Thread: Am I wasting my Time with woodwork?

Originally Posted by windbreaker

You're not badly off. Listen to this.

A good friend of mine has all the tools and I mean all the tools. Here are a few:

Full set of Gordon planes...............
............All possible power hand tools

God there is so much stuff....I just can't think of it all.

But the point is he makes nothing.

He has the best workshop, the best of everything, best appointed i've ever seen but there has never been any sawdust on the floor.

Nothing has ever come out of his shop.

He spends all day polishing his stuff. He loves his stuff.

Now, don't you think HE is the one with the problem?

So common with a lot of the Darkside Dorks or Neanderthal Nerds, or what ever they are called

It has been over a month since I posted an update regarding this thread. After last times problems with the power. We managed to get back to DJ's today. Spend most of the day using the metal detector to find the last stray nails from the timber I scored from Ozwinner , then jointing and re-sawing them. However we did not have the time to finish four squaring the timber.

We even made no progress on the bench as we had to go back to the big smoke. However the bench top was just small enough to fit in the back of the hatch back. So we took it back with me. I have just finished using a modified No. 5 converted to a scrub plain to flatten one side, and then used my smoother to clean it up took about 2 hours. One side 99% flat, a good go with the belt sander now will polish it up.

It is going to look very lovely.

Taking the bench back to my place allowed me to see that the benchtop fits my small space perfectly giving enough room 1' on either side for movement.

DJ is coming past my place this week on one of his deliveries, so hopefully he will take the flattened top back to his shed.

At the moment I am only able to get to DJ about once a month. In good news I have gotten regular paid casual work. It will go a long way to helping my woodworking aspirations.

I have been making due with my tools and workmate bench, and I have completed my first hand cut dovetail box. It is nice, sturdy and square with no gaping holes in the joint. However I will keep practicing. I also shaped a chair devil from some scrap wood showed it to DJ he seemed impressed.

Things are coming along and I will keep posting back as I go. I think it will be another four months before we get close to completion. The next step is to laminate the the legs and to cut the mortice and tenon's.

In other news I also been keeping an eye out for old demolition timber. I scored a good batch of hardwood mostly Vic ash and some Red Gum from my local neighborhood. So it looks like I will not be short of timber to make things with.

Keeping at it.

Seems to me that Noah took less time to build the Ark (or was that Michaelangelo and the Sistine Chapel).

Do you have pictures of the bench in place? It would be good to see where you are storing a 2x2m pile of assorted timber too, if you can show it.

Regards,

LGS

Thumbsucker, just read your reply in another post regarding the bench top delaminating https://www.woodworkforums.com/showpo...06&postcount=6.

Is it the same bench top you did here? If so, sorry you are having to rip it apart and start again. Got any pictures?

Originally Posted by Burnsy

Is it the same bench top you did here?

Hi Burnsy

Yes it is - still considering my options it started about a month ago, with one board on one end shrinking. At that stage it could have been a bunch of causes. Not enough epoxy, some kind of contamination in the joint or the timber moving.

However at this stage, at last count we have 10 sizable openings on both ends of the top. Ranging from 2 - 4 mm. I will show DJ and consider my options. At one board we were hoping to cut it out and replace the one board now with 10 splits and counting I am a little it is shaping up to be a resaw, store to dry more and then reuse at a latter date.

As I said in the other thread: After assembling the top all was good, however assembly was done at the height of a wet winter. As summer approached the top started to tear itself apart. What started with one board separating at the end, has now spread to 10 splits in the top. This seemed to be caused by the timber shrinking and breaking the epoxy glue bond.

What else can I do but *shrug* and be

On the plus side it is better that it happened now rather when the bench was assembled.

Rssr said -

I've learned to value the sh*t that's going down in the shed as an indicator of something else.

and thats spot on. Thanks mate, think I needed to hear that myself.

Thumbsucker - You said you were allergic to MDF, what about plyboard?
Again, while MDF comes with the top board as the "cover board" and that is usually easy to get cheap/free, its the same with ply. If you are allergic to the glue fumes, you can seal it with varnish or polyu or something. If you don't break out in a rash in a modern office - its cause they seal the mdf with laminate, keeping the fumes in.

You can use dogs with ply.... just need to do a little mental gymnastics to work out how you will brace the dog holes for free.
Think glue, screws and hardwood from a pallet.

My current bench (back home) is some MDF/chipboard 4 drawer cabinets put together, with laser cut pine length screwed to them to hold them together. MDF sitting on top... I 'upgraded' from an old door as the top.

I was doing a fair amount of restoration on that, getting old solid furniture that was broken and no-one wanted at the antique auction places. While I might not be a craftsman, I could buy a flogged out and broken piece (like a victorian nursing chair) for $20 and sell it after maybe 6 hours work for enough to make me more than happy.
Some of the dealers worked out what I was doing and they were asking me to see them first instead of putting the stuff back into the auction. Seems like I do ok.

The point is not to blow my own trumpet (particularly as I know exactly what my limitations are and would never say that I am a craftsman or whatever).

The point is - that with a really dodgy set up, I do stuff that makes me happy.... and I could not do the stuff that makes me happy if I was still saving for a workbench piece de resistance.<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

Originally Posted by Clinton1

I could not do the stuff that makes me happy

It is not a disaster not at all. While the benchtop is splitting it is still a fine top. I can now actually have more then one tool on the bench at a time without something rolling of my workmate.

Currently the top is secured to my workmate and it is a big improvement already. As I posted above I have managed to make a small dovetail box that looks nice. I have been practicing cutting M&T from scrap vic ash I found slowly getting their all the time. My shoulders need more work to get that tight fit and I am in the market to pick up a router plane to keep the faces of my tenon face square and true.

The top is ubeut as is. I will let it dry out more see how much more it splits but it is nothing that cannot be fixed.

At this point it has cost me nothing in timber only in time and the cost of the glue. I am learning and I have made some friends from this board in the real world.

So I am happy.

I will keep posting as this epic saga unfolds. I will have access to a camera soon so I will post photos again.

Great!
From the posts I thought that you were not using it and it was still getting made. Good to see its all coming together really well.

Originally Posted by thumbsucker

I am in need of advice. I seem to have reached a low point in my woodworking. It has been just over a year since I took an old Stanley Spokeshave to wood and shaped a bokken (Japanese style wooden training sword). Something that I really enjoyed. I borrow an old workmate, and had allot of fun. Then a made another bokken, and another, then I made a naginata (Japanese Pole Arm Halbert style weapon).

However I found that my Stanley spokeshave was not making life easy so I purchased a pair of Veritas Spokeshave, real beauties. Next I decided that I need a work bench something more stable to work on and maybe do more then carving training weapons.

I however am unable to progress further beyond this point. I purchased some cheap air dried timber for a bench top, only to find that it never staid flat and I have now smoothed almost an inch of table top trying to keep it flat, it keeps cupping on the edges. So now I have a warped table top that sits in the corner of my tiny shed, I live in the inner city and space is tight, I am talking 10 foot by 5 foot at best. So next I bought some timber for the legs, the timber looked good, and I had the legs and rails thickness and cut for me. As I do not have the space or a spare $1000 to $5000 to spend on power tools. However when the legs were cleaned up large cracks were found making most of the timber not suitable for a bench or so I am told (the m&t would cause the splits to spread). I decided to cut the mortice and tenons by hand anyway, using an old backsaw which is not that straight and some old Titan firmer chisels. While I have managed to cut the m&t and they are square and straight, however the timber will split as soon as I put it together and put strain on the legs so it will simple not work. So we are looking at like $200 of timber which is nothing better then firewood

So I have no space, I have spend allot of money on timber that is f*@kd. I do not have the money to spend on thousands of dollars of power tools, nor do I have the money to spend on more timber, lets say I am a very low income earner. I have some nice hand tools, a smoother, a shoulder plane and spokeshave, however it is just not enough to do a completely, straight, and true job.

It just seems to me that to do any woodwork, you need thousands of dollars and actual space to swing a cat. I have neither, I therefore find-myself at a loss, while I enjoy the peace and quit of making shaving I am not actually making anything, outside very small renovation of existing furniture, however even that is hampered because I do not have a good workbench, to even start with.

The workmate I have is to light and the plastic threads on the vice are giving way and now is almost useless.

Should I just give up, sell what ever tools I have left, and burn the wood that is just shhhit and not fit for building anything.

I could go out and buy a bench from Carbatec or the like but again I do not have the space or money for those style benches.

So I have a case of the blues, being broke and living in the big city, is not conducive to this very expensive hobby.

I am my own hardest critic, and I expect allot from myself, however after one years of trying, I am on the verge of saying that enough is enough.

Mate, some one once told me: "when you're so far in the ????, you can't smell it". - The point of me saying this is that take a step back and remember why you liked doing this in the first place, not because you need to spend thousands, but because it gave you a sense of satisfaction.

Whilst it doesn't sound like you're in the ????, it sounds like you've just got to remember that timber is a natural occuring object, and sometime you cannot control what it does. ???? happens! (I don't mean to trivialise your frustration however, we've all been here).

Mate, get back onto that horse and don't forget why you like woodwork. Go out, buy some cheap pine and make yourself a strong workbench.

hi,
I had also just started woodworking, and i don't even have a work bench, just a small coffee table that i found, which is not even stable, so i do most of my work on the floor. I also found buying timber expansive so i usually buy floorboards. and make dovetail small boxes.