Craftsmanship in Wood

Hi all,

Life intervened and I had to take a break from the current joinery project for a bit. Getting back into things now, I warmed up with work on an ongoing project: a larger Japanese planing board, which incorporates some Western workholding elements. Here, with one of two planing stops finished and installed, visible at the left:
The height adustable planing stops are inspired by those on a smaller planing board used by Kiyoto Takana, a Japanese luthier, in some of his videos. You can just make out some of the layout marks for the second stop, in line with the first, on the far side of the board.

The board is laminated doug fir, about 12 3/4" x 70", with 3/4" dog holes and a Veritas inset vise in line with the left planing stop. The feet and stop are hard maple. The male sliding dovetails on the feet were cut with a custom-ground tablesaw blade (14°), which worked wonderfully. The female side was hand-cut using a saw guide with an azebiki and a kataba, cleared by chisel, and finished to depth with a router plane. I can now definitely say that it's time to spring for a (power) router.

I'm really curious how well the hybrid workholding is going to play out. Time will tell...

John,
Looks nice. I had originally thought that holdfasts would bottom out when holding thin stock but realised you only plan to use dogs in the holes.

I built my utilitarian bench a number of years ago and have been mulling a replacement for a while. I have couple of wide, nearly 3in thick planks of doug fir that are quite dry now that will be the top.

It is hard to define one's exact needs in the area of benches. The latest craze of double screw vices, shoulder vices, tail vices and parallel guided leg vices is adding a lot of noise to my thoughts. l have come to the conclusion that many modern work-holding devices are solutions to problems that don't exist. My observations are that people who do professional work on benches use the simplest possible work holding solutions because they work quickly. The video you linked to reinforced that view.

Your east/west fusion will be interesting, let us know how it goes.

Derek

Are you planning to use the board atop the sawhorses, or on the floor?

Chris Hall wrote:Are you planning to use the board atop the sawhorses, or on the floor?

Mostly on sawhorses, but I made it with two feet so that I can use it on the floor should that be useful. I do plan on using holdfasts from time to time, but obviously only when sawhorses. It's heavy enough to be quite solid and not move too easily, but not so heavy that I can't carry it around myself.

Hey John , do you stil like your planing board after almost 2 years ?
I like the hybrid design .

jury wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 09, 2016 11:15 am

Hey John , do you stil like your planing board after almost 2 years ?
I like the hybrid design .

Apologies jury, I only just saw your post. My current take is that the holdfast holes have been quite useful, because the bench has mostly lived on the sawhorses. Holdfasts are quick and useful for workholding in both hand and power tool work. I also use the holdfasts to secure a Moxon vise to the bench for the occasions that’s useful. The end vise is primarily annoying because it interferes with one end of the bench for sawing work. (I seem to recall Chris forecasting that one. A+ grade on that call.) I’m nearly to the point of pulling it and patching, but I’ll wait until the new shop settles down and see how it goes. I’ll admit to a tiny temptation to make the patch a big butterfly key as an obscure, snarky gesture.

In hindsight, the end vise would have been a lot more useful if I’d gone more in the direction of handheld vs. table-based routing for some of my work. But having finally acquired a good cast-iron router table with a nice lift tipped the balance towards using the table for virtually all of that work.