Category: Woodworking

Idea for an easily movable couch

Post author By Aaron
Post date February 28, 2018
No Comments on Idea for an easily movable couch

I have started interviewing for gigs outside of Seattle – and that has me thinking about furniture and moving. Well the Seattle Bouldering Project has some awesome – but comfortable – collapsible chairs. I am thinking they would be easy to make, easy to move, and a decent way to store crash pads the 99.9% of the time when you are not climbing.

This picture shows how the pieces of the chairs slot together (and Tyler tying his shoes). I’d probably add some reinforcement to the sides of the slots, but with a high quality plywood they should be really strong.

I am thinking I could sew up a cover for when they are acting as couch cushions. That would give me something easy to wash, and help a bit as the crash pads get used I am not dragging dirt or chalk dust back into the house.

More I think about it the more I am really liking this idea.

Martial Arts Woodworking

Böker Gnome Training Blade

Post author By Aaron
Post date May 18, 2017
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While the glue was drying on the kitchen knife trainers I am making – I decided to make a trainer for the small knife I sometimes carry. It is a Böker Gnome. It is only 4 inches long in total, with a 2.125 inch blade length, so you can carry it anywhere – but it is a tiny knife.

Working with small knives is always different, as they tend to just disappear in your hand. The Gnome has that same property of being hard to see – yet its curving blade feels like an extension of your hand. It should be interesting to train with – especially to defend against.

Knifemaking Uncategorized Woodworking

Wooden Kitchen training Knives – (part one)

Post author By Aaron
Post date May 17, 2017
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I’ve wanted a set of wooden kitchen knives for a while now. All the training blades I have ever run across were all patterned after crazy blades meant for poking holes in, or cutting, other people; basically large combat or hunting blades.

For knife work, I figure that if I ever have to defend myself form a knife attack, it is way more likely that my attacker will be using a weapon of opportunity than pulling out some crazy combat or hunting knife. Conversely, kitchen knives seem like a good pattern to practice basic knife attacks – as they are easily found most homes. So I am making a set of kitchen patterned training knives.

I started with some holly that I had harvested a few years ago.

The piece of holly I started with was fairly thick – so after cutting out a knot
I planed the rough cut stock flat on both sides, cut the stock in half, and then planed it flat and to the desired thickness.

From there I traced the pattern of the pattern of the knife in question onto the wood. I tried and pick a location and alignment with the grain that will work best for the knife pattern in question.

The next step is gluing on the handle scales. Holly is a very white wood, so I am glueing on American cherry scales. I’m hoping after a few coats of linseed oil it will finish off nicely. The scales are taking forever to add since each side takes a day for the glue to dry.

Shop Woodworking

Hack for using a cheap vise…

Post author By Aaron
Post date September 6, 2015
No Comments on Hack for using a cheap vise…

A few years ago I got so frustrated picking things up all night, I made one of the most useful tools in my shop. I was using it last night and realized it might be a trick worth passing along.

The problem is that cheaper vises “ratchet” when trying to hold a work piece that does not span the run of the jaws. So when the sides of the vise leave parallel, force gets applied unevenly to the work piece, which means the vise does a horrible job of gripping the work piece.

The solution I used since I was a kid was fairly simple – just put a scrap piece of the same width as the work piece on the other side of the vise. Its fast and work works, but it is generally a pain since you keep one hand one the work piece when loading and unloading the vise, and use the other to work the vise, which means the spacer usually falls through the vise to the floor. When you are cutting a lot of pieces, especially small ones, this means you keep having to pick things up off the floor.

After an evening of repeatedly picking the spacer up off the floor, I routed a small channel in a piece of scrap and glued another piece onto it to act as a lip. This prevents the spacer from falling through the jaws of the vise when loading and unloading the work piece. I did it without thinking as a quick hack, and inadvertently created a tool I use all the time. You only need to make one for each width you commonly use.

This trick makes tasks like cutting a bunch of pins massively faster.

Projects Woodworking

Machining wood

So Ian came over Sunday with a project and a bottle of Johnny Walker black. An excellent combination.

The project was milling two plaques – one for his mother and the other for his father. His mom is a pilot – so her plaque were the letters MOM with an airplane at as the hole in the O. For his father’s plaque the A in DAD was replaced by a boat.

We spent a while messing with software and screwing around getting things set up – so we only cut the MOM plaque. Cut it from a 1/8 inch thick strip of wild cherry I had in the shop.

For fixturing we clamped a board to the mill – then screwed the cherry into that board. This way we could machine through the cherry into the wood below with a sacrificial cut. Doing this helps get a clean edge on the cut.

Projects Woodworking

My “new” leg vise!

I was having a crappy day yesterday and the best prescription for that is always to check something off of my to-do list. My leg vise had been sitting half finished on the corner of my workbench bugging me so it seemed the job. I drilled the vise jaws and attached the screw from a cheap grizzly workbench.

I was looking forward to having the vise but it is a huge improvement over the other vise on my bench. Kind of odd since it is the same screw mechanism. I might have mounted the screw a little too low but I am very happy with it. I really should take some time and clean up the look of the leg. As this was my first leg vise I was just shooting for functional – but since I get the feeling I will be using it a lot I should probably go back and clean up how it looks.

Projects Woodworking

Adding a plane stop to a cheap Grizzly workbench

Post author By Aaron
Post date January 15, 2010
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Grizzly sells a really nice bench with lots of drawer space. I already had two of these benches in the garage – and rather than buy or build a cabinetmakers workbench I decided to improve the bench I had and use it until my woodworking projects outgrew it.

The first thing I wanted was a plane stop. The stop is basically a board that sticks up proud of the table surface by an adjustable amount. Here you can see a profile of the stop.

The stop attaches to the end of the bench by two bolts. I milled slots in the stop board to allow it to slide up and down. The board is held in place by friction and adjusted by a quick light taps with a hammer. I have some ideas for a screw lock for the stop – but so figured I would use the friction adjustment first and it seems to work great.

Below you can see the stop in use. A board rest against the stop so the length of the board can be planed right out over the edge of the board. This is useful for thicknessing stock by hand.