OldTools Archive
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152541 | Mme4u2meh@a... | 2005‑11‑20 | bio & ? |
Hello all, my name is Steven C. Kumpf Jr. I currently reside in Philadelphia, am 28 with a wife and a 2.5 year old boy. I have been consulting the Archive for planemaking information and I figure that it is time that I join the list. My obsession started with the birth of my son. With a newborn in the house I was forced to alter my war plan. how does one make no noise and still continue butchering wood? we all know the answer to that .My solution ended up blossoming into a modest working collection of Stanley metal bench planes( mostly type 6, 7, and 8's for my users) and 80 plus molding planesand about ten that I have made so far. I also have started a restoration business( houses) and work in Chestnut Hill and Center City(old City) for those of you who know Philly. I use the molders for the trim that I have to make. I like to do it that way and I do not own a sh@p$r and mills want to make a thousand feet, not ten. I'm doing allright so far. I've been working for the past eight months straight. Gotta start somewhere. My shop/closet is soooo small, I think I can win an award for that. It is a 10 by 18 garage in the back basement of the house. My workbench takes up about a third of it. I have to get very creative. Right now I am doing a job for a guy in old city. He wants me to fab/install a ballustrade on the third floor stairway. I am doing most of it by hand, my lathe is belt driven, but I want to ask, the banister, I bought the stock hemlock rail from h*m# ch!po. It is close enough that I can modify it to match the ballustrades that are in the rest of the house which is the whole point of the project. I planed off the two cock beads that are on either side and planed off about 7/16ths from the bottom. Then I stuck on a 1/4 inch bead on the two bottom sides for the finish. Pretty simple but my question is, is this cheating? I know if I wanted to do it the galoot way, I would have had to chop a tree down with an axe and hew it by hand with a hewing hatchet. Do true galoots only use wooden planes? What is the specific time period that a galoot thinks he or she should have been born in? I am only being half serious but do want answers. Is my hand rail cheating or am I well on my way to being allowed to sit on the porch with the rest of the club? I have looked for some of the philadelphia planemakers' locations. Most of them are gone. The worst example is that of John Veit. His workshop was demo'd when I-95 was put in(right through the middle of the city also cutting right through the oldest part of the city where the highway, a park where bums sleep, and three luxury apartments now stand) Philly has been raped in the past eighty years. The water company and the gas company use thick lumber when they dig ditches to hold up the sides of the hole and to cover the hole. About a year ago, I stopped on a site and asked for some. They said, people still use wood this big? It ended up being mostly center cuts and wery wet as well as knotty. I did manage to find three peices of 16/4 by eleven and a half by ten southern yellow pine, four peices of 12/4 by eight by eight semi clear poplar and two peices of 12/4 by ten by eight ambrosia maple, all just like it was just sawn except for the pine which was bone dry. The pine ended up being my new workbench top with two rows of dog holes, square, in the front piece. The maple is the base with doweled mortice and tenon, all done by hand and not glued in case I have to move it. It is a monster with all my bench planes in the base. But now I see that I should have glued the base because with all the planing the base has become loose. Is there some way that I can keep it solid without gluing it together? I know about the drawboring, but I would rather be able to take it apart if I need to. Steven C. Kumpf Jr. Philadelphia PA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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152545 | <raweber@m...> | 2005‑11‑20 | Re: bio & ? |
Welcome to the Porch, Steve. |
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152557 | "Gary k" <gtgrouch@r...> | 2005‑11‑21 | Re: bio & ? |
Steven, Welcome! I was born in Philadelphia at a very early age but grew out of it quickly - we lived off Cottman Avenue until I was 4. No, what you did with that hemlock handrail is *not* cheating, and anyone who would do that with hand tools is absolutely in the right place! Pull up a chair. Sounds like a nice bench. If I'm understanding right from the porch dwellers, benches are not a project that are ever completely finished; if you use it, you'll keep tuning it for the rest of your life. There just comes to a time when you spend less time building it and more time using it. By the way, kids like eggbeater drills. Gary K Close to Buffalo NY ----- Original Message ----- From: |
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152563 | "Robert Weber" <raweber@m...> | 2005‑11‑21 | RE: bio & ? |
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152551 | "John Manners" <jmanners@p...> | 2005‑11‑21 | Re: bio & ? |
Steven C. Kumpf Jr. wrote: The pine ended up being my > new workbench top with two rows of dog holes, square, in the front piece. The > maple is the base with doweled mortise and tenon, all done by hand and not > glued in case I have to move it. It is a monster with all my bench planes in > the base. But now I see that I should have glued the base because with all > the planing the base has become loose. Is there some way that I can keep it > solid without gluing it together? I know about the drawboring, but I would > rather be able to take it apart if I need to. Steve could try the method of joining prescribed for bench building in "How to Work with Tools and Wood", a Stanley Tools book first published in 1952 and into its 22nd printing by Pocket Books in 1972, the vintage of my copy. Simply, hex head (machine?) bolts of 3/8" are run through washers into the legs and thence into the rails, 1" holes are drilled into the rails at the points where the ends of the bolts will be located and the bolts are tightened into the nuts placed in such 1" holes. It's all a bit, hum, Ikea with real timber. Although the Stanley design was for flush-fitting rails and legs and dowels were incorporated to prevent the rails from revolving on the bolts, there seems to be no reason why one can't fit the bolt & nut assembly to the bench as is. The trick is to drill the bolt holes straight enough so that the 1" holes land on the ends of the bolt holes. Horizontal drilling (boring?) with a brace and auger with a looose washer on the auger shank to keep things horizontal whilst sighting along the rail to keep things straight should do the trick. The auger having, in the ordinary course, 1/64" greater diameter than its nominal size, permits the easy fitting of the bolts. I have built six of this type of bench (some simply as heavy stands) in this manner over the years and have been happy enough to have been able to tighten them up whenever timber movement so dictated and they can be pulled apart for transportation and re-assembled fairly easily. 16 nuts, bolts & washers are required if the bench has lower as well as upper rails. If one does not like the bolt heads protruding they can be sunk and plugged and the 1" holes can be bored from the inside to a sufficient depth to accommodate the nut but without exiting the far side (outside) of the rail but the plugs have to be removed for disassembly or retightening. This construction method first appealed to the bottom-feeder in me because I could use "off-the-saw", unseasoned and therefore much cheaper hardwood for the bench base and pull things together as shrinkage loosened things up. Liberal applications of diesel fuel on the green timber forestalled endgrain cracks. In the alternative, if drawboring is continued completely through the legs and well-seasoned and substantial (1/2", say) and "bendable" dowels are used for the pins (unglued) they should be able to be drifted out with a smaller diameter drift but would need renewing on re-assembly. The offset should be no greater than 1/16" and the leading end of the pin needs to be well tapered to avoid the dreaded "blow out" on the far side. Drive them from the "show" side just in case. John Manners In Brisbane, where it's starting to warm up a bit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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152599 | "Bill Taggart" <wtaggart@c...> | 2005‑11‑21 | RE: bio & ? |
> I bought the stock hemlock rail from h*m# ch!po. It is close enough that > I can modify it to match the ballustrades that are in the > rest of the house which is the whole point of the project. I planed off the > two cock beads that are on either side and planed off about 7/16ths from the > bottom. Then I stuck on a 1/4 inch bead on the two bottom sides for the > finish. Pretty simple but my question is, is this cheating? Nope. ;-) > Do true galoots only use wooden planes? Nope. We use metal ones too... > But now I see that I should have glued the base because with all > the planing the base has become loose. Is there some way > that I can keep it solid without gluing it together? Some have mentioned bed bolts or lag screws - how about tusk tenons with wedge keys? Then you could snug the joints up nice and tight, but still disassemble if you wanted. Of course, that would likely require some redesigning of the current bench. The answer would then likely be bed bolts. http://tinyurl.com/7l7hh - Bill T. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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