From timber to Jewelrybox, nothing but headaches.

John Albers

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5
I'm just getting into fine woodworking, though I've volunteered building scenery and the like for my local theater for years. I found a honey of a design for a jewelrybox that I'd like to give my fiance for Christmas. But some problems keep popping up.

First, my materials. I'm using castoffs and scraps since I can find cheap hardwoods this way. But I need to be able to take roughcut boards and straighten them well enough to be able to glue and pin if need be. Normally that would require an 18" planer, but I haven't seen on of those lying around since I was little. The hand models look too small to be able to cut off the humps and bumps they would encounter rather than ride them, and an actual freestanding planer machine isn't in the budget and I don't have room for one. If anyone knows how to straighten lumber on a budget, please let me know.

Next, concerning what tools I do have. I've got a little Ryobi table saw. Blade cuts fine, but the table surface is so small it's difficult to keep large pieces of wood balanced there. Anyone know where I can find plans for building extensions? Same thing goes for the adjustable miter gauge. It runs in a depression that's barely two feet long. How the heck am I supposed to make an angled cut from six feet away using that?
 
Welcome to a wonderful journey. There's so much to be said in response to your post that this discussion will probably go on for an enjoyable while and probably consist of several threads. There's always more than one way to skin the cat and by starting now, I think Christmas will be an easy target.

Using "found wood" has its ups and downs. I have, more than once, spent much more in time and supplies, wear and tear, etc. by trying to make "free" material into what I am after. This is fine for me as I am primarily a hobbyist. Given your tools I would recommend going to the local lumber yard and ponying up the dough for the properly milled and dried material you want. Just decide where you want to spend your money because you will spend it. :)

You mention a planer as if it will flatten material and this is a common misconception. Planers make surfaces like the reference surface used, jointers make surfaces flat. A motorized hand planer is great for fitting a door on your house but, has little value in the jewelry box department. Sometimes a local cabinet shop will mill material for a fee. There is little that is so frustrating as trying to make a delicate little box with material that is out of square.

I'll go ahead and mention hand tools since someone undoubtedly will. A good jointer, smoother or other bench plane can help with flattening if you practice a bit. I'm a hybrid woodworker and while I have a till of hand tools, I generally rough mill my material on machines using the typical face joint, opposite face plane, edge joint, rip to width and crosscut to length method.

Back to materiel and striving for success; my local yard has a shorts bin that often has some interesting material in it suitable for smaller projects. The board-foot price is still the same but, I don't have to buy a 12 foot board to get what I am after. The smaller the project, the more forgiving the irregularities of the material. That is, a bow of 1/8" over 48" is not so problematic once I have cut an 8" length of this material off to make a part. This goes to your question of how to cut a 45* angle on a 6 foot board . . . the answer there is arguably a slider :D . . . seriously though, reduce your parts to rough, over-sized pieces before you start cutting things to finished size.

I'll let someone else chime in with more and once again, welcome aboard.
 
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Welcome to the Family, John! :wave:

Glenn covered all of the basics pretty well, so I can't really add much there. I started small and added tools as budget allowed. Ease into the world of sawdust and enjoy yourself!
 
John, Welcome to the family. Glad you found us. In addition to what Glenn said, you might consider building a router planer sled for flattening wide and irregular stock. That should give you sand-able surfaces to work with.
 
Glenn, thanks very much for taking the time to reply. I really appreciate it. Budget is unfortunately an issue since I'm in the middle of moving. The plans I've got require some very precise widths; the jewelry box ideally will have a tray that rises up when the lid opens, and there is no lumber yard in the state that can accommodate me within my price range. I was taught some basics way back when by my granduncle, who was a master carpenter, and I remember his tools fondly. Sadly they are gone now. A jointer or bench plane sounds ideal; from what I understand of them, the longer the plane the more effective it can be in smoothing out irregularities. Is there a handtool you can recommend for this job that won't break the bank?

Fair point on cutting the stock for smaller parts. There will be some wastage, but oh well.

Question: when a board is not square, to the degree that you're looking at a parallelogram, how do you establish a point of reference to get your edges back to 90 degree angles?

I'm being ambitious and hoping to use finger joints for my corners. I've got some practice in attempting different methods but have yet to find something that works every time. Is there a tutorial you can point me toward that you find reliable?

All the best.

Also, Bill and Ted, excellent!

Seriously. Ted, I'm still enough of a novice to not be able to envision what you're talking about. Can you point me in the direction of a good router planer sled so I know what you mean?
 
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I'm being ambitious and hoping to use finger joints for my corners. I've got some practice in attempting different methods but have yet to find something that works every time. Is there a tutorial you can point me toward that you find reliable?

All the best.

Also, Bill and Ted, excellent!

I have an i-box from Incra but, just as often find myself doing this instead.

Party on, Dude! :thumb:

That one got me too :thumb: Note my sig line.
 
Glenn, A jointer or bench plane sounds ideal; from what I understand of them, the longer the plane the more effective it can be in smoothing out irregularities. Is there a hand-tool you can recommend for this job that won't break the bank?

Yes a number 6 hand plane it was my first bigger plane. Made for carpenters as a hefty but not to heavy plane to be carried in a tool box. Not sought after as much as the #7 so it should cost less. I really like my plane a Miller Falls #18C same as a Stanley #6.

Miller Falls is numbered according it's length so a #7 as in Stanley becomes #22 in Miller Falls as in 22" long. Here is a chart... http://www.oldtoolheaven.com/bench/benchtable.htm#7
 
Hey John,

Welcome aboard.

You might want to check out Paul Sellers online videos, he starts truing up a piece of stock in this one, and has a fair number of other hand work videos. I don't agree with 100% of everything he does, but he's pretty practical and generally gives pretty solid advice for hand work and you won't go to far off following his instructions.


Another piece here with a bit of discussion on other plane types.

You'll also note after watching his videos that you don't need a longer plane to get stock true but it does make it easier for the final truing. The trick is really just to work the high spots, the second video talks about setting up a smaller #4 as a scrub (or sure) plane to do bulk material removal for initial truing. The longer try or jointer (depending on the size of the piece) plane spans the humps a bit easier to get it absolutely flat and true at the end but is somewhat inefficient for initial material removal.

More generally it might be useful to share a bit more of your design. Designs that require large single pieces of wood are usually harder to do with hand work that pieces that are built up a bit because its easier to true a smaller piece than a larger one. Its also harder to cut large thin pieces accurately with hand tools.

As for making the angle cut, I'm going to suggest maybe back to hand tools :D There's a lot you can do with a hand saw and then true up with a hand plane in a shooting board.
 
Hi there John WELCOME to the forum.

You will get TONS of advice here.

On the small Ryobi saw - many people would swear by it.

You can build a nice cabinet that surrounds the saw with extensions that make it very usable.

http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?9231-10-quot-Ryobi-Table-saw-extention-plan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgfXn9xJSc0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XziV2v4sTQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVWG8Nfi6_s

John there are mulititudes of way to make you Ryobi saw - sing beautiful songs.

I have listed just a few above.

You need to find a way that will suit what you want to do - then design and build

I don't think you will find much in the way of ready made plans.
 
John, I'm currently using oak castoffs and parts that my brother's father-in-law can get hold of when he does demolition work. Thicknesses I'm using are 1/2", 1/4", and 1/8". Another reason I'd rather not use storebought is I can't find true sizes. Lengths vary from a few inches to about two feet, and the widest boards I need if I recall correctly are about 10".

http://www.jeffgreefwoodworking.com/pnc/Boxes/FingJewel/index.html This is what I'll be making. I did tweak the design though to add height for a drawer in front.

I think with information on planes, building extensions to my table saw, and putting together a nifty jig for cutting finger joints I should be well on my way. Just gotta wait until I'm back in the right darn state.
 
Doesn't look to bad to do..

One other thing I'd add is that finger joints are an artifact of the machine age. They're pretty easy with a jig and a dado blade. Cutting them by hand and having them look good (regular) is heading on master level work. Its actually easier to cut dovetails by hand and have them not look to bad, as long as they're tight some irregularities kind of disappear into the pattern (and you can tighten them up with some shims or peening and have them look pretty good even if you didn't cut them quite perfect).
 
Thanks, Ryan. I've had some new developments pop up in the meantime. Just to get some practice in I went ahead and bought some regular one by four roughcut pine and went to work on it. Found myself a Number 7 jack plane as well, which is a godsend. I was getting the hang of planing, gluing, and clamping boards to the right width and coming close to matching the grains. But I realized the arbor on my dang table saw was bent slightly. No wonder nothing I was putting through it was coming out right.

Well, it was practically a new saw. One of the cheap Ryobis with a ten-inch blade. Managed to get it replaced for another, but the same exact problem arose. And I'm not gonna find a comparable saw for the same price, so I'm doing what my dad did in his shop and fitting a skilsaw to a 2'X3' panel to create a rudimentary but accurate table saw. So far it's cost me less and works pretty well, but I haven't installed a miter gauge yet. Everything I read says to start with a metal blank and go from there, but I'm not set up to work with metal and don't much care to get into that. So what I did was use my router to cut a 1.75" wide miter channel into the saw face and then cut a dovetail into the bottom of the channel. I've already cut a practice board to match in a lock & key fashion, which should work well as the base of a wooden miter gauge. But I'm concerned about wood swelling or shrinking, since that would destroy the smooth fit I've got. What sort of finish or sealant should I use, do you think?
 
Be careful with the upsidedown skil saw, there are not a lot of safeties in place there (yeah I know as long as you're careful, yadda yadda but please do be careful :)). There were plenty of old table saws with wooden tops though that worked just dandy for years.

Slightly less scary is setting it up with a rail guide (before I bought a rail saw I used a skill saw with a 3/8" piece of plywood and a 1x2 glued to it as a guide), but that's also a fair bit less flexible for cutting thinner pieces.

If you can find some UHMW plastic scrap (the local junk yard extraordinaire by me has a stack in the back that I raid from time to time) it works quite well for

For ease of use and being pretty reliable I'd stick with a wiping varnish since all it needs is a rag to apply and some sandpaper to knock down the bumps. The minwax or formbies "tung oil" (may not actually include any tung oil :rolleyes:) are reasonable products or you can get a full strength varnish and thin it with some paint thinner (usually a bit cheaper than the pre-formulated ones). Put on super thin coats (low-no surface moisture) and lots of them (6-8) and it looks pretty darn good without a lot of pain. http://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/finishing/the_basics_of_wiping_varnish2
 
Thanks for pointing out the difference regarding plane size. If I go by size then it's a number 5. Looks practically new but I suppose it would have to be as old as I am at least. Guess it held up better than I did over the years. :)

And thanks, Ryan, for a rail guide idea. I think I'll probably give it a try, for fun if nothing else. And I appreciate the suggestion regarding varnishes.
 
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