Oak tabletop for my granddaughter.

[demographic]

I've been pestered into making my granddaughter a tabletop to go onto a Singer sewing machine cast iron base.
The brief was, "Just get something she can do crafting and homework on, can be plywood or whatever but 1000x500 in size".

I've had a bit of 18mm plywood that size kicking about for a while and more recently have been cladding the inside of a building with engineered oak flooring (not my choice but there you go) so have some offcuts which just happened to be about 1100 long...
The boards are fairly shite as they look like they've been fired through a bandsaw at running speed but I can sort that, free boards are the best price though.

First of all I used some Sikaflex I had spare off another job to glue the flooring to the ply and secret nailed the tongues where the nails wouldnt get in the way of any cuts I needed to do.
Not showing the photo of the Sikaflex stage cos in the tradition everyone with a mastic gun my granddaughter wrote her name with the Sikaflex.
Anyway, I left all the boards overhanging the plywood so I could cut it later, left it dor a day for the Sikeflex to go off then the next day I planed it flat, using a toothing plane going across the boards at 45 degrees or so. Didn't have to be my toothing plane but I've hardly used it and I just wanted a play.
Then went over the parts where the grain was ok with my No3 record handplane and the parts with the reversing grain with a 112 scraper plane (the first time I've ever used one of these and yes I was just having a play with it) to minimise tearout.

Its all just on a couple of bits of offcut 100mm square oak beams ontop of my sawstools, in the back alley cos I'm short of space.

[demographic]

After planing it I cut it to size from the underside with a circular saw to stop it from spelching through to top surface, to be fair its a guiderail saw and the cuts are very clean but no harm in doing good practice to make it as good as possible.
Then I've glued some slightly over width oak lipping on the ends, let it go off, routed the end lipping to the same size as the tabletop, cut the lipping ends and a little bit off the width down to size.
Lipped the sides the same way, its longer that it needs to be as well as extra width (the ply and boards add upto 32mm and I'm leaving the lipping at 35 mm til its glued on. Can rout it with a flushcut bearing guided cutter.


You can see where I've pinned the lipping on with three pins on each section, I used a brad nailgun shooting through a bit of wood with a slot cut in it, that leaves the pins sticking out of the lipping so I can pull it out with a pair of pincers when the glue goes off.

Here it is clamped up.

As a side note, I've been using one of those Mujingfang High Speed Steel tipped plane blades in my No3 handplane, I had to attack it with a grinder to get it to fit the lateral adjustment mechanism as its designed for wooden planes not Record No 3s.

It's ugly as feck, HSS brazed onto mild steel but the HSS holds a hell of an edge, way better than standard blades and it cost about the same.
People chuntering on about O1 toolsteel really need to give it a try, I sharpen it on a diamond hone and strop it on a bit of green compound charged MDF. Dead easy.

[Yorick]

My tosspot brother is a brilliant joiner and he does that sort of stuff.

Coolio.

[demographic]

My tosspot brother is a brilliant joiner and he does that sort of stuff.

Coolio.

I hardly ever get to do it, its more often I'm just working on sites building stuff like this, a recent eco room extension I did to a college over the border.


With the frames made from that heap of wood, the company I was working for seemed to think it all came in large panels as I'm damn nearly positive they underpriced it. No crane on site and it all needed sealed up to passivehaus levels.


Oh and the college had a bloke filming me for almost all of the build, must have a fair bit of footage of me scratching my head and swearing.

[Yorick]

My brother was an ace joiner. Proper amazing. But not not academically great

I'm a keen DIYer and do OK

Exact opposites

[Yambo]

I want your long clamps.

[1913]

Sounds like a great swap.

[demographic]

I want your long clamps.

Cramp heads, got one set from the local secondhand place with a 25mm batton drilled at regular intervals.
I had some unspecified hardwood (its been suggested it might be Teak and also Mahogany but as I don't usually do much with either I really just don't know) from a school demolition and made up battons to go across the back of my van.
As they go across the back of my van at top of toolsafe height it means I can clamp doors of sheets of ply in the back.

Or at least when the second one is finished, despite being the same make the second set was bought at a different time and the holes don't line up as well with the holes I drilled through the first one.
Just means the second one needs the holes drilled for its specifid clamp heads, I'll get round to it.

They go onto 25mm thick timbers and obviously you can choose the length you want, get the ones with the pin on a little chain though, keeps the pins from disappearing in the shed/back of van.

[demographic]

So, after leaving the glue on the oak lipping to go off I ratched out a better flushcut router bit cos the one I was using the other day wasn't so clever.


Clamped the tabletop up so the router was simpler to use.


Fitted the router base and routed the lipping flush, its one of the rare occasions where I do a climb cut cos sometimes the oak splits knackers the lipping otherwise.
Not exactly me doing it but I only have so many hands.


I'll post more up when the photo hosting site speeds up, its uploading but not showing the pics.
At this rate its faster doing the work than putting the pics up.

[demographic]

Turn it upside down to cut the lipping horns off.

I left all this very slightly oversize so I could finish dimension it close to the end, I took an additional 2mm off the lipping and could plane it nice afterwards.


Do a bit of cleaning up with my new scraper plane, it's been mentioned that I don't mind spending a fair bit of cash to save a fiver on sandpaper but I hate the dust, not right keen on the finish that sanding produces produces either so I avoid sanding as much as I can.

[Druid]

Lovely work demo. It helps having the tools for the job but I wouldn't have the skill to use them properly anyway.

Scraper plane is interesting, I've never seen one before

[Yambo]

You're a carpenter ffs demo, how can you not like sanding?

Looks like we have the same router, although mine probably has a different designation for Turkish sales. Mine is a D26200. This afternoon I'll start cutting pieces to make a small table for it and make it a bit more useful.

I also have a smaller Makita RT0700C which is a bit more powerful than a laminate trimmer but is ideal for hand held use on thin plywood which I do a fair bit of.

[GuzziPaul]

Scraper plane is a new one on me as well. Going to add that to my list of tool wants, not that I''ve got a need for one or it would get much use.

Just looked up the price (and the skill required to sharpen and set up) i think I'll have to stich to sandpaper

[demographic]

You're a carpenter ffs demo, how can you not like sanding?

Looks like we have the same router, although mine probably has a different designation for Turkish sales. Mine is a D26200. This afternoon I'll start cutting pieces to make a small table for it and make it a bit more useful.

I also have a smaller Makita RT0700C which is a bit more powerful than a laminate trimmer but is ideal for hand held use on thin plywood which I do a fair bit of.

Sandpaper? Nope, I don't have any in the van, no siree.
Well, maybe just a bit, hidden in the toolsafe but I just don't like the finish it gives.
Yeah, same router. I also have the plunge base for it which make it more usable when using a hinge jig to do lots of hinges if I'm on a big site.
Its a really nice size for me, great for rounding off inch MDF when I'm making window sills.
On a site with just a few doors its faster setting the hinges with a chisel than setting it up.

I do have a big Hitachi router and although good for doing stuff like postform joints on worktops (not my favorite job anyway) it's a bloody big numb thing. I expect I'll fit it into a bit of thick plywood I have spare to use it as a router table at some point.

Scraper plane is a new one on me as well. Going to add that to my list of tool wants, not that I''ve got a need for one or it would get much use.

Just looked up the price (and the skill required to sharpen and set up) i think I'll have to stich to sandpaper

I kind of bought the 112 scraper plane as a present to myself with some of my tax return.
Usually I get more work based tools but this year I was fairly sorted for every tool I need for work.
Think it cost ￡130 off Ebay and being a Chinese made Luban was a decent bit cheaper than the American/Canadian alternatives. Think the only thing it nedded apart from sharpening was for me to de-burr the mouth witha file, took longer to find the file than to do it.
They are all basically a copy of a very old Stanley one anyway so it's not like copyright is an issue.
Sharpening it just isn't anything like as hard as I thought it would be after I watched a bloke from Lie Nielson (spelling?) do a Youtube tutorial on them. Just a 45 degree bevel and ease the corners so they don't dig in. You can turn a hook on them and I have done that with a hand cabinet scraper before but so far its worked nicely with just a sharp 45 on it.

I'll fire up a few pics of my German wooden toothing plane cos thats a bit of an oddbal item as well.

[demographic]

Ulmia toothing plane.
It's kind of one of those tools I just wanted to have a bash with so I bought one off Ebay for 20 something quid. Seems I landed on my feet cos it's a right posh one with a Lignum Vitae sole and a laminated blade so the steel on the cutting edge is harder than on the bevel side.

The sole has had a weird sort of finger joint going on, looks like its been done on an angle by the larger waves seen from the side.

I'm not called Wm R Trist by the way but whoever he was he looked after his gear so who am I to scrub his name out.
Then there's the blade, which has shallow grooves in it so it cuts tiny grooves, this can sometimes be useful for either increasing surface area for glue up, ensuring theres a slight clearance for some glues or in my case they allow me to plane in virtually any direction and not get tearout, then afterwards scrape it to flat.


Now it's not very visible but if I squint just right I can see the line (maybe 3mm back from the cutting edge) where the harder edge metal has been forge welded to the softer backing metal, its easy to see in real life but a bugger to take a photo of.
This means it holds a good edge but the softer backing on the bevel side allows the user to sharpen it faster.

Then there's the way the wedge is retained, there's a pin going through the body of the plane with a spinny plastic thingy (it's a technical term, honest) that means the wedge doesn't have to be an absolutely perfect fit into the more common wedge mortice like old British wooden handplanes have.
Its a good system, not fussy.

The plastic bit looks like its all pattern welded steel but its not it's some kind of hard engineering plastic.
Shown here with the wedge retainer spun round slightly.

Just a well thought out way of reducing the amount of time it takes to make them whilst still working as well as the traditional wooden plane wedge/blade mortise.

Oh and wooden planes? Surprisingly nice to use. I expected them to be harder to setup.
There's a learning curve but I'm just dicking about in my spare time here, its not work.
As long as I'm willing to just wait to pick em up cheap I can get some decent kit without breaking the bank.

[GuzziPaul]

I've got a large wooden plane I inherited, buried on the right hand side of the garage, Must be about 2ft long I think, from memory. Although I am now tempted to dig it out and give it a clean up. Not that I have ever need such a big one.

[demographic]

I've got a large wooden plane I inherited, buried on the right hand side of the garage, Must be about 2ft long I think, from memory. Although I am now tempted to dig it out and give it a clean up. Not that I have ever need such a big one.

I recently bought an old long (from memory its 23 inches) wooden jointer plane from the local secondhand place. The tote (rear handle) is cracked and theres slight checking in the front end.
Thing is, the soles pretty flat and even it wasn't I can plane it flat.
The whole thing cost me a fiver and it's got a decent parallel Norris blade in it, looking on Ebay the blade alone can bring 90 quid.
Not had a bash with that one yet, I'll save it to joint a worktop up as I've something I want to build.

I'd like to see that old wooden jointer if you fancy firing a picture up?

[GuzziPaul]

Been out to the garage and pulled the plane out from behind my DT175. Can't read the name on the blade at the moment. But the plane 22 inches long. It needs a good clean up so that will be a nice little project, not that i have a use for it at the moment. The top of the blade is a bit turned over where its been hammered in so that needs filing off and I'll give it a sharpen with my new MDF wheel, then oild the blade and BLO the wood.

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The photo is taken on top of a stool one of my daughters is making (with my help) from her old Uni desk (which I made).

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The blade, you can just make ot the burr at the top hopefully

[demographic]

That plane is almost identical to the one I bought recently, mine has a Sorby cap iron that looks the same as yours but the blade on mine (often called the Iron but I think that calling something thats made of steel an Iron doesn't really help explain things) is made by Norris.
The blade is about 2 1/2" wide (64mm give or take a bit) and by eye I'm guessing its about 4mm thick so its a fair hunk of steel.
I very much doubt my blade is original but I suspect the Sorby cap iron is.

As a matter of interest, is your blade tapered in thickness with its thickest point being just behind the bevel then thinning back slightly to the top of the blade where its been hit with a hammer to adjust it?
My blade is parallel.
There's a point on the front of the wooden plane where its been hit a good few ti.es with a hammer when the owner has been adjusting the blade back. To advance the blade you hit the blade, to pull it back you hit the plane. Sounds more violent than it is and its surprisingly quick to pick up the basics.

I'll fire a couple of pics up at some point but it looks like yours has a better body than mine.

Oh and DT 175? My first working motorcycle was a DT100 1N1, cost me thirty quid off a mate and jeez it took some hammer, the 175 was the one we wanted though.

[GuzziPaul]

Got some more pictures and even stuck some dimensions up. Yes it does taper botton to top.

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And the area in front of the blade has several hammer dents in it, I wondered why it had been hit there.

The DT is a DT175MX, Y reg Monoshock with the rectangular silver swingarm.

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