Si600

My workshop is in the cellar if that makes you feel better. The way the land falls means that I have some natural light from a small window and a door out into the garden, which may not help of course 😉

Apropos this. I've also been distracted by having to fit a mortice lock in the garden gate. I've just got to the handle to find that the square bar is too big for the hole in the lock body. Ho hum. More bench may happen later. It's proper hot though. 28 (82.4 for Americans and old people) according to the thermometer thing.

I have done stuff, honest. It's mostly revolved around getting the workshop reorganised. The bench drill now has its own table for instance. What I have managed to do is cut out the middle slot. Fig. 1 It's a bit of a mess to be honest. I didn't do very well reading the grain in places so I've dipped below my lines. Planing it got rid of the worst of it, but it's not great. I cut the middle one off to make the hole for the screw, and made a housing dado in one of the others. The first outing for my new toy: a router plane.

Was Mrs Jr1515 out today, or does she know you're in danger of scratching the best dining table?

I deliberately cut it 5mm oversized just for wiggle room with the planing

Black tapewounds. You'd never find them though 😉

I'd use a well sharpened chisel and pare it off carefully.

I'm baaaaack! The first two pictures are me showing off. Obviously everyone else can hand plane a square face on a bit of wood, but I'm new enough to it to still be pleased by it, so tough! So having learnt from doing the legs that cutting the slot for the scissor mechanism after you've glued the leg blank is a pain in the derriere I'm doing them before applying any glue. I've screwed the strips together and once it's ready I'll use one of the strips as a template and drill for dowels. I don't think it'll need them, something else will break before the chop gets anywhere near it's limit. Hacking the hole out. I cut the ends and then a series of slots for splitting into. I'm not sure why they all lean though, I thought I was being careful with the saw. The end ones are fine, which are the important ones. I also went shopping to increase my tool stable. 4 chisels from vintagetoolshop.com, they look like they've been used to open paint tins or something, they're all rounded off and a router plane from eBay.

Black fret markers on a black fretboard.

I R confuddled. Purfling? What, how, where and other adjectives. You've lost me on the plectrum shaped sound hole and what colour, or even what component goes where.

I dragged myself back into the cellar to make a start on the chop. It's middle is going to be 5 lengths of 18 x 60 x X mm. I've been putting it off because it's hand cutting and I'm lazy. It's a case of cut a strip, true up the edge of the big board and cut the next. I managed to remember that the middle mortice thing needs to be done before gluing so here it is marked out ready to be done. It's the weekly family Skype call now, so you'll have to wait a bit for any more progress.

Not for long if you were crucified upside down.

I've just seen I've got 8 followers! Are you all mad, or desperate for something to read? @Richard R is correct about the name being wrong, and has fortunately saved me from having to explain how it works. 😉 I didn't know about the different ways of crucifying saints either. Name wise, it seems to have come from a book called The Amateur Carpenter and Builder from c1900 which has a diagram in it labeled. "Fig. 243. Croix de St. Pierre" and it's been run with ever since. I'll call it a scissor mechanism from now on 😉

Oh, and to steal a quote from the doyen of Build Diaries, this is how I'm doing it. It doesn't necessarily follow that this is a) the right way, b) the only way, or c) it'll ultimately even work.

Making a set of legs: A critique. Today I R put the legs on the bench. Points in no particular order. 1) It's solid AF. I can't make it rack front to back, side to side is a bit sloppier. 2) It's as near square as dammit lengthwise. Vertically from the bench top not so much unfortunately. 3) The individual sets of two laminations are four square, which I'm very happy with. As full units they're not great, the back leg in particular is very out on the cut dimension. 4) It's a little short as @samhay points out above. I had always planned to make it the same size as the bench top excluding the edging, but why, I don't know. There's no reason to have done that, except, and this is in hindsight rather that being planned, it can have a removable fixed jaw plate which can be swapped if it gets tatty. Saves having to repair the leg proper, but I've only just thought of it. In general, I'm happy with what I've made. Yes, more care could have been taken, more thought should certainly have gone into it but I've learnt a lot and I've enjoyed doing it. The next step is cutting the chop, no idea why it's called that, and making the cross. Again, as pointed out above, Benchcrafted crosses, although nice, are shockingly expensive. I have seen a guy who uses a sliding thing at the bottom, like a peg board but with a length of bicycle chain as a mechanism. http://ancorayachtservice.com/?page_id=196 Here is my St. Peter's Cross...... It's a length of 20mm square mild that my brother in law had in stock behind his workshop.

I heard that he made them out of the bones of pixies and glued them together with rendered fairy wings.

It's got legs, it knows how to use them... Well sort of. The nut has been fitted, I don't think that the face is actually square, but I'm not sure I can get it out now either. All cut to length, not cut brilliantly unfortunately, but hooray for planes. Being blockboard the end grain is all over the place so it's a bit of a pig. Screw fitted for test and a trial fit to make sure that the bolt holes in the top plate actually line up. From the end. The astute amongst you will notice that the front leg doesn't actually touch the floor. This is deliberate. The floor isn't level, I considered making the legs to fit, but then decided that if I end up moving it, which once we change our heating system and the big brown 5000 litre oil tank goes, I may very well do, having legs that only fit one spot of floor is a bit restrictive! It's currently upside down on the bench being varnished.

Want.

So plays just as well but you don't mind gigging it 😉 My dad's got a Mitutoyo one, it must be 20 years old by now.

Interesting that the price difference between the gold standard and a near as dammit identical performer is £100. When was that published?

I was thinking that I might dowel them anyway once I'm done just to really over engineer it against it racking. I'll dowel the other half and see how that goes.

More has happened. Will the horror never end I hear you cry. First up, a little tidying up on the front leg, chamfering the edges, squaring off the foot and so on. The foot is going to have a filler before it's finished. Today I've added the first half of the back leg. I don't glue both sides on at once simply because they move so much. The little clamps doing nothing are end stops so I know that the legs are parallel. The only way I could think to do it was running a tape measure alongside a square to ensure that the outside dimension was the same top and bottom. Then it's just a case of getting glue on it and squeezing it up. Of course, the thing moved despite the stops, any tips on how to avoid that happening? Less glue, screw it together?

I had to cut the silk off of the b string on the flats I've just fitted, it wouldn't go through either the hole in the bridge or the hole in the body. All the others were fine.

Just a couple of pictures to demonstrate how far I've got. If anyone cares my entire tool kit for doing this is generic DIY shed hardpoint handsaw, 350mm tenon saw and 20mm chisel. A Record no. 5 and Stanley no. 60 planes and my luxury, (sounds like desert island discs) a Starrett combination square. The supervisor came down to check up on progress. Obviously now I've posted the pictures even I can see a set square, steel rule, marking knife and big rubber mallet which are also in my tool set!

LEDs as face dots as well? *runs away and hides*