Ash bed WIP - Finished!

[AndyT]

Les, I'm not sure about the underbed clearance. I really need to do an up to date drawing of these dimensions so I'll work out all the details and post it on here soon.

Chris, the wood is all back in the utility room. It's unheated but very well ventilated as it used to house the gas boiler. There's always a good flow of air through there.

I thought the 3 inch board might need longer to adjust than the rest of the thinner boards - it was certainly a heavy great lump to get home. Good job I'm not in a rush.

 

[AndyT]

Still no woodworking to report, but I think the legs are ready. Here's the latest graph of how the weights are changing:



Oddly, the numbers have mostly gone up a bit, but not much. I'm hoping that this is

a) because the wood is now in equilibrium with the surroundings and is losing/gaining moisture naturally, as it will continue to do over seasonal variations, and

b) pretty much within the margin of error when balancing bits of wood on end on domestic grade kitchen scales. (Especially on leg 1.)

So, I should be able to make a start soon, as long as no other distractions occur in the next week or so. And if we all have to stay at home again in the new year, at least I've got something to be getting on with to keep me occupied.

 

[9fingers]

Looking good now Andy

Fire up the machines and you should have it all dry fitted by tea time!
Ah ! I forgot hand tools :lol:

Good luck
Bob

 

[AndyT]

Looking good now Andy

Fire up the machines and you should have it all dry fitted by tea time!
Ah ! I forgot hand tools :lol:

Good luck
Bob

But what would I do after tea time?

I do expect to be able to keep this one simmering for several months. I'm always happy when I have got something on the go that I can tickle at from time to time. Finishing is not my objective!

 

[9fingers]

Looking good now Andy

Fire up the machines and you should have it all dry fitted by tea time!
Ah ! I forgot hand tools :lol:

Good luck
Bob

But what would I do after tea time?

I do expect to be able to keep this one simmering for several months. I'm always happy when I have got something on the go that I can tickle at from time to time. Finishing is not my objective!

Do the glue up after tea, get some quick drying finish on in the morning and sleep in it Monday night! Sorted!

Bob

 

[AndyP]

Finishing is not my objective!

Oh I like that one. I’ve counted 3 unfinished “projects” in the workshop yesterday afternoon.

 

[johnward]

Les, I'm not sure about the underbed clearance. I really need to do an up to date drawing of these dimensions so I'll work out all the details and post it on here soon.
.

Andy,
The underbed clearance on the 4' bed I made for myself is 225mm
John

 

[AndyT]

The Christmas presents have all been unwrapped, the leftover food has all been eaten and it's time to get back to bed

Back to the bed-to-be, that is!

Picking up where we left off, my current sketch of the dimensions shows 9½" clearance under the bed, or 241.3mm if you prefer, which is enough to clear the stuff that needs to go there.

But you'll all be wondering how dry those leg pieces are. Here's the latest and final graph:



I'm not really sure what's going on here, but all four pieces seem to be heavier than they were last time.
Some of the difference could be because the simple kitchen scales I have been using aren't designed for long bits of wood balanced on one end, but I've been using them consistently so it can't just be that. If I remember right, seasoned wood will still absorb and lose water from the surrounding air as the weather changes. So I reckon the increase suggests that the wood has pretty much dried but is measuring the humidity of the air as it changes day by day. Tell me different if you want, but I decided it was time to get these bits squared up and ready.

So here are some notes from the last few mornings as I have been planing.

As already mentioned, I had sawn these out oversized (but square) and they have obviously distorted in the textbook fashion as they have dried. Here are the ends of the two short legs:



Fortunately, there's just enough wood there to get down to my target size of 2⅝" (67mm). It's close on the thickness, but there's a bit more to spare on the width. This is wood that was sawn at a nominal 3" / 75mm and I want to keep it as thick as I can.

I didn't photograph everything, so I hope you can imagine an assortment of planes being passed over surfaces, with plenty of breaks for checking for straightness and squareness. Also plenty of breaks for tea and sharpening. Nothing improves planing more than a freshly sharpened iron and a cuppa.

The ash mostly planed nicely, though there were some parts where the grain reversed several times along the length. Preliminary thick cuts were followed by much thinner shavings and frequent changes of direction. I did most of the planing with the wood flat on the bench, bearing against a bench stop but not fixed down. I do find this most conducive to checking progress, if there is nothing to undo first.

On the faces where I needed to remove the most wood, there was about 6mm to take off. Being me, I tried three different ways of doing that.

First, I used the nice old scrub plane I showed you earlier



The big advantage of a plane like this is the narrow iron, which makes a real difference if you are planing reasonably tough wood like ash, and don't have the physique of Popeye. This should show the surface after taking lots of diagonal swipes, which is the quickest way of getting down to size.



On the third piece I bandsawed a strip off - sorry no photos of this - which is a bit slow but just within the capacity of my little 3-wheeler bandsaw.

But on the last piece, one of the long ones, I used a tool that doesn't seem to get talked about much, so I did take a photo:



It's my Bosch PHO 15-82 electric plane. A nearby receipts file tells me I paid £56.66 for this in 1994. It's had a relatively easy life over the last 27 years but is ideal for this sort of job. The matching vacuum cleaner picks up all the shavings. There's no way I could fit anything bulkier in my workshop for planing or extraction but this little bit of Swiss manufacturing does the business without much fuss at all. I expect it's better made than the equivalent you could buy now, for the same or less cash. Does anyone else use one for this sort of work?

The surface it leaves is pretty poor, mind, and I can't help but get massive snipe at the final end



and tearout on the reversing grain



However, like all the other bits, this soon succumbed to the gentle touch of a Stanley no 4 which left the surface shining even round the bit of pith:



That defect will either get planed off when I taper the legs or just be hidden on an inside surface out of sight, but it's satisfying to be able to tame it.

And so, after several bushels of shavings, this is where I am at - four bits that have gone from this



to this



and collectively look like this



- proving that looking at close-up photos on a big screen shows up more imperfections than I can ever see at the bench.

 

[Mike G]

Lovely stuff Andy. I do enjoy dimensioning stock by hand, and diagonal planing with a heavily cambered blade gets rid of a lot of waste very quickly.

I use an electric plane on green oak, where it's the only practical way of cleaning up a face. It does create lots of work, though, because of the ridges it leaves behind. I don't think I've ever used it on seasoned timber, though. Mine's an Elu, and possibly 10 years older than yours.

 

[NickM]

Lovely stuff Andy. I do enjoy dimensioning stock by hand, and diagonal planing with a heavily cambered blade gets rid of a lot of waste very quickly.

I've been mucking around with some of the ash I milled a while back. I'm seeing if I can make a small toolbox almost entirely with hand tools. I've had one of these for about 20 years and decided the best thing to do with it was to turn it into a scrub plane:



I think I may have made the camber on the blade a bit too heavy, but it did the job and was fun to use. I think I took about 12mm off a 600 x 200mm board and it didn't take too long. It was good exercise!

Andy, I was surprised how easily the reversing grain tears out on the ash. I'm enjoying following your build.

 

[Cabinetman]

That’s a lot of work gone into that Andy, can’t remember if you said you were using American or English Ash, from the look of it I would say English?

 

[AndyT]

Nick, I'd say that was an ideal use for one of those "value engineered" planes.

Ian, as Wentwood only process and sell local timber, I think it's Welsh ash by birth and English ash by species.

 

[AndyT]

It seems that nearly three weeks have passed since my last update and some of you might be wondering if I have just been staying in the bed we already have, or getting on with things at my usual glacial speed.

Well, ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶g̶ ̶b̶o̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶l̶e̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶b̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶n̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶w̶a̶y̶ somehow other things have got in the way, and I haven't done much. And what I have done is hard to make interesting - I've been deciding which bits go where and carrying on with making them the right size. Several shortish sessions in the workshop but not much to show for them.

Although I had extracted a set of sawn pieces from the boards and marked them up, I want to be sure that the best looking ones go in the most visible positions. One of the disappointments/blessings of this design of bed is that a lot of the surfaces will be hidden by the mattress or facing the wall. Some of the wood has some irregularities in the grain which could look nice, but if I can't get them straight and smooth I shall have to hide them away.

Perhaps the most challenging is this bit:



With hindsight, I should have left this one in the rack, which is what all the previous customers had done, but stock was low and I needed a piece this size. It's reasonably thick, so I thought I could get an inch board out of it.

It will be one of the cross-rails, with the mattress hiding one face. If I can get one surface flat and straight, it could go on the visible side of the foot end. The inside surface will need to be smooth but it won't matter much if it's not straight, as it will be up against the mattress. I don't know if this is what anyone else would do, but this is how I went about it.

I put the wonky piece on top of the much better rail from the other end of the bed, which is flat and straight enough, despite what that little shadow off to the right might suggest. I then sharpened a little pencil so it would lie flat on the reference surface and scribe a line across most of the gap. (Not all of the gap; I don't want to make this too thin and a bit of concavity is ok.)



I then planed the bumps off that side, leaving some shallow dips.

Now, the normal way to mark the thickness and define the opposite face would be to use a marking gauge, but that would give me a parallel, wavy line, not a straight one.

Instead, I used a surface gauge, running along the chipboard as a reference, to scribe a straight line along both edges.





I could then plane the bumps off on the outside, going all the way to the line. It felt odd using a smoothing plane and going to what is almost a finished surface before I have cut the joints, but I need to be sure that the outside face won't have any horrible tear-out on it, before I have no choices left.

This board was a challenge to plane, with bits of rippled grain reversing suddenly. I tried several techniques, including using a jack plane diagonally and a very fine set smoother with the cap iron close.

But to get the bulk of the planing done, I found that two less common approaches helped. One was using this little ECE smoother:



It is a smoother - not all horned planes are scrub planes - and although it's only got a single iron, the combination of a relatively short body, narrow cut and the horn made it easy to work short lengths in the direction they they needed to be planed, reversing my direction of attack rather than swivelling the wood around continually.

I also made a lot of use of a toothing plane.



These are really useful. Their virtue in veneering is apparently the ease with which they will level off any surface and I like the way that you can use one on really recalcitrant reversing grain while planing in any direction you need - round and round if you want. The only downside is that the threadlike shavings don't eject from the mouth and soon clog it up:



so I had to keep stopping and poking them out with a little scrap of wood. If anyone knows a clever trick to avoid that, please say!

Some people might think that there is no need to distract myself introducing extra tools to solve a problem like this wavy wood, but I am happy exploring and experimenting, even if it takes longer and I forget the results.

And so, after today's session I have a flat surface on this board that I think will be ok on the show side. Here's a nice bit, which is hard to photograph but I assure you feels nice and smooth:



However, further along there is a blotchy area which I am not sure about. I've removed very little wood from the original mill-planed surface at this point. I wonder if the dark spots were where damp sawdust was left on the boards in stick? I wetted the surface with some alcohol to show them up



This view is after some brief sanding with 80 grit Abranet. You can see that I have not yet touched all of the surface, but I hope the blemishes will disappear. I don't want to sand this all now and then do it again after cutting all the joints - I'd like to sand once and tidy up any marks from clamping, handling etc. So any reassurance from someone with experience is welcome!



I still have quite a bit more of this to do before I can mark out my first mortise and tenon joints on this project, but there will be more delays and interruptions before I finish. At present, cold winter days are ideal for handwork in my unheated playroom, but spring weather will bring various trips away, family events etc, so I'm not putting any dates on this yet.

 

[Cabinetman]

That bit of wood had some very nasty grain as you said. I don’t know if it will work and I’ve never tried it but how about a bit of silicon spray on the blade of your toothing plane, worth a try?

 

[AndyT]

That bit of wood had some very nasty grain as you said. I don’t know if it will work and I’ve never tried it but how about a bit of silicon spray on the blade of your toothing plane, worth a try?

Bearing in mind the usual warnings about silicones and finishes, I might try something slippery on the iron and see if it makes any difference, thanks for the thought.

Meanwhile, I have taken a bit of a break from planing and have turned my thoughts to joining some of these bits together.

I didn't photograph the stage where I was looking at all the bits, deciding which faces will go on show where, checking my written down measurements, checking them against the existing bed, etc but I seem to have spent quite a chunk of the time doing all that.

I don't know how to feel about it, but I managed to make a silly mistake, where the cross rails would have been two inches short, but because I checked it, I hadn't cut anything. I guess I'm cross at the error but pleased to have dodged it.

Not much to show though, except perhaps to say that I think this is a standard practice - stack all the bits vertical, clamp them together, and mark the length once across them all. Even if the actual dimension is wrong, it should all end up straight and square. I knifed in the shoulder lines and pencilled in where the ends of the tenons will be.



So, with that done I cut the cross rails to size and marked them all up again so I can get them the right way round. The next step was to start on the mortise and tenon joints where the cross rails get glued into the head and foot assemblies.

The bottom rails are 4½" wide by ⅞" thick and the top ones (which will have a curve on them) are 3½" wide max by 1⅛" thick. I decided that all the tenons would be 1⅝" long, which looks about right to me, going into the 2⅝" square legs. (Sorry about all these inches. I tend to work in them most of the time as most of my tools and reference books are in inch sizes. I could start converting them or putting conversions down as well if it bothers anyone too much. )

How wide should the mortises be? And how should I cut them?
I've got some spare wood on the top legs so started on a trial run to see how it looked.

For a ½" mortise, I have two suitable chisels - a Marples Registered pattern sash mortise chisel and a Fenton and Marsden big old lump of iron with a steel face welded on. (Another welcome gift from my good friend Ted.)



I marked out a trial mortise in the waste



and started malleting away. I'd sort of expected the F&M chisel to sink in under its own weight, but it didn't, maybe because the timber here is a bit gnarly and tough. After a few minutes of random chipping I'm afraid it looked like this, which was hardly impressive:



I thought I'd see if this was a time when boring away most of the waste was a good idea. Using all the latest gear, I set about making some deep round holes, one size narrower than the finished mortise:



It seemed to help. It wasn't too pretty at first



but it looked like it could clean up ok



To help with paring the sides accurately, I clamped a handy block of steel on; it would probably be worth knocking up a foolproof wooden guide block when I do the real mortises.



But now I have another question. Should I make these mortises a bit wider / tenons a bit thicker?

I expect it won't matter much, but now I've decided to bore out the waste, going up to ⅝" wide is feasible. There's plenty of wood left in the legs. What would you do?

In modern measurements, I'm looking at a 115mm x 22mm rail. I was going to make the M&Ts 90 x 12mm by 42mm long. Should I make them 16mm wide/thick instead? I know it's not as exciting a question as those being asked in Parliament these days, but I find my blood pressure stays pleasantly low if I divert onto cogitating on this sort of topic.

 

[9fingers]

I think the usually adopted rule of thumb is that the mortise is a third of the width of the material consistent with the tenon being able to have a shoulder all round to cover the mortise. So in your case the rail of 22 suggests 20 mm max but I’m not sure of the leg width but whatever 12 mm seem too small to me.

HTH
Bob

 

[AndyT]

Bob, the legs are 67mm square, so I think I could easily go up to 16mm instead of 12 and still have a shoulder all round on the tenon.

 

[9fingers]

Ok 16 will work as well as up to 20 but only 1mm shoulder which might be a little tight to cover any chisel marring on your mortises.
Bob

 

[Woodbloke]

I think the usually adopted rule of thumb is that the mortise is a third of the width of the material consistent with the tenon being able to have a shoulder all round to cover the mortise. So in your case the rail of 22 suggests 20 mm max but I’m not sure of the leg width but whatever 12 mm seem too small to me.

HTH
Bob

Wot Bob said; the 'Rule of Thirds' usually applies, so if your leg is say 36mm square, you ought to use a tenon with a thickness of 12mm. I recollect that the legs are chunkier than that so you could up the thickness commensurate with the RofT - Rob

 

[AndyP]

I’ve never seen one of those on the end of that bit. It looks a bit OTT for a depth stop. What is it?

 

[AndyT]

I’ve never seen one of those on the end of that bit. It looks a bit OTT for a depth stop. What is it?

It really is a depth stop - a Stanley 575. A surprisingly complex shape, designed to fit snugly onto the helix of the auger bit, which it does well. I just thought this might be one of those rare occasions where it would make sense, and it did.

It was a bit rusty when I bought it



but cleaned up ok



Those Stanley designers and pattern makers did rather well, even without CAD and CNC

 

[Cabinetman]

That’s something I haven’t seen before Andy, and nicely cleaned up, I’ve always just drilled through a piece of wood then added a saw cut and added a screw to tighten the piece of wood onto the helix, your gizmo would save quite a bit of time. Ian

 

[AndyP]

Thanks Andy, very interesting.

 

[AndyT]

More mortising.
With the new decision made about upping the width to ⅝" / 16mm I was set on boring out the waste and paring the sides. I could have just cracked on with the next size up Jennings bit but decided to make things easier for myself by using a bench drill instead. My one doesn't take bits with square tapered ends but fortunately I have an assortment of other options. I chose this which you can find listed in old catalogues as a "dowel bit." They were much shorter - so easier to manage in a bench drill - and were accurately machined. This one is a ½" size. Some of these photos show me cutting one more test mortise and some are of the first proper one.



The bench drill is ideal for this sort of job. The bit self-feeds automatically as you turn the handle. By setting the right height on the column it runs out of travel when there's no thread left under the horizontal wheel on the top. In this case I adjusted that to give me a 1⅝" deep mortise. I found I could drill the whole depth in one go without needing to manually clear the chips.



I found it was easy to overlap the holes a bit, with no tendency for the bit to go sideways into the gap.

Here you can see the result after drilling. I had nailed a bit of square wood onto some ply to help me chisel straight. This is clamped on ready.



Here's a view after some initial paring



and here's the first real mortise completed



Now, I know there are quicker ways to do this - and some of you will probably be able to manage more than one and a half mortises in a morning - but I have enjoyed myself, finding what I can do with these old tools, while listening to podcasts with no interruptions from noisy machinery.

I'll crack on and cut a few more.

 

[Dr.Al]

That's a beautiful bench drill.

Really enjoying this build - keep going! :text-bravo:

 

[AndyP]

That's a beautiful bench drill.

Really enjoying this build - keep going! :text-bravo:

:text-+1: you beat me to it. I have never used a hand cranked bench drill. I bet it is very satisfying.

 

[AndyT]

It is both lovely and practical, in my opinion, and will outlast me and a few users after me. It was an eBay bargain - local seller, collection only, so not many bids, though he helpfully dropped it round in his van in the end. I think it was £16.

 

[NickM]

Very neat and tidy Andy. Speed isn’t relevant when you’re making for yourself and are enjoying the process. (Might be different if you’re currently having to sleep on the floor in the absence of this bed…)

 

[Woodbloke]

I see Tedster's chisel is getting a good work out! - Rob

 

[AndyT]

I see Tedster's chisel is getting a good work out! - Rob

Well spotted - one of Ward and Payne's finest. It is an added pleasure to be able to use it for a job like this, where its size helps.

 

[Mike G]

I've only taken a certain number of houses apart, and a certain number of bits of furniture, so I can't call my experience extensive or definitive. However, my experience is that drilling and paring was used for big joints in building framing, but not in furniture. As it happens, that's also how I have evolved. I use a spade bit in an electric drill when doing big nortices in green oak, and I use a mallet and chisel when chopping smaller mortices at the bench. One of the reasons will be the working height, with a brace being easy to use on saw horses but less easy on a bench (and obviously big pieces of framing timber never went anywhere near a bench).

 

[AndyT]

Mike, while what you say is true, there's also the possibility that less muscular woodworkers will sometimes choose the less energetic option...

In my own defence, if I had room for a low mortising stool, I'd have been more tempted to chop these mortises.

As it happens, I used to have something suitable, knocked up from scrap to make a long bench for a children's birthday party. It was decades ago, before Chris Schwarz taught us to like them again, and had to go to make room.

 

[Alf]

Always nice to see the Weetabix-powered machinery doing what it was meant to do. Nice job, Andy. Mind you, I'm suffering green-eyed jealousy too because, frustratingly, I've never ever managed to get such a good result from pre-boring mortises.

 

[AndyT]

Thanks Alf, but I think the squareness is largely down to my "stabilizer wheels" guide block.

But just when I thought I knew how to proceed, up pops Richard Maguire with one of those face-palming "why did I never think of that?" suggestions on how to use a router to get perfect mortises (provided you planed the workpiece right in the first place of course)...

[youtubessl]8F3WqXVmSIk[/youtubessl]

https://youtu.be/8F3WqXVmSIk

 

[NickM]

Thanks Alf, but I think the squareness is largely down to my "stabilizer wheels" guide block.

But just when I thought I knew how to proceed, up pops Richard Maguire with one of those face-palming "why did I never think of that?" suggestions on how to use a router to get perfect mortises (provided you planed the workpiece right in the first place of course)...

https://youtu.be/8F3WqXVmSIk

I like that. I've been struggling with getting square mortices. I was thinking that I should try a block, but this looks like another option.

 

[Windows]

Drilling the waste seems to be quite common practice amongst handtool-mostly woodworkers on YouTube even on relatively small work. Sometimes drilling replaces chopping, and sometimes it supplements it. As an example, this video from “the English woodworker” shows him drilling some of the waste from a mortise prior to chopping the rest out with a chisel.

https://www.theenglishwoodworker.com/ro ... ces-video/

 

[Alf]

Thanks Alf, but I think the squareness is largely down to my "stabilizer wheels" guide block.

But just when I thought I knew how to proceed, up pops Richard Maguire with one of those face-palming "why did I never think of that?" suggestions on how to use a router to get perfect mortises (provided you planed the workpiece right in the first place of course)...

https://youtu.be/8F3WqXVmSIk

Well... Yes. But it's that ever-annoying (to me) school of "lets use hand tools so we can make things like a power tool would". Perfectly parallel planed faces, perfectly centralised mortises, perfect happiness because it's "like machine grade". Ack, do the ruddy thing on a machine then, and be happy.

But I will now take my hobby horse for a rub down and give it its oats.

As to the guide block, seems a good idea to me. Alas, for most of us here we don't get to do these things regularly enough to rely on creating muscle memory.

 

[Mike G]

Drilling the waste seems to be quite common practice amongst handtool-mostly woodworkers on YouTube even on relatively small work......

Youtube can be a useful tool, but the output is at best patchy. It's hard for a beginner to know who to take any notice of.

-

Let me add some variation to the discussion. Short deep mortices can be awkward. The problem is levering out the waste. Four of the mortices on my mock up chair are about an inch long and 40mm deep. I chopped them out with a pig-sticker in the usual way, but the geometry didn't allow the waste to be levered out once I got more than 10 or 15mm down, especially as I chop out short of the end lines so as to preserve them until the last action of the job. As always, I have the next-size-chisel-down to hand to aid waste removal, but even with this I simply couldn't lever up the chips in the space (length) available. So, I mushed up the waste with a drill. This works a treat. Normally, I hold work down with my left elbow, but because of the crook in the chair back leg, I'd had to raise it on blocks and hold it down with a hold-down, so tipping the workpiece over and giving it a tap on the bench wasn't an easy option. Chopping the chipped-up-but-stuck waste with a drill meant a good breath and a puff would clear most of it quickly and easily.

So, drilling out short deep mortices first might offer some advantages. Otherwise, I reckon the practice probably doubles the time it takes to do a mortice by hand.

 

[AndyT]

There's nothing like cutting a lot of mortises for focusing the mind on these interesting details!

Fortunately, on this little project, I think I only have about 80 to do

 

[Alf]

I think the too-restricted-to-clear-out-but-too-awkward-to-turn-over-and-tap-clear problem might have been the catalyst for the lock mortise chisel. Probably too big for your situation, Mike, but as the thought of one floated into my head and I had to go and look up what the thing was called anyway, I'm going to damn well share! :lol: