Handworks, Here I Come

I'm heading to Amana, IA tomorrow for Handworks, a big woodworking tool maker's show.  The event is Friday and Saturday and there'll be tool vendors from all over.  But it's not only tool makers; there'll also be people from several woodworking schools, magazines and other organizations.  And Roy !!!

Pic from the Handworks website

In my hand tool stupor, hopefully I'll remember to take some pictures.

Looking forward to meeting many like-minded neanderthal galoot woodworkers there.

Fixing (?) a Troublesome Spokeshave

A couple years ago I got this wooden spokeshave as part of a small lot of tools.  I've used it a couple of times, but it's never been quite right.  The iron has "tangs" that are threaded and it is fixed in place by two thumb-screws (I guess these would be thumb-nuts) that engage the threaded tangs.  There is a fair amount of play between the tang-screws and nuts.

Clark Tool Co. spokeshave

Bottom view

When the thumb nuts are tightened down all the way, the iron won't cut because it is below the level of the brass wear plate.  When the iron position is adjusted using the thumb screws, it's not held firmly in place due to the play between screw and nut.

The iron when fully tightened is below the brass

I noticed that where the iron mates with the spokeshave body there are large gaps, so the iron doesn't rest on much.

Right side

Left side

I thought if I plugged these holes that the iron would have something to seat against.  So I very carefully cut and fitted two plugs, testing the iron in the shave many times as I pared away the plugs to get the fit I wanted.

Right side with the piece being fitted in place

Right side with iron installed - note the solid contact with the plug

Set one plug a little higher than the other to allow heavier or
lighter shavings depending on which side I use to shave

You can see in the above pic that one side of the iron is set shallower than the other.  The iron is fully tightened down and this will let me cut heavier on the left side of the iron than the right.  And because it's tightened down fully, there's no play to allow the iron to move around in use.

I've tried it out and it definitely works better.  It's not adjustable anymore, but I'm OK with that.  I'm still getting a bit of chatter on more difficult cuts, but it's better than it was.

Democratic Armchair, Part 5

Last post I had dry-fitted the undercarriage and completed shaping the seat.  When I went to glue up the legs and seat, I found some stretcher tenons (cylindrical) were a bit too small.  Not sure if they continued to shrink or what, but I had to glue on some shavings to make them fit better.

The clamping method for gluing shavings to the tenon

A patched tenon

The undercarriage and seat glued up ...

... but there was a problem.

This crack goes all the way back to the rear leg

Apparently I was a bit too aggressive when pounding this together.  Gotta watch out for those tapered conical mortises and tenons - by definition they are a wedge.  I forced some glue into the crack from both top and bottom and clamped it.  So far it's holding fine.  If I think I need to, I could add a bow-tie inlay across the crack on the seat bottom.

After cleaning up the squeeze-out, can't even notice the crack

The next task was getting the posts, crest rail and spindles glued up.  I didn't get any pictures of boring the holes in the crest rail or in the seat, but that went well and the glue-up wasn't too stressful.  The joints are wedged with white oak.

Gluing up the chair back

A post and it's wedge sticking out the bottom of the seat

After the glue dried, the protruding wedged joints were domed with a gouge or chisel

The last real challenge was fitting the arms.  Much earlier I had shaped the arm supports and bored and tapered holes in the seat for the arm supports.  In Curtis' video series on these chairs, he made a side chair with no arms, so I was left to my own devices to figure out how to install the arms.

There were two things needed to happen.  First, bore a hole in the post for the back of the arm to fit into. At the correct angle.  And second, bore and taper a hole in the arms to fit on the arm supports.  At the proper angle.

The second task should have been straight forward, given that the resultant and sightline angles were given on the plan.  But things don't always go as planned.  Fortunately I made a test arm first to iron out the details.

First things first: boring the hole in the post.

In this pic, my thumb is touching the post.  The arm support is at lower right.
To get the "left-right" angle, stretching a rubber band between the two centers of the
post and arm support and lining up a ruler on the seat to draw a line parallel to the rubber band
(it was actually a little different from that - something more accurate)

To get the "up-down" angle for boring the post, getting a distance from the seat to
where the middle of the arm will be on the arm support ...

... then using that same distance to locate the boring bit (where the arm support would be)

Another picture of that setup

This worked well for boring the short hole in the post for the stub tenon.  Then I bored the rest of the way through the post with a smaller bit (at that same angle).

Boring and tapering the hole in the arm was key to success.  if the tapered hole is not at the right angle, the arm's tenon will not line up with the hole bored in the post.  To get this right, I'd need to taper the hole in the arm only slightly, check the angle on the chair, taper some more, check again and repeat until the proper depth of taper was achieved while making sure the arm's stub tenon pointed at the hole in the post.

Before boring the hole in the post, checking where to start the arm's tenon

And also seeing if the arm is at the right angle to fit into the post.
Here, the back of the arm is just a little too high - the post hole will be centered on the bulge

It took another step of adjusting the taper in the hole in the arm to get it right.  But it came out right.  Well, almost - for some reason the top of the arm shown above is not quite flat: it slants to the outside a bit.  I don't notice it when sitting in the chair, so it's not a worry.

One detail of the arm attachment is that a hole is drilled into the back of the arm through the stub tenon.  Remember that the hole bored in the post was done in two steps: first a shallow hole for the stub tenon, then a narrower hole all the way through.  The through hole allowed me to drill back through the post through the stub tenon and into the back of the arm.  A dowel (loose tenon) is glued in from the back to lock the arm to the post.

Here's one of the arm assemblies gluing up.
Note the wedges at top and bottom of arm support and also at back of post.

And ......... we're done!

Glamour shot - finally complete

Well, the last instruction on the plans says to sit in the chair.
Who am I to argue?

And just to give credit where credit is due, I added a note where I signed the piece (underside of seat on the bevel).

Thanks, Curtis

Currently, I'm not planning to add any kind of finish to the chair.  I could change my mind on that later, but for now I like it how it is.

Democratic Armchair, Part 4

I got sidetracked for a few days being sicker than a dog (are dogs sick?).  Not sure what hit me, but it hit hard.  And I rarely get sick.  I'm hoping I'll be better by this coming weekend for the Summer PAST tool collectors meet in Half Moon Bay.

Since the last post, I've completed the joinery for the legs and undercarriage, as well as for the posts, crest rail and spindles.  Not glued up yet, but ready for glue after a few more tasks.

Fitting the post conical tenons to their mortises

Found some misalignment - not surprising since both posts were bent.
Had to ream the holes a bit more to compensate,
 but unfortunately that set them a little too deep in the seat
and the locations for fitting the arms are now a little too low and not equal.  C'est la vie!

On to the undercarriage.

Using rubber bands to scribe a parallel line on the seat for mortise hole angle.
Bored the holes using the line as a guide.

Turned the tenons using a makeshift bungee lathe.
(These stretchers were a tad too long for my regular bungee lathe.)

This picture shows the bench chaos and how many different tools I used here.
Bungee lathe at left, shave pony at right, clamps, hammers, drawknife, spokeshave, ...

Undercarriage dry-fit, with other parts temporarily in place.
Starting to look like a chair.

Then I bored the holes in the posts for the crest rail, and also in 
the crest rail and seat for the spindles.  All spindles were slightly bent,
and the crest rail didn't have quite the curvature on the plan, so I adjusted the angles.

With that stuff done, I started shaping the bowl of the seat.  Oh man, I was crushed after that.  It took about 4 hours and I still hadn't smoothed it out.  Then the shaping of the edges took another 2-3 hours.  And I was crushed after that, too.  But well worth it - Curtis really worked out some good looking details for this chair.

Laid out the contours and drilled holes to desired depths

Plugged the leg mortises so that I wouldn't get any blow-out around the mortise rims

Used gouge and compass plane for most of the work

The shop floor was a big mess with all those small chips

Bowl carved.  Still more shaping to do in this pic.

Shaping the rest of the seat went OK, though it takes me 5-6 times as long as it does for Curtis.  Maybe if I had access to white pine like he uses is would be easier and quicker.  As it is, I'm using some unknown species of Asian hardwood that was once a tabletop.

Tomorrow I hope to get the undercarriage glued up and wedged.  Hopefully I'll also be able to work on the posts, crest rail and spindles.  The last thing will be connecting the arms.  That was not included in Curtis' video series about making a democratic chair, so I'll have to use the techniques learned so far to figure it out.