Thread: WIP - Mobile Door Top Bench

Good start - I just made a bench using a solid door (should do a post I guess) - I like the mortice jig and the cross dowels.... looking forward to more progress pics.
I just priced some bed bolts for a bed I'm going to build - I think I'll go with some nice brass bolts instead.....

Nice (almost trouble free) start

I'll watch with interest

How come you are not cutting the mortise by hand?

Originally Posted by Christos

How come you are not cutting the mortise by hand?

I'm a crap traditional woodsmith

Nah. Well, yes...but I know I can do them this way whereas I don't have any forstner bits to clear the waste (holding out for some Colt MaxiCuts), my few brad points are only small ones and I don't particularly want the hassle of making a flat bottom if I use normal twist bits or chiselling the whole lot out.

With the template, if I didn't have that trouble with the router (which I guess was caused by doing the full depth in one shot instead of working down to it) all the mortises are, or would have been, in exactly the same position with the same dimensions and done in a fraction of the time...which is something I doubt I could have done so accurately or quickly by hand.

Thankfully I managed to get the collet out of the router this arvo. I'd read up on the problem for a while last night and tried all the suggestions, but to no avail. So out came the red headband and black face paint and I went Rambo on the thing.

A bit of drilling, thread tapping, screwing in a bolt and light hammer tapping later, it was free. I couldn't see what the problem was with the collet and figured I wouldn't be using it again so I cut it open to see what sort of damage I'd done to the inside with my removal technique.

Turns out, it was heaps To be expected really.

In the end I think the problem was with the main shaft. I must have over tightened it or something as I couldn't get a normal 1/2" bit in once it was cleared. So while I was still dressed to kill, I tapped a couple of different sized rods into the end of the shaft and with some gentle rotating wiggles got it to open out properly again.

It seems to be cutting fine again, although there is one point during the motor slowing down where it makes a different, probably not good, noise. I'll be able to give it a full run in the next couple of days so I'll see how it goes then.

Hopefully the rest of my posts for this thread won't be so long winded and full of drama

The leg frames of the bench are going to be made with bridle joints and due to the size of them (90mm) they're too high to cut vertically on the newly procured table saw.

Looking for an excuse to use my new toy...I decided I'd go with "well, I can't very well let me make that router bit blunt by using it too much", so I basically just started hacking away some waste to make the job light on the router bit and I'm replacing the saw blade soon anyway.

I made the cuts to define the shoulders on all the pieces. After lowering the blade a mm or two, holding the piece against the mitre gauge, I nibbled away at the meat for all the leg pieces and rails which left pretty much roughed out open mortise halves and tenons.

To get my distance right between the shoulder cuts on each end of a leg, I shoved the fence way out the side and clamped a piece to it that would contact the shoulder of an already nibbled at opem nortise half and put the other end in the correct position ready for the cut. I knew the pieces were slightly different lengths, so I did this as an experiment; and now I've got perfectly matching distances between shoulders on the legs and rails, and any overhang from the mortise is simply sanded flush.

Once I get a router back from repair I'm going to give the router wing on the saw a spin. The initial plan being to just nibble away at the depth with a planing bit until I reach the depth of the shoulder cuts then clean every piece up from there.

That is provided of course that I can mount the router in such a way as to let me use the left hand mitre gauge slot (which is on the right of the router wing).

I got impatient waiting for the router to come back so I decided to finish off the open mortises this afternoon without it.

On the table saw, I set the fence to the right of the blade so the cutting width matched the depth of the shoulder defining cuts I'd previously made and pushed the workpiece in until the blade *juuuuuuust* met the shoulder. Once all the pieces were done, the fence got moved to the left side of the blade and the same kind of cut was made again to remove the waste from the other side of the same face. This left me with a triangle of waste still to be removed near the shoulder.

I could have used a tall fence to do this with the workpiece held upright, but fortunately this worked just as well.

After a nibbling away at the remaing waste again with the saw, I spent just a few minutes of light hand work with a chisel and cleared out the remaining triangle of waste rather easily using the flat area made by the table saw as the reference point for the back of the chisel.

I should have done this in the first place. It was much easier that I expected.

(Pic is of two leg halves. Top one shows the cut pattern and remaining waste, bottom one after the chiselling)

Glued up the leg halves, sanded the rail tenons to fit and have started glueing up the side frames. I've only got two clamps long enough so it's going to take a while to do the four of them

I've gotten really disappointed with the results now. Something somewhere along the line isn't setup accurately (and I didn't/couldn't joint the timber prior to starting) and there are honking great gaps growing up to about 1.5mm around the tenons, particularly on the end. I'm only continuing because there will be a bench/bed bolt going through them to connect the aprons which should assist the glue in keeping everything in place. While it's a tight fit, it's not uniform and I was really hoping to be able to use this project as a practice for some fine joints. This will teach me to be more thorough in checking setups.

Ahh well. I'll be able to "fix" it visually but deep down I'll know it's just not right.

Not looking too bad... are you using polyurethane glue?

Sure am, hence the spray bottle on the ironing board come assembly bench. I love the stuff and as I understand it, it's a stronger glue joint than plain old PVA and I'm hoping that as it expands it will help bridge the gaps around the tenons.

Have a read of this article about strength tests between different glues....
may not apply to you situation exactly, but makes interesting reading in any case....

http://www.titebond.com/Download/pdf...urGlue_FWW.pdf

Oh my...basically that doc says I'm boned Ahh well. Too late now so we'll just have to see what happens.

Thanks for that though. Interesting read and I'm always happy to be corrected.

My experience is limited with PU glue, I certainly wouldn't have considered it stronger than PVA - even then I find it a pain to use, so it would have to be a LOT stronger for me to bother with the clean up etc.... much prefer PVA....

I don't know how I missed this a few days ago.

Originally Posted by RedShirtGuy

I spent just a few minutes of light hand work with a chisel and cleared out the remaining triangle of waste rather easily using the flat area made by the table saw as the reference point for the back of the chisel.

I should have done this in the first place. It was much easier that I expected.

Welcome to the Dark Side.