kiwi1969's Blog at LumberJocks.com

the humble house workshop #10: happy days

kiwi1969 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:21:11 GMT

Cut myself twice today, once when my tenon saw jumped out of the kerf and again with a slip of a chisel. nothing serious, just a couple drops of the red stuff, but i felt real happiness. Why? BECAUSE IT MEANS IM WORKING AGAIN!!!!!!!!!! now where did i put those bandaids.

the humble house workshop #9: one door closes, another opens

kiwi1969 — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 06:13:32 GMT

FINALLY!!! after almost 2 years of struggle in the Philippines it has actually happened. The light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train! I found a backer for my business plan and I now have a small furniture company of my own! Thats it behind the red door.
The tools are your basic stuff. Planner/thicknesser combo, bandsaw, drill press etc all of it generic chinese, actually very good generic chinese I must say, but thats what the setup budget allows for and it,s not like there,s a powermatic or grizzly dealer on every corner here so you use whats available on the market.
You have no idea how good this feels. When you look in the mirror everyday and see your cheekbones and ribs sticking out you know things are tight! I must say it always amused me to hear sob stories from people who couldn,t make the payments on their SUV,s when I was here selling my shirts just to buy rice so I could eat. But I,m so thin now none of my clothes fit anyway! Faith in Allah, patience and perserverance are the three things that got me through the tough times here and even when all I had was a cup of rice ( literally!) I never stopped believing that this day would come. Thanks to all LJ,s for the motivation I got everyday on this site, and a personel thanks to one jock in particular to whom I ve sent a thankyou pm.
Asallam o alikum.

the humble house workshop #8: Narra, King of the forest, destroyer of cheap plane irons!

kiwi1969 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:23:56 GMT

I wasn,t planning to write about this project, but as it,s my first experience with Philippine Narra wood and I just gotta tell you it,s amazing stuff. The colour is like fresh beef, the smell is sweet and the dust, even from a hand saw, gets into every crack and orrifice the human body posseses. Hate to think what would happen if you used a belt sander! The photos don,t do it justice, even if they were better than my cheap camera can achieve. I,m recycling a chair that I bought about 4 years ago, one of a pair that I was never happy with, turning it into a small box on stand to hold my copy of the Qur,an. Knocking it apart was easier said than done. Unbelievably they nailed the seat on to the rails through the top, although the rails themselves were mortise and tenoned to the legs. I,m thinking of useing the carved back as a photo frame.

The piece here is around 35mm x 25mm x 270mm for the base frame. Four of these and four shorter pieces were all I managed to get done before both my #5 and my block plane irons got totally blunt.

This stuff is also a great lesson in reading grain direction and no matter what I did I got some tearout. Lumberjock Daniels broken glass scraper idea is going to be put to the test on this job I assure you. Check out the grain on this panel. At almost 500mm x 500mm it,s one piece.

I won,t put any stain on this when its done, that would be a crime against nature on this beautiful wood, maybe just danish oil or a low sheen wipe on poly. With any luck the weather will hold and I can get it done this week, inshala.

Woodcraft in the Philipines #7: How much?

kiwi1969 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:39:44 GMT

So you made the move to the Philippines and you want to furnish your house with some nice examples of locally made furniture, how much is it going to set you back. If your in Manila expect to pay more than you would in other urban centers like Cebu or Davao, but even so you won,t break the bank. A sala set, like the one here, usually consisting of a sofa, two chairs a coffee table and two side tables, will cost you around 55000 peso (US $1150) The somewhat awful photo shows it as you will find it in the shop awaiting final finishing and upholstery which is then chosen by you. The wood on this set is Molave and weighs a ton so forget shipping this set home in your excess baggage, seriously it took two of us to lift it!.

The display case here, made from Narra, is selling for 25000peso (US $520). This one took a month to complete start to finish, stands around 7 ft tall, comes with glass shelves and has matching carvings on the bottom. The finish is typical here, thick heavy orange looking goop that completly obscures the timber and i,ve yet to understand why they insist on useing it when there are much better options out there. But for $520 bucks it still looks great.

This cabinet can be yours for about 20000 peso, with a bit of haggling. Thats about US $420. 420 bucks! You can,t even buy the wood for that price. Well you can here. The timber used on this example is Gmelina thats been stained. and it,s all hand carved.

How much for a dinning table and chairs? How longs a piece of string. They vary fom 10000 pesos for a four seater up to six figures for the eight seaters and above. They are usually pretty solid in the undercarriage department. This Gmelina table is over 8 ft long and all the rails are at least 2inchs thick.
Shop around and you,ll find something you like, but never accept the first price your given, especially if your a foriegner. The additional cost is known locally as ” skin tax” or as a friend called it “long nose tax” and they won,t be upset if you negotiate. But do check it over before you sign up for anything, some of the pieces I saw in this store had insect damage and doors and drawers that didn,t quite fit right. Delivery is usually thrown in if you live close enough. Happy shopping.

the humble house workshop #7: Torrential rain and broken baileys

kiwi1969 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:08:22 GMT

Being born and raised on a small island just north of Antarctica I revel in the tropical climes I now enjoy and have been known to have a bit of a dig at those in the frostier regions who are suffering as I once did. However the downside to this paradise in the tropics is the other season we have otherwise known as the wet season, and I must admit i,ve been laughing on the other side of my face recently because for the last 17 days as it has rained every single one of them. Every day dawns with the promise of fun in the sun and ends in a tropical downpour of biblical proprtions.

So this state of affairs shows up the main disadvantage of my outdoor workshop, it turns into a swimming pool about 11 oclock, however I managed to finish Anti toddler gate number 2 during one of the brief moments when it rained sunshine as opposed to water, and must say i,m a lot happier with it than I was with Gate 1.

So in the meantime i,ve been attending to the other side of my new venture which most of us usually pursue with less enthusiasim than the actual work. The paperwork. I,ve been designing business cards and flyers, coming up with advertising ideas and placeing ads on various websites here, setting up email accounts and a blog site, basically to get the name out there as much as I can. Also I have used the old costing sheets from my last job to finalise the priceing of the products I intend to make. Essentially it,s an excel sheet with the size of each component needed plus the board foot cost of lumber and the labour per hour which not only gives you the total board foot requirement but the actual time and cost of labour for each piece which is then linked up to another sheet which adds all the other sheets together, adds on the hardware and finishing which then gives you the cost of the total job. They have proven to be pretty accurate and the beauty of the system is if you adjust anything from the timber or labour cost down to the individual process times, like docking, dressing ,moulding etc, the sheet automatically adjust to the change. It sounds a bit long winded but once you have a template it,s just a matter of copy/paste and fill in the blanks, although with almost 100 products going into my catalog it takes a while to get it all done.

The inclement weather also means a lot of net surfing time and this has meant i,ve finally found a treadle lathe design that takes my fancy and i,ve finalised my workbench and tool chest design, now i just need the cash to make it all happen.

One other spanner in the Stanley tool works was the untimely demise of my #3. the Y shaped adjusting lever on the frog broke! After only two projects this doesn,t bode well for the future of my #5 either and has only hastened my desire to finally make the wooden planes i,ve had on the drawing board for far to long. On the upside i,ve already had a nibble about a possible small comission so fingers crossed on that one. See you all again soon.

the humble house workshop #6: Cheap saws bad, cheap planes good

kiwi1969 — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:45:36 GMT

Only did about two and half hours today which meant I got the dovetails and all the mortises for the slat done. Is this time about right for hand tool work? Love to know if it is as I felt I could have done better.
....
Another thing that i,ve discovered since I started doing hand tool work is the importance we place on the handplane seems to be a little overdone. My previous postings show piles of shaving that have come from out of the box Stanleys but in these simple projects once the initial work is finished they go back in the box as their job is done. The more important work of joint cutting now begins and for this the quality of the saws and chisels become all important. If you can,t work to your marked lines cleanly and accurately then all the effort you just spent planning your stock is wasted. My budget saws very quickly showed up their limitations and these will be the first to go when cash allows. Not being able to cut to a line means leaving a lot of waste that then has to be pared away with a chisel if I wanted any thing like an accurate joint, costing sweat and time. The chisels I have, also Stanleys, are actually reasonably good but they too will be replaced before I even think of ditching the Stanley planes for something better. Obviously good handplanes are important but for a Handtool newbie like me a good saw and chisel set will take me further for less. Just my thoughts on this, any other opinions are most welcome.

the humble house workshop #5: LOVIN' IT!!

kiwi1969 — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:36:47 GMT

Sorry for the dim pic, got a late start to the next project today and just ran out of light. Thats the downside of an open air shop, but I just didn,t realise how dark it was until I couldn,t see my gauge lines! I really just got into a groove with the plane and simply didn,t want to stop. Can,t remember ever feeling that way when I was useing a jointer. Maybe I should of called this post “Pumping iron”. Tommorow, Mortise and tenons cut by hand. Lovin it!!

the humble house workshop #4: First workout

kiwi1969 — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:38:35 GMT

So I finally get to make some shavings and give the new budget bench a trial run. The project is a gate for the front door to stop the little guy from crawling away as he is getting a bit adventurous for his own safety at the moment. After some not too bad sales of our second hand clothes, I went and got some 3×2 from the local hardware, three 12 ft lengths of something that looks a bit like luan for 900 peso. The bench itself was always going to be a bit light weight so i,ve built a removable tool box to add weight and give extra support to the legs, it,s not finished in these pics but it did the trick and I now have a surprisingly stable surface to work on. The luan lookalike planed up really nicely as long as you have the grain running the right way, and the jig is proving way easier and faster than useing a vice for this job.

The next planing job was on some Palochina (local pine) that I got for free. I love Pine, big shavings pouring out of the Jack planes mouth, the smell rising up of the bench, wonderful stuff.

Then came the dovetails. Now I have to say that after 15 years in the factories i,ve never done a dovetail by hand so this is the first in my entire life! Made a slight goof by not leaveing enough meat on the pins and one of them did split on the dry fit, and yes I did manage to cut on the wrong side of the line on my first one!

It feels great having a pile of shavings underfoot.

The dry fit pointed up some pretty average joinery. The mortise and tenon joints are a bit gappy and I realised goof number 2 was not to make the tenons before the slats were shaped. The design is also very average. I intended the slats to be an ode to Charles Limbert but they ended up looking like a badly drawn cactus from a road runner cartoon.

The dry fit also exposed another goof ( thats 3 now). The gaps created by the design stuff up were too big and the little guy could fit his head through so I had to add the cross piece which also helped make it look a little better. He seems happy with it anyway.
So after my first 100% all handtool project I must say despite the stuff ups I honestly enjoyed this more than all my years in factories and thats not an overstatement. This way of working was like a fresh start to a new career and after taking a break from the tools for a bit over a year it,s a wonderful feeling getting dusty again without haveing to wear glasses and earplugs. I also discovered that working in an open shop is realy nice, as long as it doesn,t rain, and I will certainly include this feature in my dream shop when I finally get one.

Although it did reveal something horrible when you combine weightloss and handplaning. PLANERS CRACK!!

Sorry about that.

the humble house workshop #3: Budget workbench needs all the help it can get

kiwi1969 — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:15:11 GMT

So with the basic bench built it,s time to increase its ability to do some serious work. Without a vise other ways have to be found to hold stock and as Adam Cerubini pointed out it,s the ability to securely hold stock that makes hand tool work easier,safer and all the more enjoyable and it frees you up to concentrate on holding the tool with a more effective grip which in turn makes your work more accurate. All these jigs have been written about and described in books and magazines going back centuries so they aren,t any clever invention on my part, in fact the clamping device for doing dovetails was described in Popular woodworking last month. All the others I got from Bernard E jones which I reveiwed on this site last week.These were all made from 1/2 inch ply which is ok for the moment but they will be replaced as they wear out by hardwood versions in the future. There,s less than $10 US of material in these jigs so they seriously give you bang for your buck.
The first jig is to hold boards on edge for planning. The square block has a wedge shaped cut out and when any forward pressure is put on the stock it naturally tightens up into the jig. If you have dog holes you can mount it to your bench that way rather than use clamps.

The shooting board is for ensureing you shoot a square edge. Simply built from two perfectly flat boards with the bottom one wider than the top to create a ledge for a plane to ride on with a square stop at one end. It can also be used to shoot endgrain square on drawer box parts for example. Make sure your plane body is also square otherwise you shoot out of whack edges.

These bench hooks are for securing long stock for trimming.

While this bench hook is for trimming shorter pieces. These jigs can be made any size to suit your stock and are great things to use with a tenon saw or small plane.

This shooting board is for shooting mitres. I goofed a bit on this one as I have both sides at 45 degrees, when it would have been good to have one side set at 22.5. It,s made to work the same way as the straight shooting board.

The last two pictures are of a simple jig for secureing stock when cutting dovetails and I imagine you could also do some tenon cutting on these as well. It,s a simple jig to make being almost entirely from scrap and can be adjusted to any size that takes you,re fancy. The settup is self expainatory by looking at the photos.

So there you are, now I have no excuses for not making sawdust and at least I now know that any sawdust I make will be straight and square. These took no time to make and cost next to nothing and can be done cheap or fancy depending on your taste. If you haven,t tried any of these already then I can recomend giving them a go. They certainly surprised me.

the humble house workshop #2: Every shop needs a bench (please don,t laugh)

kiwi1969 — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:32:34 GMT

So in the first of this series I mentioned i,m starting an enterprise with no money, hardware store hand tools and a sheet of 3/4 in plywood. This is what happened to the plywood. Now like many on this site i,ve long dreamed of building my ultimate workbench and I must tell you in advance that this is not it! This is my answer to that chicken and egg argument about needing to build a bench so that you can then build a bench. Its taken directly from Shopnotes and haveing seen numerous 1 sheet of ply bench ideas this seemed to be the best. If anyone has ever thought of attempting too break down a sheet of 8×4 ply with a handsaw I must tell you now that it is not a pleasant experience and I decided not document this part of the procedure with photo,s as i,m sure nobody wants to see a pasty white man sweating proffusly in the tropical heat wrestling with a cheap sheet of ply and an even cheaper hand saw. Once that struggle was over, and after I recovered with the aid of a very strong coffee, I then had to create some dado,s using a straight edge, a tenon saw and chisel as well as trying out my stanley knockoff rebate plane.

This operation was not as painfull as I expected and I was surprised how quickly it was done. The base was simply assembled with glue and screws and I cleaned it up as best I could with a #5 jack and rounded all the edges with a block plane.

The uprights come together next by hinging the left side directly to the base and the right leg onto a 3/4 in cleat to allow both uprights to lie flat when packed and the support rails are then joined to these using bed rail brackets. These aren,t the same brackets as used in the original design, which are mounted on the ends of the rail,s but they work just as well. You can also see some of the tools used including a Stanley cordless drill and a screwdriver that never needs recharging.

The top is next. It is double thickness around the edges, the strips creating pockets that locate the top.

Using a cheap cordless jigsaw I then cut slots that will allow clamps to be used like holdfasts. There should also be dog holes but I don,t own any drill bits larger than 1/4 inch so they will have to come later.

This is the completed bench assembled and ready for use. It only measures 32in long. 22in wide and 33in high, so I won,t be making armoirs on it any time soon, but it fulfilled it design brief which was to be cheap, portable and solid enough to get the job done.

Flat packed it can be tucked away under a bed or against a wall without taking up precious space which is important here as I live in a town house so any bench large and immovable is not an option (so a Roubo is out of the question). The catches for closeing it will be fitted another day. If I had the budget I think I would have made two so they can be placed end to end or side by side for larger projects but for now this will do just fine. Total cost of this project worked out at around $22 US.

When I no longer have a use for it maybe I could turn it into a sandbox!