Barnsley hayrake table for my sister in law

 Mettes sister turned 50 this year, and her husband asked me some time ago if I could make a table for her birthday. 

They have recently bought a summer house and wanted a slab table of sorts. 

I showed him some pictures of the tabletop I made a couple of years ago, and some pictures of the Barnsley hayrake tables that I have made. and he confirmed that it was something along those lines that he would like to give her. 

We settled on a family price, and I got the joy of being able to make a complete table this time. Not just the tabletop. 

I wanted to blog about it during the build, but given that it was a birthday gift I couldn't out of fear that the surprise was blown. 

All the wood comes from the blood beech that I milled a couple of years ago, save for the pegs that I used for the drawbores that are made of ash, and the butterflies that are made of elm. 

I had forgotten how much work there is in flattening a massive slab using hand planes, and at one point I considered if I should try to make a flattening jig for a router. But I decided that it wasn't worth the while for just one slab.  

A thing I remembered from last time was that it was important to make the breadboard ends before putting too much energy into the flattening. Simply to keep the split parts of the crotch in place. So that is where I started. 
As soon as the breadboard ends were in place, a regular workout using a jointer plane with a scrub blade in it was the next task. I switched a little with a regular jointer and going either diagonally or traversing the grain. 
The slab had twisted a bit during drying, so one small area in the top end of the crotch kept being about 1/4" lower than the rest of the surface. I decided that it would be a waste of time, wood and energy to remove that much wood from the rest of the slab, just to get everything flat. After all it was an area about half the size of my palm, and I felt that it gave a bit of character to the table. 

I made a bunch of butterflies in progressively larger sizes out of elm, just to give a bit of contrast to the beech. The butterflies serve both to stabilize the split crotch area and to fill up the void so you don't accidentally push a dinner plate through the large hole. 

Once the butterflies were glued in place, they were dressed down to the surface of the tabletop, and I sanded starting with grit 40 on a belt sander and ending with grit 240 on a random orbit sander.

The undercarriage for the table was interesting to make due to the tabletop not being rectangular. I decided that it would look the best if the legs were sort of the same distance from the edges of the table. To avoid any hiccups, I made some full size drawings of each end, so I had something to work from. 
I mounted the two traverse pieces with a tenon through the center, and the traverse piece itself set into the top of the leg (I am a bit uncertain what the technical name of that type of joint is).

After chopping in MMXXV in the lower stretcher, the table got a couple of coats of a wipe on finish (linseed oil, spar varnish and turpentine) And it was moved inside the house to be ready for pick up (and to make a bit of space int he shop again).

As always a challenging and satisfying project. The biggest issues were that he top was heavy and unwieldy, and that it takes up a lot of space during the build. 

I clocked my hours, and all in all there is 60 hours of work in the table.

Ash log Roubo project 5, the completed bench.

The two leg vises each had a parallel guide installed. I made a mortise and tenon joint with lightly tapered run out, so the guide was thoroughly fixed be means of a couple of wedges.

I made two lines of holes, so I can adjust the parallel guide with 1" increments.

A groove was routed in the underside of the top, and a sliding deadman was made and installed. A bunch of holes were drilled in that one too. 

My old bench was never fitted with a shelf, I have often thought that it is one of the few things that could make a good bench better, so for this one I wanted to install one. 

The shelf itself was made out of small ash boards of varying width. I simply milled whatever pieces I could find from the large log, and to avoid live edges, they were all trimmed. 

The shelf lies loose on top of a batten that is screwed to the stretchers. I positioned the shelf so that the ends and the rear was flush with the top of the stretchers. That way it will be easy to sweep debris of the shelf, or push/pull a heavy object in and out of the shelf.

The front stretcher carries the sliding deadman, so that one ends in a triangular shape that raises above the shelf.

The ends of the slab were sawed square and they and the top were planed using a couple of hand planes.

I purchased a really nice Record quick release vise from Brian Eve, and I plan on installing it at some point. But I'll wait a bit because the wood is still moving a lot as a result of it not being completely dry.

I think that I need to run the tap through the threaded holes in the legs too when the bench dries, just in case the wood movement distorts the legs and thereby shrinks the holes.

The bench hasn't received any sort of finishing, but I might give it a coat of linseed oil to protect the surface a bit.

I told Gustav, that I would like him to have the bench, since he will train to become a carpenter. So we have installed it in the shop so he can start using it.

Completed Roubo work bench.

Twin leg vises and sliding deadman.

Rear of the bench (now on a clean floor)

Shelf is flush with the top of the rear stretcher.

The patched up top of the slab.

Spindle with apple hub and ebony pegs for the dowel.

Complete with Roman numerals.

This end will feature a Record quick release vise at some point.

Ash log Roubo project 4, leg vise spindles and chops.

During my final trip on the Troms Capella, I used the ships lathe to turn a tap for making wooden threads.
It makes a 2" thread with a pitch of 4.5 modules. Modules is actually just a fancy word for Pi mm, so the thread is 14 mm or pretty close to 9/16"

It seems as though I only took one picture while making the tap, and now it is at home, so I can't really take anymore pictures of it at the moment.

The tap worked really well, despite ash not being the easiest wood to turn a thread in.
After making the internal threads in the legs, I watched an episode of Roy Underhill, where he makes a die for wooden threads.
I basically copied all he did, and though I couldn't do it as fast as him, eventually I ended up with a die that could produce a thread.
The first spindle looked utterly magnificent, with the slight but important part - it didn't fit..
I had to do quite a bit of adjusting to get the die working in a way that produced a spindle that would work. But finally I had two spindles (made out of whitebeam).

I turned a couple of ends for the spindles out of some apple, and glued them on. Then a hole was drilled through, and a couple of sticks were turned and inserted.
Those sticks were retained using small ebony pegs, so technically I can't keep on claiming that the entire bench is made from the same tree.

The chops were made out of the ash log, and I made those a bit tapered to make them look nice.
A square recess was chopped in each of them to receive a garter for the spindle.

Completed spindle.

Close up of cutting action of the die.

Turning a spindle blank on the metal lathe.

Fabricating a 2"/4.5 module tap.

Two pieces of ash for the vise chops.

 

Recess for the garter.

Ash log Roubo project 3, the undercarriage

With the legs all done and the short and long stretchers ready, I was ready to begin the assembly of the undercarriage of the workbench.

All the joints were drawbored, and I made a bunch of dowels for the project. I can't quite remember what size, but I think they were sort of 3/8" in diameter.

I used my homemade drawbore pins to test the fit of each of the joints, and they worked really well. Having made four of those enabled me to test both ends of a stretcher/leg assembly at the same time.

The long front stretcher was made with a triangular shape at the top, to accommodate a sliding deadman. I even remembered to make a slot in the front legs for the parallel guide for the leg vises before assembling all the parts!

I placed the top upside down on a couple of battens so I wouldn't mar the top in case there was a small stone or any other debris on the workshop floor.
The tenons and the mortises were lubricated with an old candle, as I didn't want things to seize up half way. The undercarriage was brought up to the mortises, and I double checked that the front of the bench top was also aligned with the front of the undercarriage before I began to negotiate the legs into place with the help of a hammer and a block of wood.

Slowly but surely the legs seated themselves in the mortises, and once the sound changed upon hitting a leg, I knew that they were in position.

The assembled undercarriage.

Checking that all parts line up.

Checking both sides.

Half way through.

About an inch to go. 

Ash log Roubo project 2, legs and mortises

It is with a slight embarrassment that I discovered that I forgot to blog further about the build of the Ash log Roubo bench, so I'll try to spread the rest of the pictures and information over a few blog posts to make up for that.

I had read in the Roubo book, that the legs should be rectangular, which puzzled me a bit, since they are square on all the drawings. But I decided to follow the written instructions. So I made the legs 4x6".
I made a little shoulder on the inside of the legs, and then sawed out for the large double tenon with the angled front.

I used the chain mortiser to make the mortises in the top. I had to make a new attachment to get it to work that way, but a bit of plywood and a few small strips of wood was all that was required.
The machine took care of the bulk of the work, and there was just a little bit of cleaning up in the corners of the front mortises that had the corners defined by a saw cut.

Once I had made all the mortises in the top, I remounted the chain mortiser in its stand and made the mortises in the legs for the stretchers.

Making the tenons on the stretchers was easy, basically a bit of sawing and chopping.
Prior to making the tenons though, I had drilled a hole in the two legs destined to become the front legs of the workbench. And I had threaded those holes with my homemade tap.
My plan was to make sure that the bench could be used for boat building (just in case), so I wanted to make two leg vises on the front.

I had decided to use as much ash from the same tree as possible, so the legs and stretchers were all from the same trunk as the top itself. It was far from bone dry, and in the end one of the stretchers had twisted a bit - but not enough to stop me.

Making a double tenon on a leg. Notice the shoulder.

Marked up and ready for sawing.

Portable chain mortiser attachment.

Drawbored stretchers.

A fid for a friend

I am back on the ship, and this time our sailing schedule is to do evening cruises in and out of Bergen, so I have the rare pleasure of a functioning Internet connection that comes with being alongside in our home port.

Some might think that evening cruises are a bit dull, but just like all woodworking can't be ebony inlay, once in a while you need to build the casework that will house the inlay.

These cruises with paying guests are part of our bread and butter, and in addition to providing the ship's foundation with some needed cash to run the ship and keep her well maintained, these cruises actually give the residents of Bergen a sense of ownership of the Statsraad Lehmkuhl.
So it is part of our strategy to be active visible and accessible in our home port for two months of the summer every year. That way people feel proud of the ship and recognizes it and feels that it is "their ship."

The incredible support that we have from the local community can not be overestimated, so it is only fair that we do our part in giving back to the community by doing these small evening cruises.
And just like in woodwork, it is difficult to say that one operation is more important than the other.

Since there are comparatively few tall ships on a world wide basis, often young people who wants to work in this field have a difficult time finding a ship to do it on, we usually have 6-8 volunteers sailing with us, who have completed their basic training on a training ship.
One of these volunteers told me last time I was on board that his birthday was tomorrow, (we discussed it because it was close to the date where I was signing on again).
Now these volunteers get room and board and that is it, but they do an incredible job on board, so I thought that I would make him a small birthday gift.

So a week ago I took the time to head into the shop and I turned a fid for him. It is made out of some dark exotic wood that I once purchased, and I think it might be mahogany, though I am not sure.
Turning a fid was pretty straight forward, and in the end I tried to polish it with some Carnauba wax. I have never tried this before and I was so impressed with the look of the surface that I ended up making yet another fid for him. This time a bit smaller.
He doesn't read this blog, so it will be safe for me to post a picture of the large fid here. I forgot to take pictures of the smaller one.

The large fid has a length of almost 12", and the thickness at the fat end is something like 1.5"
I can't remember the size of the smaller one, and it is already gift wrapped.

Stanley # 20 compass plane locking screw.

We have a lathe on board, and just to make sure that I don't forget all about how to use one, I once in a while try to do a bit of turning on it.

I had one year of shop class prior to the engineering college, and I was actually quite skilled at using a lathe at that time. However that was 24 years ago.

The two most difficult things as far as I remember was turning correct fits for bearings, and to cut threads on the lathe. Not the type where you use a tap or a die, but grinding the tool bit and adjusting it all and then lead the lead screw take care of the pitch.

Searching for an appropriate challenge, I ended up reading about the Stanley # 20 compass planes. 

According to Patrick Leach's excellent pages on Stanley planes , the # 20 often has the original knurled locking screw replaced. So making a new one of those might be helpful to someone out there sitting with a recently acquired #20 missing that screw.

However excellent Leach's page is he doesn't reveal the thread of this screw, but I managed to find that information on a British tool forum.

The screw was apparently of the much under appreciated UNS standard, namely a UNS #10-28.

This just kept getting better and better!

A rare screw with a sort of obsolete and no longer used standard.

I googled the Standard and found the necessary information about the thread, so I could proceed to the workshop.

We have a very limited supply of tools for the lathe out here, and off course the most important thing for thread cutting was missing: A thread cutting tool.

After scouring the shop I found some old parts from a diesel injection valve, and those parts are made out of hardened steel. So I ground one of them into a 60 degree tip so I had something to use.

A piece of brass was turned to the desired dimensions, and then it was literally time to change gears.

Most simpler types of lathes that have a thread cutting capability will need to have the gears changed in order to switch from metric to module to imperial threads etc.

There are some small tables on the face of the lathe that will tell you how the correct configuration is, and once you have got that right, you just need to correctly position two handles and two knobs - and you are ready to go.

On the first attempt I managed to mess up the thread. But on the second attempt it came out all right. I think it could have been a bit more crisp, but without a proper thread cutting tool and an thread cutting tool position gauge, I just had to sort of eyeball it.  

After the threading, I inverted the cutting tool, and used one of the gears as a dividing head, so I could make some knurling lookalike.

Due to my goodhearted nature, I have decided to offer this screw for free - to the first Alicante based American woodworking blogger that comments on this blog.

UNS #10-28 

Gear setup for metric (42:120:42)

Gear setup for imperial 28 TPI, (32:120/127:48)

Stanley #20 locking screw.

Making a tenon saw 2, saw completed.

Fabricating the handle was just like what I did for the Simpson saw, but I had planed a little bit more of the blank before starting. something like 1 mm (5/128"), which makes the handle a bit more comfortable in my opinion.

The screws that Pedder had sent along were of a much stouter type than the ones on the old saw. In addition to that, they also happened to be metric which made it a whole lot easier finding a drill that corresponded to their size.

Drilling the holes in the saw plate was kind of hard, since the steel is just a bit on the hard side for a regular drill to go through. A really good drill press helps, but I still had to regrind the drill one time. I started with a small drill, and made it up to the correct size in the next step.

Due to my reopening of the spine, the saw plate slid in place without any hick ups. 

The handle was sanded and smoothed with some steel wool, and then I gave it two coats of varnish where I wiped off the excess after each time and followed up with some steel wool to give a matte surface.

I had a feeling that the spine and plate were not completely in line with the center line of the handle. So I checked it and it seems that I was correct.

Over the total length of the saw the plate/spine bends 0.8 mm farther to the right than to the left.

This is over a length of 43 cm, so using a cotangent function I was able to establish that the angle was 0.107 degrees off to the left.

With the risk of being called a crude worker with sloppy results and no regard whatsoever for precision, I have to admit that I can live with that. It wasn't enough to get my fired up for making a new handle.

My guess is that it is some sort of optical illusion due to the grain lines on top of the handle that causes the eye to think that it is all crooked.

I tested the saw for a couple of cuts, and it cuts beautifully. No tendencies to wander off or pull to one side. But I attribute all this more to the sharpening of the saw than to the handle and spine. 

Conclusion of those two saw builds/rehabs:

Making a saw handle is not that hard. 

Making a nice looking handle on the other hand takes a long time. 

Making a really nice almost perfect handle is a lot of work, and takes a lot of time.

I think I ended up in category number two. It is nice but it isn't perfect.

The spine ended up looking fine, but again not perfect, It is not completely symmetrical but that was due to how I bent it. 

While it is possible to make a saw completely from scratch, I think that getting a kit for a first time is well worth it. I noticed that Two Guys In a Garage sells kits. And I think that there might be other ones out the who does it too. (I am not affiliated with TGIAG, but I have looked a lot at their saw handle scans page, and I would like to give them credit for making those public available)

For me the most fun is in shaping the handle. Bending the spine and filing the teeth are just things that need to be done in order to complete the saw. So I am happy that Pedder did the filing job for me.

But just because a project is difficult doesn't mean that you shouldn't attempt to do it if you feel like it. There is also a special feeling in using a saw that you have made yourself, and that has to be taken into account too.

If you count out the metal bending brake and the 25 ton hydraulic press, the rest of the project can be made with very few tools and in very little space. So the way I see it is that getting a kit is a cheap way to avoid a divorce and an eviction due to mounting a large hydraulic press. Just in order to make a bent saw spine.

Elm handle tenon saw.

Elm handle, with character giving knot at the end.

20" tenon saw 9 TPI rip fied

Large tenon saw with brass back.

Making a tenon saw 1, the spine (a bloody mess)

With the rehab of the Simpson saw out of the way, I felt confident enough to start on the tenon saw that I would make from scratch.
Technically I had already started it while at home, with borrowed tools that we haven't got out here.

The saw plate was supplied by Pedder, and he had not only stamped out the teeth, but also sharpened them for me :-)

I bought a piece of brass plate at a local metal working shop, and it was enough to yield two spines if everything went OK. It could have been thicker, but I had to settle for what they had which was 2 mm (~5/64")
At home I sawed it in half with the table saw. A positive thing was wearing safety glasses and ear protectors. A negative thing was wearing short sleeves.
The blade threw some fairly large and very sharp brass chips at my right arm, so when I was done it looked as though I had been fighting in a thorn bush.
Even my wife was impressed! I am still not sure if she was impressed by my stupidity or my manly looks with a perforated right forearm.

I haven't got a metal bending brake, so I decided to ask our local fork lift dealer if I could use their equipment. Those guys are always incredibly helpful, so I bought a case of beer as a way of saying thanks for the many times they have helped me by letting me borrow a special tool.
I can highly recommend to give them a call if you are even in need of a forklift or some service. It might help if you are in Denmark, as I am a bit uncertain if they do international service as well. But they just might.

So N&V truck had a metal brake that I used for bending the two spines the initial piece of way. That way I had something like a V shape.

I headed into the other part of their shop and aimed for the 25 tons hydraulic press.
My idea was to gradually close the V to a nice spine for the saw. So I tried that with the first one. It was definitely not a success. By doing it gradually (lengthwise) the entire back ended up having a swoop upwards and a not very straight line.
I was glad that I had a second chance. The next piece I managed to find some large steel bars that were so long that I could press the entire piece lengthwise in one operation. The most difficult thing however was to balance a V shape on the side with an 80 Lb steel bar on top, and not getting my fingers squashed in the process.
There was remarkably little cursing and swearing in the process, but somehow it ended up looking really nice.
I decided to take full advantage of the 25 tons of pressure available, so the spine was completely closed.

It had seemed like a great idea at first, but once out here I realized that I wouldn't have a chance of getting the saw plate into the spine unless there was some sort of opening.
Prying the spine open was quickly ruled out. I was simply afraid that I would ruin it. The logical step was to saw an opening all along the 20" of spine.
This can be reasonably fast if you have a thin circular blade and a milling machine. It might even be a pleasurable job that way. grinding down a hacksaw blade to remove any set of the teeth, wrapping it in tape and using 2" of the length as a mini saw sure wasn't fast or pleasurable at all. But I got an opening for the saw plate without messing anything up.

Filing and sanding the spine was uneventful and quite pleasant because it looked better and better for every change in grits.

Getting ready to split the brass plate.

Initial trickle of blood.

Metal bending brake.

Final setup.

Two spines, OK on the left, swooped and crooked on the right.

Re-opening the spine with a hacksaw blade.

First side getting filed.