Chris Griggs
08-12-2012, 5:39 PM
As some of the folks around here already know this past month I relocated to Philadelphia after spending the past 4 years in New Orleans. New Orleans has no basements, so this is the first time I've had a dedicated basement workspace to setup shop. In the past few weeks I've gotten unpacked enough to start working on some projects, and I decided a good way to break in the new turf would be to make some new shop appliances.
First up, (the one I'm most excited about) is my new sloped shooting board. It great! Way better than the previous shooting board I was using, seen sitting on the left in the first photo.
238978 238981
The board slopes at about 5 degrees, which is enough to spread out the wear on the blade but not so much that wide boards sit beyond the capacity of the blade. The fence is made from two pieces of laminated red oak. I cut two rabbets on the underside of the fence to create a a tongue that fits snugly into a 9/16" by 1/4" deep dado.
238984 238983
The tongue's fit is very tight so that there is no play. No fasteners or glue hold the fence in place. The joint is tight enough that the reference face stays square against the planing forces. However, even though it won't move out of square the force of shooting can pop it up and out of the dado, so I've been using a holdfast to keep it down in use. The nice part about having no fasteners is that at any given moment I can adjust the fence so that it comes right up to the blades edge and fully supports the wood fibers on the exit of the cut. I had originally planned to add an adjustable sacrificial fence like on Derek's shooting board to serve this purpose but adjusting the whole fence is working so well i'm not going to bother.
I may add a single screw or wingnut at some point to hold it in place, but for now I'm perfectly happy just to use a holdfast.
238982
The secondnew tool/appliance is a saw bench I literally nailed together this morning.
238980 238979
It very simple design with nothing but some notches and nails to hold it together but its rock solid and only took me 4 hours to build. One thing I did wrong with it though was put the legs a little too far in so the bench can tilt up if you kneel to far to one end while cross cutting. I deliberately built it with the legs 7" in from either end to give me a longer support are when using the ripping gap, but if it proves to be too tippy I may cut a couple inches of each end. Its 32" long so even if I cut of 4" total it will still be plenty long enough.
Of course the best part of the new saw bench is that it looks like my workbench had a baby!!!
238977
Now its on to making a couple simple BORG pine bookcases which I've been told that I need to get done quickly or risk having to purchase Ikea bookcases instead.
First up, (the one I'm most excited about) is my new sloped shooting board. It great! Way better than the previous shooting board I was using, seen sitting on the left in the first photo.
238978 238981
The board slopes at about 5 degrees, which is enough to spread out the wear on the blade but not so much that wide boards sit beyond the capacity of the blade. The fence is made from two pieces of laminated red oak. I cut two rabbets on the underside of the fence to create a a tongue that fits snugly into a 9/16" by 1/4" deep dado.
238984 238983
The tongue's fit is very tight so that there is no play. No fasteners or glue hold the fence in place. The joint is tight enough that the reference face stays square against the planing forces. However, even though it won't move out of square the force of shooting can pop it up and out of the dado, so I've been using a holdfast to keep it down in use. The nice part about having no fasteners is that at any given moment I can adjust the fence so that it comes right up to the blades edge and fully supports the wood fibers on the exit of the cut. I had originally planned to add an adjustable sacrificial fence like on Derek's shooting board to serve this purpose but adjusting the whole fence is working so well i'm not going to bother.
I may add a single screw or wingnut at some point to hold it in place, but for now I'm perfectly happy just to use a holdfast.
238982
The secondnew tool/appliance is a saw bench I literally nailed together this morning.
238980 238979
It very simple design with nothing but some notches and nails to hold it together but its rock solid and only took me 4 hours to build. One thing I did wrong with it though was put the legs a little too far in so the bench can tilt up if you kneel to far to one end while cross cutting. I deliberately built it with the legs 7" in from either end to give me a longer support are when using the ripping gap, but if it proves to be too tippy I may cut a couple inches of each end. Its 32" long so even if I cut of 4" total it will still be plenty long enough.
Of course the best part of the new saw bench is that it looks like my workbench had a baby!!!
238977
Now its on to making a couple simple BORG pine bookcases which I've been told that I need to get done quickly or risk having to purchase Ikea bookcases instead.