A Roubo odyssey

[bushwacked]

very nice! Another Roubo is always fun to watch. 

 

do you have any plans for accent woods, like on your vise or something like that?

[pdxkris]

On 5/30/2017 at 7:41 AM, MattF said:

So much for you and I tracking pretty close. At this rate, you will be done by the time I get really started. 

I've hardly had any shop time the last couple of years, so once I got momentum and buy-in from the wife, I'm trying to get as much out of it before my time disappears again     

On 5/30/2017 at 2:07 PM, bushwacked said:

do you have any plans for accent woods, like on your vise or something like that?

I really like the look of the end cap / chop / deadman contrasting, and was initially thinking about cherry or sapele, but I think due to money and time constraints it'll likely just be all hard maple.   I'm considering not gluing the end cap so I can change it later, but haven't decided for sure.

[pdxkris]

Hardware came in today!

I also got the front slab glued up this evening.   It didn't turn out as flush as Marc's seemed to, but I figure he is the whisperer after all, so I guess I can't beat myself up too much.   It'll cleanup just fine, but I was hoping for better.   I didn't measure it to get specifics, but there are noticeable height differences (I'd guess +/- 1/32" in several places, maybe as bad as 1/16" on the worst area) where it should have been nearly flush.   It's sitting at 4 3/8 total, so there should be plenty to true it up.

[Alan G]

Great work so far! Love those tools!

[..Kev]

I'm just getting caught up on this thread..  Looking great!

What's the Moxon hardware for?

[pdxkris]

13 minutes ago, TIODS said:

What's the Moxon hardware for?

Honestly, it was a last minute impulse order change.   I was initially going to go with the M series hardware (we all like shiny, right?), but then noticed I could get the C series kit and the Moxon hardware for about the same price.    I've heard good things about the moxon, figured there was a decent chance I'd want it at some point, and it's easier to sneak it into the house as "part of the bench" than placing another order later

If I'm wrong and the bench ends up doing everything I need, I'm sure the Moxon holds its value well enough I won't be out much.

[Brendon_t]

So are you not installing the moxon right away? Or will you have it on an appliance you can install and remove?

[pdxkris]

Grrr..   Got a double-whammy this weekend.    First the whole family got the flu, second I wasn't smart enough to stay out of the shop with said flu.     I was feeling semi-ok and wanted to make some progress on the bench, so I got the front slab cleaned up and down to 4".    That all seemed fine, except in my rush to get things done (and the fact that things had been going well so far), I wasn't checking square between planer passes, and wound up with this:

The top and bottom are dead flat across the width and presumably parallel, but I think I managed to knock the jointer out of wack moving the slab around.   Initially I thought it was just technique while having flu-head, but then I went to joint a small board for a circular saw guide, and said board started out damn near straight, and got more and more wedge shaped every pass I took on the jointer to clean it's edge.

Off to calibrate the jointer today, and figure out the best way to recover.

Since I'm already at proper width and height (just not square), unless I'm missing something, I think my only real option is to fix the jointer, square up the sides again using the top as my reference, then glue on another board that's a hair too tall, use the planer to bring the slab to proper width again, then a hand plane to even out the height of the last board.

Thoughts?

 

[SawDustB]

6 hours ago, pdxkris said:

Since I'm already at proper width and height (just not square), unless I'm missing something, I think my only real option is to fix the jointer, square up the sides again using the top as my reference, then glue on another board that's a hair too tall, use the planer to bring the slab to proper width again, then a hand plane to even out the height of the last board.

Thoughts?

 

I had the same issue with the front of my slab being out of square from the top. I fixed it with a hand plane, but that's really no different from you jointing it again. The width of the gap is not critical, so if it ends up being 1/16" or 1/8" bigger because your slab is a little smaller, no harm done. Before you do anything drastic, get back to square and see how far off the plans you are. If it's only a little, then I wouldn't worry about it. I made my gap 2" on purpose (rather than 1 7/8") because otherwise I couldn't fit my clamps. And then it shrunk with seasonal movement anyway, so it's back at 1 7/8" for the summer .

[Brendon_t]

4 hours ago, SawDustB said:

I had the same issue with the front of my slab being out of square from the top. I fixed it with a hand plane, but that's really no different from you jointing it again. The width of the gap is not critical, so if it ends up being 1/16" or 1/8" bigger because your slab is a little smaller, no harm done. Before you do anything drastic, get back to square and see how far off the plans you are. If it's only a little, then I wouldn't worry about it. I made my gap 2" on purpose (rather than 1 7/8") because otherwise I couldn't fit my clamps. And then it shrunk with seasonal movement anyway, so it's back at 1 7/8" for the summer .

Do this... My full body clamps are currently unsure about fitting every time....

[pdxkris]

Well, the flu kept me out of the shop for much of my PTO, and when I did get in there, I needed to true-up the front slab, as I really wasn't happy with the square or flatness of any of the dimensions.    I mentioned the square issue of the width previously, but once I started looking closer, I noticed that the top wasn't really as flat as I would like either.    I could take my 50" level, and most places I put it, it would have a small amount of rock to it.   I'm not sure if this was due to the jointer mis-alignment, or me introducing issues via my noob'ness, but I wasn't happy with it.

I decided to channel my inner-Shannon and true up the top with my jointer plane since I wasn't completely sure what caused the issue the first time, and I didn't have a lot of material left to waste trying things.    One crazy sweaty tshirt, and a pile of shavings later, the top was dead flat.   This was really my first go at doing anything real with my hand planes, and I see a lot more of that in my future... very satisfying.

Next I moved on to fixing the jointer.   I ultimately found that the leading edge of the infeed table was .019 low.   Unfortunately, the Minmax planer doesn't have adjustments for all 4 points on the table, so I had to create some custom shims:

Those had to go in the hinge points circled in red.   A combination of those shims, and adjusting the 2 points that are easily adjustable, got the tables within ~.002 across the board.  

(Note:  I think this is the first time in my life I needed both feeler gauges, and a sledge hammer for a single operation!  The screws at the hinge points that needed shimmed had some industrial loctite on them that I had to bust loose)

Once the jointer was fixed, I ran the slab through the planer to telegraph my hand-plane flatness to the bottom, then used the top as my reference surface to true up the sides on the jointer.  After about 3 passes, everything was and square, flat, and true.    The total height was at about 3 7/8, and width is close enough I suspect I can just widen the gap as suggested by SawDustB and Brendon_t.

Next up, I tried to trim the slab using my circular saw, but that didn't go so well:

I made sure the blade was square before making my cuts, but I think the issue was this is a tiny battery powered unit with a small kerf blade.   I think either it wasn't up to the task in hard maple, and/or I was going too fast, and the blade bent/warped during the cut.

Rather than fight with that saw, I moved on to the slider.   That worked great to cut to size, as well as doing the tenon work:

I had a minor goof when routing the cavity on the endcap that caused the gap seen below, but it's only on the last 1/4" or so, the rest of the tenon fits like a glove.  

Below is where things currently stand.   I was hoping to get further this week, but the flu and my early mistakes killed my time.   Oh well, I'm moving much slower and more deliberately now, but really enjoying the journey.   After tomorrow, I'm back to a few hours on the weekends if I'm lucky.   I'm sure it'll be a while before I finish, but I feel like the worst is over at this point (the tenon and large routing cavities always worried me), and I'm learning tons in the process.

[shaneymack]

It's looking great ! What minimax is that? Is that one of those complete workshop in a box type dealeys?

 

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

 

 

[Eric.]

4 hours ago, pdxkris said:

I think this is the first time in my life I needed both feeler gauges, and a sledge hammer for a single operation

LOL  I've experienced this oxymoronic situation before.

It kind of sucks that you have to go to such lengths to calibrate a new machine...I've been there before, too.  But what you have going for you is the quality of your machinery, so once you get things dialed in, hopefully you won't have to mess with it ever again.  I'm pretty jelly of some of your kit.

Good progress despite life getting in the way...like it always does.

[pdxkris]

Today started off well.   I got the holes drilled to accepts the nuts for the endcap bolts, and did a dry fit just to make sure things were lining up ok, and all was well:

(Is it normal for the Benchcrafted kit to not include the 3/8" nuts or lock washers for the endcap?  I had a bag labeled 'endcap hardware' that only had the bolts and regular washer for the outside.   I had nuts to use for now, and will grab lock washers before I tighten it down for the final time)

 

Next up I made the template for the dog block.   Since I don't have any flat sheet goods handy and live a ways from any decent suppliers, I made it from a pice of poplar and scrap maple.   I left the back 'fence' extra deep so I didn't have to worry about cutting if off by accident.   This turned out nice and sturdy and worked like a champ:

Initial rough-out went off without a hitch:

Since I've only got one hand held router handy, I batched out all the rough out tasks first:

 

The final cleanup passes were going great, until I made the mistake of thinking so to myself.   10 minutes from when I was going stop for the day, literally a few seconds after thinking "this is going pretty well, I got quite a bit done today", at cleanup for dog #10, my heart sunk when I pulled the router away and went to make sure it didn't need any touchup before moving on, and found this:

It's kind of hard to make out in the picture, but basically I first noticed waviness in the dog hole where it should be smooth, then I noticed the same waviness on my template itself!  After closer inspection, my template had been fubar'd in several different places at varying heights.   Obviously anywhere my template was screwed, so was this dog hole.

I had to stare at it for quite a while to it to sink in what happened.   I just couldn't figure out how the template itself got mangled (especially in an inconsistent way) given the bit I was using:

I had done all of my cleanup in two passes.   One similar to above, and another at full depth.   I was very careful, borderline paranoid, to ensure that the bearing was always riding on the template surface for the first pass, and the freshly machined surface the second pass.   9 previous dog holes worked fine with this process, and I was "in the groove" by this point.

I eventually noticed that the bearing stop collar had wiggled loose, and there was *just* enough room based on the depth I was cutting, and the amount of exposed router bit shaft outside of the collet, that the stop collar and bearing were most likely vibrating just above the surface of the template and back down again, thus causing the wavy template-eating marks that I saw.   

Sooo, a few questions for the more experienced:

1)  Was I wrong to assume the set collar would be tight from the factory and remain so during all these cuts?  Is this a newb learning moment, or is this uncommon?

2)  What now?  Do I suck it up and re-make the whole dog board?   Devise a way to patch just this one dog, and let it torment me every time I look at it? (I assume the patch will be obvious from above).     If I do patch,  I have to make a new template, which likely won't be 100% identical to the last one, so am I likely to have dogs 1-9 fit a certain way, and 10+ fit different?

[pdxkris]

17 hours ago, shaneymack said:

It's looking great ! What minimax is that? Is that one of those complete workshop in a box type dealeys?

It's a CU 300 Classic, which is one of their 5-in-1 models.      12" Planer / 12" Jointer / Sliding saw / Mortiser / Shaper

 

[Llama]

On 6/10/2017 at 11:37 PM, pdxkris said:

1)  Was I wrong to assume the set collar would be tight from the factory and remain so during all these cuts?  Is this a newb learning moment, or is this uncommon?

2)  What now?  Do I suck it up and re-make the whole dog board?   Devise a way to patch just this one dog, and let it torment me every time I look at it? (I assume the patch will be obvious from above).     If I do patch,  I have to make a new template, which likely won't be 100% identical to the last one, so am I likely to have dogs 1-9 fit a certain way, and 10+ fit different?

1- Always check things like that

2 - If it's functional, and not too much of an eyesore... you can use it.. It's just a workbench. I'd probably remake it... up to you

 

[Eric.]

The way I'd feel during the building process - I'd remake the whole thing.

The way I feel about it now - I'd square up that boogered mortise, patch, route a new dog hole.

Because five years down the road - Jimmy crack corn.  But it's a tough pill to swallow during the build.  I feel for ya man...always a bummer to botch a time-invested part like that.

[Cheeset202]

Not sure I can think of a project that somewhere along the way that I ended up I botching up a piece of wood.  Building my first Maloof rocker and wrecked a rear leg, pissed me off!  Mangled up the top of the leg on the router table due to not using the starter pin.  Eric kindly helped me figure out the problem so the second one came out perfect.  Been woodworking for years never really understood what that damn pin was for!  Roubo is looking great it will definitely be one of my future projects.

[..Kev]

Which dog hole is it?  First one near the tail vise or last one at the end of the bench?

If it's the first one, I'd probably remake the piece.  If it's the last one, which is rarely if ever used, I'd be very tempted to patch it and move on.

[pdxkris]

Wellll... I was really hoping to be done by now, but at least I can report back with some progress made recently.     I did end up re-making the dog hole strip in whole, and the 2nd time around went much better.

 

 

The strip has been attached to the slab, and I've got the front laminate milled to size and ready to do the dovetails on it.  Before taking that plunge I decided to give it a try on a test piece first to get a feel for it.   Seems straightforward enough, but I wasn't super happy with the smoothness of the cut.  I'm sure I could have cleaned it up with a chisel, but I don't trust myself not to botch that just yet.  Perhaps it was fine and I'm just being paranoid, but a resaw king blade was on my wish list anyway, so I pulled the trigger and have one on the way for when I do the real thing.

Here's the test cut.  It doesn't look horrible in the picture, but in person it feels very rough and I was worried how gappy it might look once tapped into the endcap.

While waiting on the new bandsaw blade to arrive I moved onto the legs, so far so good there.   I've got everything all glued/milled, all the mortises roughed out, the markings for the tenons are there, and the dado blade is installed waiting for next time I can get in the shop.

 

 

 

[Tom King]

I think it was worth the extra time, and effort to make the dog hole strip.  I've never had a single problem with a Whiteside bit.  That's one of my very few brand loyalties.

[pkinneb]

Coming along nicely. I agree with Tom on both remaking the strip and Whiteside Bits. 

[Cheeset202]

Just started my Roubo this weekend, I am watching along and learning!