Tag: Chisel

Doll Beds

Published on by Mike  (Leave a comment)

It is still way too cold to be doing any real wood working out in the garage.  This morning with wind chills, it was -16 degrees outside!  However, since it will probably be at least a month and half before I can start regularly working in the garage again, I thought I would post some of the projects I tackled in 2010.

The first one was probably the most time consuming project for 2010, which was actually started around Christmas time in 2009. However the bulk of the work was done during from winter,  into summer of 2010.  This project in fact is what reinvigorated my wood working hobby!  The need for this project came about because my daughter collects American Girl Dolls.  If you know anything about this line of dolls, collecting the dolls and their accessories can be as expensive as this woodworking addiction.  My wife asked me if I could attempt to make a simple doll bunk bed for three dolls, as she felt I could make it for a lot less than what they sold theirs for.

I didn’t have any real plans, just some thoughts in my head on how I wanted it to look, and measurements of the dolls so that they would fit in the beds.  I started out using some scrap red oak I had laying around from a previous project.  I made the decision to make the head board and foot boards the same, to make things easier, as ultimately 6 were made.  The boards were all made with mortise and tenon joints.  Note the illustration showing how the joints were made and went together.  Since I also made this a learning experience as well, I tried different methods in making the mortises.  For the bottom rail in four of the boards, I used the drill press to clear out most of the mortise, then used a chisel to clean it up.  I made the tenons as close as a match as possible, but then spent some time cleaning up both the mortise and the tenons to get a good fit.  I used the router to make the long mortises for the solid board.  I did about half of these on the router table, plunging it into the router bit, then lifting it out.  This technique works well with bigger pieces, but these parts were two small to control safely. Unfortunately this resulted in a couple of pieces needing to be remade.  I made a jig that used guide bushings on the plunge router to make the mortises.  This worked very well for cutting the long mortises.  I found that by using a smaller guide busing I was able to make the short but wider mortises just as easily.  I then sanded each part of each board down to 220 grit before glue up.  After glue up, I took another pass with 220 to clean up any points where the glue may have squeezed out.

I really wanted to mortise and tenon the main bedrails, but realized that where the mortises would need to be would interfere with the joinery of the boards to the point that I was afraid it would weaken them.  To solve this issue I used dowels, and a shop made dowling jig.  This worked fairly well, and I was able to get a decent fit.  Finally I ran a dado down each rail so that I could put a 1/4″ sheet of plywood in for the bed support. 

After some dry fitting, I realized that I made the boards too short.  There wasn’t enough space between them to make the dolls look comfortable in the beds.  I spent some time thinking on this.  I found the solution one day during one of my many trips to my local WoodCraft I found some maple spindles that were a perfect solution.  Before the final glue of the beds, I spent quite a bit of time with dry assembled beds to drill the holes and making sure they mated to the supporting bed.  Once this was completed, I did the final glue up of the three individual beds.  I made sure the spindles were a tight fit, as I elected not to glue them to the beds.  This way my daughter can reconfigure the beds if she decided she didn’t want them bunked.

The finish I applied was a couple coats of red mahogany stain and a couple coats of semi-gloss polyurethane.  After letting the finish cure for a couple weeks out in the garage, my daughter happily took ownership of the beds.

A New Chisel Collection

Published on by Mike  (Leave a comment)

For someone who is starting it is very tempting to start buying nothing but power tools, with little regard to hand tools.  A trap that a lot of new woodworkers fall into, including myself, is thinking that these will be enough to make a finished project.   Some of the popular wood working shows give the illusion that hand tools are a small part of the project.  What you don’t see is the many hours that is spent with hand tools perfecting joints, edges, routes, and so on.  Also hand tools do not have the size limitations that most power tools have.  (You are not going to get a 13 inch wide board flattened in a 12 inch planer, but a jack plane will!) 

I actually still have a very small hand tool collection.  One of the most basic hand tools every woodworker should have is a set of chisels.  Just like any other tool,  the rule of you get what you pay for applies to chisels too.  When I bought my first home, I bought a 5 pack of Craftsman chisels, which included 1/4″, 1/2″, 3/4″, 1″, and 1 1/4″  wide chisels.   I don’t recall how much I paid for them, but today they go for about $35.  As chisels go, these are definitely not the best you can buy.  However, they have served me well.  The steel in them isn’t as hard as some of the higher end chisels, which means they won’t keep their edge as long.  I don’t have the best sharpening capabilities, so I typically sharpen them on the bench grinder.  These have also been used for a lot more than just woodworking.   In fact they have been used and abused on many occasions when working on various projects around the house, including two bathroom remodels.  Frankly, these chisels are perfect for that.

Now, I have recently decided that it was time to get a set of chisels that are dedicated to woodworking, leaving my craftsman chisels for the ‘dirty work.’  You wont see these chisels breaking out drywall or floor tile!  Last month, I spent at least a good hour in the hand chisel aisle at Woodcraft looking at the three brands of chisels they had available.  The first brand is the Irwin Marples.  I quickly put these aside, as these are about the same quality as the craftsman chisels.  The other two options were the Crowns and the Pfeils (they are labeled as Swiss Made in the store).  I will admit, based on recommendations I had received, I was already leaning towards the Pfeils.  Both brands of chisels are good chisels.  They both have a harder steel, which means that they will hold their edge longer, and sharpen up better.  At first look in the store, the Crowns look very elegant, with the handles having a nice finish.  The handles on the Pfeils are wood, but the finish is basic.  In fact you can still see the marks from the lathe  tail stock in the back of the chisel.  However, the handle isn’t the only part of the chisel, as we still have the steel to consider.  The steel on the Pfeils, well, they had a better feel to them, as they felt like they were more refined.  As I was looking through the chisels, I noticed that a couple of the Crowns bevels were not square, which I found to be unacceptable.  The one drawback on the Pfeils is that they are metric, when the rest of my tools are standard.  Since they are sized to match the standard sizes (though not exact) I decided that it was not a deal breaker.    In the end, I decided on the Pfeils, as these felt the best overall in my hands.

 

Now, while these chisels are not the most expensive chisels available, they still are not cheap.  Each chisel by itself cost as much or more than 5 pack of Craftsman chisels!  It would have been a budget buster to by them all at once (I am saving up for a band saw!).  Therefore I have been buying them 1 at a time.  The drawbacks are that I have to wait longer to get a complete set (not a big deal, my shop is not heated, and it is COLD outside) and that it will cost me a little more in the long run.  However, this gives me the opportunity to hand select each chisel that goes into my collection.  Also, I can get the sizes I know I will use.  (I don’t think I have ever used the 1 1/4″ chisel in for a woodworking project)  I currently have 3 Pfeils now (6mm, 12mm, 19mm or roughly 1/4″, 1/2″, 3/4″ respectively).  I have used one to finish off a project I was working.  The first few cuts I made with it, I realized I made the correct choice.  They truly are finely made chisels that will last at least a lifetime.

*Note, I did not spend much time looking at chisels available online.  I felt being able to hold them in my hand to make sure they would feel right was too important to risk  buying something unknown.