Home / Tag "tools" (Page 3)

Sunbathing poplar

So asking on UKworkshop about that clamping problem I was thinking about with the shelf/desk project led to the conclusion that housing joints won’t work and tapered sliding dovetail joints are the better choice. That will probably mean some router work because of the precision needed – I could probably make a tapered dovetail joint that wouldn’t pull out, but one that would be precise enough to maintain the shelves against racking would be beyond me. So a new router bit, get that router table out of storage and actually assemble it (I basically picked it up in Lidl intending to use parts of it in a proper router table at some point and then just developed a dislike for routers in general 😀 ), and that sorts two of the shelves out; the third gets dovetailed into the top shelf which will also help with racking.… Read the rest

Read More

Plugging away…

So first things first, take the clamps off and see if the hide glue cured…

Not too bad, lots of squeezeout in places but I can deal with that.

Well, bugger. I thought I had that better aligned than that and there’s no real way to fix it now. Feck.

Clean up the squeezeout and smooth the surfaces. Mostly the #04 with a few pieces done by card scraper. Not too bad. Broke the sharp edges as well.

Couldn’t get all the edges with the #04 though, so various other tools made an appearance. And then leveled the legs so it didn’t rock. I don’t like MDF for, well, anything, but it is nice to have a flat surface for this sort of thing and I don’t have room for a granite slab so I do keep a piece or two of MDF handy for this task.… Read the rest

Read More

Locker progress

So with the bandsaw down, my plans for the box are on hold and I moved back to the locker. I started off by planing the roughcut pieces I was going to use to get them flat and smooth, then I cut the dovetails for the main carcass, and of course, that means sharpening time 😀

And marking up time…

And sawing time…

No, I didn’t do all the sawing with the fretsaw, I just used that to get the bulk of the waste out. Then it was chopping and paring time.

Incidentally, that chisel mallet is a nice find from lidl. I’d say I spotted it, but credit for that goes to Calum…

Different faces of different colour-coded hardness from white (hardest) to black to red to yellow to blue (softest), so you can have one hammer with one face for thwacking the chisel and the other face for beating the joint together or apart without either losing energy on the former or marring the work on the latter.… Read the rest

Read More