Woodworking Tools

JohnG

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Most of my woodworking projects seem to start with tool making.
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On the right is a 1/2" stub spindle for a shaper that I've never used. Next is a standard 3/4" to 1/2" bushing. I took the 1/2" straight cutter in the center and counter bored it so an upper bushing would set in flush. It took several tries to get the cutter mounted in a 3 jaw chuck so the bore and counter bore would be concentric. I turned the countersunk bushing on the right to fit the bore and counter bore of the cutter. Finally there's a machine screw that holds this all together.

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Here's the setup on the shaper. The end of the work piece has been miter cut. A parallel shoulder was cut, and most of the rabbet wasted away. Several passes with the tool on the stub spindle flatten the face of the joint precisely until the undercut parallel to the shoulder is made when the shoulder hits the stop board.

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This is what the edge and face of the joint look like. A single setup makes both sides of the joint. In English Historic Carpentry this is called a face-halved and bladed scarf joint and its origin traced to the 16th century. The parts are about 2" thick by 7" wide, and the overall joint is 6" long.
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Finally, here is a pair of hammer beam braces with the scarf joint in the center of the curved support. I've tried several methods for joinery of this type over the years, and this worked the best by far. The curves are very fair and uniform. The tenoned joints where the small diagonal meets the curved brace have matching curved shoulders, and these are both hairline tight on both sides--a big consideration for weathering. I think I knew for a long time this was the right way to do this, and it ended up being easier than I thought.


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I worked in a variety of industrial wood gluing operations, and what I learned affected how I set up my own shop when I started to work with wood veneers.
Good glue rooms start with smooth surfaces. I use some fiberboard, but mostly I like to veneer on glued up lumbercore so I can cut conventional wood joints. I made this crowfoot base for a dial indicator to set my planer knives to a uniform cutting circle for the most even knife pattern.
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This is a classic mill tool for setting straight knives in cylindrical planer heads. The tripod base self aligns on the cylinder. I made this out of a 2" cast iron pipe coupling. It fits right into my 18" Yates American planer.
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Good gluing operations had sturdy presses.
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The frame of my big veneer press was welded by 2 millwrights who were maintaining the steam system in a mothballed factory. They had time on their hands as well as a maintenance bay full of steel destined to be sold as salvage when the factory was finally shut down for good. To save space, the press is the base for a large work table. The press capacity is 3' wide by 8' long.

The big press works off compressed air.
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It holds 6 of these twin air pods which I made out of surplus 6", 300 pound test fire hose. The primitive manifold connects enough pods to match the length of the work piece in the press. I've gotten good results running the press at 50psi which gives a 5 ton push per pod or 60 tons when all 12 are being used. I stood outside with a long air hose the first time I brought the press to that pressure, but the frame never budged.

This little drop front desk tested both processes.
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I made it to showcase a single piece of yellow birch veneer 1/10" thick by 16" wide by 10' long. The grain pattern is uninterrupted up one side, across the top, and down the other. I laid it up 3 ply on a birch lumber core so I could cut the miter dovetails in the top corners and a lot of little tenons for the shelves. The miter joinery allows for a full radius profile on the front edges which shows off the lustrous finish of birch but draws the veneer to a feather edge at the glue joint.
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Thanks for looking. I hope you found something useful or interesting.
 
Thanks for looking. I hope you found something useful or interesting.

Yes I did, thanks for posting.

I have a lunch box planer which sets the knives is slot so no need for an indicator. I have a jointer which could use a jig to hold an indicator.

Now if only I could eliminate the snip in my so-called autolock planer which was claimed to not have snipe in the brochure.

I wish I had the room for a vacuum press. Could be very useful.
 
Yes, parts of the vacuum system do not take up much space. I have a vacuum system for my wood lathe. I do not have the space for the vacuum press like the original poster has. I have visited the JoeWoodworker site. Lots of good information and a good source for veneers.
 
End snipe in a planer is annoying, especially when you're told it shouldn't be there. I attribute it in mine to stock riding up and down off the bed rolls which need to be set up 0.015" or the stock stalls. I get rid of it by planing stock on a sled or backer board at least as wide as the work piece and at least 8" longer. 3/4" fiberboard or sanded AC plywood, sanded side down, work well. The backer rides up onto the outfeed bed roll before the leading edge meets the knives and stays on the infeed roll until after the trailing edge is past. This works on any larger planer with bed rolls.
 
I made a matched set of 6 of these cutters and 2 follower bearings to mount on shaper spindles.

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I used the slot geometry of the larger, black cutter on the left but reduced the diameter to work into smaller pattern radii; and my cutters hold the same carbide inserts. With the inserts staggered these give a smooth cut on thicker material.

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I use these with a box jig like this for shaping legs. The jig has matching patterns top and bottom, and the spindle stack has 2 follower bearings aligned with them. With the part in place, the jig can be flipped and rotated to shape 2 sides of the leg in 4 passes while always working down grain on a single spindle. After that, the part is rotated 90 degrees in the jig; and the operation is repeated to complete all 4 faces of the leg. The auxiliary clamp adds stability, mass, and handholds a safe distance from the cutting. The leg is located in the jig with dowel holes that are later used in the joinery. For this tall tool stack, I run the spindle at slow speed right off the line frequency.

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I made the legs of this mahogany Ming couch table using this type of setup. It is based on plate 4 of Chinese Domestic Furniture by Gustav Ecke.
The techniques I use to layout "fluid" curves are based on CAD geometry I picked up when I designed aluminum extrusion dies. I wonder sometimes how my work would look to preindustrial craftsmen whose work I admire so much.


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I cut a lot of joinery with hand held routers. I like them big and powerful with precision adjustments. Then I wanted to cut delicate little aesthetic details. I wanted a small, light, and maneuverable router but still with some power.
I built this little plunge base to hold an old production line die grinder.

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The base is aluminum except for the plunge guide rods which are ground steel drill rod running in hardened steel bushings pressed into the aluminum bridge. The threaded end of the die grinder screws into the bridge. The base plate takes standard template guides. I have several edge fences made of high density polyethylene with the guide edges curved to match the diameters of the follower bearings I use on my shaper shafts so they follow inside radii without wobbling.

The legs of this dresser were shaped using a box jig. The raised beaded edge on the legs and apron was cut after assembly. It took 3 passes with different beading and coving tools in the router to do 90% of the work. This was the first piece I tried with this tool.
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After that, the last 10% was hand work to blend the router cuts and clean into corners. To my eye, details like this tend to look cheap if they are just made with convenient machine cuts; but my hands are klutzy enough that the last 10% of the work is all I can ask of them without looking foolish.
Thanks for looking.
 
That makes a great little router John. Small ones are hard to find now. The bases on the trim routers are too small and none of them have the spindle concentric to the hole or base outside. I had a small 1/4 inch Porter Cable I used with bushings to mortise hinges, The fan fatigued and blew up taking out the windings. Can't find one to replace it.

Greg
 
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