Rambling Quickie #2 - Bench Stability - Pt II

Author's note - Tonight, as I write this, my wife is out with her sisters and I'm exercising my skills in fatherhood. I'm also watching my nephews. Currently, the boys are sleeping and my daughter has just finished her 8 PM snack. Yes, this means I'm not in the shop again tonight, but that's okay. I did spend a little time in the shop yesterday and as limited as it was, I did manage to work a little further on my knot repair exercise.

Welcome to Fight Club

As I recounted in my last Rambling quickie, I had started planing the epoxy filled knot, but my bench had started walking across the shop floor with each stroke of my hand plane.

Getting back into the shop last night (even if only briefly), I discovered that the legs of the bench had skewed and now the bench rocks from side to side like a cradle in a wind storm just by looking at it. Giving one set of legs a nudge caused the other set to rack. By the end of it all, I was sweating and cursing.

I am Mike's sense of bitter defeat.

I resignedly unscrewed the router table top from the legs and proceeded to kick at the legs as I was too tired to bend down and pick them up. They finally fall back into place and shift into their proper place. I decide to screw only one side down.

Back to the task at hand. Fixing the knot. Here's how it looked before the epoxy fill. Actually, it's the reverse side of the board. Either the knot is whole at the centre of the board, or the epoxy wasn't thin enough to get all the way through but this is what it essentially looked like before filling. The after with some planing done is right below it.

In the right photo, I was planing cross grain using a scrap of walnut to brace the board. Because I was planing towards the wall, there was no problem with bench stability. My previous theory from the last ramble worked!

I am Mike's sense of complete satisfaction. Or so I thought.

Finishing up the planing, I noticed that there were air bubbles that had been left behind.

Not quite sure how I would fix that. Slower stirring of the epoxy maybe? I'll have to flip over to side 2 and try again. The knot itself is probably a throwaway, but I can cut that out and save at least a small cutoff.

I am Mike's sense of optimism

Rambling Quickie - Handplaning boards and workbench stability

Today, I took my lunch break and scooted off to the garage for a little therapy away from spreadsheets and financial forecasts.

There's a cherry board that I did a little knot repair to for practise. The board has some dry rot along one edge and I figured if I could fill the knot as per the technique in TWW episode 113, I could cut away the rot and salvage at least part of the board.

After filling the knot, I was left with a high spot of epoxy and it has cured fully (I applied the epoxy last week). So I took my smoothing plane (the board is still in rough cut state), and started taking shavings. With each swipe, some hardened resin came away.

It was going well until the hollow that the knot is sitting in became evident and wood shavings around the knot started coming up. The blade is still sharp, and it was cutting well but planing a board takes considerable force. Too much for my workbench to handle (plywood on 2 sawhorses).

My bench started walking across the floor. If I want to be able to plane this board without destroying my 'bench', I will need to find a way of stabilizing it. Maybe I'll try again after work and align the board so that my push action is towards the shop wall.

Back to my spreadsheets for now.