Benched

I have 3 weeks off school for xmas, so between all the sitting on the couch and eating 8-10 meals a day I've been rebuilding the top of my workbench. I built my bench while I was working at a timberframing shop in Invermere BC in 2004. It originally had a tailvise that I purchased from Atlas Machine in Toronto (if you have 'The Workbench Book" it's the tailvise that Michael Fortune designed for his bench) but no front vise because I never made my mind up about what to use. Unfortunately the benchtop warped very badly when I brought it back here to Alberta and despite my repeated attempts to flatten it I eventually admitted defeat. The warpage caused the tailvise to become inoperable and I had planed the top down so much I had almost reached the 'shoulder' of the dog holes on one corner.

After doing some research before starting my new benchtop I decided to forgo the tailvise and instead incorporate a wagon vise. The first wagon vise I saw was the one used on the Roubo bench on Khalaf Oud Luthiery's blog: www.oudluthier.blogspot.com (which is where the image below is from).


I have since seen a couple other versions, none as pretty as the one shown above however. The thing I like about the wagon vise is how rigid it is. When I was at the IP it seemed like I was constantly having to tweak my tailvise to get it flat to the benchtop, which isn't a concern with a wagon vise. The obvious disadvantage is the lack of ability to clamp pieces on-edge perpendicular to the front apron.


I've mentioned in recent posts how much maple costs in these parts, so in order to reduce costs I only made the top 1-1/2" thick, which is a bit scant. Realistically though, I don't forsee myself working on huge heavy pieces where a bench's rigidity may be called to question, and if I do see some deflection in the top I can always stiffen it up somehow.


After using a few different benches there were definitely a few things I wanted to incorporate into this bench, like lots of dog holes. It's frustrating when dog holes are spaced 3-4 inches apart because sometimes the piece you're planing ends up being 'between holes' and you have to either open your vise up super far or add a piece of scrap between your work and the dog. I also added a row of round dog holes because there's so many good workholding gizmos out there designed for them. Cutting all the dog holes was by far the single most labor intensive step, but I prefer using square dogs for planing.


Man, you sure need lots of clamps to build a benchtop. Even though I don't really like them I bought 5 pipe clamps just for this glue up. I clamped aluminum extrusions on either end to help keep the whole assembly flat - it worked well.

Next step - build the vise.

Lotsa Wood

There's a place in Edmonton, WG Chanin Hardwoods, that has a ridiculous assortment of both exotic & domestic wood.

The guy who owns/operates it is Gary Chanin, who is possibly the most knowledgeable person I've ever spoken to about wood. He has endless energy, and will talk your ear off if you let him.

Buying wood from Gary is not without frustration however. As you can see, his inventory is far from organized and if you're looking for something specific the usual response is 'Oh yeah, I've got a couple lifts of it, beautiful stuff! But I don't know when I'll be able to get to it'. I asked about doussie once and he pointed to a couple lifts of it wayyyy in the back. He thought he might get to it in a couple months. I know that he has some air-dried domestic pear though, and he also gets lots of really wide planks of mahogany and bubinga.

The other unfortunate thing is his prices, they are the highest you'll find anywhere. He almost has that 'Robert Prince' attitude, where you get the feeling that he's collecting the wood rather than trying to sell it. I was there last week to buy a couple of planks of maple, I had left PJ White empty-handed - digusted at the crap they were trying to sell. Gary charged me $9.70 a board foot! Nice stuff, but twice the price of PJ's. I also overheard him telling a customer that he had a lift of quarter sawn olive, for $70 a board foot. Yikes.


Anyways, if you're looking for something specific or special I'd give him a call, he's always willing to chat.

28 Days Later

My hand is coming along, slowly but surely. The stitches have all dissolved and the last of the dead tissue has finally been peeled away. It's going to take a long time for the tissue to grow back on the ring and middle fingers though, and there's a big oozy hole that might actually need plastic surgery to close up because of its location - right on top of the knuckle.


And so I bought a SawStop. There's a woodworking show going on in Edmonton this weekend, and this afternoon I stopped by. There were three retailers selling SawStop machines. I chatted with all three and learned that one of them had a machine in their shop that had been returned recently. A school had bought 2 machines this past summer, but after running them for a month they decided they needed a second bandsaw more than a second tablesaw. I went to their shop and looked at it, and of course you can't tell it isn't brand new. So a 3hp industrial saw with a 52" fence, regular $4300, was $2900. Still more than I can afford being a starving student, thank god for good credit!

I really need to do something with all these machines I'm gathering up! I believe a project is in order...

Blood & Gore

Sometimes the simplest of things go very very wrong.

I was building a door frame this weekend and while I was cutting the rabbets in the jambs I had a hell of a wreck. I was pushing the wood against the fence with a push block, above and slightly behind the blade, and the jamb must have tipped away from the fence because suddenly it kicked back slightly, sending the push block into the blade. I guess I was caught off balance because I let go of the block as it was thrown back towards me, sending my left hand into the side of the blade.

At that point I decided that the best course of action was to run circles around my yard, top speed, screaming my head off.

After a few minutes I finally gathered my wits, wrapped up my hand, and phoned my folks. Then I commenced the circle running until they showed up and took me to the ER. After almost fainting and damn near puking I was laying in the trauma room, nurses and doctors running around saying incredibly reassuring things like 'yow, what a mess' and 'I don't know if we can even stitch that'. At one point, while the doctor was giving me one of eight 'blocking' needles in my hand (which hurt every bit as as bad as running my hand into the blade) a nurse ACTUALLY asked me 'on a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?'. And then I called her bad things...

Anyways, after the smoke had cleared it wasn't really that bad - considering how bad it COULD have been. It took 65 stitches to close it all up, and I lost a tiny piece off the top of my pinkie and at least two of my nails are long gone, but I didn't sever any tendons and I didn't lose any digits. Phew!

After I got back home I went into the shop, turned off my still-running saw, and surveyed the aftermath. The thing that I was left with was this: I wasn't doing anything precarious or unusual, I wasn't using the machine in a way it wasn't intended for, and I thought I was taking the necessary safety precautions. It all happened instantly, there was no time to counteract the inevitable. The last couple weeks have been rough, I've had a couple crappy things happen and have had a lot on my mind. I was working on the door frame at a dogged pace and my heart wasn't in it - I should've just walked away. Inattentiveness caused the accident. It would have been just as easy to lose a finger, or a whole hand, I got away lucky with 65 stitches.

The pictures below are pretty gruesome, pan down at your own risk.

Higher Learnin'

About a year ago I thought 'I hate what I'm doing'. I was working as a project manager for the family-owned drilling company, and while I realized that me taking over the business wasn't in the cards, I continued working there because the money was good. I've always enjoyed building things but I also really enjoy drafting and designing. Years ago I played around with taking architecture but was talked out of it. 'The oil industry is where the money is' I was told. Well, that's true, but it's a shitty soulless environment that in 12 years I've never learned to enjoy.

So here I am, three weeks into the 'Architecture Technology' program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. I chose the two year diploma program over the six year professional Architect program because I've always felt that a professional program has a way to pigeon hole people when they graduate, and I know that I'm only ever happy when I'm allowed to do a variety of different things.

It's weird being back in school, but exciting to be doing something new. I'm by far the oldest person in the program and I find myself constantly shaking my head in disbelief at the mentality of the 17-22 yr olds I'm surrounded by. It's fun though, and projects like the model building exercise in the picture above make me look forward to getting to school every morning.

So anyways, I still have some unfinished business with my house that I'm going to keep picking away at, I actually just began building a large vacuum press to help with the construction of an entry door. I'll keep updating the blog as I pick away at wood-worky type things, but the posts may be spaced a long ways apart.

Pete's Page

Just a quick note. My friend Pete, who's shop in Brooklyn I posted pics of a few months back, finally has a website. His Wife Maura is actually doing it for him, and she says there's more editing to do, but the initial effort is looking great. Check it out:

www.heilmandesign.com

New Old Saw

A couple months back I was working in my garage building cabinets when my mom showed up with a friend of hers, Eileen. My mom gave Eileen a tour of my house renovation and afterwards they wandered over to the garage and the three of us chatted for a few minutes. Eileen looked around at my mess of tools & machines and said 'Bill (her husband) bought this old table saw years ago and he's never done anything with it, it just sits there. You should come get it". I didn't think much of it at the time because, A: I didn't think that Bill would share her enthusiasm at giving his tools away for free, and B: I just figured the table saw would be some old piece of shit. So last weekend my dad happened to be out at Bill and Eileen's place (they live a couple hours away) and he came home with the tablesaw in his trailer. I was delighted to see that it was a 12" Poitras with a sliding table! It is certainly suffering from years of neglect but it's definitely worth the time to rebuild.


I had to borrow my dad's skid steer to move the saw into a storage shed at my place.


Unfortunately the saw has sat out in the weather for a few years so the trunnion is seized up and the table is getting fairly pitted with rust. The sliding table still works well though. It slides smoothly and doesn't have any play in it. I don't think I'll keep the original fence though. I'm pretty sure it outweighs me.

The first order of business is to get the table off and the trunnion out. I'm going to get the motor tested, I'll soak the trunnion in diesel fuel overnight to free it up, and I'll take the table and cabinet to work one day and sand blast it all. I'll probably take the table to a guy I know in Edmonton who has a 48"x64" surface grinder. The table appears to be nice and flat, but sandblasting is fairly abrasive and won't leave a very smooth finish. The motor is 5hp, 3ph, and has a square housing. I hope it's in good enough condition to rebuild, because it appears to be an un-standard frame. Something I find interesting is that it's direct drive, no belt, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Direct drive is nice because there's no belts to slip, and tends to allow more torque, but it's more difficult to deal with runout or vibration. It's much simpler to true and balance an arbor than it is a motor armature. Again, I hope the motor is in decent shape, getting threads cut and a blade flange pressed on an armature will cost some dough!

Another thing I'm not crazy about is that it's right tilting. I've never actually used a right tilt tablesaw, and from what I can tell they're not very common anymore, but they seem wicked dangerous. I guess we'll see!

This is the extension table for the right side. At first I was a bit dissapointed to see it wasn't a solid table, and then I picked it up - and almost pooped my panties. It's plenty heavy and rigid - I'm sure it'll work fine.


It looks like it was purchased at some point from House of Tools, which is a big tool resaler here in Alberta that just recently went into receivership. I called Bill to ask where he bought the saw from and he said, and I quote, 'a retard shop. Y'know, like one of those shops where retard kids build... I dunno, birdhouses or something'. Old Bill, he's not the politically correct type.