Back at it!

After weeks of moving, taking down the tools and subsequently setting them up again, I began working on hardwood again tonight. I'm making a Hayrake Table, which design from from an editor of the Fine Woodworking magazine.  The modification to the basic design is that the structure is made of hard maple while the table top is still made of quatersawn white oak. This will be more consistent with the China Cabinet and chairs that are going to be in the dining room. Another reason why this is so is because I couldn't source anything but 4/4 stock of oak in this cut style, and thus it would have made it very tedious to prepare the legs and stretchers (it calls for 8/4 and even some 12/4 stock).

I spend the best of 1-2 hours with my daughter doing the initial milling of the legs (with 12/4 stock), which was a good work-out for my new roller stand and a good test for the ducts going to the dust-collector. Everything seems to be working as expected. Life is good.

Tomorrow, I'm finally getting a 10" contractor saw from busybee.  The only tool not yet delivered is the DW618K 2HP router that will be the workhorse for a router table. When will this router table be made? Good question, but it is good to know that the most critical component will be in the shop.

A computer Scientist designing a woodshop

Now that my shop is partially in boxes and crates, there is nothing fun left to do until the move is done... and will begin only in 12 days. With nothing better to do than spend time on the laptop, here is a workflow diagram that I came up with.



White nodes are things that I already have, gray nodes are things that I'll add to the new shop. An arrow indicates that I commonly go from one place to the other. The blue node represents the Dust collector (the arrow direction is meaningless).  The point of this diagram is to identify the "hub" nodes and the relationship between stations to minimize movement around stuff with material in my hands.  Since I'm taking over a big workshop, I've got a lot of space to deal with and thus I have the option of designing rather than just making it fit. The result is a bit messy, but there is some things that can be said.

Findings

The main hub of the shop is the project parts shelf. I've wanted to have a dedicated spot to store project components. It is fairly clear that these shelves are common to the milling and joinery equipment. As a result: it will be in the middle of things, even more than the bench and tablesaw.  The second hub is unsurprisingly the bench. The tablesaw is adjacent to the bench (acting as an outfeed anyway).

To minimize the dust collector ducting, I'll keep the bandsaw, drill press and router table near the tablesaw in-floor duct and cluster the other tools (planer, miter) near the collector beside the lumber/milling area.

The assembly area needs only to be adjacent to the tablesaw/parts shelf and the finish shelves and sink, at the other end of the room.

My idea of a man cave.

Ok, few people would look at this and wish they had that much stuff in such a small space. But hey, I'm very happy that the machinery is in, working and tuned. This week-end, I'll use this fine piece of Sapele (African Mahogany) to baptise the equipment.

A table for the tablesaw II

There is nothing like the doggiest day of summer to get for building something. As the apparent temperature raised to 40 Celsius, I went from this:

Enough for both the table and the workbench

To this (sketches here):

Not much to look at, but now I can safely
use the tablesaw for small cuts.

This is not going to be making it to the reader's gallery on finewoodworking.com, but it is strong enough to be used as a step latter if I choose to. I still need to fit a shelf on the lower part, and probably a set of wheels to make it easier to push around when I setup/teardown.

Lesson learned: spruce in the 2X4 stock isn't very good and it makes it unmotivating to do a good job with it. But hey, it sure beats the sad quality of end-joined spruce in the 2X3 stock.  But when push comes to shove, I'd rather spend time and money on other things than this piece of utility furniture. Mmm, oh yes, I don't know how I feel about MDF either (which is what I used for the horizontal surfaces), but it's cheap and does the job.

Building a workbench

Problem and Design

With the addition of  the tablesaw, there is a need to get a workbench that can be used as an outfeed table. It has to meet the following criteria:

1. Be relatively small because of the size of my shop.
2. Match in height the tablesaw's top.
3. Be inexpensive.

The ideal design comes from John White in an article in Fine WoodWorking: the new fangled workbench. The main differences are that the full length will be 4', a width of 24" and will not include a longitudinal set of clamps.  Here is a diagram from which I'll base the bench on:

Smaller version of the New-fangled bench.

The lumber is in the garage, the construction begins tomorrow.

A table for the tablesaw

Alright, I got myself a tablesaw. It is a small jobsite one with the rationale that it can be stowed away when needed (I've got a very small area to dedicate to the shop). The bad news is that, in order to operate it safely, I will need to build a table for it. It isn't so much a bad news, but rather that I'd prefer trying my hand with dovetailing on a nice piece of hardwood...

Problem

I need to take the top of the tablesaw to waist height, or 31". I will build a matching workbench which can be also used as an outfeed table. Here are the constraints:

1. Must be cheap (no fancy hardwood structure here): I prefer to keep my scarce money for a bandsaw, a jointer and a planer for the moment.
2. Must be solid: no vibrations nor wobble that would make operating the saw dangerous.
3. Should have a bit of storage underneath.

Design

The design of this table is very simple: It will be made with framing spruce in the 2"X4" and 2"X2" stocks. The traversal section are made of 2"X4", mounted atop of the legs to ensure very solid joints. The Table top and lower shelf are made of 3/4" plywood.  The L-shaped legs will be both light but sturdy and match the legs on the workbench (to maximize the clamping area near the corners). I plan to make dowels as I go from rounded rods of lumber, although I think that I'll have to use lots of screws to tighten the whole thing.

The diagram doesn't have dimensions on it for two reasons: Inkscape doesn't have a measuring tool, and most measures have to be made on the go (especially with rough lumber such as spruce), which makes keeping track of precise dimensions futile. The only important measure here that isn't going to change is that the top of the tablesaw (13 1/4" height) must fit slightly above at 31": so the legs and tabletop together must add up to 17 3/4". The distance between the bolting holes is also fixed by the dimensions of the table (18" frontage, 20" depth).

Hopefully, I'll get the lumber tomorrow and get cracking on this project: I've got some tenons to make for my pair of desktop shelves to match the desks that I recently completed.