A Learning Adventure in the Workshop

Greene and Greene Legs and Other Parts

Lots of progress on the Greene and Greene desks over the past two weeks.  I made 16 legs with inlet details (8 per desk)  and fully mortised (photo below shows the legs before mortising), tapered,  rounded-over (1/8" round-over) and rough-sanded them..  I am pleased with how they turned out.

In addition to the legs, I cut and tennoned the four interior braces out of secondary wood (poplar) and cut and tennoned all of the lower rails (14).   The lower rails still need to be rounded-over on the router table.

I am going to use soft maple of the rest of the secondary wood parts (drawer sides and backs), but I used poplar for the braces since I had it available and those parts will not be seen after the desks are complete.

Shooting Board Experiments Continue

Over the past couple of weeks I completed the shooting board.  Below are two photos of the completed board. One with the miter attachment installed and one without.

You can also see the silver rare-earth magnets that were intended to secure the miter attachment...they were not strong enough and are not used, but I left them in place for now.  Instead the miter attachment is attached with two pegs.  The holes for the pegs are barely visible in the base in the first photo.

I have been using my low-angle Lee Valley (Veritas) jack plane for these experiments, and it works great.  I have a blade for this plane that does not have the usual camber in it.  The straight blade is necessary for shooting,

So far, I really like the new shooting board and the UHMW plastic slider is a definite improvement.   I will continue to report here in the blog as I get more experience with the shooting board.

Woodworking Plan Storage

Since the Holiday season is almost here, I thought I'd post this item.   I store my rolled-up woodworking blue-prints and plans in a plastic gift wrap organizer storage box. Several brands make them, but I have the "Sterlite" brand (basically a long plastic box).   These storage boxes can be found inexpensively at home stores during Holiday season (I got mine at Target).  The boxes are basically water-tight (important for those of you that have basement shops like I do) and the perfect size for storing rolled up plans.  Many, many plans can be stored in one box.

Progress on Shooting Board Experiments and Desks

I completed the prototype of the UHMW shooting board over the weekend.  It is made mostly of MDF (with a hardwood fence and bench hook) except for the UHMW runner.  Additionally, I experimented with using rare-earth magnets to allow the miter attachment to be easily attached and removed to change the shooting board from 90 to 45 degree operation.

The UHMW runner seems to be a success and works great...the rare-earth magnets are too weak to hold the miter block tightly enough in  place, so I supplemented them with hardwood dowel pegs in the miter block and holes in the base.  It now holds tightly enough.  So, one successful experiment out of two isn't too bad.  This week I will experiment with the operation of the board a bit and report back to this blog.  Photos to follow.

I also completed the two desk tops this weekend by cutting the four slots for the ebony splines into the edges of the tops with a slot-cutting router bit.  The tops are now "complete" and will be stored until the rest of the desks are done.  The ebony trim will be added to the tops after they are mounted on their bases.

I then made a jig to allow me to route out the inlet details on the legs of the desks and routed one leg as a prototype.  The jig works well.  I now need to cut 16 legs from the rough mahogany and then route them with the detail on all four sides each.

Experiments with a Shooting Board

For a long time I've wanted to build and experiment with a traditional shooting board for use with my hand planes.  A recent article in Popular Woodworking magazine has prompted me to take the plunge and make one so that I can use it on my current desk project.  An expanded version of the article can be found a the Popular Woodworking website by clicking here.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been reading all that I can on the Internet and elsewhere about building and using shooting boards, and I've gained a fair amount of "paper" knowledge about them.  Now its time to build one and see how they work in practice.

Below are a variety of links with good information on shooting boards:

• Great overview and including a variety of planing techniques:  http://www.amgron.clara.net/planingpoints/shuteingboards/shuteingindex.htm
• Nice photos of construction of a shooting board:  http://www.whitemountdesign.com/ShootingBoard.htm
• Wikipedia's general definition:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_board
• Michael Connor makes and sells a nice ramped shooting board through HNT Gordon:  http://www.hntgordon.com.au/shootingboards.htm
• Lie-Nielson has David Charlesworth's  shooting board plan here: http://www.lie-nielsen.com/pdf/shootingboard.pdf

Of course, all this reading got me thinking about ways to add a bit of modern technology to this excellent piece of old engineering,  After all, I'm trying to do "blended" woodworking, right?

My first thought is that the sliding surface of a shooting board has a lot of metal to wood contact (or wood to wood if you are using a wooden plane), and therefore a lot of friction in use.  So, how about if I build a shooting board using UHMW (Ultra-High Molecular Weight) plastic as the base for the sliding surface?  I just happened to have a piece of UHMW laying around the shop from making bearings for the CNC project.  After I'm done, I might use a spring-scale attached to a plane to see how much resistance there is on the UHMW, verses wood, verses plastic laminate.  That should tell me if the UHMW is worth the trouble. 

I've begun to build a shooting board that is in most respects very traditional, but it will have a few "tweaks" to see if I can improve on it a bit...UHMW, for one, and maybe a couple of other ideas.    The first shooting board that I build will be a quick-and-dirty prototype with which to experiment.  After I have a design that I like, I will build a hardwood version for long-term use.

I'm also considering experimenting with the "ramped" version that Michael Conner uses in his design.  I don't see where this design improves performance, but it does distribute wear across more of the plane blade's surface, and that is a good thing.  Unfortunately it also reduced the width of the piece that you can trim with the shooting board, so maybe its not worth it...I need to think about that.  The first prototype will have a "flat" surface.