Bench Hook

As part of my reconnecting with hand tools I made myself a bench hook. It's almost too simple to be worth talking about, but that's where the beauty of this gizmo shines: it's so simple, but really handy. If I had to think about it, I'd say that you could probably boil down the worth of a homemade tool as a ratio of how useful it is, over the value of its manufacture in time and resources. The equation looks like this:

V = U/{T + r + wt}

Nah, I'm just kidding. I made that equation up, but I'm serious about value. There are guys out there building table saws and joiner from scratch out of wood and swimming pool parts. Honestly, these projects are fascinating but I'm not sure their usefulness balances with the time and effort that's put into them. I'm sure there are better examples, and I also understand that there are other, less quantifiable, benefits to these efforts (such as enjoyment and learning potential) but for me, some things are just more efficient to purchase.

The bench hook, by comparison, is NOT something that anyone should buy. It is easily made with scrap wood in about 5 minutes and makes all kinds of things easier. Especially when you don't have a vise! With a little more effort you can square it up nice, and even add a 45-miter on one side and you can use it as a quick miter box for things that don't need to be dead on, just run the saw blade along the edge of the base and the end of the fence.

The design is simple: a rectangle of wood or plywood, with a stop or fence attached to either end, on opposite sides. One stop hooks onto the edge of the bench, the other is used to trap your work against. Easy. And when it wears out, you make a new one. You can even reuse the scrap for something else.

Final analysis: make one today.

Wedge Vise

I have a machinist's vise, which works great, and I've recently made a set of wood jaws for it--maybe I'll point them out in a future post--so I can get by, but what I really needed was a bench vise to hold stock in place for planing, chisel work, etc. so I made this simple wedge vise. Actually, I made two, you can see the smaller, vertical wedge vise mounted to the face of the bench for clamping boards vertically. In the first image, you can see that I have small board tapped into the vise on edge, but an even better idea, would be a third type of wedge vise for working the edges, as shown in this Rockler article.

The draw backs of this system is lack of flexibility. The size of wood these units can handle is based on how far apart the jaws of the vise are set. I tried to pick a size that works for me, but I still end up blocking the vise with scraps to make up the difference in wood sizes.

Using the vise is simple. The stock is placed flat on the bench, with one end against the fixed jaw, and then the wedge is tapped in place with a wooden mallet. To release, just tap on the other end. Once a piece is in the vise, the whole bench will move when the clamped stock is shaken, so it really holds.

I made my vise out of 5/4 pine scrap. The long angle is 15-degrees, if I remember correctly, and its back-cut at 30 to 35-degrees, so that when you tap the wedge in place, it dives in under the fixed jaw and won't work loose. I cut the mated pieces out of one scrap on my compound miter saw, and then just screwed the fixed jaws to the bench. As you can see, my bench is 3/4-inch plywood sheathing on a frame of old 2x framing lumber, so I can beat on it (and screw things to it!)

This system won't take the place of a nice bench vise and some bench dogs, but until the time I get something like that, this is what I'll stick with. Since I took these photos, I've added a few bench dogs to help with clamping different sized pieces, including a set that runs perpendicular, so that I can drop in a scrap, and use the vise for edge work as I mentioned above. So far, so good!

Marking Gauge

So I've been really interested in hand tools recently, but not just hand tools; old school hand tools. It a back-to-basics feeling that's behind it and I like the fact the I'm more closely connected to the work. Not that I'm not connected with power tools is there a joke in there somewhere? its just that all that high speed and high power which works so well, has safety precautions that necessarily separate me from the work, so the work doesn't separate me from my fingers.

That, and its really satisfying to use a smoothing plane to square up a piece of stock that came out of a log 20 minutes ago.

This particular project however has very little of the lately of the log caste, just the birch wedges in the beam and the fence; the former holds the scribing blade in place, and the latter fixes the beam within the fence body. I'm a big fan of wedges.

So this is my first marking gauge, but I don't think it will be my last. I've never owned a marking gauge so just getting used to using it is fun. I've used a sharp knife to mark my work I'm actually working on a marking knife now but the gauge does things the knife and a straight edge can't do, and it does some of the same things, only better.

Long straight marks, parallel to the edge of a board: marking gauge. Square lines across the end of a board a set distance off the end: you could do it with a square and a marking knife but boy is it easy with a marking gauge.

Scrap wood marking gauge

 The fence is mahogany, and the beam is some hard-as-a-rock mystery wood from a pallet I have, and the two wedges are birch, as I mentioned.

The design of the beam is rounded on the bottom, so that when the wedge which runs over the top of of the beam is tightened, the beam is pushed down into the rounded mortise. This keeps the beam from wiggling left to right, as opposed to just top to bottom, which is what a wedge may do if the beam was rectangular. This basic idea I got from Sumokun over at YouTube. Sumokun does some beautiful woodcraft with not a lot of space and no fancy tools. He says it comes from a Popular Woodworking design, based on an old French design. Thanks Sumokun.

I made some additional modifications: I wedged the scoring blade, rather than setting it into the end of the beam with a screw, and I set in a brass plate on the face, to keep the face from wearing. The wedged blade idea came from Steve Emmons, who says he learned how to make his gauge from a Fine Woodworking article. The rectangular mortise in the Emmons gauge is made by assembling the fence from four pieces, and leaving the mortise as a void space, clamped around the beam to insure a tight fit. If I make another one, I may try that, altho the round bottom (made with a 1/2-inch Forstner bit prior to squaring up the mortise) is a nice feature to leave out. I think a similar feature could be had with a beam--and mortise--that is wedge shaped on the bottom

The gauge broken down to its parts

The scoring blade is made from a jigsaw blade: I ground the teeth off, cut it to length and sharpened the end to a short knife point. You can see the detail of the wedge that holds the beam in place in this photo. The little hook on the end keeps it from falling out when loosening the gauge. In fact, its pretty easy to use the gauge one handed, which is pretty nice--and not possible with the thumb screw type.

Wooden Mallet

This blog is the companion to my Etsy Shop of the same name, where I sell buttons, baubles, and other things I make in the shop downstairs. You can find the shop here, if you're interested. If you've come over here from the shop to check out what's going on or if you've stumbled onto this blog from my other blog about books, reading, libraries, and robots, here's what's up: I'm planning on putting up notes about the shop, what I'm working on, and whats working (and what isn't.) Feel free to comment where ever you like, and I'll check in and write back as soon as I can.

In the shop, the things I make I try to keep all natural, so that includes the stains and finishes I use. I love to recycle old wood, but I also try to make sure that it hasn't been treated. For example: pallet wood can be great, but I don't know if its been treated with anything, such as a preservative, or a pesticide, so I won't use it for anything I sell. In fact, I don't use it much at all, as its not something I have ready access to.

I love hand tools, and I'm learning more about them every day, but I also love power tools, and I put them to good use around the shop. I'll probably discuss the tools in a little detail in later posts, but just to get things going, I'll share one of the first tools I made here at the shop.

Moonlight wooden mallet

Check out the wooden mallet; as I said, its one of the first tools I made here at the shop, and I use it for working chisels, and for setting the wedges in my wedge vice--more on the wedge vices later--the head is maple, and the handle is birch. I split the pieces out of firewood I had in the yard.

The head was sawn into three sections, and the center section was cut to remove a wedge shape to support the handle, and then the pieces were glued back together. The handle was shaped and then I added two cuts into the top, slid it into the head, and then added mahogany wedges to expand the handle to fit the wedge shaped recess in the head.

The decorations on the head featuring my initials, were chip carved in with a knife, and then I oiled the entire mallet with walnut oil. Walnut oil makes a great finish, because it penetrates and brings out the grain, but unlike other oils such as mineral oil or olive oil, walnut oil dries. I know boiled linseed oil dries, but that's because chemical and metallic drier are often added. Raw linseed oil will dry eventually, but it takes a long time, and gets tacky in the interim.

If you have any ideas about what I should add here, or what I should try in the shop, or if you just want to say hi, please leave a comment, here or anywhere else around here, and I'll find it.

UPDATE: The mallet post seems to get a lot of hits, so I put together a sketch of the way its put together. Click on the image to blow it up (that's true for all of the images) and if you think it would be helpful for me to post the sketchup model, let me know and I will.

SketchUp model of mallet construction. Let me know if I should post the model