Pinch dogs - Spring board edges or no?

[Tyler Bancroft]

this should be fun...
let us know how it worked out and what went well, and what was challenging...
3 boards will make this a lot easier...
You will surely get a good physical workout doing all this neander! Kudos to you!
I love using hand planes, have a LOT of them. I would struggle to get 80" long boards x 12" FLAT and of equal thickness! That is quite the Neander task!
as u correctly point out, a LOT of patience is the most important ingredient!

With COVID, I can't go out as much, so I have to get my exercise inside. And I have a LV scrub plane, which saves a lot of time on the early flattening, but it's definitely going to be a longish project. But we'll see just how flat I can get them...I haven't worked on anything quite this large before. (I've done ~12" wide maple, but shorter, and it definitely moves over time.) I do wonder a bit just how flat your average large wood tabletop stays over time. If it's assembled with wide boards, surely it's going to display a fair bit of seasonal movement? I've never had the opportunity to wander into an antique furniture store with a straightedge....

[Jim Koepke]

I'm hoping the pinch dogs help with keeping the boards flush, but I expect some remedial planing after glueup will be necessary. I have an 1890s-era Stanley no. 8 that was made for situations like this...

You will likely have better results with a few cauls to hold your boards flush.

If a pinch dog isn't perfectly aligned, it may be the cause of the boards becoming misaligned.

jtk

[Will Blick]

> Some good open mindedness in this thread!

Why is this always not ALWAYS the case? Forums have such potential, but as seen in a recent post I made on product review of a honing guide, sometimes the comments are so unjust, off topic, offensive, etc. Glad to get back to a normal thread where people helping each other! Thx for the tip Mel on the adjustments...


> But we'll see just how flat I can get them...I haven't worked on anything quite this large before.

Sounds like you have a good attitude towards the project, that helps, cause full Neander can be challenging on projects like this. Not sure your experience level, so maybe much of what I write, u already know, if so, hopefully it will help others. The other issue is, you can get both sides of the board FLAT, but not co-planar to each other. That makes for a funky glue up Specially if you want cross boards on the bottom. There is all kinds of tricks to try to keep the board co planar which I am sure you aware of. Using a FLAT work surface is very critical here as well...

It truly is amazing how fast and accurate a powered jointer and thickness planer is. It is one of those tasks after I complete them for longer stock, I sometimes marvel how did ww do this 100+ years ago by hand! All day long, thats all they did. They prob had additional tricks n tips that got lost through time. I am Neander more on smaller projects, where I feel the tools fit the wood size better. A jointer hand plane works great on a 20" long board Although maybe some time in the future, I will challenge myself to see if I can get a rough board your size, flat and co planar.

Yes, the wood will move... not sure how thick the boards are you are starting with...but as you know, as you remove thickness, it moves the most as the outermost areas are removed. So doing the project over many days, paying attention to the movement is advised.

As for movement over time, the cut of wood is critical here. Safest bet, use Rift Sawn for long boards, they are remarkably more stable than quartersawn and surely plain sawn. Of course, a finish that is equally applied to the entire surfaces also can greatly reduce movement. I have walked into a lot of antique stores, and no straight edge was required, excessive movements on some table tops. OTOH, I have seen some 400 yr old pieces done right, and movement was minimal. It really takes a LOT of planning at every step to achieve the end goal in ww. The larger the project, the more obvious movement becomes as errors double with doubling size.

Why doesn't everyone use Rift sawn? 1) not always easy to find, and when u do... 2) in many species, extremely expensive vs. plain sawn, sometimes 3-6x the price per BF, as the waste is so great and labor much higher!

[Tyler Bancroft]

You will likely have better results with a few cauls to hold your boards flush.

If a pinch dog isn't perfectly aligned, it may be the cause of the boards becoming misaligned.

jtk

I was actually considering nailing battens to the very end of the boards to use as cauls - since I will have to trim the last inch or two off anyway to deal with the holes left from the pinch dogs. It seems an inelegant solution, though, and I may well use cauls. Honestly, never having done a glueup of this size, I am tempted to use every solution combined.

[Jim Koepke]

I was actually considering nailing battens to the very end of the boards to use as cauls - since I will have to trim the last inch or two off anyway to deal with the holes left from the pinch dogs. It seems an inelegant solution, though, and I may well use cauls. Honestly, never having done a glueup of this size, I am tempted to use every solution combined.

Place packing tape over the narrow edge of a 2X3s or 2X4s long enough to be clamped across your glue up. Before clamping up the pieces being joined lightly clamp the cauls in two or three place to hold the work flat. Tighten up the clamps across until glue just begins to squeeze out. Tighten the cauls a little more, then across the glue up. It shouldn't be too difficult.

jtk

[Tyler Bancroft]

> Some good open mindedness in this thread!

Why is this always not ALWAYS the case? Forums have such potential, but as seen in a recent post I made on product review of a honing guide, sometimes the comments are so unjust, off topic, offensive, etc. Glad to get back to a normal thread where people helping each other! Thx for the tip Mel on the adjustments...

I find SMC to be one of the most supportive and informative forums I've ever found. Learned a ton here (which reminds me, I'm overdue to renew my contribution).

Sounds like you have a good attitude towards the project, that helps, cause full Neander can be challenging on projects like this. Not sure your experience level, so maybe much of what I write, u already know, if so, hopefully it will help others. The other issue is, you can get both sides of the board FLAT, but not co-planar to each other. That makes for a funky glue up Specially if you want cross boards on the bottom. There is all kinds of tricks to try to keep the board co planar which I am sure you aware of. Using a FLAT work surface is very critical here as well...

It truly is amazing how fast and accurate a powered jointer and thickness planer is. It is one of those tasks after I complete them for longer stock, I sometimes marvel how did ww do this 100+ years ago by hand! All day long, thats all they did. They prob had additional tricks n tips that got lost through time. I am Neander more on smaller projects, where I feel the tools fit the wood size better. A jointer hand plane works great on a 20" long board Although maybe some time in the future, I will challenge myself to see if I can get a rough board your size, flat and co planar.

Yes, the wood will move... not sure how thick the boards are you are starting with...but as you know, as you remove thickness, it moves the most as the outermost areas are removed. So doing the project over many days, paying attention to the movement is advised.

As for movement over time, the cut of wood is critical here. Safest bet, use Rift Sawn for long boards, they are remarkably more stable than quartersawn and surely plain sawn. Of course, a finish that is equally applied to the entire surfaces also can greatly reduce movement. I have walked into a lot of antique stores, and no straight edge was required, excessive movements on some table tops. OTOH, I have seen some 400 yr old pieces done right, and movement was minimal. It really takes a LOT of planning at every step to achieve the end goal in ww. The larger the project, the more obvious movement becomes as errors double with doubling size.

Why doesn't everyone use Rift sawn? 1) not always easy to find, and when u do... 2) in many species, extremely expensive vs. plain sawn, sometimes 3-6x the price per BF, as the waste is so great and labor much higher!

I'd love to have a machine setup that could deal with 6'+, 12" wide hardwood, but I don't have the space or money for that (nor will I in the foreseeable future). And, ultimately, like you said, people throughout most of history have made glorious things from wood using only hand tools, so it's something I enjoy aspiring to (but without much hope, because I don't do it for 60 hours/week like traditional furniture makers used to).

The wood is 4/4 roughsawn, more like 9/8 in spots. I'm expecting a final 3/4, but hoping very hard I can keep an extra 1/16th or so. This tabletop is going on a trestle base, so I'd like the extra rigidity.

I'd love to have somewhere to get 12" riftsawn cherry heartwood. But you work with what you have - and at the end of the day, anything's better than Ikea.

[Tyler Bancroft]

Place packing tape over the narrow edge of a 2X3s or 2X4s long enough to be clamped across your glue up.

Have you seen what a 2x4 costs these days?!

[Will Blick]

OF course, I was not suggesting you find rift sawn cherry...
I was only trying to translate, if you have plain sawn cherry, movement risk is much higher vs. if you are working with Riftsawn, as you asked about movement. What do you have?

If you can get the boards down to 3/4 and flat, depends on how much bow and twist the board has now....
I have power jointed some 6/4 Maple, and could not get to 3/4 as the twist and bow was greater than I thought....of course, if I was hand planing it, I would have measured it all out, marked it up and determined it was not possible...before wearing every muscle out in my body only to find out 6 hrs later
hand tools give you more time to think.
Sometimes when using power tools, I stop thinking, and just do... usually thats when fk ups happen! ;(

[Tyler Bancroft]

It's all flatsawn, but very well-behaved. Very little twist, virtually no bow. I appreciate that you think that my decrepit muscles could do six hours of work...

[Warren Mickley]

In historic times, workers planed an edge flat with no gaps. They used match planing for very thin stuff where it was difficult to balance a plane, but not for thicker stuff.

The spring joint arose around 1880 for machine jointer edges. I don't have enough experience with jointer machines to understand what problem they were trying to solve. The term "sprung joint" is a relatively recent variation. It relies on heavy clamping, which was not really a part of historic repertoire.

[Will Blick]

Well, if its old, and well behaved, that is a good sign!
hey, I didn't know how spry your muscles are !
Some days I hand plane so much, my entire upper body aches the next day!
I raise the grain with my sweat, saves a step!
I get carried away, like its an iron-man competition!
thats why now, I have reduced Neander work down to smaller projects...

BTW, i find it interesting that so many edges come apart in panel glue ups, hence the spring joint... I never used a spring joint, never had an edge open up. Never seen one either from fellow ww's. Sometimes, I think these issues are older, and just linger... maybe today's glues are soo damn strong this is a non issue today? This assumes you closed the joint during glue up. I marvel how strong glue is today, when I try smashing apart a joint or cut off, etc, never once did the glue line break. But I keep trying! I know modern glues are 3-4k psi strength, my guess is, glues in the 1800's were prob. 1/10th this? Does anyone know? Interest factoid... and would maybe explain a lot of issues ww had then, that get erased today.

I have had entire panels twist on me, but not enough to ruin the top. The reason is, I usually don't wait long enough after jointing / planning to allow for re acclimation. It should be done in stages. Sometimes I feel the boards are stable, and just take my chances if my material removal was minimal... I need to get it done.

[Tyler Bancroft]

Spry has never been applied to me. I mostly have issues with my elbow and shoulder after too much planing, and I expect eventually I'll have to switch to machine prep of rough stock, but for now, you work with what you've got, right? I do plan to build some wooden planes this fall, as I like the lighter weight for some work and it's certainly easier on the joints.

I seem to remember that Popular Woodworking did some glue tests and found that long-grain glueups tended to fail in the wood around the joint, rather than the joint itself. PVA glues are pretty reliable, IMHO. And I know that hide glue is substantially weaker. Interestingly, Chris Schwarz has written about how many examples of older (>100 years older) furniture had joints reinforced by the occasional subtle nail. It makes sense, given that glue joints are likely to weaken with movement over time.

[Christopher Charles]

Hi Tyler,

Fun project. I've done a couple of desktops that were ~60" long full-neander. A couple suggestions:
-Get one face flat on each board (but not necessarily glass smooth-just need a good reference surface for the next step).
-Edge a joint to 90 deg using a square to carefully reference the angle and use a straight-edge to get the length close.
-Repeat with a second board
-Identify gaps by referencing the board off each other. When you get close, you'll experience 'sticktion' when its right and will be able to pivot the boards on the high spots when not. 80" will be a bit of a challenge-may want to practice on shorter boards, but totally doable.
-Repeat for the second joint
-Glue up using cauls to keep the reference faces as flat as possible. I would not trust dogs in this situation.
-Flatten the top and then dress the bottom to final thickness. Note, you'll just need a flat surface for mating to the trestle so may be able to maintain thickness in the middle or taper the sides/edges for aesthetics.

This sequence should keep as much thickness as possible. Will you be using breadboards on the ends?

Best,
Chris
IMG_1931.jpg

[Will Blick]

Very nice table Chris, impressive all Neander!
I have power jointed so long on bigger projects, I never thought of Chris's excellent suggestion!
just get one side flat, then glue up, then work the bottom for maximizing board thickness...
the bottom does not need to be perfectly flat! Great contribution!

Tyler, yes, we work with what we have, or what we feel like...
sometimes I feel like a Neander, sometimes I don't.
there was times I did not have access to my power tools for a year or two...
when they were in storage during long moves...
and worked 100% Neander only, as that is all the space I had to work in at the time.
I like it all...
A heavy hand planning session is like a weight lifting session!
I loaded my Veritas Jointer plane up with an extra 6lbs of steel weight to give it more inertia...
Great when pushing, hard when picking up a tad on the return strokes!

[Mel Fulks]

Interesting stuff ,Warren. It doesn't always rely on heavy clamping though. Ive been told that bowed instruments had
hollow joints. I used to help a violin maker friend with his plates ,using a plane ,and he asked me to hollow joint. Said he
had seen both old and modern instruments with center joints that had popped open. He never trusted his gluing of plates
even though his violins were "good" and used by some pro musicians.He even mentioned at least 2
makers of at least "good " old instruments being known today as makers whose plates had to be reglued. And
they were not pieces that showed water damage. But I guess most of us have seen some open joints in the paneling of
old museum houses. But I don't blame their methods, I don't really know why there are so many needing regluing.
I do know that in gluing panels for interior or exterior use I have never had a failure. Bad panels had been a big problem for one
place. I told them if they let me do all the facing,planing, jointing for all panels I would give $25 dollars to anyone who
showed me one failure. In 3 and 1/2 years of doing panel work often used for exterior, I never had a claim. The jobs
varied in size but needing 100 panels or more was common.