boiled linseed oil. Every coat soaked in completely within 10 minutes. I have never seen a plane that is so dry.







Once I finally freed the stuck wedge and got the blade and chipbreaker out, I was able to pry them apart. Into an electrolytic bath they went!





Next up: sawing the body.

1. It was hard to move and reposition.
2. It lacked height adjustment.
3. The tool rest wasn’t able to rotate (for work on hollow vessels).

So, I designed a tool rest that was adjustable on all fronts. The bottom flange has grooves that slide along the tracks. The bottom knob tightens the position of the rest base. The rest itself can be moved up and down and rotated by the knob on the front.








Ok, now onto getting this thing completed…

Once the rough shape was cut, I then trued up the wheel with a spokeshave.

The flywheel has a 5/8” hole bored through the center. There are also 1 3/8” holes bored 1/2” deep on each side to accept two sets of bearings that the flywheel rides on.

Once the bearings are in, the flywheel is mounted on the support and locked into place with stop collars.

To get the wheel to turn freely, I had to sand down the 5/8” steel rod that the flywheel was mounted on. It was just a bit too large and was causing the mounting to drag on the flywheel, greatly reducing it’s speed. Once I got it slimmed down, the speed of the flywheel increased greatly. The shine of the right side gives away my work:

Finally, the wheel mounted:

I started by sawing the basic shape – I threw in a couple of decorative curves.

I followed that up by cutting a 1/8” groove in the top and tapping in a piece of 1/8” steel bar stock. I figure that should provide a solid rest for the tools. In Roy’s original plans he doesn’t mention doing this, but I think it will really add to the life of the tool rest. I sawed the line initially, then widened it with my 1/8” chisel until I could tap the bar stock it. I really didn’t want the piece to split so I made sure the fit was just snug.

Afterwards I mounted it to the frame and my tool rest is complete!

The top is secured through the lathe rails and uses a bolt & wingnut to hold it in place. As you can see, I bored a slot through the top to allow for depth adjustments.

As usual, after the build I got to thinking – it would be nice (for more complex turnings) to be able to adjust the height of the tool rest. I’ll have to see about modifying it to allow for that.

I started the day by finishing up the cross brace on the end. It probably seems like nothing, but cutting mortises in 4”x4” posts takes up a lot of time. Saint Roy’s plans call for this brace to be a simple 2×4, but since I am increasing the mass of the flywheel some (and because I had leftovers) I decided to beef up the brace to a 4×4 post. Getting the mortises and tenons for the triangular beams has been the biggest pain in my butt so far on this project. I probably spent a good hour and a half today just trimming and fitting to make this piece. I also went back and but a nice little beveled edge on the top surface of the bottom beams.

With that brace complete, the basic frame was done! So I started working on the tail stock. Again, Roy’s plans call for a 2×4 but since I had 4×4 scrap I wasn’t doing anything with, I decided to use that instead. The stock has a through mortise that when combined with a tapered peg solidly grips the lathe.

Now that these pieces are complete, the lathe is starting to finally take shape!

Up next, hardware and the flywheel!

So I started looking around for a way to build a lathe that fit into my “no power tools” lifestyle. I looked at a more complex spring pole/bungee lathe but to be honest the half one way half the other way thing got pretty annoying after a while. Eventually I found plans for Roy Underhill's treadle lathe (pdf) that appeared in Popular Woodworking. They were even nice enough to provide a Sketchup Plan for it. After looking over the plans it looked like a reasonable build so I got started.

My plan is to build the entire lathe from store-bought dimensional lumber – Douglas Fir to be precise. I looked around for the necessary hardware (steel rod for an axle, bearings, and stop collars) and they seemed price prohibitive. The bearings alone were $9 a piece at Grainger! While I’m normally a fan of buying American-made products whenever possible, it seemed like no matter where I looked I could not find American-made sealed bearings. So, I went on ebay and bought 10 of them for $18 with shipping – roughly 20% of the cost from grainger. We’ll just have to see how these suckers hold up over time.

I got started building the main frame – Douglas Fir 4”x4” braces make for a hefty base. Cutting the tenons for this took some time but boy were they beefy.





I’m assembling the frame with breakdown hardware – since I live in a rental I have to be able to disassemble this sucker and move it at some point.

I’m also assembling it in reverse of Roy’s plans. The configuration he had wasted a lot of valuable space. In my small shop I can’t afford to waste space so I’m flipping the lathe around. I’m also reversing the support for the drive pulley. I’m probably going to be using a spade or screw chuck and I wanted the screw to turn in the correct direction.

Now it’s time to see about the supports, the headstock, and the tailstock.

My workshop is in a shared basement of a multi-apartment building. While normally the other residents of my building are quite nice and respectfully don’t mess with my stuff (I don’t mess with theirs), I wanted a till that would deter easily-tempted eyes from my tools. Ideally I’d also be able to lock it.

To accomplish this, I began surveying the saw tills that others have done. There are several designs out there that use rubber balls (like Timberframe Tool's example) to hold the saws in place. I have never cared for this design as it just seemed hokey to me. I don’t want to rely on plastic children’s toys to support and protect my antique saws.

I really like Dan's version but unfortunately, it’s not enclosed. I loved Phil's design but that’s waaaay too big for my tiny little shop. Finally, Old Wolf's was closer to what I was looking for. Again, it wasn’t enclosed, but at least the basic shape worked.

So, I came up with my own design. I made the design mirror the toolbox I made previously. I wanted it to sit on top of the toolchest, but I was worried about the depth of till necessary to keep the saws vertical. I ran some quick numbers and I thought I could get everything within 12” of depth, but I needed to test. So I got some blue tape, laid down various designs on my dining room floor and tested them out. After doing so, I figured that I could build the till with a 10” depth and a 30” height.

I chose to mount the saws teeth-out for identification purposes. A couple of my saws have almost identical handles and it’s just easier to me to look at teeth rather than try to memorize handles.

While most other designs call for a drawer of some kind, I decided against it mainly due to height restrictions. The till was slready going to be pretty high and I didn’t want to have the strain to pull down a saw. Besides, since my design has doors, I can mount sharpening-related items there.

Now that I had my design in hand it was time to get started!

A while back I decided to start expanding my saw collection. When I made the transition to hand-tool work, I bought four saws from Traditional Woodworker: a rip panel saw, a crosscut panel saw, a back saw, and a dovetail saw.

While the saws were excellent introductory tools, there are a few gaps that they could not cover. For example, I found I was using my backsaw for cuts where I should really be using a fine-toothed crosscut panel saw. My rip saw was also a little too fine for use on soft woods.

I looked at modern saws from several manufacturers (Veritas, Lie-Nielson, Grammercy, Pax, etc…) but all of them were out of my price range. Instead, I started keeping my eyes open for a restorable Disston saw. After looking around for a few weeks I found a D-8 rip saw with a thumb hole that looked to be a diamond in the rough. The blade was straight and while it was rusty, it looked like most of the rust was just on the surface.






Once I got it home I separated the blade and the handle with a little effort then dunked the blade into my electrolysis tank to derust it. Doing so removed the rust, but left plenty of discoloring. I’m not one of those guys who requires a perfectly shiney blade, but I also didn’t want something that was black all over. So I spent some quality time with the blade, some mineral spirits, and some 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper. After it was cleaned up I put a coat of paste wax on the blade.

After an hour or two of sanding, the blade was looking pretty good. Now I had to tackle the handle. I first rubbed it down with some mineral spirits and 0000 steel wool to remove the remnants of another finish. I then did a light sanding to smooth it out some. I didn’t want to remove the history of the handle, just smooth out some of the rougher sections. After it was a little smoother I gave it two coats of boiled linseed oil, followed by two coats of blonde shellac and finally a good coat of neutral paste wax applied with steel wool.

The brass I cleaned up by soaking a vinegar, salt, flour mixture for a half hour. I then rubbed it down with steel wool. I’ve used ketchup for this task before but it always imparted a reddish tint to whatever I was working on.

Once everything was put back together I clamped it in my restored saw vise (another rusty restore) and went to work with the saw files (using Skroo-zon file handles) to sharpen the blade. In about thirty minutes I had the blade razor sharp again.





I then tested the saw on some scrap poplar I had laying around. Unfortunately, as soon as I did so I noticed that the blade was binding really badly. I did some more reading and figured out that it was because the teeth had no set at all on them.

Naturally I then went out, purchased a saw set, and learned how to use it. I put a slight set on the teeth, just enough to eliminate any binding. Now this restored 1920s Disston cuts through poplar like a knife through butter!

My cuts were a bit too long so I ended up touching up the boards with a low angle block plane and then just screwing them in place. In addition to a storage area, the shelf also serves to hold ballast. You see, the original design of this bench was almost twice as large. However, in order to fit it into my small shop I had to make it smaller and therefore lighter. Right now I have a 50 lb sack of road salt down there to help keep the bench from shifting around so much.

I also attached the front vise: a Jorgensen Woodworker's Vise. I ordered the vise from Highland Woodworking and got excellent service as usual. They went above and beyond the call of duty to get my package rerouted to me after I gave them an old shipping address. I love those guys. So far it seems to work pretty well. The quick-release function is pretty neat. The only pain-in-the-butt part was mortising out the bottom of the bench to attach the vise to.





I mortised the face of the bench as well – that way the vise sits flush with both the top and the face. Once I got everything hooked up it worked like a charm. After cleaning up some of the oily residue on the vise with some alcohol, I gave it a good wipedown with wax to protect it. Now I have to decide if I am going to put wooden or leather faces on the vise.





Up next, the Shoulder Vise and on to Finishing!

I constructed the levelers from four hockey pucks. I drilled a recess in them and epoxied in a bolt by the head. I then drilled a matching recess in each leg and epoxied a nut in each leg. By spinning the hockey puck the bolt will move in and out, helping to level the bench.

To add stability to the system I also added a washer to the bolt head and epoxied that to the puck as well. Hopefully it will distribute the weight of the bench more.

I also decided to go ahead and attach the tool rail to the bench. I crosscut another piece of douglas fir to 48”. I then created the spacers by ripping a 1/2” wide strip with my hand saw, cutting it into 6 4” chunks, smoothing it with a number 4 plane, and then attaching it to the previously mentioned piece. Doing so established a 1/2” slot along one side for me to rest chisels, saws, squares, etc… in while I worked. Very handy.





Finally, I also took this time to bore the bench dog holes. I did so with a 3/4” auger bit and a hand brace. I learned that I had to clamp a scrap piece of wood to the bottom while doing this, otherwise the bit would make a mess when it punched through to the other side.

I did the boring while the bench top was still not quite smooth. If there was any tearout I wanted to clean it up when I smoothed out the top. For most of the top I put the dog holes 4” apart from each other. I only placed them where I thought they would be useful. I can always come back later and add more holes – it’s kind of hard to remove unnecessary ones though. I placed a series of them right where the shoulder vise and the front vise are. I figure those should get the majority of the use.

Up next, finishing up the leveling of the top and starting to attach the vises!

Lastly I did the handles. I initially just cleaned them up with soap and water, after which I noticed that the finish was almost completley gone. I ran some sandpaper over it lightly to smooth out some bumps and then put on two coats of Tung Oil and one good rubdown of natural-tone wax. I’m pretty pleased with the appearance and the performance blows me away!

Here you can see the mortises and the nuts that went into them. I used a forstner bit on my drill press to made the mortise. I thought about using my dedicated mortiser, but since I was working with a fairly shallow piece of wood (the stretchers are only 1.5 inches thick) I wanted the clean sides and bottom that a forstner creates.
 

 
I also recessed the bolt heads for a more finished look. Here you can see the completed joint.

 
 
Now, from the top where you can also see the pegged joints (before I trimmed the pegs).

 
 
After I got all of the joints assembled (it’s so easy to say that, but it took me days of after-work work to do it!), it was time to start thinking about the lower shelf. Had I been using a table saw, ripping a piece of stock would have been trivial. However, since I was trying to avoid power tools as much as possible, I broke out my ripping saw and got to work. My initial cuts were not perfectly straight so I ended up planing down the pieces. I created a register for the bottom shelf:

 
 
And for the top.

 
 
Finally, a shot of the lower shelving going in…

 
 
Next, on to the top!

The Levelers:

Testing the fit of a nut after I drilled a hole in the bottom of a leg using my drill press and a forstner bit.

Once the levelers were done it was time to look into finishing up the ends. I went ahead and used a 3/8” forstner bit to drill holes so I could peg the joints. I really want this bench to survive anything I throw at it and glue just didn’t seem to be enough.

Once I got the pegs in it was time to glue up the end pieces. I used Titebond slow-set glue to put these together. If I had used normal Titebond there would be no way I could get everything together in time. My only concern is whether or not I got enough glue into the joints. Some of those mortises are big!

Up next, the stretchers!

My first task with the new bench was to create the end assemblies. So, I used a German cross cut handsaw (http://www.traditionalwoodworker.com/24-Hand-Saw-7-TPI-Cross-Cut-Teeth-Germany/productinfo/520-0600/) I ordered from traditional woodworker and got to work. Once I rough-cut the lumber down, I used my new Stanley #7 plane (bought used and refurb’d it myself) to joint the surfaces and get them ready for gluing.

After I had the legs together I started in on creating the mortise and tennon joints that would join the end assemblies together. Cutting tennons by hand is always an interesting proposition, but after doing a few I think I got the hang of it.

After the dry fit I loosely put things together to see how they would do.

Since my bench was left in Tennessee, I decided that the first thing I needed to build a new workbench. One that was sturdy, solid, hand made, able to take any abuse I want to inflict upon it, and yet be able to be disassembled and moved to a new residence at some point. So, I started digging around and found this popular woodworking article about building a $175 work bench (http://www.popularwoodworking.com/article/175_Workbench/). I liked the design and I decided to give it a shot. This blog series will be the story of the workbench as it comes together with only hand tools.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the article-specified Southern Yellow Pine in Boston, so I went with Douglas Fir instead. I have never done much work with hand tools before so I wanted something soft and easy to work with.

Next up, making the end assemblies…