One day I'll have time for these. All of them require no screws, nails or glue.
Reply to: Re:Proper tools
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2020, @05:09AM
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday November 16 2020, @05:09AM (#1077737)
> and plane the surface.
Why use a plane to flatten the surface, that's the hard way.
If you don't have access to a really wide jointer (which makes a plane surface), then there is a trick I learned from an ace pattern maker* -- once you have the benchtop all glued up, tack on dead straight 1x4 or similar on the two long sides with the top edge an inch or so higher than the bench top. The 1x4 should be a little longer than the length of the bench. Move the 1x4 up and down as necessary so that the 2 top edges are in the same plane and roughly parallel to the bench top, I leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out this detail (there are several methods). When this step is complete you have established the tops of the 1x4s in a true plane surface.
Step two is to take an ordinary router and mount it on a very long & stiff base, 2x+ as long as the width of your bench**. I happen to have a piece of 3"x3" aluminum angle extrusion for this, but anything stiff that you can bolt the router onto is fine. By now you should see where this is going--lay the long base across the 1x4s and set the router depth a little deeper than the lowest point in the glue-up. Route (it's analogous to end milling) the top flat. The surface won't be great, but it will be dead flat (in one plane) and you can smooth with a sanding block, or if you prefer the clean look of a cut surface (without any grit in the surface), then take really thin cuts with a hand plane.
A neat thing about this technique is that it works on end grain too -- I tacked router supports to the side of a big tree stump and routed (milled?) off the top perfectly flat. All set to take a table top without any rocking back and forth.
* Al worked at a boat company and later Bell Aircraft after WWII. Among many other things, he built the full scale mockup of the Bell X-1 supersonic plane from wood. Back then it was common to build a full size wood version of the plane to lay out all the wiring, plumbing, etc...since they didn't have 3D CAD to check for interference between parts.
** It can be shorter, then you mount the router off-center and have to turn the router base around to do the other half of the top. I prefer to do it all in one setup with the longer router support.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2020, @05:09AM
> and plane the surface.
Why use a plane to flatten the surface, that's the hard way.
If you don't have access to a really wide jointer (which makes a plane surface), then there is a trick I learned from an ace pattern maker* -- once you have the benchtop all glued up, tack on dead straight 1x4 or similar on the two long sides with the top edge an inch or so higher than the bench top. The 1x4 should be a little longer than the length of the bench. Move the 1x4 up and down as necessary so that the 2 top edges are in the same plane and roughly parallel to the bench top, I leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out this detail (there are several methods). When this step is complete you have established the tops of the 1x4s in a true plane surface.
Step two is to take an ordinary router and mount it on a very long & stiff base, 2x+ as long as the width of your bench**. I happen to have a piece of 3"x3" aluminum angle extrusion for this, but anything stiff that you can bolt the router onto is fine. By now you should see where this is going--lay the long base across the 1x4s and set the router depth a little deeper than the lowest point in the glue-up. Route (it's analogous to end milling) the top flat. The surface won't be great, but it will be dead flat (in one plane) and you can smooth with a sanding block, or if you prefer the clean look of a cut surface (without any grit in the surface), then take really thin cuts with a hand plane.
A neat thing about this technique is that it works on end grain too -- I tacked router supports to the side of a big tree stump and routed (milled?) off the top perfectly flat. All set to take a table top without any rocking back and forth.
* Al worked at a boat company and later Bell Aircraft after WWII. Among many other things, he built the full scale mockup of the Bell X-1 supersonic plane from wood. Back then it was common to build a full size wood version of the plane to lay out all the wiring, plumbing, etc...since they didn't have 3D CAD to check for interference between parts.
** It can be shorter, then you mount the router off-center and have to turn the router base around to do the other half of the top. I prefer to do it all in one setup with the longer router support.