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255432 Kirk Eppler <eppler.kirk@g...> 2015‑07‑16 Old Tool Ad in a book
Hey gang

Whilst perusing another topic, I found a couple of books with some fun ads
in them

American Carpenter and Builder, from 1906 & 1910


https://books.google.co
m/books?id=3mFAAQAAMAAJ

https://archive.org/details/AmericanCarpenterandBuilderCoAugust19060001
">https://archive.org/details/AmericanCarpenterandBuilderCoAugust19060001

Old ads from GP, Atkins,Stanley, MF etc, plus brands like Seavey Miter
Boxes, Miller's Lock Mortiser.

The nice thing is, the ads are in some sort of order, all the Miter Boxes
are together at first glance.
-- 
Kirk Eppler in HMB, CA, who should get back to work now.  But maybe a
cookie first.
255435 Nichael Cramer <nichael@s...> 2015‑07‑17 Re: Old Tool Ad in a book
Kirk Eppler wrote:
>Hey gang
>Whilst perusing another topic, I found a couple of books with some fun ads
>in them [...]

Cool.  Thanks!

My favorite "old ad" was one from Sears from a time when they
used to sell build-it-yourself house kits.

One included a guarantee that the buyer would be reimbursed
10 cent for every knot they found in the wood that they were shipped
(this, at a time, when the cost of a stud was well under a dollar).

Try springing this on the lumberyard the next time you buy
some construction timber.

N
255437 curt seeliger <seeligerc@g...> 2015‑07‑17 Re: Old Tool Ad in a book
> One included a guarantee that the buyer would be reimbursed
> 10 cent for every knot they found in the wood that they were shipped
> (this, at a time, when the cost of a stud was well under a dollar).

Yep, back when we had forests that would provide that kind of quality.
255438 paul womack <pwomack@p...> 2015‑07‑17 Re: Old Tool Ad in a book
curt seeliger wrote:
>> One included a guarantee that the buyer would be reimbursed
>> 10 cent for every knot they found in the wood that they were shipped
>> (this, at a time, when the cost of a stud was well under a dollar).
>
> Yep, back when we had forests that would provide that kind of quality.

I wonder what happened to them ;-)

   BugBear
255490 Buz Buskirk <buz.buskirk@g...> 2015‑07‑21 Re: Old Tool Ad in a book
My grandfather (the blacksmith) had a house built in Parkersburg, W.Va. in the
late 20s. He inspected the day's lumber delivery every evening when he walked
home from work. Anything with a knot was sorted out to be returned. The lumber
yard exchanged it with no questions.

On another note, my brother and I did some remodeling/repair on one of those
Sears kit-built houses. They were ingeniously conceived. The basement stairwell
walls were 2x3s (not load-bearing). Everything was cut to length. The wallboard
was glued onto the studs (with fire blocks) before the walls were erected. I
also remember cursing this when fishing wires in that house.

Buz Buskirk

Who is presently eking out a couple dozen cubic feet of space in the shop


On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 at 11:24:37 AM, Nichael Cramer wrote:
> Kirk Eppler wrote:
> >Hey gang
> >Whilst perusing another topic, I found a couple of books with some fun ads
> >in them [...]
> 
> Cool.  Thanks!
> 
> My favorite "old ad" was one from Sears from a time when they
> used to sell build-it-yourself house kits.
> 
> One included a guarantee that the buyer would be reimbursed
> 10 cent for every knot they found in the wood that they were shipped
> (this, at a time, when the cost of a stud was well under a dollar).
> 
> Try springing this on the lumberyard the next time you buy
> some construction timber.
> 
> N

-- 
Buz Buskirk
Richmond, Kentucky

The three hardest things to make in your shop are time, space and money.
255599 "Joseph Sullivan" <joe@j...> 2015‑07‑31 Re: Old Tool Ad in a book
SNIP

One included a guarantee that the buyer would be reimbursed
10 cent for every knot they found in the wood that they were shipped (this,
at a time, when the cost of a stud was well under a dollar).

Try springing this on the lumberyard the next time you buy some construction
timber.

END SNIP


Probably full dimensional, too.  Try finding some of those with or without
knots.

Joe
255601 Mark Pfeifer <markpfeifer@i...> 2015‑07‑31 Re: Old Tool Ad in a book
> SNIP: Try finding some of those with or without
> knots.


—— It’s getting worse, too. Twice in the last couple weeks I’ve been at the blue
big box lumber department, and had to pull apart two entire stacks of the “top
choice” studs trying to find even half a dozen that were knot-free. I was told
that if you buy longer than stud they use higher quality. I was willing to pay
the premium but no dice. The 12’s and 14’s were just as bad.

On one level I know it’s green and sustainable and can be happy. The lumber
companies are doing a better job now using the crappy new growth wood for things
that won’t show, which in theory means more efficient use of the resource…..but
still frustrating.
255602 Christopher Swingley <cswingle@s...> 2015‑07‑31 Re: Old Tool Ad in a book
Mark,

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 12:57 PM, Mark Pfeifer  wrote:
>> SNIP: Try finding some of those with or without
>> knots.
>
> It’s getting worse, too. Twice in the last couple weeks I’ve been at the blue
big box lumber department, and had to pull apart two entire stacks of the “top
choice” studs trying to find even half a dozen that were knot-free.

I've given up on knot free.  What I usually do is go to the end of the
stack and choose pieces based on the rings.  I'm looking for as close
to quarter sawn as I can find, with as many rings as I can find.  It's
amazing how much heavier a quartersawn 2x4 is compared with one with
only a few rings and the pith.  Then I buy 10-20% more than I need,
knowing that some will pretzel before I get a chance to use them.

But yeah, I still have to sort through a lot of junky wood in order to
find the good sticks.

Cheers,

Chris
-- 
Christopher Swingley
Fairbanks, Alaska
http://swingleydev.com/
cswingle@s...
255603 "Joseph Sullivan" <joe@j...> 2015‑07‑31 Re: Old Tool Ad in a book
SNIP

knowing that some will pretzel before I get a chance to use them.

END SNIP

Pretzel; to say the least.  I was building a new shed two years ago, as time
permitted.  Used new nominal 2x6 timber from the orange despot for the rafters.
A week after they were installed the ends over the deep eaves had bowed in so
much that I had to use heavy bar clamps to move them back into place to have
decking screwed on.  I had misgivings, but that actually worked pretty well.
I've had a solid roof for two years now including the wettest winter on record.
Disheartening to see that wet wood bow though.

Joe
255605 Spike Cornelius <spikethebike@c...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
You have to let the wood acclimate to the climate in your shop. For at least a
few months.


spike
 "No hour of life is lost spent in the saddle"
                             W. Churchill



> On Jul 31, 2015, at 7:20 PM, Mark Pfeifer  wrote:
> 
> SNIP: pretzel lumber from the box store
> 
> The rafter story was sad, sorry to hear it. I have a horror story of my own .
. . . was it the wood?
255606 "John Eaton" <jeaton@w...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
Could you have over-clamped and squeezed out the wood?

> On Jul 31, 2015, at 7:20 PM, Mark Pfeifer  wrote:
> 
> SNIP: pretzel lumber from the box store
> 
> The rafter story was sad, sorry to hear it. I have a horror story of my
own . . . . was it the wood?
255607 scott grandstaff <scottg@s...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: Old Tool Ad in a book
> Hey Mark
>   Couple of random thoughts.
> Which Elmers and which Titebond?
> In a race to say their one part polyvinyl glue is totally waterproof, 
> Gorilla, Elmers and Titebond have all released glues that do not last 
> very long on the shelf.
>  I think its tradeoff making the totally waterproof glue.
>
>  Old yellow glue is waterproof in cold water. But that wasn't enough 
> for current marketing.   Old yellow glue (Elmer's carpenters and 
> Titebond11) lasts for many years on the shelf.
>
>   Say, uh........... what were you doing in a box store anyway?
>  And you went there twice?   And with a concern about quality?
> These places care for nothing but price. They hustle sawmills for 
> lowest cost, period. Quality is not on the table.  Nothing but cost 
> matters to a warehouse store.
>
>   Last time I was in one, I toured the whole store and was generally 
> revolted.  I remember buying a couple spray cans of Rustoleum and 
> wondering if even this was second quality? Everything else I saw there 
> was second quality.
>
>  I hear that even John Deere and Troybuilt make specific second 
> quality goods to sell in these places.  Only a few dollars less to 
> buy, but years less in performance.
>
>  Finally, how bad is the top really?
>  Can you see it riding by on a fast horse?
>  Can you see the defects underneath a pile of chisels and a few sheets 
> of sandpaper, 4 planes and a couple quarts of stain?
>   You do realize that once you install this bench in the shop you will 
> likely never see the top again?
>  This is the way it works.
>    I expect this bench top will be fine.
>       yours Scott 


-- 
*******************************
    Scott Grandstaff
    Box 409 Happy Camp, Ca  96039
    scottg@s...
    http://www.snowcrest.n
et/kitty/sgrandstaff/
    http://www.snowcr
est.net/kitty/hpages/index.html



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255609 "yorkshireman@y..." <yorkshireman@y...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
Snipped per FAQ..


> On 1 Aug 2015, at 03:20, Mark Pfeifer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hit the glue, 12 clamps to an 8’ slab, they looked sweet clamped up, like one
big slab. Stuck around for a while tweaking a screw here and there until nothing
was seeping, nothing was popping. Big stable slabs. Yummy.
> 
> Shut down the shop, went to bed, couldn’t wait to get up this morning,
unclamp, and do a little smoothing with the #6, my favorite Stanley.
> 
> To my horror, despite being COMPLETELY CLAMPED, these sob’s managed to gap on
me. I swear someone put a hex on it . . . there is no rational explanation. It
was perfect when I shut off the lights. When I cut one end of the slab for
square, instead of one nice loaf of wood, each of the 2x4’s fell off in sections
as I cut. Needless to say I’m really bummed out. I did it all “the right way” .
. . . .
> 
> For the bottom of the slabs I cheated and slathered more glue into the gaps
and smoothed it all off with a hunk of thin plywood. For the tops . . . . I
don’t know. Part of me wants to plane 1/4” off and see if maybe they just gapped
on top . . . . maybe the glue dried funny? Maybe if I plane 1/4” off the top my
beautiful unitary monolithic slab is still there?


My ‘travelling bench’  is made from 2x4 material, It does its job.  I should
have written about it maybe - the top has stayed ‘stable enough’ - way way more
so than the slab of english air dried beech I bought in the first place ( to
reference another thread)

Back t the plot though. I suspect that your glueing is your problem.

First - preparing to a glass smooth finish would be a bad thing for a glue up.
Hows the glue going to hold if there is no access to the fibres?  After getting
that satisfying finish, you need to then destroy it with a sheet of 120 grit
abrasive - keeping everything square, and not destroying the corners.
Then you need to arrange the joint for glueing.  for something like this I would
be very very tempted to use stub dowels to align the joints. with your sharp
jennings bit, a pair of random holes, on at each end, in the centre of the
board.  Then with your dowel aligning pins, press the opposing face to mark it,
bore the matching sockets, then make up the dowels and assemble dry to check
that everything mates up. you could plane the surface closer to final finish if
it were necessary.

Now disassemble and apply the glue,
You are aiming for an even glue line, 20 - 40 thou thick.  I sued to just spread
some glue from the bottle and assume that it would spread out as I cramped the
joint.  I don’t do that anymore.  I use some form of spreader, and get an even
spread over all surfaces.  For e really important job, that would mean coating
both surfaces, with the glue well scrubbed in to the face of each.
Now, when you bring the faces together, they will be aligned, and stay that way
without effort, whilst you tighten the clamps you arranged earlier when dry
fitting.

You should have little squeeze out, if your surfaces mate, and your spreading
was even, then you want to see the glue appearing, evenly, at the edge of every
joint.
You do NOT want to keep tightening until the joint has given up all of its glue
load.  Again, the even spread, and the knowledge that your planing has ensured
the faces mate well will leave you confident enough to stop, and let the glue do
its thing.

Incidentally, I now use Titebond almost exclusively.  Cascamite is the only
other go-to glue for me, Titebond comes in grades though.  Get the good stuff.
The ones rated for waterproof use, or the one rated for below water.  Cascamite
is a different animal.


As for fixing your present bench.  adding a surface of plywood would be a really
good thing - benches that do real work are often made with ply, it’s a good
surface, it’s ‘disposable’ so adding nailed stops or screwed on jigs is OK.  You
don’t have to worry about damaging it.  paint, glue spots, anything can be
scraped off, and if you need to run in a couple of inch holed for a non standard
position for a bench stop you just do it.  When you replace it eventually, the
substructure may have holed, but they all vanish when your new top goes on.  A
coat of varnish and its new and lovely all over again.


It’s a bench - it’s a working tool, a building experience, not a dilettante YB
ornament.  No problem here..


Richard Wilson
Yorkshireman Galoot
in Northumberland.
255610 Michael Blair <branson2@s...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
It was the wood. Big Box stores sell "construction common" 2X3 and 2X4
stock.  My great uncle complained about the quality of construction
grade wood back in the 50s; said it was "so green you can still hear
the birds tweeting in it."  I wish I could still buy what he hated
because what you get today is much worse.  I've driven screws in and
had them squeeze out sap as liquid as water.  That's what the weight
is in con-common wood.

If Titebond didn't hold it, Elmer's won't either.  I gave up Elmer's in
favor of Titebond almost 30 years ago.  I like the tack better by quite
a bit.  I very occasionally use epoxy, and more often use hide glue,
but Titebond is the glue I use the most.  Titebond II is "water 
resistant,"
and except for outside use, is water proof for all intents.  Titebond 
III
is water proof, period, and I buy it a pint at a time because of shelf 
life
issues.  But it holds like a demon.

The thing is, no glue works well with green wood.  To work, glue has to 
be
able to penetrate the wood. The greener the wood, the less it will do
that.  It's like trying to put water into a wet sponge -- won't happen.

My narrow (30 inches wide) bench is built from clear red fir that I
salvaged from a garage built in 1907.  No muss, no fuss, no gaps.

You are building a bench that will last you the rest of your life. Don't
get cheap construction lumber from any of the big box stores.  Go to an
actual lumber store.  If you can find southern yellow pine, kiln dried,
that will serve you well, and I think you might be able to find it in
NC. If not, vertical grain fir will do.  None of it is cheap, but it's
for the rest of your life.  You only have to buy once.

What probably happened is that the planing you did exposed the wet core
of your 2X4s and allowed rapid drying of that wet core.

Mike in Sacto
255611 Michael Blair <branson2@s...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
> As for fixing your present bench.

I'd call the present bench a total loss.  No use carving on rotten wood,
as Confucius actually did say.

> adding a surface of plywood would be a really good thing - benches that
do real work are often made with ply, it’s a good surface, it’s 
‘disposable’
so adding nailed stops or screwed on jigs is OK.

Good point, though I use 3/4 inch termite barf on the top of my big 
bench
(4 ft by 8 ft).  When it gets funky, I flip it over to the fresh side 
for
another few years.  It's gone through two sheets since 1985, now 
starting
on the third sheet.  With termite barf a slip of the chisel doesn't 
throw
up splinters, and with its smooth surface you can draw lay-outs for a
project.

Mike in Sacto
255612 Gye Greene <gyegreene@g...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
>
> Now disassemble and apply the glue,
> You are aiming for an even glue line, 20 - 40 thou thick.  I used to just
> spread some glue from the bottle and assume that it would spread out as I
> cramped the joint.  I don’t do that anymore.  I use some form of spreader,
> and get an even spread over all surfaces.


My "some form of spreader" tends to be the ol' index finger.  ;)


--Travis (Brisbane, AU)
255613 William Ghio <bghio@m...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
On Aug 1, 2015, at 6:48 AM, Gye Greene  wrote:

>> 
>> Now disassemble and apply the glue,
>> You are aiming for an even glue line, 20 - 40 thou thick.  I used to just
>> spread some glue from the bottle and assume that it would spread out as I
>> cramped the joint.  I don’t do that anymore.  I use some form of spreader,
>> and get an even spread over all surfaces.
> 
> 
> My "some form of spreader" tends to be the ol' index finger.  ;)

I keep a stack of expired credit cards, plastic hotel keys, & etc. (and all
those stupid AARP cards I get in the mail) next to my glue. They are reusable if
you get to them soon enough, otherwise disposable. And I date the glue when I
buy it, buy small bottles and generally discard and buy fresh for anything
important. Glue is the most inexpensive part of any project.

Bill
255614 Claudio DeLorenzi <claudio@d...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: Old Tool Ad in a book
re Buying wood at big box stores

Hey Mark
Some more random thoughts on this topic:
Whenever I buy any wood, from anywhere, including the local saw mills or
(shudder) the big box stores, I stack it with care in my garage with thin
straight sticks between each layer and at least 4" off the concrete
(stacked carefully- we call it "stickering" up here).  Then I let it sit
there for weeks- but what is important that all surfaces be exposed to the
air.  I want to reinforce the point made earlier that all wood must
acclimate to your conditions, so that means restacking it in your shop
before you start using it, and waiting... again.  Wood is hygroscopic in
moist environments, and releases moisture when the surrounding air is
drier; equilibrium is when absorption and release are equal, yada yada.  I
have a couple of moisture meters, but I never bother.
  When cutting parts on relatively fresh stuff, I always cut them oversize
and then let them sit for a while to do whatever they are going to do, then
I joint and plane the lumber to the final thickness and width.

   So if you remember that you are ALWAYS working on a moving target, and
that it's moving really fast when first drying out, but slowly breathing in
and out when at equilibrium, then you have the main point.

  When you do it this way, apart from the disadvantage of cutting stuff
twice I suppose, stuff stays relatively flat and stable pretty much forever.

   As far as glue goes, any of the modern glues have worked fine for me,
and I have had no issues with the regular  titebond.

  Going nuts with clamps is a bit of a rookie mistake, causing 'glue
starved' joints, especially if you have "glass smooth" surfaces.  I suppose
you probably have not run across a "toothing plane"?  They used to make
these to purposely rough up the surfaces before gluing ( especially for
veneering with hide glue) but it is a good idea for your application to
rough up the surfaces so that the glue has an opportunity to grab hold of
something.  You only want enough glue for a thin layer on both sides, and
just enough clamp pressure to get an even 'squeeze out', ie  a bit of glue
all along your joint. Good modern clamps can create very high pressures and
you can squeeze out all the glue if you crank them to the max, esp if the
surfaces are glass smooth. (You might want to look up a 'rubbed joint',
when no clamps are used at all- just rub the two pieces together to spread
the glue, no clamps... but this is not appropriate for your application)

Dowels can be tricky to line up perfectly unless you drill straight through
both pieces at the same time and then use a really long dowel pin.  I found
it easier to make a spline.  You can cut a 1/4" wide groove along both
sides, and then use a thin strip of 1/4" plywood as a spline between them
(sort of like a tongue in groove, but with two grooves and a free tongue).
For a workbench, it also adds strength to the joints, but the main thing I
suppose is that it helps you keep everything lined up nicely while gluing.
Cheers
Claudio In Waterloo
255615 Don Schwartz <dks@t...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
On 2015-08-01 4:09 AM, yorkshireman@y... wrote:
> with the glue well scrubbed in to the face of each.

This point bears repeating. It's one thing to spread glue on a surface 
like icing on a cake, but what's wanted is to work it into the surface, 
so it penetrates, more like butter melting on toast.

Don

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure
foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow
255616 Spike Cornelius <spikethebike@c...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
This is the lesson from this that applies to so much of life! Save up the money
and do what he said!

Sent from the seat of my pants

> On Aug 1, 2015, at 3:34 AM, Michael Blair  wrote:
> 
> None of it is cheap, but it's
> for the rest of your life.  You only have to buy once.
255617 Claudio DeLorenzi <claudio@d...> 2015‑08‑01 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
Snip:  It was the wood. Big Box stores sell "construction common" 2X3

You are almost always better off buying 2 by 12"
In the longer lengths to rip down to what you need.   You'll get better
lumber and the cost will be less...
Claudio
255627 <ecoyle@t...> 2015‑08‑02 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
In the painting and finishing field, there is an effect called “mill Glaze”
wherein the cuttters of the moulders and planers actually burnish the wood,
thereby causing poor and inconsistent penertration of primers and stains.
Presumably it would also prevent glue from binding substantially with the wood
fibres cause they’re all burnished or polished

. OTOH, over the years I’ve laminated lots of 2-by materails off the shelf .
with nary a problem.

Glue can go bad too, with freezing, contamination

Just my thoughts

Eric
255629 Thomas Conroy 2015‑08‑02 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
Mark Pfeifer wrote, snipped heavily:
After a year of debate (slab? laminate? buy lottery tickets and pray?) I decided
to do the Paul Sellers bench. If you?ve not seen the videos, it?s made of glued
up 2x4s or 2x3?s, with mortises and dados. I?m better with chisels than thin
fine saws, so away we go....To my horror, despite being COMPLETELY CLAMPED,
these sob?s managed to gap on me. ...When I cut one end of the slab for square,
instead of one nice loaf of wood, each of the 2x4?s fell off in sections as I
cut. . . . . . For the bottom of the slabs I cheated and slathered more glue
into the gaps and smoothed it all off with a hunk of thin plywood. For the tops
. . . . I don?t know. Part of me wants to plane 1/4? off and see if maybe they
just gapped on top . . . . maybe the glue dried funny? Maybe if I plane 1/4? off
the top my beautiful unitary monolithic slab is still there?


Mark,
I bring you comfort, but you may not believe it when you've heard me out.

This isn't the only workbench you'll ever make. So none of it matters.

Oh, I'm a fine one to talk. I've never made a woodworking bench, and at this
point I'm pretty sure I never will. (My bookbinding bench is different, I had to
make that, to house some paper drawers I was given.) But we all have sizes of
work we're comfortable at. My comfort size is a cube about two feet square. From
the fact you hand-planed all the wood for a bench so soon after starting with
planes, clearly a workbench is inside your comfort size. That means you'll make
more. Probably you'll end up like Chris Schwartz, knocking off a new workbench
every six months because you're curious about how the style works, and then
you'll have to build a barn to house your collection...

Sorry, I got carried away there for a moment. But the point is, don't sweat it.
Don't panic, don't rush into "cures", let it sit and think about it for a while.
You may have hit the kind of panic disaster where everything you do goes wrong
because you are tense, but you feel you can't stop because things are getting
worse. And, of course,they continue getting even worse because you are tense.
Feedback loop. The only thing to do is to put the whole project down, stop
worrying about it, -let- it get worse, let your muscles unknot. And after a
while---maybe another six months, maybe less if you're lucky---you'll go into
the shop one day and fix it without pause and without fuss. Hey, I haven't made
my own bench, but I've had plenty of projects that have gone wrong. Bad wrong,
and on customer work. See ye these scars?...  You learn to recognize the point
when -anything- you do will make things worse, and put it down.

Maybe the worst mistake you made was to glue the sheet of plywood to the base.
This is basically putting a layer of thick veneer on the bottom, and the one
rule of veneering is that you have to balance the pull. A layer of plywood on
the bottom means you need a layer on the top to balance it. But don't go out and
glue on another layer right away; that would be panic reaction to the feedback
loop. And some people seem to get away with unbalanced pulls on furniture, at
least some of the time. My guess is that planing wood off the top would also be
bead, since it would make the unbalanced, asymmetric pulls even worse. But, hey,
what do I know? I haven't made a bench. So let it sit while you wait and watch
and think.
If you are lucky the whole thing will fall apart. Sounds brutal, but I'm not
kidding. Then you can stop fussing, run the pieces through a tailed pl*ner, and
sticker them for another project. And go out to a real lumberyard and get some
better wood. Or wait until this lot of wood dries out a bit. You will end up
with a smaller bench if you do it that way, but that might be to the good. I
suspect that most people "over-bench" themselves at first, make something far
wider and longer than they need or will be comfortable. I certainly know what I
wanted and planned for would have been much bigger than what I have, and what I
have is bigger than I need. If it doesn't fall apart, you might eve want to cut
the pieces apart along the glue lines, separate them and remove the failed glue
and the failed surfaces all at once. Then wait. You can't rush green wood.

The great pioneering railway builder Thomas Brassey once had an entire viaduct
collapse six days after it was built. Eight million bricks worth. Liable to be
hard on a professional reputation, something like that. But he had the whole
thing rebuilt at his own expense, with improved design, and the rebuilt aqueduct
is still going strong nearly two centuries later. Brassey's reputation has held
up, too.

Cold comfort, I know. Would it help if we started swapping stories of things
that have gone wrong?
Tom ConroyBerkeley
255635 Mark Lovett Wells <mark@m...> 2015‑08‑02 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 9:20 PM, Mark Pfeifer 
wrote:

> After a year of debate (slab? laminate? buy lottery tickets and pray?) I
> decided to do the Paul Sellers bench. If you’ve not seen the videos, it’s
> made of glued up 2x4s or 2x3’s, with mortises and dados. I’m better with
> chisels than thin fine saws, so away we go.
>

I glued up a bench top from air dried hackberry that was felled in my
yard.  It was the same problem.  There is no amount of mechanical force you
can apply that will prevent that wood from moving.

This is not a failure.  It is a great lesson.

1.  Even kiln dried construction lumber is sold "wet."  The moisture
content is higher than hardwoods because it doesn't have to be as dry to be
used in construction.  That's fine as long as you know what you are
getting.  Once you bring it home, cut it to rough length, stack it so each
board has about 3/4" of air all the way around it, and wait for it to dry
more.

2.  The wider the construction lumber, the better the quality.  Pass those
2x3s and go straight to the 2x10s and 2x12s.  If you don't want to rip them
by hand, then find a local woodworking club and look for somebody with a
band saw who can help you out.

If you haven't done so already, I recommend reading Christopher Schwarz's
workbench book.  He recommends laminated the top from ripped yellow pine
2x12s.  He also recommends cleaning the glue surface with acetone before
the glue up.  I did that and my top turned out great.

However, a laminated top bench is A LOT of work.  I helped a friend build a
Nicholson style bench.  The Nicholson bench was *much* easier, requires
much less material, and can be done with only hand tools.  It's actually
similar to Sellers' bench.  Get The Naked Woodworker DVD.  Our own Mike
Siemsen explains how to build a Nicholson bench from construction lumber
using only hand tools.  I find his advice very sound and reasonable.  The
two DVD set is only $22.

Mark
255636 Mark Lovett Wells <mark@m...> 2015‑08‑02 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 9:20 PM, Mark Pfeifer 
wrote:

> One side note . . . . one slab was done with Elmer’s best wood glue. The
> other was done with Titebond blue, which I bought just to prove to myself
> that I could be flexible. I’ve never bought anything but Elmer’s, now I
> know why we stick with things that are proven. I’ll never buy Titebond
> again, because my old friend Elmer the cow definitely did a better job
> keeping things tight.
>

One more thing.  If this was regular Titebond, that glue has a much shorter
working time than Elmer's.  I think the package says 20 minutes, but in my
experience, with Titebond I have to get the pieces together as fast as
humanly possible.  This may be because much of the work I do is in an
unconditioned garage in central Texas.  By the time 20 minutes is up, the
glue is way too dry to stick.  Titebond Extend has a much longer open
time.  When I glued my slab bench, I used Titebond Extend and only glued 1
or 2 joints at a time.  To do half a slab (~10 boards) at once is too hard
for me working by myself with Elmer's or Titebond Extend.

Mark
255637 Don Schwartz <dks@t...> 2015‑08‑02 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
On 2015-08-02 1:31 PM, Mark Lovett Wells wrote:
> One more thing.  If this was regular Titebond, that glue has a much shorter
> working time than Elmer's.  I think the package says 20 minutes, but in my
> experience, with Titebond I have to get the pieces together as fast as
> humanly possible.  This may be because much of the work I do is in an
> unconditioned garage in central Texas.  By the time 20 minutes is up, the
> glue is way too dry to stick.  Titebond Extend has a much longer open
> time.  When I glued my slab bench, I used Titebond Extend and only glued 1
> or 2 joints at a time.  To do half a slab (~10 boards) at once is too hard
> for me working by myself with Elmer's or Titebond Extend.
>
> Mark

This is worth remembering. Glue open time and drying time and speed of 
air drying varies dramatically from region to region. Here in southern 
Alberta, it's semi-arid: glues and finishes invariably dry faster here 
than manufacturers claim IME.

Don

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure
foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow
255638 Chuck Taylor 2015‑08‑02 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
Mark,

You wanna hear a horror story about building a workbench? Long ago and far away,
I was a 20-something-year-old Naval officer stationed in Charleston, SC. I read
an article in Southern Living or Sunset Magazine about building a couch from
4x4's and rope. I went to the local Borg and bought some Southern Yellow Pine
(SYP) 4x4's, not realizing that they were sopping wet, or, if they were, what
the consequences of that might be. The plan included drilling 1" holes for
threading rope through the frame to support cushions. My tools included a hand
saw, a Skil saw, a brace and bit, a Stanley #4 plane Made in the 1970's, and
some saw horses I had built. About halfway through the project, the 4x4's
started to bow and twist. I got mad and decided to go with Plan B. Plan B was to
rip the 4x4's into 2x4's and build a workbench. I used the Skil saw to do the
ripping, two passes each. A lot of the resulting 2x4's had 1" holes bored in
them, either in thickness or transversly.

I built the bench base by nailing together 2x4's using 2" finishing nails,
including the top and bottom stretchers (short and long stretchers, top and
bottom). Dimensions are 2 feet wide by 4 feet long by about 34" high. For the
top I cut a bunch of 2x4's into 2-foot lengths and nailed them transversely to
the long top stretchers. That makes the top about 1.5" thick in most places.

No part of that bench is square or plumb or level. It wobbles when I tried to
plane anything. I can't plane the top flat because of the nails. As the wood
dried, gaps appeared between the boards on the top (inevitable because of the
way I oriented the grain of the top boards). There were 1" holes in random
places (which was great for losing small pieces of hardware). No glue was used.


Some 39 years later, that bench is still in use. It has survived 5 moves (2 of
which were across an ocean). I've added a few braces and a couple of vises and
plugged the holes in the top over the years, so it isn't quite as rickety as it
once was, but it's still rickety. And I still love it. It's my "dirty" bench. If
I spill oil on it, no problem. If I pound on it, no problem. That SYP is nearly
as hard as a rock. If my chisel slips into the bench surface, no problem. If the
black swarf from sharpening with my oilstones gets on it, no problem. I actually
find the gaps between the top boards useful when I need to cut sandpaper with a
utility knife (when I can find the bench's top). Ed Minch has seen this bench in
person and can testify to its faults.
So, Mark, don't despair. Just because your new bench top doesn't look pretty
doesn't mean that it can't be useful. I learned a lot from building my first
workbench. So will you.

I've been intending to build a new, more proper bench for quite some time now. I
actually started building it only 7 years ago, and it is at last nearing
completion. Stay tuned for a report after it is finally finished, which will be
Real Soon Now (measured of course in Galoot Time).

Chuck Taylor
north of Seattle
255640 Michael Suwczinsky <nicknaylo@g...> 2015‑08‑03 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
My "some form of spreader" tends to be the ol' index finger.  ;)

I keep a stack of expired credit cards, plastic hotel keys, & etc. (and all
those stupid AARP cards I get in the mail) next to my glue. They are reusable if
you get to them soon enough, otherwise disposable.
One swap meet foray yielded a set of pinking shears (cuts a zigzag for non
sewers), for the aforementioned stack of cards. Almost like notched trowel in
tile work.
Michael-still causing his neighbors concern.
255642 Mark Pfeifer <markpfeifer@i...> 2015‑08‑03 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
Chuck

Thanks for writing, I feel better. I laughed, but your note struck a chord and
made me sentimental.....And FYI if benches had genes, I'd swear your bench's
clone is out in my garage. And I do love it. Literally.

I hear about guys planing their tops.....I used to paint mine every couple
years, but as life accellerated, having and raising 7 kids, running a big
baseball program, keeping the house up, restoring several cars, all while
managing to keep my job, I didn't make the time.

Im glad i didnt, because now I think of my bench as my journal. 

The stripes of Testors Panzer Grey do sometimes rub off on my work, but they are
the memory of my son's freshman project; we built a working trebuchet that when
tuned could throw a 5/16 x 9/16 nut about 120 feet. He will graduate HS soon and
if he doesn't make the cut for the Red Sox, wants to me a mechanical or civil
engineer. He still has the trebuchet somewhere.

The greasy orange-brown smear looks like a biohazard, but that's a remnant of
restoring a corner  curio stand that has been in my wife's family for
generations out of mind......my father in law loves dark brown stain ("it's
colonial!") and gloss urethane....very careful stripping reveals it's
mahogany.....except for the pieces that had been repaired with pine, or cedar,
or some indeterminate wood.....some with hide glue, others with cut nails, so by
itself it's a history lesson of sorts. Yes I planed it all smooth and shiny, but
I left the amateur repairs, and used the square nails for part of it.

The bench has some old holes I cut in it because I was careless with a hole saw,
or a drill. Others I cut on purpose, where and when i needed to have a bench
dog.......by which I really mean plastic pieces from a Workmate I bought the
year I got married, 1993. They still work, banged in with a hammer..

The front edge has the first saw cuts my now 14 year old ever pulled. 

Some people have really nice Record face vices.....I have a Columbian stand up
that my father in law gave me when he moved into assisted living. I'm not sure
it closes square, and it must weigh 150lbs, but he got it used......in 1964. The
only place I could mount it was the right hand corner, right where my elbow will
find it when I'm hyper focused on a carving or cutting with the 20s vintage
Simonds he gave me with the vice. My right elbow is rounded off from that vice,
and it probably has enough of my DNA in it to call it a relative.

Now i want a tail vice and nice neat rows of holes, and a wood screw face vice,
and a surface that wont vibrate when I plane. So I will finish my fancy
bench.....and when I look at the hairlines in the far side slab, will notice the
aprons and near side slab don't have hairlines, and I'll remember how that bench
taught me to glue, with a lot of help and encouragement from some generous men I
never met.......

So I'll finish it, but nobody can take my old nasty bench unless they pry it
from my cold dead fingers.   :)

See, I toldja your note made me sentimental. 

Thanks for making the time to write,

Mark. 



Sent from my iPad

On Aug 2, 2015, at 4:59 PM, Chuck Taylor  wrote:

> Mark,
> 
> You wanna hear a horror story about building a workbench? Long ago and far
away, I was a 20-something-year-old Naval officer stationed in Charleston, SC. I
read an article in Southern Living or Sunset Magazine about building a couch
from 4x4's and rope. I went to the local Borg and bought some Southern Yellow
Pine (SYP) 4x4's, not realizing that they were sopping wet, or, if they were,
what the consequences of that might be. The plan included drilling 1" holes for
threading rope through the frame to support cushions. My tools included a hand
saw, a Skil saw, a brace and bit, a Stanley #4 plane Made in the 1970's, and
some saw horses I had built. About halfway through the project, the 4x4's
started to bow and twist. I got mad and decided to go with Plan B. Plan B was to
rip the 4x4's into 2x4's and build a workbench. I used the Skil saw to do the
ripping, two passes each. A lot of the resulting 2x4's had 1" holes bored in
them, either in thickness or transversly.
> 
> I built the bench base by nailing together 2x4's using 2" finishing nails,
including the top and bottom stretchers (short and long stretchers, top and
bottom). Dimensions are 2 feet wide by 4 feet long by about 34" high. For the
top I cut a bunch of 2x4's into 2-foot lengths and nailed them transversely to
the long top stretchers. That makes the top about 1.5" thick in most places.
> 
> No part of that bench is square or plumb or level. It wobbles when I tried to
plane anything. I can't plane the top flat because of the nails. As the wood
dried, gaps appeared between the boards on the top (inevitable because of the
way I oriented the grain of the top boards). There were 1" holes in random
places (which was great for losing small pieces of hardware). No glue was used.
> 
> 
> Some 39 years later, that bench is still in use. It has survived 5 moves (2 of
which were across an ocean). I've added a few braces and a couple of vises and
plugged the holes in the top over the years, so it isn't quite as rickety as it
once was, but it's still rickety. And I still love it. It's my "dirty" bench. If
I spill oil on it, no problem. If I pound on it, no problem. That SYP is nearly
as hard as a rock. If my chisel slips into the bench surface, no problem. If the
black swarf from sharpening with my oilstones gets on it, no problem. I actually
find the gaps between the top boards useful when I need to cut sandpaper with a
utility knife (when I can find the bench's top). Ed Minch has seen this bench in
person and can testify to its faults.
> So, Mark, don't despair. Just because your new bench top doesn't look pretty
doesn't mean that it can't be useful. I learned a lot from building my first
workbench. So will you.
> 
> I've been intending to build a new, more proper bench for quite some time now.
I actually started building it only 7 years ago, and it is at last nearing
completion. Stay tuned for a report after it is finally finished, which will be
Real Soon Now (measured of course in Galoot Time).
> 
> Chuck Taylor
> north of Seattle
255643 Brian Rytel <brian.rytel@g...> 2015‑08‑03 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
I'm a bit late to this discussion but...

Here's an excerpt from a private email sent about my Seller's
multi-year wood-wrestling project.

"
I'd emphasize not using the material I did. Truer, easier material
would be better. Jointing the faces for the slab hasn't been fun. I
had considered using alder, ash, or beech milled [and S2S] to 1-3/4"x2-1/2" but
decided against it in an impulsive move. For someone looking for a
quicker project, choosing a more suitable stock is a good idea.
"
That's the polite way of stating it. I had one board, intended for a
stretcher that must have twisted 20-30 deg. While the SPF borg
not-at-all dry lumber is a lot easier to work than doug fir, it's been
a giant pain. If you have access to a fully-stocked shop for a weekend
(jointer, planer, etc.) then you can get it all done, glued up and
only have to worry about some of the specific joinery.

However, my lams came out decently. I trimmed them to length (total ~8
in. of waste from both sides) and the ends were all solid, most
breaking through the wood just a Sellers demonstrated. My aprons did
twist a bit but nothing that a few strategically placed fasteners
won't overcome. Not a total loss, although...

The worst part is that as I'm getting everything ready to assemble I
realized I'm not even going to be in love with the bench. The aprons
mean you can't sit at it with your legs under the top and you'll rub
your knees on it while standing in certain positions. Plus installing
the vise is a far more challenging enterprise than on an open-face
bench. The only bonus is that you get a deadman where ever need one.

Next time (maybe soon) I'll be going with a more common trestle. A
couple extra M&Ts looks pretty appealing compared to 10+ joints for
the aprons. I'll probably go with ash although it's crept up in price
around here (guitar builders) and with all this recent discussion of
beech it's still in the cards as well.
255644 Michael Blair <branson2@s...> 2015‑08‑03 Re: Fwd: Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
> Before my ill-fated rip cut, the board looked straight and true, with 
> no
> indication of internal stress.

We used to call that phenomenon "case hasdening."  The exterior of the 
wood
is straight and true, but a little deeper into the piece the stress is
tight.

> Serves me right for using a tailed apprentice!  Still, it is a poor 
> workman
> who blames his tools . . .

If it's any consolation, the same thing would have happened if you hand 
ripped
it.  It wasn't you.  It wasn't the tailed apprentice. It was the tension 
inside
the wood.  I've had it happen numerous times.  Alder, pine, redwood have 
all
done this for me.  The most exciting time happened when one of my 
partners was
running a four inch thick by 26 inch wide piece of cottonwood through a 
tailed
apprentice planer.  From deep inside the machine, we heard a loud boom 
when
the inside of the timber was released from its bondage.

Mike in Sacto
255646 Mark Pfeifer <markpfeifer@i...> 2015‑08‑03 Re: Fwd: Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
Wow this is all new to me.....I know cars better than wood. 

Is exploding wood just one of those "fact of life" things like cam slop in the B
series BMC engine? Or is it more like orange peel in paint and it's hard to
avoid bit if you know how....

I LOVE the phrase tailed apprentice. 

I am seriously looking at adding a couple. I've developed carpal tunnel and am
at a PoDR where if I stick hard to the no electrons principle I may not be able
to do as much as I'd like.

Doctor is saying I change something, or end up having the CT release surgery. I
don't usually trust doctors so if anyone has advice for avoiding carpal tunnel
I'm open to alternative medicine.

Bourbon, Scotch, vodka all off the alt medication list for me.....lifestyle
choice. :)



On Aug 3, 2015, at 6:19 AM, Michael Blair  wrote:

>> Before my ill-fated rip cut, the board looked straight and true, with no
>> indication of internal stress.
> 
> We used to call that phenomenon "case hasdening."  The exterior of the wood
> is straight and true, but a little deeper into the piece the stress is
> tight.
> 
>> Serves me right for using a tailed apprentice!  Still, it is a poor workman
>> who blames his tools . . .
> 
> If it's any consolation, the same thing would have happened if you hand ripped
> it.  It wasn't you.  It wasn't the tailed apprentice. It was the tension
inside
> the wood.  I've had it happen numerous times.  Alder, pine, redwood have all
> done this for me.  The most exciting time happened when one of my partners was
> running a four inch thick by 26 inch wide piece of cottonwood through a tailed
> apprentice planer.  From deep inside the machine, we heard a loud boom when
> the inside of the timber was released from its bondage.
> 
> Mike in Sacto
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255647 Claudio DeLorenzi <claudio@d...> 2015‑08‑03 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
>
> Re CTS

Hi Mark
Carpal tunnel is a real thing, and median nerve compression can be quite
bothersome.   You should get a baseline EMG done (an electrophysiologic
test of the nerve function across the wrist).  The carpal tunnel is a real
tunnel, having bone on 3 ¼ sides, and a thick ligament (¼ inch thick) on
the top.  The ligament prevents the tendons from bow stringing outwards, so
it is very strong and thick.

 You can sometimes get good symptomatic relief by switching to ergonomic
keyboards, tables, and chairs  if you spend a lot of time at the computer
for work.  In general, you want to avoid having your wrist palmar flexed
(or extremely dorsiflexed) for prolonged periods.  The natural position of
the wrist with the least pressure within the tunnel on the palmar side of
your wrist occurs when the wrist is dorsiflexed in a natural position of
about 20 degrees, with the pressure increasing with either extreme palmar
or dorsal flexion.

 You can pick up a night time splint to wear to prevent you from flexing
your palm downwards in your sleep (we tend to assume a foetal position
during sleep.  Keeping your hand elevated when sleeping may also help (you
have to rig it so that if you had a drop of water sitting on the tip of
your index finger, it could roll down to your shoulder: in other words, you
want to make it more difficult for swelling to stay put.

In my own patients, the only ones who got better non surgically were those
who had treatment for a disease that was causative or those who really
changed their habits.  Everyone else generally failed to show
permanent improvement with conservative treatment.  Surgery was generally
effective with long lasting benefit.  Non surgical treatment, including
cortisone injections splinting etc typically only provided some temporary
relief unless habits were changed.  Untreated, this can cause permanent
damage in terms of sensibility of the finger tips of the radial 3 and a
half digits and impairment of thumb abduction, but this is unusual.  So you
can stabilize it with night splints, anti inflammatory meds, rest,
stretching, physio, etc, but permanent relief, in my opinion, comes from
surgery.

Cheers
Claudio
255654 David Nighswander <wishingstarfarm663@m...> 2015‑08‑03 Re: horror story . . . was it the crappy wood?!
I intended to make a workbench. 
After 40 years of not having a proper woodworking bench I thought it was time. 
Thinking that I was being clever I set myself a task with a deadline. I told
LOML that I was going to make a bench for my sons birthday gift.
With all the trepidation involved in the beginning planning of any project I
went with the Paul Sellers method. It closely matched my fathers methods in that
it involved 2x4’s and glue. Dad always threw in lag bolts on any project and his
favorite glue was PL400 in the caulking tube. The large caulking tube.
I cheated with a tailed apprentice in some steps. Removing 1/4” of radius from
the edges of the fifteen 6’ long 2x4 seemed like a job for the big blue planer
that had sat in the corner of the garage since the move. I glued up two 12” wide
planks of 2x4’s face to face.
For a spreader I zigzagged Titebond III glue over the face of one board and
rubbed the other across it. Seeing that I have a plethora of clamping devices I
gripped the planks mightily and left them to sit overnight while I went off to
earn the money for more glue.
After rough planing one face with my Stanley #5 I bashed them through the
planer. Because I wasn’t sure exactly how long the bench needed to be I had left
the 2x4’s at their original 96” length. A fair amount of fast footwork was
involved in making multiple passes but it finally was done.
When I got back to the task of assembling the planks I found that during the 2
days of idleness in the garage the planks had twisted. Only about 1/4” but
enough that it would be obvious. Using mechanical means and several cauls I was
able to bring a 6’ section of the planks into alignment. Having settled on a 6’
long bench the rest was rather anticlimactic.
The bench was well received and arrived at its new home in the originally
designed number of pieces. It needed to go down a set of stairs with a dogleg so
it was designed to be disassembled.
It has been in use the most of a year and seems happy to be of service. No
further warping or twisting has shown up. The one half that is Douglas Fir is
coexisting nicely with the white pine half, that was all that was available
during the second trip to the Borg.
Why did it work? Don’t know. Don't care. I used the same method on a similar
bench for my shop that has been most satisfactory.
If you are interested you can see the bench in various stages here. 
https://www.youtube.com/wa
tch?v=EZ2yHekr00A
The second bench top was hand flattened after the final glue up. No matter how
many clamps I used I couldn't pull it into alignment.
The second bench top shrank to be about a 1/2" narrower after the final gluing
and before the base was attached.

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