Luke Dupont
09-02-2018, 10:07 AM
I made an almost Japanese planing board / low bench. A very small one with a few added conveniences found on Western benches -- namely, a vice, and dog holes.
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The bench itself is only about 8 inches wide and about 2-3 feet long (extensible via the vise), with two adjustable planing stops at the end, dog holes, and a home-made vise.
The vise is just made from a 10mm steel bolt which is tapped directly into the wood using a 10mm tap. Given the small size of the vise and the competing position of the dog holes, I opted for only one "supporting rail" in addition to the screw. This gives me more jaw space to camp things vertically. Given that the vise is just a standard 10mm bolt, it is slow to operate, but infinitely better than not having a vise, and meets my requirements of something light weight and low profile.
392651
A picture of the underside, showing the vise:
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I didn't focus much on being super neat or cutting fancy joinery, mainly because I just don't feel that I needed to do so and want to get on to working on the "real" projects that I want to start. Everything is just attached with glue and hidden pegs. I feel somewhat better after having met a an actual Japanese joiner who also just glued his feet on his planing board and didn't bother with sliding dovetails :D
I might clean it up a bit and add little feet that will allow it to clamp to a table or something, but for now I do all of my work sitting down anyway.
The niche for this tiny bench is to fit my rather odd working conditions: I live in a tokyo apartment, so I can't do large projects, and I can't do a lot of work in my apartment itself as I'm not on the ground foor and any noise tends to carry down stairs. So, I need a small, light bench that I can carry to my rooftop or to a park somewhere and work. As I'm only doing small projects, this is doable.
Lastly, here it is with all of the tools that I used to make it (which is nearly all of the tools that I currently own here in Japan!):
392653
392650
The bench itself is only about 8 inches wide and about 2-3 feet long (extensible via the vise), with two adjustable planing stops at the end, dog holes, and a home-made vise.
The vise is just made from a 10mm steel bolt which is tapped directly into the wood using a 10mm tap. Given the small size of the vise and the competing position of the dog holes, I opted for only one "supporting rail" in addition to the screw. This gives me more jaw space to camp things vertically. Given that the vise is just a standard 10mm bolt, it is slow to operate, but infinitely better than not having a vise, and meets my requirements of something light weight and low profile.
392651
A picture of the underside, showing the vise:
392652
I didn't focus much on being super neat or cutting fancy joinery, mainly because I just don't feel that I needed to do so and want to get on to working on the "real" projects that I want to start. Everything is just attached with glue and hidden pegs. I feel somewhat better after having met a an actual Japanese joiner who also just glued his feet on his planing board and didn't bother with sliding dovetails :D
I might clean it up a bit and add little feet that will allow it to clamp to a table or something, but for now I do all of my work sitting down anyway.
The niche for this tiny bench is to fit my rather odd working conditions: I live in a tokyo apartment, so I can't do large projects, and I can't do a lot of work in my apartment itself as I'm not on the ground foor and any noise tends to carry down stairs. So, I need a small, light bench that I can carry to my rooftop or to a park somewhere and work. As I'm only doing small projects, this is doable.
Lastly, here it is with all of the tools that I used to make it (which is nearly all of the tools that I currently own here in Japan!):
392653