Finishing the year?

Starting with a reminder about how nice the weather was in October (this picture was taken on the 7th October), here's the last bits of fencing that I made, and which, with a bit of luck, should keep the cows out for a bit. I found a better kind of wood treatment - at least, a less offensively coloured one. Whether it's effective we'll have to wait and see.

 

I've now finished off the doors to my workshop. Previously they looked pretty much like this - though I have to say there is a certain charm about this decayed object:



Now they are all finished, and I've also done an interior wooden case to reduce draughts, as well as having a bit of a go at repointing around the edges. I don't really like the rather startling white colour from the lime mortar, so I started experimenting with a bit of brownish dye. My first attempts used perhaps a bit too much, but it's probably better than the white. It would be visible round the middle door if you could see it.



I've also been having a go at skirting boards around the house. Some places really did need to have them done - gaps like this:



The hole is larger enough for a family of mice to come and go. The skirting board is described as "American Oak", and although it is very good wood - fine-grained and very hard - it's also very expensive, just under €10 a metre. Gulp.

Here's the finished version. I've also managed to do something about the "expansion" gap in the floorboards by the door, though what will happen when the wood expands and contracts I don't know.



The main problem with longer sections of board was pushing them up against the walls while the glue sets. Regrettably, not all the walls were as straight as they might have been. Even plasterboard ones seem to bulge a bit at corners where they have been smoothed over the top of the corner reinforcements. In the picture above, I had to plane the back of the skirting board at each end to make it sit flat against the wall (that's better than trying to shave the plaster off). The mitres aren't quite as good as the pictures make them seem, but they are good enough.

Sometimes I was lucky, and I had a bit of heavy furniture to wedge against. Other times I found a way of clamping, but that was the exception. There are a few gaps at the top of the slirting boards in places, but these can be filled with a bit of white mastic, as they aren't more than about a quarter of an inch.

 

It's odd how this picture shows up the way that the electrical conduit was chased out from the nearby plug point horizontally to the one on the other side of the room. I'm fairly sure that good practice in the UK says you don't do that.

Right now, after a coupkle of weeks of really good sunny weather, it's pouring with rain, so it's a good thing that the outdoor work is finished. I don't think I'll be doing much now before Christmas (except sitting in front of the fire - plenty of offcuts to burn!)

Next door

The weather is still good - dry and sunny, so it was the right time to have a go at the next door in my workshop - this one:



I think when we first arrived the door was held shut either with a heavy prop or a bit of string: the sliding bar (a bit of bent reinforcing rod) and its guides were an early improvement of my own. But although they are still fairly solid, the door is visibly falling apart.

The new one was a bit quicker to do than the first as I'd found it was easier to use the router table to make the lapped sections of the board, rather than the hand-held router, and that I could do the whole cut in one pass without tearing the wood excessively. So here it is:




It's not yet entirely finshed. It will have an interior bolt too, so I can keep it shut from the inside when it's cold or wet. And I've put up an inner wooden casing, just glued to the stonework, to reduce draughts. I've used mastic round the edges to fill the gaps between the wood and the stone on the inside: I'll use a lime mortar on the outside for cosmetic purposes.

I hope eventually to put a third hinge on, but the upper hinge pintle is missing. I'll need to cut away a bit of stone before I can cement it in, as it needs to be in line with the other two, and the pin there previously (for the upper section of the door) wasn't - you might be able to see that the unused pin is about an inch to the left of line of the bottom ones.

Back to work

After a quiet summer (with the grandchildren - that kind of quiet) I've started to get my workshop a bit more comfortable, or at least a bit less draughty - and secure - for the winter.

The doors were very much on their last legs, despite some temporary repairs that I did - oooh - about six years ago. These are visible on the back of the open door. I appreciate that they have a well-used look about them, but practical? No.





I thought I'd start with a door that I don't use very often, the one in the middle. It's normally got my table-mounted mitre-saw ("chop-saw") behind it so even when it's open it's not much use. But at present it does have one advantage: because the top of the stable door is missing, it lets in a lot of light. So the new doors will need to have some kind of glazing.

Here's the old door:



About the only thing that can be said for it (apart from its rustic appearance) is that it can be opened and shut. But if you were able to see the hinges properly, it would be clear that they have been put on effectively back to front: the door should go right into the opening and be flush with outer side of the wall, not sit so that it is a little larger than the opening and touching the outside part of the wall at the edges.

I bought a quantity (about €200) of chestnut planks, 20mm thick and about 2m long, from the timber merchant in Aurillac. And I ordered some twinwall polycarbonate sheet cut to 50cm by 40cm: I didn't think actual glass would survive very long in a workshop. 

Et voila!




The planks are lapped rather than tongued and grooved: they overlap about a centimetre so any shrinkage shouldn't let in the draughts too much. I've cut the bottom of the door to fit the v-shaped threshhold, but I might sometime level that up with cement and cut the door straight afterwards. The door is only held shut with wedges at the edge. I plan to make an interior doorcase to give a slightly more airtight fit, and that will take an interior bolt. This door doesn't need to be opened from the outside.

I've used a waterproofer on the timber, which has darkened it a little, and I'm pleased with the results. Now just the other two to do.

Summer's lease

Results have been a little thin on the ground during the summer, though I have been working on the fence panels that I can't install until I can find a satisfactory wood treatment. 

However, I've done a rotating door for our chickens - these ones and their less attractive friends:


 

The new door was needed as Jean-Pierre's dog Champion was finding his way into the henhouse and eating the eggs. I can't complain too much as I am pretty sure that the dog keeps the foxes away quite effectively.

Here's the new door open



and shut:

 

The drop-down bar on the right locks the door in the "shut" position, and I have every hope that it is fox-proof.

I've consolidated the top of the wall in the hangar. Before, leaning a ladder against it was sure to dislodge a stone or two at the top.




It's annoying that the cement-based mortar is a different colour from the old lime mortar, but at least it holds the stones together. And hopefully it will keep some of the draughts out of my workshop on the other side of the wall.

I also had a go at a short stretch of the wall separating us from Jean-Pierre's field. Before, it didn't even look much like a wall:



I think it had been used as way through from the field by various animals, ranging from cats, dogs and chickens up to full-sized cows.

I took it down as much as possible and cut out some of the roots of the ash tree, and now it looks like this:



The picture doesn't do it justice, as it isn't just a loose pile of stones. It's pretty vertical, quite stable, and makes a fairly regular line. With a bit of luck it'll stay that way. I think you can see that it is sitting on a bit of the bedrock, so it has a good enough foundation. 

En Garde!

as people say when they are fencing .....

As part of the ongoing  campaign to keep cows out of the garden (and the larger dogs, too), I'm starting to replace the temporary fencing - this bit -



  - with something a bit more robust.

The top bar - split just below the mailbox - obviously didn't survive being climbed over by the grandchildren, so a cow would have found it easy to push through:



I bought a quantity of cheap wood which had one (apparent) advantage - it had been pressure treated against woodworm and other boring insects. I then chopped it up and rebuilt it into a fence panel that was supposed to look much the same as Mr Jackson Fencing's gates. The colour was not intended, and I hope it will fade: on the tin it said "incoloré" and what it would have looked like if it had said "bright orange" I dread to think. But it is supposed to keep the wood weatherproof but breathable. I guess we'll see.

Here's the result:



The edges have been chamfered to match the gates (though perhaps not a very close match), and the back edges of the uprights have been planed down to fit flat against the railway sleepers, which aren't at rightangles to the panel. The next ones to be done are a bit bigger, but fit in between the other sleepers, so they won't need so much planing to fit.

Despite the colour I'm pleased with the result -



- and it is certainly robust enough to keep out the local cattle. All the mortices are pegged and glued, and where the middle uprights cross the lower four bars they are bolted through. The gaps between the five horizontal bars are copied from the gates. Curiously, from the top down, each gap is slightly smaller than the one above. Either aesthetics or to keep out smaller animals?

We didn't have to wait long .....

...... before our new gates and fences started to prove that they were useful:




Jean-Pierre and a friend then played hide-and-seek with the cows in the wood, and got all but one back into his own field.

The elusive one (possibly this one) succeeded in jumping a fence into the field below the house, and joining some elderly relations of hers belonging to Jean-Louis Carrière. Then, as evening approached, she jumped out and made her own way back to her own field - which she got into "sans rien demolir". Nobody saw her in the act, so this is all speculation: but next stop the moon?

Topping out

I've been building a wall to keep the cows out. This bit is in local stone - schist - because it butts up against the end of the farmhouse and I thought it would look better than the wooden fence I plan to have elsewhere.

It's been going up slowly for the last fortnight, as I have been using a lime-only mortar (NHL 3.5) that takes a day or two to harden, so it's easiest to build it up a couple of inches, then let it harden properly before adding any more stones. We've had some sunny days so I have had to put wet sacking on top to prevent it drying too quickly.

The last stones, to top it off, are very heavy. The lightest one I managed to get up to the top of the wall unaided. The next one I had Tony to help with (our combined ages - 140 years or a little more). The last was the heaviest of the lot, and it had to go into a corner where it would be difficult for two people to handle it.

So out with the Black and Decker Workmates and a length of alloy scaffolding:



I didn't think of taking pictures immediately: I started with the scaffold board virtually on the ground, and made sure that the stone was slid to one end before lifting the other: first to the footstep on the righthand Workmate, then to the crossbar, lifting the other end appropriately in between. Thank you, Archimedes.



Up at this level it was all a little wobbly: mostly because the ground here slopes in two directions. I had moved the stone fully onto the righthand Workmate before moving the lefthand one in and up.

Here it is about to be slid onto the wall:



And this last picture shows it in its final place. Not mortared in, of course, as it is pouring with rain today and the mortar would just wash out.



It fitted into the gap I had left with a millimetre to spare. Now I just have to level it and get some mortar underneath, and the wall will be done. Though I may decide to grout the joints a bit more to get a smoother result.

Few words

Et voila!



Below is the old bench. Just a little bit warped, but at least the new surface is flat.





And I think there ought to be a smile:

Stanley Bailey Five and a Half

This was the last of the old eBay planes that I wanted to get back into working order, the biggest and heaviest one, a Stanley Bailey 5 1/2. It's fifteen inches long and has a two and three-eighths inch wide cutter. The US version of this plane ceased production in 1958, and I'd guess this English one also dates from the 1950s. The No 5 plane (which I already had) was slightly shorter and had a two-inch cutter, and continued in production in the US for another thirty years - presumably because users preferred a slightly lighter jack-plane.

Before I started on it, it looked like this:



The pitting in the sole has resulted from the plane being stored in damp conditions for too long. I didn't photograph the cutter, but the whole plane really was pretty badly treated.



It came apart very easily, and luckily neither of the two handles was damaged. In fact, they were both the older style in proper rosewood, and the larger handle still had most of the "Stanley" transfer to be seen on the top.

Here's how it looks now:



The sole doesn't look perfect, but really it doesn't need to be mirror-smooth.

This shows the other view:



The handles are held on with brass screws (rather than the cheaper steel ones found on later planes) and the rosewood polished up quite well, and - as usual - with an hour or so of work, it was possible to get the cutter reasonably sharp too. I went only as far as the 1200 grit wet-and-dry - later on I will do the really sharp finish when I am actually about to start a real piece of work. The proof of the pudding, of course, is how well it works, and I found that it cut a nice long and transparent curl of wood from a piece of scrap wood.

As it was the last plane and now it's been done, I hope tomorrow to re-arrange the workshop, get rid of the old and temporary "bench" supported on concrete blocks, and move my new bench into its proper place. From then on, it should be carpentry rather than fettling tools.

Getting to the cutting edge

I took a chance and bid on a job lot of woodworking planes (and chisels) on e-bay, and got them for £65. As there were eight steel planes and three wooden ones, I thought there would be a chance of salvaging something useful - it's difficult to really wreck a plane. But in this case someone had had a good go at it.

Mostly they looked like this:



Or like this:

 

But after a bit of work, I was able to clean up the one above into a nice Record 4 1/2 plane, with just a bit of pitting on the sole and some parts of the cutter - luckily not the sharp end of it:



I glued the broken handle (the one at the right hand end - known in the US as the "tote"), and gave it a coat of varnish. It's an early post-war model - 1950s or 1960s - and the wooden handles are made of rosewood. The original varnish was quite thick and I didn't succeed in sanding it all off.

This one, which is the smaller Stanley No 4, was in very poor condition, and now I think it will be a very useful plane.



It is a later model, from the 1970s or after, and the handles are made of a dyed wood, stained and heavily varnished to look like rosewood. I cleaned them up and didn't try to re-stain them, and the look and feel is pretty good. I also bought a new Veritas sharpening guide, which has helped me get some good sharp cutters. Here is the one from this small plane:



I didn't quite remove all the parallel scratches created in the sharpening process, but despite those small blemishes this one has a mirror surface that quite surprised me. The little patches of rust near the sharpened edge I will hope to polish out eventually, but there was a lot of rust all over this plane and it took a couple of hours to get rid of most of it. What's left goes a little deeper than the surface. It is very sharp.

The Veritas guide has a detachable stop that lets you set the same angle each time, and which helps you get the edge at a good right-angle to the side of the cutter. It grips the blades much better, and has a large roller to ensure that you don't tip the cutter and grind of its edges. It is far, far better than the little gadget sold in B and Q. I've been using it on a thick sheet of glass, with progressively finer abrasive papers - the finest is a 5 micron one, which has put this polish on the edge.

The chisels that came with the planes were largely scrap, but the one or two that had good metal and handles in solid (unchipped) wood I have kept and I have sharpened those too with the new Veritas guide.

I have still a couple more planes to do, but they will all be waiting a while before they get any attention. There were two useful wooden planes, one of which i have cleaned and sharpened, and old "coffin" plane. But this metal one I shall be giving the treatment to:



It is a Stanley 5 1/2: this is a long plane with a wide blade - the biggest metal plane I have, in fact. I also have a number 5, the same length but with a narrower blade, and noticeably lighter. The extra weight of the 5 1/2 can help in getting a nice finish.

Only a detail to go

This is the bench I've been building, and it's now one that's been used for actual carpentry work - so it must count as being pretty well finished.

The latest additions were the two trays at the back for tools that are likely to roll off, and a shelf underneath for storage.



There was a minor issue with the leg vice: when clamped tight, it would push the worksurface back about 5mm on the framework, creating a small shelf on the leg. This was because the tenons on the top of the legs were a little smaller than the mortices in the worksurface. So I glued a small piece of wood to the front edge of each tenon at the vice end of the bench, and I hope that has cured the movement.



The idea with the tool trays is that they can be lifted out, so that it is possible to clamp large pieces of wood to the back of the work surface.

The final detail is that the "garter" for the leg vice screw has yet to be brought back from the UK and fitted. This will mean - or so I hope - that the vice will both open and shut using the vice screw. At present it shuts, but to open it you need to unscrew and then pull the vice jaw out separately. I am off tomorrow in the car to go and get the garter.

I'll need to move the bench over to my proper carpentry workshop now that the weather is getting warmer - I'll need someone strong to shift it. Even in two pieces it's very heavy. Then I'll have to get rid of the old bench - this one:



And although dragging it out and unscrewing the various bits fastened to it won't be that difficult, bringing myself to breaking it up, after it's been such a long time in use (I'd guess a good hundred years), will be difficult. Maybe I can make something out of the pieces?

Bench - nearly there ...

I've now finished the two ends with a cross-piece each. The metal vice is installed and the leg vice at the other end is now fully functional.



I haven't yet added the piece of thick wooden dowelling which will operate my version of a wagon vice set into the surface on the right. The clamping will be done by closing the metal end vice on the dowel, which will push the slider along. I don't yet know how effective it will be.

The picture below shows the leg vice, at the other end of the bench, in operation:



The piece of wood at the bottom, the one with all the holes in it, is used to make sure that the vice jaw (I believe this is called the "chop") stays parallel with the leg. It's usually best to set the chop so that it tapers in slightly towards the top, as this gives a firmer grip.

The main advantage of a vice like this over a conventional metal one are that the clamping area is potentially much larger, and the workpiece as a result is held very firmly indeed. With a metal vice, the added wooden jaws to protect the work are usually slightly tapered from top to bottom: but as they wear, they have to be replaced with newly made ones. With the leg vice, the angle of tilt can be chosen for each piece of work.

Bench - the beginning of the end ....

The bench is now assembled in its most basic form, and I have started working on the leg vice.


Even without any vices fitted, the dog-holes make it possible to clamp up work-pieces in quite a variety of positions, using either dogs or the cheap hold-fasts.



The piece being held is the main part of the leg-vice. At the nearer end of the bench, the tenon for the end cap has been cut. I haven't yet got around to cutting a suitable piece of wood and making the corresponding mortice.

These two pictures show the leg vice in place (with a dummy bolt substituting for the vice screw):






Annoyingly, I cut the leg vice about 2mm short, so I am adjusting the screw position and the wooden piece that supports it at the bottom. The bit of rough board clamped on top was to show Fergus (age 4) what all the holes were for.

More of the bench

It's getting towards the point when I can start to assemble the bench.

Before putting the stretchers onto the legs, one of those at the front had to have two roles of dog-holes drilled into it (for supporting long planks in the vice). The holdfasts also fit into the same size holes.

It needed the pillar drill as the holes needed to be nicely done at right angles to the surface - that's quite difficult with one of those flat wood-drills. But the pillar drill is inconveniently sited for drilling a two-metre-long plank. But it was possible:



The cleverly constructed input table fastened (clamp and screws) to the shelves solves the problem of trying to hold a long plank steady when drilling holes right at one end. Regrettably it will have to be removed as it is dreadfully in the way. When the new bench is installed I plan to re-site the drill.

After this, it was possible to put the legs and stretchers etc together. This did require the use of a reasonably heavy mallet - some of the joints are a good tight fit. One of them, however, isn't. Despite marking both halves of each joint, in one case I fitted non-matching halves together (twice, actually). As a result, a dovetail - luckily one at the back that doesn't show - is a bit loose, and has now been packed out with a thin sliver of offcut, which in time I may glue in place. Apart from that it all fits very well:



On the other hand, it is now much too heavy for me to lift unaided, and I need to get it off the worksurface it's on at present, then turn that worksurface upside down, and put the legs back on, but the other way up. This will let me work on cutting the mortices, in the underside of the worksurface, that the tenons on the legs will locate into.

Luckily I have a strong friend of my daughter's visiting for a couple of days.

I think I'll cut the ends of the stretchers back to a little closer the legs, while trying to decide whether they'd be better cut completely flush with the legs - though doing that without scarring the legs is at the limit of my carpentry skills.

The hidden wedged dovetails in the lower stretchers need to be cut a little shorter, too, and they also need better wedges: those in the joints at present are definitely temporary. But it's real progress to see it put together (and fitting well and solidly).

This picture shows the top inside of the leg nearest the camera in the picture above:



The housing (currently empty) will take a heavy iron threaded collar - with an outside square shape - for the leg vice. This created some problems, as the threaded rod is an unusual size: about 23mm. I have a 25mm drill, but not a 24mm one. So I drilled the hole at 22mm instead, making a very tight fit, then wound the rod in from the back of the collar (before assembly) to allow it to act as a tap cutting its own thread in the wood as it went through - this required a good deal of effort. Putting it in from the back ensured that the thread in the leg was continuous with the thread in the collar.