A few odd jobs around the place

Following up on the last blog post, I found a whole lot of photos which I had taken but forgotten to upload to Google Photos. There is a short comment on each one by way of description.

OSB box for the concrete foundation

The concrete foundation finished (65x65cm)

The position of the concrete foundation on the west side of the house

The finished floor (with step)

After painting the same colour as the workshop floor

The other thing that I was busy doing was tidying up the workshop. To get this done on some kind of a permanent basis, I needed storage solutions. Due to lack of those, everything was left on top of a single shelf, or on the floor. I decided to go with a tool wall. To do this I cut MDF board and screwed it to the wall. This was easier said that done because the wall itself was gas blocks. It was easy to drill the holes but it wasn't easy for the screws to get a grip. After a bit of manoeuvring and filling, I managed to get a secure fit. What you can see on the picture to the left is the boards already fixed to the wall. There are four red screw storage boxes attached on rails already. I have another three rows of two smaller boxes and two rows of big boxes ready to go in. That will fill up the space to the left of the steel support. On the right I'm getting ready fixings for saws, bits and chisels.

To make the fixing for the chisels, I used offcuts from the MDF boards. There are nine chisels at the moment, and I decided to leave room for twelve altogether. If I need more, I can make up another fixing fairly quickly. The chisel fixing was actually simple to make. A 15mm forstner bit for the holes and that a quick touch with the table saw for the slots. The only complication was the chunky chisel. The steel shaft was way to thick. The solution was a less secure fixing for it. It won't fall out without a lot of encouragement but it is nowhere near as secure as the rest of the slots. It isn't fixed to the wall yet. I used my new dowel tool (the dark grey and green tool to the top left of the workbench) to attach another bit of MDF as an angle to the chisel holder. Once the glue is dry I can screw it directly to the wall.

Another thing I got done was a drawer for my workbench. I was always looking for things like the small square, the calipers and pencils. That probably has to do with the lack of a working tool wall, but things like the pencils and the small square are used so much, it probably makes sense to keep them in the workbench anyway. I got the plywood from Holz Balk in Vilsbiburg. The sides are 16mm ply and the bottom is poplar plywood, 5mm thick. Once I had everything cut to length, I cut 5mm slots towards the bottom of all the sides. The bottom of the drawer ran nicely into those. The drawer sides are dowelled and glued together. It seems to be a fairly good fit overall. Since taking the picture on the left, the drawer got a coat of linseed oil. It now looks much the same as the rest of the workbench. It sticks a bit when opening or closing, so I'll have to find some way of dealing with the tracking.

Quick update

 It's been awhile since I posted anything. That's not because nothing was done, but rather because nothing was finished. At the start of February I thought I'd get the bathroom floor done downstairs. The aim was to have a solid floor put in, so I can then move the washing machine from the bathroom upstairs to the bathroom downstairs. I can also install a dryer there - I already planned the electrics to take care of that.

I thought I'd pull out the tiles on the floor (it was only half tiled anyway) and then level everything with self-levelling compound. As usual, nothing went as planned. The floor under the tiles was anything but level and it was pocked and cracked in multiple places. I went for the nuclear option and ripped it out. Like in the workshop, the concrete floor was actually just a thin layer on top of bricks, so it was easy to get rid of.

I dug down into the clay and installed a layer of 8cm Geotherm insulation. You can see in the picture to the left that there is a bit of concrete left over in the corner. I didn't want to kango that out because there are water pipes in it and because it is also the foundation of the walls. The concrete is so hard and so deep that I'd almost definitely shake the walls up too much (gas concrete walls) and end up having to rebuild them too. Instead, I'll put the wash machine over there.

Other than the bathroom, I also had to get moving on the heating. I had to figure out where to pour the concrete foundation for the chimney outside. The plumber had already marked a circle on the wall inside, where the chimney would go out through the wall. With the laser it was easy to transfer the vertical height of the centre of the circle to the outside. By measuring back from the window and then out from the window on the outside, it was easy to get the horizontal position on the wall and thus the exact centre of the circle. With the laser, it was then easy to see where the chimney would end up on the wall.

In the picture on the right it looks like the laser is a bit near the top window. In reality it still is a good 40cm from it. The chimney will have to be 10cm out from the wall. This is because it has to be at least 5cm from combustible material. Where the wall meets the roof overhang there is a beam right at the wall, that runs about 5cm outside the wall. I have to go 5cm out from that, so 10cm out from the wall. This means that the chimney might be just visible to the right of the big window, but only if you look from the very left of the room at the most acute angle possible. I can live with that.

Building a router table (continued)

Routing the rebate to hold the Dibond plates

At the end of the last post I was about to put the centrepiece of the router table together, so I could fix the router up to it and start routing. Well, that didn't go so well, for a number of reasons. First, I had to rebate the table itself so as to make space for the 8mm Dibond plates I had stuck together (yes, it is Dibond, not Dieboldt). After setting up guides for the router, that went fairly well. It took ages though, as the router was hard to control when cutting 8mm in one go. I got it done eventually, without too many mistakes. After that I had to cut out a round hole in the rebate itself, so as to be able to get thr router up as near to the top of the table as possible (otherwise I would lose 20mm height if I just fixed the router to the bottom of the tabletop itself.

The router is fixed (it is possible to raise the bit up way more)

Once everything was cut, it was time to fit the Dibond plates and make sure they are absolutely flush with the top of the table. This actually worked out better than I thought. A little bit of chisel work around the corners and the plates fitted perfectly. This was about the last thing that worked easily though. I bought the right screws from Liebl in Taufkirchen. These are sinkhead bolts which are coutersunk into the Dibond plates, so the surface of the table is smooth. Countersinking without the right bits is a mess though, especially in Dibond, where you cut up the plastic in the middle of the sandwich too much. After a while I was able to fix the router vertically and securely and was able to the first routing work with the fence I had made. It worked out quite well - give or take for the chipping (which you would have against the grain anyway). I wasn't altogether happy with the overall setup though, especially because it takes ages to get the router into position.

I decided to take another stab at it. The changes are that I bought a new router - a fairly cheap one from Lidl - to sit permanently in the routing table. The Lidl router is solid enough but it doesn't have the features the Bosch has. That doesn't matter though, because it is never going to be used outside the routing table. As well as that, I'm going to put legs on the table. I originally planned on clamping it to the workbench, but that is neither practical, nor is it secure. The clamps get in the way of the sliding fence, and the weight of the router tends to pull the table off square to the workbench as well.

One last thing I got done today was a mortise for the angle slide. I decided to cut the same mortise as I have on the table saw so I can use the same angle slide as I have on it. It has a bit of strange dimension, so rather than adding an aluminium slide (which I couldn't find anyway for the Bosch guide), I just cut straight into the chipboard, like I did for the guide rails for the fence. The chipboard is really compact and heavy, so it will hopefully keep its form. Now I'll give it a rest for a day or too until the new Dibond plate comes as well as the router itself.

One last thing I needed to do was make sure the fence runs parallel. I had originally routed four slots into the board. The aluminium tracks were on the bottom of the fence. The issue was that either not all four tracks were perfectly parallel or not all of the slots. It might only be a millimetre, but it was causing the fence to stick. I was thinking of leaving it but that would mean that every time I had to move the fence I'd be stuck with the problem. Better to get it right for once and for all. I solved it by fixing two more pieces of board to the outside of the table. Luckily, I cut that perfectly square (even though I didn't think I had to). After checking again with the big square, I decided to go for it. The fit is quite tight, but it slides ok-ish. I might sand the outsides of the fence a bit to make the fit better.

Building a router table

Router table with fence. Router insert not done yet

One of the things I wanted to get done quickly was to build a box for my circular saw. There are various box systems that you can buy. Makita has one, Festool has one and Bosch Professional have one (the blue Bosch). The green Bosch (DIY) don't seem to have anything for circular saws. You buy the saw and it comes in a cardboard box. You can't really take it anywhere. Given that the saw also has a guide, various blades and assorted bits and pieces, a box seemed a good idea.

The first thing that I got was 6mm plywood. That is strong enough to easily  hold the saw and any bits and pieces as wells. 6mm is not enough for dowels and screws though, so I decided to go with finger joints. They are strong as hell and in a different league to dowels and screws anyway.

Had to improvise a bit to get the router to cut circles

Plus I wanted to try out a couple of techniques to see which would give me the best joints. In Youtube there are a whole load of videos of americans cutting finger joints with dado blades. Easiest thing in the world - you can build a jig for it in minutes and get straight to making box joints. The only issue is that you are completely at the mercy of your dado blade. Your joint has to be the width of the dado blade. As well as that, dado blades are banned here - at least in the industrial carpentry, but because there is no market for them professionally, there is also no DIY market for them. The next best thing is a table for a router where you can turn the router upside down.

I started off with a chipboard wardrobe door that I found.It was coated in some kind of hard plastic lacque, which means that anything at all would slide across it easily without resistance. I cut it to length on the table saw. The next thing I needed was a fence. This is particularly useful for running long pieces of timber through - e.g. cutting a profile for skirting boards. I decided to let the fence run in four grooves. I put aluminium runners in the outer grooves. Threaded bars in the fence reach down into the profiles. With wing nuts you can tighten the fence down to the profiles so it can't move. I originally throught that that would be enough but there was too much play. I cut two more grooves parallel to the outer ones, towards the middle. On the underside of the fence I stuck pieces of the aluminium profile. They run in the corresponding grooves and keep the whole construction parallel.

A circle cut out of one of the Dieboldplatten with the router

At the moment I am busy trying to figure out how to actually fix the router to the bottom of the table. Obviously, I can't just screw it to the bottom of the chipboard table, because it is 20mm thick. With the router blade just hanging in to the router (which is highly dangerous), that would let me cut at the most about 5mm above the table (25mm total) and that wouldn't be worth the effort. So the objective was to find something as stiff as possible and as thin as possible. The answer is Dieboldplatten. These are sandwiches made of 2mm aluminium, 4mm plastic and then another 2mm aluminium. I stuck two of these together, giving me 10mm total. It is stiff as hell. Tomorrow I'm going to cut down 10mm into the chipboard so to rebate the Dieboldplatte. After that I'll still need to figure out how to safely fix the router to the Dieboldplatte.

Two Dieboldplatten stuck together

Building a workbench Part 2

Yesterday and today I got most of the workbench finished. The last time I wrote about the workbench I had the frame almost made (I had run out of threaded bar) and I had nothing at all done with the top. Also, I had no vise. Finding a normal woodworking vise wasn't all that easy. There is a lot of far eastern cheap stuff on the market, where the vise doesn't close properly or where you can't really expect it to last more that a few years at the most. I finally find what I was looking for on a website for carpenters. The vise is cast iron and built in the Czech Republic, using an english design.

On the same website that I found the vise on, I also found some bench dogs. These come from Canada, from a company called Veritas. They are really good. The issue was that they are 3/4, so I had to find a way of boring 3/4 inch holes. All of the bits in Germany seem to be metric. 20mm is too big - the dogs would fall through. I ended up getting a 19mm bit from Famag. They are about three times more expensive than their nearest competitor but after drilling one hole it is obvious why. They bore perfect holes, carry the dust and shavings easily upwards and don't get hot. Plus they are easy to sharpen. Anyway, I bored six holes near the vise, so it should be easy to plane on top of the table (using the dogs as stops) or to hold timber steady. I also bored horizontal holes in the frame to store the dogs when they are not in use.

Bench dogs in action

Bench dogs when not in action

Building a workbench

Laying out the parts

It's hard to get anything done without a workbench. You can have as many machines as you want, but if you end up trying to piece things together on the floor, you'll get nothing done. Plus, anything you try to get done will get dirty and scratched and you end up sanding and waxing more often that you plan. Before I go making bookshelves for Sandra's gallery office, I absolutely have to have a workbench. Which is why I decided to get working on one. I got the timber from Stuckenberger. It is all building quality timber - nothing fancy. The leg posts are 95x95mm and the stretchers are 50x100mm. The top of the table is a three layer carpenter's panel, which should be sturdy enough for anything I'd be doing. It's over an inch thick.

Stuckenberger cut the timber to length and squared it on his table saw. To get going, I had to cut grooves along inside of the long stretchers and in the bottom of the short ones. The idea is that threaded bars run along inside the stretchers, through the leg posts and pull the whole construction together. It should also be easy to pull it tighter if, over time, it loosens up. One thing I learned when doing this is that a router is not the right tool for cutting long neat grooves. The table saw wins that hands down. It's easy to set the fence so as to cut the left and right side of the grooves, then slightly shift the fence so the blade cuts the rest of the groove.

Dowels centre and position the stretchers on the leg posts. I used a drill press to cut decent holes in the timber, big enough to let the threaded bars through and on the outside wide enough to be able to screw a nut onto the bar and pull it tight. Once I had all the holes drilled (took longer than planned) it was relatively easy to get the frame set up. One stupid thing I did was to forget that I needed threaded bars for the bottom stretchers too, so I had to call it a day. I'll see about getting more bar tomorrow and get the frame finished. Then I have to sand and wax the top. I'm still not sure how I'm going to fix the top to the frame. Plus, I have to source a proper vise as well.

Crosscut Sled

After all the effort that went into putting in a floor, it was finally time to benefit from the work. At some stage in September, I bought a table saw. It is a Bosch PTS10 and it came with a relatively lightweight frame to put it on. The green coloured Bosch line are for DIY enthusiasts etc, not really for professional use (the equivalent Bosch GTS10 - the blue line - is almost three times as expensive). While the saw is very solid and has a relatively powerful 1500W motor, you can see where they cut costs. The top of the saw - the flat surface that the timber is actually cut on - can't be adjusted. At least, I can't see how it can be adjusted. I measured to check how parallel the blade is to the fence that came with the saw and it is acceptable. The saw has an attachment for a vacuum cleaner. I need to figure out how I can set up a master/slave combination where the vacuum cleaner comes on automatically when I turn on the saw (and turns off when the saw goes off).

Setting up the fence at exactly 90° to the blade

After looking at videos on Youtube (e.g. the WoodWhisperer), it seems that for accurate joinery, almost all of the time cross cut sleds were used. The beauty of a cross cut sled is that you can assemble a jig that will cut 100% perfect square lines irrespective of the table saw setup. The blade could be well off 90° to the table saw fence, but when you assemble the cross cut sled, you can set it up square. For my saw I needed a coated sheet of plywood about 80cm x 70cm (it hangs over the left side of the saw by about 15cm - this is deliberate). I also needed two runners. These fit into the slots on the table (the slots that the angle fence usually runs in) and keep the sled running in one plane. Finally, on each side of the sled I needed fences. Only one fence (the one nearest to the operator) is critical - it absolutely has to be dead on, as the timber you cut registers against it and it must be at 90° to the blade. I was thinking of going to the building supplier for the materials but it turned out Stuckenberger had everything and he even cut the timber with his table saw (completely different league).

After clamping the fences, I pre-bored the screw holes and countersunk them as well - otherwise the screw heads would catch on the table. It worked out fairly well. To cut the slot that the saw blade actually travels in, you have to first drop the blade below the table, then turn the saw on and raise the blade up slowly. Given the length of the fences (particularly the important one between the operator and the blade), it should theoretically be possible to get very square cuts. Once the second fence was installed, I tested it with a two metre long piece of timber. Usually, you'd have no chance of crosscutting a piece like that. It would be impossible to hold the piece square to the blade - and if it moved (which it very likely would) you could get a savage back kick from the saw. With the crosscut sled, I clamped the timber against the fence and cut it with no problem whatsoever. You might not be able to see from the photo, but the cut is absolutely, perfectly square. That beats having to set up a circular saw with a guide.

Here's the sled set up to cut a long piece of timber across the grain