Pembroke Table-Long Aprons with Leaf Supports

Here are the two boards for the long aprons, in the upper left there's a 7/16ths Nurse mortising chisel I brought for show and tell, and a print for a batch of hinges I've been asked to make.


Alan instructing on the finer points of setup blocks, here one sled setting and various blocks allow repeatable cuts for the two-knuckle leaf support and three-knuckle fixed apron.


Freeing the waste in preparation for pairing.


Pairing to the scored baselines in the new Moxon Vise, these will be sold through Tools for Working Wood I hear. They use the same hardware as the TFWW bench on bench, are make of laminated maple, and are very nice to use. The movable jaw is cambered which grips work amazingly, I think suede would be an even better addition to these. Keeo you're eyes out for these, they are awesome. If I've goofed and spoken too soon, my apologies Joel.

A closeup of the baseline pairing. Mahogany works very sweetly.



More of the same here.



Teaching my girlfriend how we pair to baselines at PFW, the same technique is used for dovetails as well.


Once again doing things the harder way, instead of mitering the corners for hinge clearance, I'm rounding them. This is done to the front side of the fixed (three knuckle) portion.


First a chamfer is chiseled in at 45 degrees just outside the circle line. Then about 4 more chamfers are made on the resulting arii, this is most of the waste. Following that a little file work and sanding results in something like this.

Thanks Mario, for taking pictures again, interestingly enough he's got a bunch of experience shooting work as well as tools, it clearly shows.

Setting up the New Home Shop

It's been a long time coming, but the day is finally here. I'm building a workbench, and I have a space to keep it that has a window and hardwood floors. My girlfriend an I just moved to a new place, and we agreed that using the master bedroom as a sewing and woodworking room i.e. our craft room. Why do you need a big room to sleep in? We debated, momentarily about making the living room our studio, there was more space, three glorious windows that get morning sun; however if we had company if would be odd to shuffle them all into the back bedroom to hang out.


This is a pile of Radiata pine, purchased from Atlas Wood Products, their website is really minimal, but they are great people and they have a huge assortment of wood. All of it is reclaimed from pallets. These particular pieces were once large ties for industrial pallets, ulgy sounding, but there are some gorgeous beans in there. We started surfacing some of the boards for the top, I'll post a picture of the top soon as I can get to it. I was in a rush to load all this wood upstairs before it got totally soaked by the rain.

This is wood enough for tops and legs, perhaps some stretchers for myself and a friend of mine, built like a Rubo/Holzappfel hybrid. Stay tuned, we will be reglazing some really cool diamond pane windows in the next week or two, putting the workbenches on hold. Would that be of interest to anyone?

This is a shot of the tool corner of the room, which is also project lumber storage for three different pieces so far. Tomorrow I'm going to the LN event, I'll also be picking up bed oak, so add another project to the list.

Pembroke Table-Leg Work

Here are my legs, nice huh? I've marked the locations of the morti as per Alan's request, so there are no goofs while boring out the morti.




Here I am using the horizontal boring machine, with and solid carbide slot drill to bore the waste, this is a piece of tooling from the metalworking field. It's so named because unlike most other metal cutting endmills it can cut all the way to the center of the cutter, most can not. Thusly, it can cut slots, because it only has two flutes it also has more chip clearance.


The slot drill leaves a fantastic surface, however it also leaves a half-round at the top and bottom of the morti, April was in attendance and we spent a few minutes squaring the ends. What?! you round your tenons? Shame on you. (It doesn't matter, I just like square better, sharp corners not looking like they were made by machines you know.)

One guy in the class (with whom I banter about the judicial use of electrons with) brought a lovely (well looks lovely) LN #212 scraper plane with him. He couldn't get it to work, after some fussing and lack of regard to "the instructions" Mario got it singing pretty sweetly on a piece of gnarly Sapelle.

This weekend will be a busy one, I'm gathering materials for the bed build, a workbench, a kitchen table and traveling to Hearne Hardwoods for another LN handtool event, I'll be talking to Raney of Daed Toolworks about a plane, and I'm tickled.

Stay tuned for lumber haul photos and notes about the bed design.

Pembroke Table-Finished with the Top

This past week was number four, meaning we are halfway through the process, by the end of class my top was pattern routed, the spurs were carved in, and the edges were scraped smooth. I have a little tweaking to do on the rule joint, so that it closes all the way.

Drawing in the intersection lines for the spurs, the router leaves a 3/8" radius that will be carved into a sharp corner.


Pairing the curve with my lovely sharp 1" TH. Witherby, I like mahogany.


Careful cuts here, any f-ups will be painfully visible on the piece any time the leaves are up. We don't want that.


Finished spur, details like these tell you than this table has handwork in it, there is just no way to do a sharp inside corner like this with powered machinery.


Scraping the edges down, there is a bit of tearout that even the spiral downshear bit couldn't deal with. This will clean all of that up.

Here we are after about 12 hours of work, not bad. The surface is pretty good, sanded to 320, though there is a spot where an errant glue drop or chip dented the surface. I might try steaming it out. I've seen that done with good success.

On a completely separate note, one of my students recognized a picture I have of a Mike Dunbar double Windsor I have in my office (I have a lot of machinery prints, etchings from the Centennial Exhibition, and furniture photographs about), apparently her friend took a class with Dunbar in Philadelphia a few years ago and loved it. Damn, missed the boat on that one.

Writing Table Progress

This post was inspired by a few things; firstly, I'm moving soon and I will need to build a workbench in the new place to be able to do much working so time is running short, secondly, I've had a fair number of machine-using posts in the last few. It's about time to hit the handtools exclusively in a few posts.

My after-work session resulted in two short aprons and the back apron, planed four square to 3/4". I got to spend some quality time with my #7 and Jack, and I'm really happy with the results. This mahogany cuts really well and had beautiful color and grain.


I do have some worries though, the boards I hope to use for the top have a bit of wind, and they are only about 13/16ths of an inch thick. I don't think I will get the 3/4" top I was shooting for. Hopefully I can wind up around 5/8" otherwise I'll have to look for different mahogany for the top, which sucks, because this stuff is NICE.

Pembroke Table-Hinged Top

Tonight's goal, get those brass things in the mahogany. Cake. Just pay attention to the marked lines and don't overshoot your depth.

This is the mortise laid out with a knife, the hinge and the primary chisel for this work a 1/2"ish Buck Bros. tanged firmer. I like this chisel and I have three more in in varying sizes I need to restore and rehandle.

Mario graciously took a few process photos, which I'm thankful for you get to see some of my face and have some more interesting shots. On this mortise I've already cut to rough depth with a chisel, then cleaned and leveled with a router plane. The Starret #237 is there to make sure I don't overcut with the chisel work.

Checking the fit and motion of the leaf side.

Checking to see if it rocks or is held up on the notch which houses the hinge barrel.

It does, a touch, so I'm shaving down some of the notch.

All mounted up, the rule joint looks good. My quirks do not meet the tightest out of the class one is spot on, so I'll need to do some shoulder plane work to even up the gap.

The odd looking table, to make the leaf and top parts line up is a sensible way we will screw a template to the underside of the top and pattern route the whole thing. I wish I could use a bow saw, files and scrapers, but Alan and Mario would get a little bit too exasperated with me I think. I'll kill some electrons to keep from rocking the boat, I'll stick with my hide glue though.

Quick Project- Hook Knife

Ever since I saw Robin Wood's work a few years ago, I've wanted to do something as simple as split up some birch logs and carve a few spoons, a few things stood in my way at the time, not having nice and recently felled wood, and not exactly having all the right tools. Well I started to fix the latter today, I made a hook knife, which is used to carve the bowl of the spoon and work into other curved areas on woodenware.


Everything starts with a sketch, in unfolded and bent side view.

After cutting out a rectangle and grinding the profile it was time to cut the bevels. The best way to hold small parts like these is to attach them to a board, stick, refrain from parting from the parent bar etc. seeing as I had 1" wide O1 to work with I mounted it to some scrap ash for filing.

The technique used for filing is Drawfiling. This is accomplished by holding a file perpendicular with both hands, with the tang facing the right and pushing the file. Used this way the teeth act similarly to a card scraper and make smooth surfaces. I like finish filing my bevels this way.

After annealing the thin O1 is hammered at a black heat over a wooden dowel into the arc shown here. I've only got a few photos and a rough idea how these are used so I'm guessing pretty hard on the shapes and sizes here.

After the oil quench and tempering we have a dark straw color, this leaves a harder blade, but I think it will hold up okay, time will tell.


I have a fair amount of grinding to do on the inside, I was cautious about how much material to leave for the heat treating, now even that thin line of hard steel is seeming like a mountain of work. Tomorrow morning I hope to finish it up and get a razor on it.