Mini-Moravian

[DanZac]

It's disheartening the lack of interest or comments in this thread.

We're all just speechless, due to the quality of his work.

Love those little jigs and guides that you come up with @Dr.Al. It might not be the traditional way of doing things but it's a brilliant use of modern technology cleverly used to simplify the process.

 

[Dr.Al]

It's disheartening the lack of interest or comments in this thread.

I don't mind that much to be honest. I'm posting the same content on a couple of woodworking forums (as well as my website). On one of those forums (thewoodhaven2.co.uk) I've been getting loads of comments and suggestions and they've really helped with figuring out the design. I always expect more in the way of comments on the woodworking forum when I'm doing woodwork projects and more on here when I'm doing metal ones and that's fine with me. I do find it a bit odd that I get hardly any comments on the other woodworking forum (ukworkshop.co.uk), but then I've never found that forum to be as good.

We're all just speechless, due to the quality of his work.

Awww, thanks. It doesn't feel that high quality in this project given the number of mistakes though!

Love those little jigs and guides that you come up with @Dr.Al. It might not be the traditional way of doing things but it's a brilliant use of modern technology cleverly used to simplify the process.

Thanks. This is the first time I've had to deal with compound angles on a woodworking project and being able to model it in CAD and then make jigs based on the CAD model has definitely been helpful. We should find out later today whether they've worked when I try to assemble those dovetail housings!

 

[Dr.Al]

We're all just speechless, due to the quality of his work.

Of course "speechless at the quality of the work" is something that could be said both about something really good and also about something really bad

 

[Dr.Al]

As I said in the last post, the next job was to smooth up the underside of the top planks (with a Stanley #4)...

... and then get the inside edge perpendicular to the bottom face (with a high angle blade in a Veritas smoothing plane as the grain looked like it was going up and down a bit). There's a photo of this, but it isn't that interesting so I've omitted it to get under the maximum images per post limit on this forum. If you want to see it, it's here.

This brings us on to the next set of jigs/gauges from the 3D-printer:

They got mounted onto the legs and tapped home until they're nice and snug on the taper:

The top planks then got clamped to the bench and the whole frame got flipped over and plonked down on top:

The little marking gauges show where the end of the dovetail needs to be marked onto the top pieces...

... leaving a mark that looks like this after following the gauge edges with a knife and then going over the knife lines with a pencil:

The lines don't go all the way to the top for the simple reason that I couldn't get the knife to the correct angle to be able to get into that part of the gauge due to the other top piece getting in the way. However, that's easily sorted, using the next little gauge, which also has the taper angle built into it...

... and leaves these marks on the top pieces:

Before cutting the mortices, I needed to truncate the tenons so that the end of the socket is hidden nicely underneath (or should that be on top of?) the leg. I did that with a (rip-cut) Dozuki, starting by sawing straight down about 10 mm from the end...

... and then coming across slightly above the shoulder line...

... before cleaning up the shoulder with a chisel:

The tapered dovetail housing sockets were cut in a similar way to how I've done them in the past. I started with a 10 mm mortice chisel to open up a roughly 20 mm wide pocket at the far end:

I then used a saw (initially a cross-cut Kataba but later a cross-cut Dozuki) to saw three cuts:

The router plane sorted out the bottom of the pocket:

To get the socket edges at the right angle, I made a simple paring guide by planing a chamfer onto a handy bit of wood, with the angle checked by holding it up against the tails:

That got clamped to the top piece up against the knife line and the chisel could then follow its angled face to make the sides of the socket:

The first fit was, as I'd hoped, a little on the tight side but everything looked to be the right angle (i.e. it was tight at both ends rather than just one and it didn't rock):

When I've done tapered dovetail housings in the past, I've tweaked the tail/tenon to get the right fit, but this time (with a wide and relatively short socket and all the awkward angles on the leg frames) it seemed easier to tweak the socket. After a few goes back and forth taking off as little as possible each time I had a nice fit in about the right place:

That process continued for the second socket on the first top piece until I had one plank fitted to both leg frames (but without the stretchers so this didn't prove the distance apart was correct):

The other two sockets followed much the same process. One of them ended up at slightly the wrong taper angle (it was loose on the inside but tight at the outside) but that was spotted while it was still too narrow anyway so I managed to correct it before the socket was wide enough for the leg to go fully in.

With all the sockets done, it was inevitably time to try assembling the whole bench and I'm very happy to say that it went together fairly easily and feels extremely solid. The gap between the top pieces is 60 mm. I was aiming for 50 mm, but bigger is fine: if I decide the overall bench width is too wide, I can trim the outside edges and inevitably as the dovetails wear, the planks will get a little closer together anyway.

It's fairly heavy (which I see as a good thing as it'll be stable) but I can still lift it: I assembled it on the floor and then lifted it up onto the bench for this photo:

There's still a fair bit to do, but it's great to get to the point of having all the major joinery done. In this state, I could take it away with me on holiday and it would be usable, so anything I manage to do in the time I have remaining is a bonus but not essential.

The next job is probably to (very slightly) trim the ends of the top pieces (they're not square at the moment), then to plane the tops and outer sides of the top pieces. I'll also round over at least two of the long corners (to make it more comfortable if I sit on it to chisel on the top of the tool chest). After all that, the legs will need a once over with a smoothing plane and there's a few more jobs on the stretchers so it's far from finished but that's a major milestone crossed.

 

[galooph]

That's looking lovely!

 

[Dr.Al]

It's getting much too hot to do anything useful in the workshop now, but I couldn't resist doing some quick experiments to see how it'll look and work. The first thing I did was place it next to my bench and put the travel tool chest on top. I'm happy to say that the top of the tool chest is at about the same height as the top of the bench, so I can count that as the first success!

I haven't ruled out shortening the legs of the bench (at the bottom, obviously), but if I do that I'll make some planks to go under the tool chest and lift it up to keep the same top surface height. One advantage of doing that would be that it would make sitting-down chisel work (where I'm sitting on the bench and chiselling on the top of the chest) more comfortable (probably). I'll do some experiments when I'm on holiday and see what feels right.

I can also confirm that there is definitely space for three drawers to sit on the stretchers:

They're currently on some simple 3D-printed brackets, but the brackets are just resting there at the moment. I haven't decided whether to screw them to the stretchers or use double-sided tape (or something else) and I expect I'll probably tweak the design a bit (if I can think of ways to improve them). The final brackets will get printed in a different filament, probably the "Galaxy Black" PETG used for the drawer liners (but I'll have to buy some more of it first!).

With the tool chest sitting on top, it occurred to me that it would be good to test clamping it down using the hand-hold holes, which works fine:

That in turn allowed me to try planing on it to test how sturdy it felt. I grabbed a bit of bandsawn cherry and planed it smooth, first with a #5 (just because I knew it was already set for a fairly heavy cut) and then a #4:

The chest didn't budge at all, which is a great result. When I was taking heavy cuts with a plane and with the chest on the Makita mitre saw stand, it would occasionally lift up the end of the mitre saw stand under the force of planing. I dealt with that by leaning my foot against the saw stand's leg, but the mini-moravian bench is a lot heavier and I think that helps it stay put without any extra help.

The final thing I thought I'd try is one of the extra benefits I'm hoping to gain from this bench: somewhere to do long rips. I had a bit of Western Red Cedar in the garage and I clamped it to the bench and ripped off the edge with the big Ryoba:

It worked like a charm so I'm really happy with that. The height felt about right for ripping. I started off with my knee on the cedar board (for comfort rather than stability: the clamps are doing the stability job) and it felt a good height for my knee. Towards the end of the board I just stood at the end without adding any extra weight to the cedar board and once again it felt nice and solid and stable.

We've got a heat wave coming over the next few days so I'll be doing my best to find excuses to be in an air-conditioned office as late as possible and then hiding from the sun when I get home; there won't be much in the way of updates on this project until the temperature cools down!