Roubo Folding Bookstand

[Rick Erickson]

Has anyone attempted a Neander Roubo Folding bookstand?

I took the lead from Roy Underhill documented in the Feb 2011 issue of Pop Wood magazine. Christopher Schwarz made a video showing the hinge marking and cutting. I took it a step further to show the rest of it. It's all Neander except for drilling the 1/16" holes in the hinges for the fret saw. They have to be perfectly plum and I don't have the confidence in my hand drilling to do that right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU-rncivcdk

[Jim Rimmer]

I'm not a Neander but that was a great video and a beautiful project.

[Caleb Larru]

Nice job Rick. Thanks for posting that. I enjoyed it immensely.

[Bob Warfield]

Rick, Thanks for the video. I gotta tell ya, I got really nervous a few times watching it. It turned out great! I don't know if I have the skill, make that eyesight, to make one of those.
Thanks,
Bob Warfield

[Joe A Faulkner]

Bravo. Kudos to your video crew as well. What a great project!

[Rick Erickson]

Thanks for all the kind words! It was a fun project to try (especially after seeing Scharz's video).

Bob, You were nervous? I think I lost a few handfuls of hair on the first two I made. The video was shot on the second one. The third one I made actually came out the best. I rounded over the hinges on that one. The video shows the simpler 45-degree paring.

Joe, My 13 year old son shot the video. I was very pleased with what he came up with. I wasn't paying much attention while he was shooting. I narrated some of the steps but didn't like it so we decided to just overlay it with music. The piano was a whole lot better than anything I contributed verbally.

[gary Zimmel]

Real nice video Rick. And real nice work.
Ripping a chunk of wood like that wide would be a test of ones skills. Nicely done.

[Marv Werner]

Hi Rick,

Really enjoyed your video. And that's some impressive woodworking also.

Hope your two saws are working out well for you. I was hoping to see them in the video.:)

[Rick Erickson]

Marv, the saws are great! I couldn't be more pleased. I forgot to shoot footage of the initial dimensioning of the wood. You would have seen them there. I may be contacting you down the road for a few finer PPIs.

[Michael Peet]

Excellent work, Rick. Sawing is easily my least favorite neander task, and you pulled it off well.

Mike

[Kevin Lucas]

Nice! That was the first Woodwrights show I ever saw and have been wanting to try it for years. You're taking away all my excuses )

[Rob Young]

Yep! :) Just the other weekend I did one in American Chestnut. The wood was salvage from old church pews. Worked reasonably well but I'm no great fan of chestnut, at least the samples I have. Weird changing density, and not the way pine does as you move through early- and late-wood. I would find pockets of softer wood as I chiseled. Didn't seem like rot either, color and texture matched but I could go from sweetly chiseling to chunky just by moving over 3/8" in some places. Odd.

Anyway, I've got a cherry version in the works.

I'll find my photos later today and post the finished Chestnut one.

[Jim Koepke]

Great video Rick.

Is there much planing after cutting the halves apart?

jtk

[Rob Young]

185853
American Chestnut

[Rick Erickson]

Jim, I guess it depends on how well you ripped it ;-) My first one didn't get too well. I lost about 3/32" of thickness trying to smooth the faces. I had a bow in the middle that I had to plane out. The second one went better. I went cross-grain with my 5 1/2 as close to the hinges as I could get and then used a shoulder plane at the hinge joints. A little 220 at the end to clean things up. I tried a hand scraper but couldn't get good leverage with the awkwardness of the faces when the stand was open.

Rob, I couldn't imagine doing this in Chestnut. Walnut is just such a perfect hand tool wood.

[Pat Barry]

That was a pretty cool video. Is the sawing the hard part of the project? Also, what are the dimensions of the board you used after cutting to size?

[Rob Young]

My order of operations was different than you show.

I cut out the profile for the feet BEFORE resawing anything followed by dressing the edges with a rasp and spoke shave. Then I resawed the board, removed the "lip" and finally cut out the top profile. To get the angle for the feet so they rest level I just set it on the bench and used a pencil lying on the bench to trace the angle around each foot. Then I chiseled the foot end-grain to that angle.

As for smooting post-resaw, that went quite well cross-grain planing with a block plane and my shoulder plane. Chestnut also scrapes quite well (I was surprised by this). The two tricks I found for cleaning up were a sharp scraper (makes it easy to work right into a corner) and second, creative use of blue-tape and bench battens to hold the stand while I planed and scraped.

A long, low angle, paring chisel helps to clean up the endgrain exposed inside the joint.

Once I was done scraping, a quick hit with some 220 grit glued to a block evened things out and ready for the oil and wax.

[Jim Neeley]

Wow, Rick... Beautiful work! ..and thanks for the video!!

[Tony Shea]

Very cool video. Nicely done and something I must try. The hinging is just too cool not to want to try it out. I've always liked carvings and such that seemed as though they are different peices but are actually originally all one peice, ie chainlinks. This has a similar feel and is something which I'd be able to attempt. Again, great job on the stand and video.

[Rick Erickson]

That was a pretty cool video. Is the sawing the hard part of the project? Also, what are the dimensions of the board you used after cutting to size?

Thanks all for the kind words. My son had the patience to stand there and video my 5-hour effort. Of course about 1-hour of it was cleaning up the boards at the end.

Pat, sorry for the late response. I answered your question last night but for some reason don't see the post. Not sure what happened. The dimensions of the board I used were about 16" x 8 3/4" x 1". I think the 1" is about as thin as you want to go. You can download the template off of Popular Woodworking. The sawing wasn't really that difficult if you get it started right. Take it slow for the first inch into the wood and it is all down-hill from there (so to speak). For me the most challenging part was splitting the hinges with the fret saw. If you don't cut those perfectly plum the hinges will bind when you split them apart at the end.