My Fellow Americans and Terrestrials,
Yes, last Tuesday I
did not post a Tuesday post. I
have no excuse except fatigue. I
got home and just could not resist the warm soft nest in my room. I owe you twice the words this
Tuesday. Until then I present to
you the second stage of a long and over do project. My Roubo inspired Workbench (The Sun Bear).
-DBL
Jig and Router
Originally I had
intended to level out the area where the faulty fox joint mortises currently
exist using only my able body and bench planes. Well for sake of speed and a newer experience I
decided to finally purchase my first Porter Cable 1 ½ hp router.
I had started to
level the area using hand tools and left it at a good place for the router to
do the rest of the dirty work, but still not be bog down by too much material
removal. Iron bark is dense and
splintery and can wear down tools, but can also be machined pretty nicely. Almost as nicely as its cousin the
lemon scented eucalyptus.
One of the troubles
I am dealing with in this project is the wind (pronounced whined) that exists
in the top of the bench. The pair
of legs on the left side are pretty leveled. The problem is at the other end. A wind in a board is a twist in which each end of the
board is at different axis.
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| Full view of jig |
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| New unused Porter Cable router |
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| Battens |
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| Anchored at the base of the legs |
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| In retrospect this area should of had more battens |
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| Hand worked unroutered |
After the jig was
built what was left to resolve was how to routering the middle of the area that
was being removed. Since the base
of the router has a radius of 2 5/8 in. I had to add a movable supporting sled
in the middle of the jig. As I
worked closer to the center I readjusted the sled.
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| Support sled |
When I had the
majority of the area routed I decided to remove the jig and do the rest of
the finesse work using hand tools.
Hopefully I have a good flat reference to finish flattening it with out
too much grief.
*A side note. The grooves I have left on each side of the flatten area will help my squaring of the top. To do this I will use my Jointer plane. Some bench plane blade's do not extend to the edge of the body. This groove will correct for the area that the edge of the jointer plane can not reach. I will later fill this area with a contrasting wood or an exotic wood for a nice adhoc detail.
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| Scrub plane for the rest of the hogging out |
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| After using the scrub plane |
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| Rounded corners |
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| Cleaned up area where the router missed |
That is the stage
the Sun Bear remains. Until the
next time be safe and love what you do.
Oh speaking of. When woodworking, using heavy equipment, power tools, sharp tools or when you just want
to do something right listen to your body and mind and the spirit will follow. When one of them is ready to quit, take a break. Remember this is fun, not work. I forget this often and this time I got
a gentle reminder. Just when I was
about to quit, just when I felt myself rushing, I told myself "ok time to quit". My mind did but my body followed through…
sliced my hand with my recently 1000 grit sharpened paring chisel. Luckily I was doing very light work, but
the tool had a very keen edge.
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| Mental/ Physical Fatigue + Sharp Tools = Two Stitches |
*Here are some Tales from the NoteBook for your musing.
