The best laid plans...and a snowstorm of "historic proportions"!

There is a saying in the military: "Plans rarely survive contact with the enemy."  In that world, one hopes that the enemy is a clearly defined entity.  But in the world of the shop (that of the eager hobbyist or the busy professional) what is the "enemy"?  I can only speak to my own experience here, but I am confident that many of you will at least partially agree with my own assessment.  Oftentimes, the enemy can be time.  For me, as a hobbyist, it is a constant challenge to find the time (especially relatively uninterrupted time) to devote in the shop.  Life outside of the shop is a huge factor.  Of late, my family and I have been struggling with this to a far greater degree.  My wife suffered a major injury this past November.  While she is progressing steadily, we all have to pick up some of the household duties.  Also, my shop is a basement shop, so the sounds of family life are easily transmitted through the ceiling above me, a constant reminder of the daily activities that I miss while I am engrossed in my work.  Concentration is another issue, probably exacerbated by the prior issues.  Can we truly "be in that moment"?  How much of the time spent in the shop is truly dedicated to the task, or tasks at hand?  Are our minds preoccupied with other thoughts or happenings?  How does the work suffer along the way?  What are some of your enemies in the shop?

A busy tin shop.

I bring this up because this has been the story of my past five days.  Last Saturday, I had hoped for a decent amount of shop time and focused productivity on the +Tom Fidgen designed bedside table I have been working on.  Of course my plans were formulated forgetting a birthday party one of the children was invited to, things on my mind, and other important tasks around the house.  While I could have taken this in stride, determined to make the most of my time, I instead set about re-learning one of the most basic tenets of the shop.  "Haste makes waste."  The few hours I had in the shop were spent looking for ways to do things more quickly or easily.  The result?  I ended up having to start over on the bottom side stretchers, and by the time I left the shop, I hadn't even gotten back to the point that I had been at.  Lesson Learned... I hope.

One stretcher.  All I have to show for a Saturday in the shop.

So when Sunday rolled around, I decided I could use a little change of scenery.  I would take a day off from the table, re-calibrate my brain and pick up another project awaiting my attention...the lantern I promised my wife some time ago.

The lantern panel from a past post.

Panel bent around a shop made form, also from a previous post.

Panels bent, spacers made, yet again, from a previous post.

Now that we are caught up photographically, we can move forward with my progress.  The next step was soldering the spacers to the lantern body.  A fairly easy task to accomplish, but it is an art to do it well.  And in this age, the selection of solder greatly influences the final result.  Historically, a 50/50 combination of lead and tin would have been used.  For the sake of safety, I do not use lead.  But if you want your solder joints to look "right" by period standards, I wouldn't suggest any of the home center solders.

Solders complete.

A little closer look.

With the bodies completed, all of the remaining joints will be mechanical (no solder) until we place the hinges for the door at the end.  To attach the bottom and top, the edges of the body must be burred.  Burring, is turning the edge 90 degrees to the existing piece.  In this case, I will use a rotary machine first patented prior to 1810.  My machine in particular, dates from the second half of the 19th century.

Burring the bottom in progress.  My flesh powered burring machine.

The completed burr.

I can now move on to the bottom.  This particular pattern is new to me, so I will have to experiment with the diameter of the bottom.

Laying out the bottom circle with dividers.

Circle ready to be cut on the right.

After a couple tries, I found the right diameter.

Ready to burr the edge.

Once the bottom is installed, it will never come off and working space inside is extremely limited.  That being said, now is the time to make and install the candle cup onto the bottom.

Tracing the candle cup pattern onto tinplate.

Candle cups cut with top edge folded and set.

Forming the candle cups: first curving the ends with a rawhide mallet over a candle mold stake. 

Bending the cups by hand around the stake.

Marking the position of the cup.  The holes for the legs will be cut with a cold chisel.

The legs are pounded flat on the outside of the bottom with the rawhide mallet.

Bottom and candle cup finished.  The edge of the bottom is burred in this photo.

At this point, the bottom is ready for installation.  The burr on the bottom is snapped tightly into place over the burr on the bottom of the body.  When i turned the burr on the bottom, I went further than 90 degrees.  This will make it easier to hammer the burr on the bottom flat onto the burr on the body.  There is a setting machine for accomplishing this, but I find it more satisfactory to do this by using a setting, or paning hammer.  It also allows me to make small corrections as I go, achieving a more perfect bottom circle.  Like most things hand tool, it goes a little slower, but it allows for a better feel for the process and achieves a much better fit and finish.  The hand of the artisan is far more skilled than the machine.

First bottom installed, with the candle cup inside.

I had hoped to have these finished prior to this post.  But as the theme goes...I spent a long day at work on Monday preparing for a snowstorm of "historic proportions."  Monday night, I made the same preparations at home and began shoveling periodically in an effort to avoid shoveling feet of snow all at once.  By midday on Tuesday, it became apparent that the 40+ mph gusts of wind were going to foil that plan.  But after a few hours spread over the last three days, I am pleased to report that I think I am done digging out.

Hopefully My remaining weeknights can be spent working on these lanterns.  And this weekend, I hope to return to the wood side of the shop to keep going on the bedside table.  Hopefully I will return a wiser woodworker for the experience gained last Saturday.

Wish me luck, and as always, thank you for visiting.

Continuing on the bedside table

Today, I'll pick up where I left off with the last post.  Having successfully executed the dovetail sockets on the top of all four legs, it's time to turn my attention to to the mortises and grooves for the stretchers and drawer box on this +Tom Fidgen design.

Joinery rough cut on the legs.

I started by laying out all of the mortises.  That went quickly and without incident.  I then sharpened my 1/4" mortising chisel and went to town on the upper stretcher mortises.  Again, being pleased with the results, I began on the lower stretchers.  I could have cut the groove the full length of the joint first, and then come back to the deeper mortises.  Instead, I cut the mortises first, thinking that i might then cut the groove between them with the Stanley 45 set up as a plough plane.  The mortises went very smoothly, but, by the time I was ready for the groove, I settled for scoring with a bench chisel and cutting to depth with a router plane.  I think the whole deal turned out fairly well.

Having finished the mortises, I turned my attention to the stretchers themselves, uppers first.  I ripped them to width and crosscut them to rough length.  Planing followed, adjusting the width to finished dimensions and removing all of the saw marks.  I laid out the finished length and tenons with a marking knife.  I then established the shoulders with a two inch bench chisel, relieving a small v-groove on the waste side of the piece and moved in with the back saw to cut the tenons to rough dimensions.  I will tailor each to its mortise later.  Finally, I cut a side bead, top and bottom on each, using the Stanley 45.

Upper stretchers:cut, planed, and beaded.

Same deal with the lower stretchers.  These are wider though, so two tenons connected by a tongue.  And we will forego the beads as these will be dovetailed to the top and bottom of the drawer box.

Lower stretcher:cut to rough dimensions and ready for layout.

Same procedure here as top stretchers: one side finished.

I was able to nearly complete one of the stretchers before I had to shut down for the night.  Today we are expecting snow and/or a mix with freezing rain.  Sounds to me like the perfect day to sequester myself in the shop and hopefully make some major progress on the table.  We will see if my plans stand up to reality.  Wish me luck, and as always, thank you for taking the time to visit, I hope to see you again soon.

Moving forward on the bedside table

In the last post, I planed the legs to size.  Moving forward, it was time to cut the front aprons to rough dimension.  I had previously laid out my cuts on a 1x12 to maximize wood use.  I used my rip panel saw and a couple buckets.

I think my next project should be a sawhorse or two.

Ripping a board on two five gallon buckets is definitely easier than on my bench, as it was made more for assembly and power tool work.  However I did have to remain very conscious of the length of my saw blade and the location of the floor.  Eerily, after I mentioned +Tom Fidgen  yesterday, his second book "The Unplugged Woodshop" (which I had ordered last week) was waiting for me on the porch when I got home.  And, even more eerily, one of the projects presented in the book is a sawyer's bench.  This could be on the agenda very soon, but the book is a wealth of interesting projects.  I may decide to do a simpler saw bench for the time being and try my hand at the kerfing plane or frame saw first, but I digress.

After ripping out the aprons, I crosscut them apart and started laying out the joinery. These aprons will be held in the legs by a housed dovetail recessed in a slight dado.  I cut the notches on both ends, and began laying out the dovetails.

One apron ready to go, the other ready to cut.  In the back left, you can see the dados cut in two of the legs.

The stock was cut to the rough size of the dovetails and then shaped with a bench chisel.  Despite my worst fears, cutting the dovetails really wasn't terribly difficult even considering how soft the pine was.  Once I determined to take my time and be careful, the process really was fairly painless.

Close up of the tail.

Once I got both aprons dovetailed, I moved on to the legs, and a chance to use my new dovetail saw on a real project instead of scrap.  I hadn't ever done half blind dovetails before, so this was going to be a learning experience.  Again, I went slow, cut to my knife-struck lines with the saw and removed waste incrementally with a chisel.  By number four, I am happy to report that I had really gotten noticeably better.  I wish that I had gotten a better picture, but hopefully this will suffice.

Dovetail socket.

 At that point, it was time to call it a night and spend some quality time with the family.  Tomorrow, I will continue on to some more joinery on the legs.

Thanks for visiting .

A long weekend, and another pleasant distraction.

As this past long weekend approached, I got to thinking.  Every morning for the past month, as I got out of bed in the dark to squeeze in a morning walk/jog, I was greeted by the sound of my wife's favorite lamp rocking away on her bedside table.  I certainly don't want to wake her at that unpleasantly early hour.  And more importantly, I really don't want to be the cause of a lamp catastrophe.  The lamp itself is an older one with three or more glass pieces in a metal frame.  I'm sure it's not particularly valuable monetarily, but since she loves it, it deserves a better home than the rickety old department store table it currently lives on.  Ah ha!

About a month ago, I purchased a copy of +Tom Fidgen's "Made By Hand"  Of all the beautiful projects that he chronicled in the book, the one that spoke to me the most (and instantly: the cover photo and the ethic he espouses on his website are the reason I purchased the book) was a small side table.  More importantly, when the book arrived, my wife agreed with my assessment.  I knew that I would build the table eventually.  Enter my early morning revelation about a cheaply made,quasi-wood side table currently inhabiting the space next to her side of the bed.  I knew that the project was beyond my current skill level, but I also knew that I would never gain skill by staying firmly within my woodworking comfort zone.  And it was a long weekend after all.  So a new table went to the front of the line on my bench.

The bulk of the stock that I will need.  And the coffee that I needed to get moving.

I came up with a compromise.  Based on the space that I would have to work with,  my desire to make the table my own, and knowing that this project was a stretch, I decided to make a full scale mock-up out of pine.  This is my opportunity to practice the skills required, work out all of the measurements and joinery, and hopefully finish with a table that will make my wife happy until we can find the perfect wood for the final version.

With my fingers crossed, and my heart in my work, I'll document the journey here.

My legs cut to length.

I was able to find some 2x2's for the legs, so that it wouldn't be necessary to glue up stock.  Of course the final dimension of the legs will be 1 1/4" square, so out came my old Stanley No.8 to plane the legs to finished size.

One leg down, three to go.

During the process, I noticed some issues with the plane.  To make sure that my legs were square and smooth, I checked my scribe lines often, and accounted for any small errors as I went.  That definitely made the process take longer, but I think the slower pace will actually help me achieve better results.  And besides, isn't that one of the reasons we all decided to use hand tools?  Working at a different pace?  Being more in touch with the feel of each piece of wood as the fibers yield to our imagination and take on the shape we envision?  A couple of blisters later, and my legs were all planed to final thickness.

All the stock that wasn't a leg.

In my next post, I'll share the beginning of the joinery.

It's been too long...

It's been too long since I last posted, but hardly due to inactivity.  If I were smart, I would have used the long weekend to finish some of the ongoing projects around the shop.  But being more eager than logical,  this weekend I began a pretty involved, project.  I expect that it will take me awhile to complete, even though it's a fairly small scale project.  I'll write more about that as the week progresses, but I thought I'd tease it here a little.

My stock awaits...but coffee first.

And just to round out this post, I'd like to finish up the Christmas post.  Last week, I shared some of the gifts I was fortunate enough to receive.  This week, I'll share a couple of the projects I gave as gifts.

My daughter had been asking for a dollhouse, and we weren't thrilled with the plastic options available, or paying a great deal extra for the privilege of working with pre-cut pieces.  So of course I built it from scratch.  We based the design somewhat loosely on a small house at a local living history museum.  We gave it to her Christmas morning with only primer so that she and mom could paint her color scheme of choice together (I'm assuming a lot of pink and purple).  Below, you can see it with the painting begun.

Proud owner of a brand new house.

We had to have a homemade gift for our son as well.  After hours of watching The Woodwright's Shop and seeing daddy with his tools, he's been dying to have some of his own. What better gift than a place to store those tools as he gets them.  So I began a miniature traditional floor chest.  He and I will add some tills together as he needs them.

Can you guess his favorite guest on The Woodwright's Shop?

The tool chest was a bit of a pain.  I decided to repurpose some "solid" oak from an old entertainment center we no longer needed.  Of course that meant it was mostly plywood, and old and warped plywood at that.  But I managed to get it together, and I'm sure it will outlive me.  Of course it had to be the same color as mine.

Next time, some real woodworking.

Christmas, a little late...

Since I just started this blog, I'm a little late in taking the opportunity to show off some of the woodworking Christmas gifts I received this holiday season.  And of course, I also would like to give thanks.

The first gift came before Christmas.  Knowing that I had been looking for many years, when the opportunity arose, my parents were kind enough to gift me the Stanley 55.  The plane is not that hard to come by, just difficult to find at a decent price.  This one was priced to sell. The plane came complete with all of the important parts and all of the standard cutters that originally came with the plane.  The box is missing the lid, but it probably won't be living in the original box for very long.  The only part missing is the screw for the cam rest.  I don't know how easy it will be to find a screw, but I can pick up a complete cam rest fairly easily.  Thank you Ebay.  While I love the plane (I know many people don't) the cutters are the true beauty of this gift.  I also have two Stanley 45's that I've picked up while rust hunting.  All of the symmetrical cutters that came with the 55 can be used in the 45.  Now I can set up three different operations and not have to tinker with the planes in between.  So far, I haven't experienced any difficulties with this plane, although I will admit there are a lot of moving parts.

Also from my parents, "Mouldings In Practice", by Matthew Sheldon Bickford, from Lost Art Press. Going back to my days of power tools, I've always enjoyed making mouldings.  This book will certainly make hand tool mouldings a lot easier for me moving forward.  Now I just need to fill out my wooden moulding plane collection.

My wonderful wife also made was very generous this holiday season.  "Calvin Cobb Radio Woodworker" also from Lost Art Press, was a fun read, even if I would have preferred a different ending.  Roy Underhill is just as entertaining as a novelist as he is a speaker, educator, and television host.

My wife's second gift was also greatly appreciated.  A Veritas dovetail saw.  I have been plodding along with an old, cheap gent's saw I purchased many years ago.  My dovetails have improved greatly with practice, but since getting this saw, the difference has been amazing.  The saw just feels so much better in my hand.  It is true of course, that every job is easier when you have the proper tool.  But I'm sure that this saw will cause additional purchases as I fill out my saw till.

Thank you to my entire family, for making this one of the best holiday seasons in memory.  I hope that it goes without saying that the gifts were a distant second to the blessing of their presence in my life.  But now I've said it anyway.

Weekend Update

As always, my weekend didn't go exactly according to plan.  And also as usual, it was mainly because of filling the glue-up time with other tasks and ending up knee deep in multiple projects.  I did get a very good start on one storm window.  I didn't get all of the photos I wanted to though.  Partially because my wife was busy with projects of her own, partly because I didn't want to break a really good workflow, and partially to hide my shame over using a $10.00 home center back saw to cut the tenons.  A situation I hope to remedy in the very near future.  Long story short, the storm frame is out of the clamps and just needs some slight planing to fit and a coat or two of paint prior to installation.

Cutting the groove for the glass.  This later became a rabbet.

Cutting mortices.

During the glue-up, I also finished a very simple peg rail to hang and organize the many patterns for tin work that I have acquired and developed over the past decade.  It's not pretty, but it is effective.  I'll post a photo when the reorganization is complete.

And finally, I made some time to work on the tin panel I showed in last weeks post.  I had promised my wife a punched tin lantern (also known as a barn lantern or Paul Revere lantern) quite some time ago.  All of the cleaning and organizing in the shop finally got me motivated.

Last week's photo.

Finished panel.

Bending the panel around a shop-made wood form.

In the round.

This is the pattern used to make the lantern, with a few additional bits made by eye later.

Two lanterns with the pattern and the two spacers that will be soldered to the body in the next shop session.

That leaves plenty of small steps to fill my limited week night time in the shop.  But I am truly happy just to be working again.  The feeling of fulfillment that comes from creating by hand is a blessing.

Welcome

Welcome to my workshop.  While I have no way of anticipating the kind of readership this blog will achieve, I hope that over time, I will be able to present posts on a wide range of topics that will appeal to several different niches.  It will most likely include some history, and heavy doses of tinplate, copper and woodworking both historic and modern.  I envision this blog as a way of documenting projects, progressing skills, and hopefully a forum for myself and like-minded "mechanicks" to exchange ideas and information.  Please feel free (I invite you) to offer suggestions and advice as the blog moves forward.

On a personal note, the last six or so years have been ones of upheaval and change.  Having just gotten married in July of 2014, the changes continue as my wife and our two children settle into domestic bliss.  That being said, it's time to dust off the workbench, clean up the years of rust, and reclaim my workshop from the storage space that it has become.  After months of work, the sheet metal side of the shop is nearly ready to go, and as such, this blog will most likely be heavy on tin and copper to start. Woodworking will not be far behind, but due to my changing preferences and my daughter's allergies, I will be converting to hand tools almost exclusively.

The first order of business in the spring: a workbench better suited to hand tool use.

A glimpse of what is currently on my bench.  More on this soon.

Please pull up a stool, grab a coffee, and join me on this journey.  I look forward to making new friends and learning as much as I can in this life.

The Winter Freeze

With the temperature hovering in the single digits, my old house is a bit to drafty for my beautiful bride.  It looks as though part of the weekend will be spent in the shop building a few interior storm windows to cover some original single pane windows in the house.  It should be a fairly quick and painless project.  It's a good thing my mortice chisel and saws are all newly sharpened.  Pictures to follow.