The Bespoke Woodworker

I’ve been in my new house for a few days now, and now that I’ve made it past the initial burst of settling in activity, I turn my eyes towards my workshop.  At the moment, my tools are sitting in part of my 24×24 garage.

While this is OK for storage for now, I need to get some room to work.  We’re in the middle of a record heat wave, so I doubt I’ll be able to clean up and organize much in there at the moment.    As a temporary shop, it has convenient access to the elec panel, which is right inside the door.

panel

And plenty of breaker space, too.

In the backyard, there’s a storage shed….

shed1

shed2

At 10×10, it is too small.

Once I get some other things out of the way, I intend to study the area’s building codes, and see just how big I could expand that to be….  At quadruple that footprint, I’d be a happy camper!

Well, we just found out, its a girl, and my wife is due July 26th, so much good news there.  Also, we’re putting our current condo (and therefore my small basement workshop) on the market, and looking for a new place.  Most of my work lately has been of the home improvement/cleanup/packing variety, so that has been quite a time sink.

On the plus side, I’m aiming for a much bigger shop next time around, hopefully with windows and sunlight!  I’m sure there will be machine setup and shop setup work, which people always love.

I decided to make my own try square, in the spirit of the hand tool extravaganza I’ve been into lately.  I saw an article by Adam Cherubini on making them, I _think_ in popular woodworking.  (If somebody has a link to the issue, let me know!)  I don’t have the article handy, but the basis of it was pretty simple.

I grabbed some spare Sipo and some spare Maple that already happened to be an appropriate width, a hair over 1/4″ and 3/4″ respectively.

Crosscut and hit them with a smoothing plane.

A nice full width mortise courtesy of a tenoning jig.  (I’m sure Adam would not approve!)  Then get it as close to square as my starret will show me, and some glue and clamps.

After resting overnight, I declamped, and smoothed it, and rechecked for square.

Came out as close as I could get it judging by visible light between it and the reference square.

To ensure no movement, and because it just looks cool, I decided to toss in some pegs out of scrap Padouk.  I made a dowel plate (see previous blog post) and whipped out a dowel.

I drilled out some holes.

Then finally pegged and smoothed.

Finished with a thin coat of BLO just to keep the glue off.

Fin!

Not much left to do.  I picked up some proper braided 65lb test fishing line.  Plenty strong enough for our purposes.  As the online documentation mentions, I used 4 loops, and made it snug enough that I could, with effort, still remove the blade when necessary.

Now that it actually was tensioned like a working saw, I had no choice but to give it a try!

You may notice that offcut from my circle cutting inlay tool test.  I decided to follow the circular groove, and even with the low TPI blade, it still followed it just fine.

I decided to turn the handles, as I hadn’t fired up my Rikon in a little while.  I roughed a nice long blank.

Drilled it out.

And then shaped and installed them!

I haven’t glued them on yet, as I’m waiting for a small variety assortment of set screws to arrive.  I’m not sure if I’m going to like the handles I made long term.  The recommendations have them quite thin, and I have meaty hands.  Handle shaping can be  a very personal decision, so I’ll temporarily attach them with set screws, and either replace them, or permanently glue them in, after some test work.

The ever popular Joel over at Tools for Working Wood (also Grammery Tool), whom I also got my excellent Holdfasts from, has produced a nice bowsaw kit.  I’ve been interested in picking up a tool like this for a while, as I’m inherently lazy, and I don’t like to take the resaw blade off my bandsaw for light scroll work, so I’ve been considering a hand tool to save me that time.

The website also makes some excellent measured drawings available in PDF form, even if you don’t buy their kit and blades, although I strongly recommend it!

I had some excellent leftover workbench Ash, and I found a nick thick piece with straight grain in it.  Or at least straight after I do a little riving.   I found good grain lines, then ran a mark off with a ruler.

Then I sliced off the offcut.

Repeat a few more times, and you’ve got some nice straight grain pieces for your stretcher and arms.

I decided to do all my joinery first, while my stock was still square and indexable.  First the tenons.

Then drilling holes for the blade and handle retainers.

I marked mortises from my tenons.

And cut the tenons.   Note that since I have not yet shaped anything, the tenon is extra deep.

I started gently on the shaping.  I know that I can easily take this too far.

I clamped up the stretcher and went to down with a spokeshave, until it felt and looked good.  Very little measurements went into this part, other than locating the ‘middle’ for my eye.

Stretcher completed

Here I kind of just sketched onto the arm from the diagram, then bandsawed and sanded until I liked it.    Then I traced the first arm onto the second, and repeated.

Some more sanding and shaping later, we’re looking good!  I also whipped out a quick toggle pin.

With a blade temporarily tensioned by string, we’re starting to look like a saw!   I need to hit the sporting goods store and pick up some braided fishing line.  The cotton string you see is just for show, and won’t hold up under tension.

I did notice that the saw definitely has taken on a tilt upwards.  I think this is in part to me roughing the parts to size without leaving myself enough room to shape.  Since this is a fairly easy tool build, I may end up replacing the wooden parts later.  I’ll have to make sure I don’t permanently affix the handles so that they can be replaced easily later.  Maybe some set screws.

Enough for today though!

There’s a pile of crap in the tool drawer of my router table, and I can never seem to grab what I’m looking for, so I decided to use some scrap and make a quick organizer.

A little bit of scrap ash…

and Voila!