TWW Roubo Build - Part 8: Builder's Block

I'd like to say I just haven't had any time in the shop this week, but the truth is I hit a wall.  Earlier this week I milled the stock for my leg vise, deadman and parallel glide.  All was going extremely well.  I had routed the groove that the deadman needs in the bottom of the top of the bench.  As you can see, I even had a knot explode on me.

No problem.  These things happen.  It wasn't catastrophic, just an annoyance.  No one is ever going to look under the bench and I believe the leg will cover the transgression.  I proceeded to figure out the design I wanted to incorporate into the leg vise and the parallel glide.  I cut the design out on the bandsaw for the parallel glide, cleaned everything up with my chisels
 and then proceeded to layout and drill the holes that are used to keep the leg vise from racking.  CATASTROPHE!!!

  I had horrible tear out.  Luckily, I have many friends on Twitter and other social media sites and I ran the situation by them.  Some felt I should just be OK with it and move forward.  "It's just a bench!".  My buddy Chris Wong of Flair Woodworks and Time Warp Tools thought I could simply do another, thicker glide and plane off the offending tear out.  My Hand Tool School teacher, Shannon Rogers, explained the forces that the glide encounters doing it's job and suggested that maybe Fir was a bit too soft to handle the situation.  My first reaction was to follow Chris' suggestion to go thicker and stay with the Fir.  A little background might help here.  I'm a bit obsessive compulsive in certain things of my life.  I really wanted to build the entire bench out of Fir.  If I was to introduce a contrasting wood, I would have done the end cap of the wagon vise in that wood.  I envisioned me sawing apart the end cap from the bench, which is now glued in place, simply to appease a compulsion that would gnaw at me endlessly until I succumbed to the somewhat psychotic demand.  Ultimately, I am choosing to move forward with the glide being made from some Osage Orange I have on hand, which over time will fade, but is fairly close in color to the old growth Fir I've used on the rest of the bench.
While I had the part dimensioned and the mortise fit, I laid out the cuts I need to make on the leg.  
I will wait to do those until I have the new part, just in case the dimensions change a bit.  Only time will tell if I have to start tearing things apart to make them either match or properly contrast.  YES, I'm weird, but I'm OK with that.

Whew! Part Five - TWW Guild Roubo Build

This was easily the most intimidating part of TheWoodwhisperer Guild build for me.  I've only cut one dovetail up to this point by hand.   It did not go well.  This time I'm cutting blind dovetails and from reading the BenchCrafted instructions, you either get the fit of this vise correct, or it doesn't work well.  What good is a premium vise if it doesn't work like it should?

So, I laid out my dovetails and put my little Doc Holliday to work.  I tried to employ what Shannon Rogers has taught us at the Hand Tool School and did my best to "split the line".  I don't know if it was because I was cutting horizontally, the learning curve, or I'm just a spaz, but I managed to drift on each dovetail when cutting the right side.  Both were straight and true on the left where I could actually see the line, but the right sides both drifted to the left as I approached the bottom of the tails.

After cutting out the dovetails, I needed to "straighten" them and pare the waste.  I got to use my Knew Concepts fret saw.  I think next time I can get closer to the base, but even though I was probably being overly cautious, it was fun getting there.

Right off the bat, I found I needed to fire up the sharpening station.  My chisels and, as I found, my planes all needed drastic attention.  I had too shallow an angle on my chisels and was damaging the edge trying to chop out the waste.  The station proved to work very well.  Since I still haven't been pleased creating the initial angle on my Delta variable speed grinder, I used the DMT Duo Sharp in the bottom drawer, moved up to the wet stones, then finished on the sandpaper on glass.  Considering I was completely reshaping the blades, I was surprised how little time it took to get them from rough to a polished finish.  Because I tend to be a space cadet, I made sure to write the settings I used on for the Veritas Mark II honing guide.

Once I had the tails cleaned up, I created a 1/4" rebate on the bottom of the tails to register against the end cap and transferred the tails to the end cap. 

After rigging up a clamping solution, which I will NEVER have to do again once this bench is built, I again pulled out my Bad Axe dovetail saw and got to work.  It all seemed to go well, but as you can see in the second photo, I was over zealous in marking my lines.  After using the knife to mark, I wanted to define the line a bit better with my chisel and I think I pushed too hard and "moved" the line.

After chiseling out the waste and doing a dry fit, you can see my joint had almost as big of a gap as my front teeth.

With much finessing and dry fitting, Saturday night I glued everything up and called it a day.  I did, however, return to the shop about an hour later to clean up my glue mess.  I'm still not very good at applying just the right amount.

Luckily after clamping up and paring down the end cap, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd originally suspected.  I've thought about using glue and sawdust to help hide the mistake, but I think this is a good lesson to remember.  The second and bottom is much better than the top and, as time goes on and I keep practicing, I WILL get better.

Now came the fitting of the vise.  Because I went with a bench top thickness of 3", the Benchcrafted directions said to use 3/4" thick spacers to properly position the tail vise runners.  That ended up being too thick and made the hardware bind too much to travel as freely as the video shows.  After trying a couple pieces of 3/4" plywood, which is actually 23/32", I thought momentarily about just using it.

Considering the reclaimed aspect of this build, I decided not to introduce man made wood.  It turned out that was a good decision in terms of the vise, too.  I ended up with a even slightly less thickness and the vise's action was incredible.  So, if you are building along or using a Benchcrafted tail vise on a future bench.  Test it out and play with the thickness.

The last thing that was kind of freaking me out was the drilling and final set of the runners.  In the previous post when I'd drilled for the retaining bolts, I had not though about the placement of the runners  I think I dodge that bullet by a hair, which you can see in this photo.

I think the hardest part is over.  I already have the legs, dead man and tail vise parts milled.  I need to mill the rails still and then on to the base construction!!!

The Woodwhisper Guild Roubo Build-Part 4

The last two evenings I haven't had any time in the shop, except to clean up a bit.  But, this weekend, which started on Friday, I awoke to a damp and frosty morning.  It was the perfect start to a blissful weekend in the shop.

The first thing I worked on was the finishing touches on the mortise and tenon for the end cap.  This was the second tenon I've cut.  The first was at WIA '11, where I was fortunate enough to have Adam Cherubini give me some one on one instruction on sawing.

For my second tenon and a monster tenon at that, I did pretty darned good with my new Bad Axe Beastmaster and Wyatt Earp saws.  The tenon required very little work to fit just right into the mortise.





The fit was just about perfect.  I left the cap a little proud on both sides to allow me to flush it up after I've got everything together.

Next, I went back and poured over the PDF from Benchcrafted and the Sketch Up plan that  Aaron Marshall has put together for the The Woodwhisperer Guild before I started drilling holes to both attach the end cap to the top and the ones needed for the tail vise.




The Benchcrafted instruction are VERY clear that a perfect fit is essential for flawless operation.




Next up was the part I was dreading the most.  I really hate dust and have tried to design excellent dust collection through out the shop.  The one weak area is any hand held routing operations.  On the next post I'll review the Triton router I bought in response to the mess made when I routed the channel for the tail vise screw.

The initial fit looks very good.  I think it will be dead on!

For the next exercise I got to put my sharpening station to good use.  I drilled the holes for the bolts that attach the cap to the bench and drilled and chiseled out the holes to capture the nuts.

You can see in this photo how hard the winter growth rings are in this Fir.  After talking to Shannon, who is my Hand Tool School teacher, I'm increasing the angle of my bench chisels from 20 degrees to 25 and adding a steeper micro-bevel.

In the midst of all this, I managed to mill up my legs, deadman, and leg vise boards.  I'm going thicker on the legs than in the plan.  Mine are 5 3/8" x 4 1/4".

Hopefully, this weekend I'll finish up the top and move on to the base!