Mother's Day Jewellery Box - Truing the laminated stock

Recently, I managed to get my Record No. 4 plane up and running. Will do another post on that specifically. It took a while though. For a beginner, it was quite an interesting learning curve. Anyway, after the glue-up, I now had the boards for the front, back and two sides of my box laminated.

The resultant laminated boards from the glue-up.

Using a straight-edge, a combination square in my case, I checked the boards for cup, hollow and twist. The boards were found to be acceptable as were. The only thing which needed to be planed were the ridges left from the lamination process. The boards were put on my bench and held against a couple of bench-dogs which I made from a broomstick I rescued. I quickly found that my bench was not suitable for planing work. It was too light and had a tendency to topple over. I had to secure it against the wall before I could start planing work. Note to myself - You really really need a proper bench.

The set-up before planing the boards.

The picture above shows the set-up. Notice the purple rag at the far edge of the bench. That's to prevent marring the paint on the wall. Also notice the hand-made bench-dogs. The bench-dogs were cut from the broomstick which was sanded with 240-grit sand-paper to remove crud. The cut pieces were held, width-wise up, under the bench holes while I traced the outline of the hole. Using a sharp chisel and home-made bench hook, I then shaved the pieces down to the traced line while intermittently checking for a snug fit. My apologies for the deviation off-topic but thought it may be worth the trip.

Bench supported against wall.

Once the board and the bench were securely positioned, I started taking full-width shavings across the face of the board, along the grain, moving from right to left. This required considerable effort until I eventually retracted the iron a little. I realized then that I was taking way too much off hence the effort required in moving the plane.

It took a little tweaking to get the proper sized shavings. I was aiming for full-width translucent shavings which I could see through. This was supposed to be the ideal shavings expected for a final finish using a smoothing plane. This tweaking I would agree is best done on a test instead of your work piece.

When I ran my fingers across the face of the board, I felt tiny ridges along the length of the board. These were left over when I failed to slightly overlap the plane swipes. Upon rectification, I was amazed at how well the plane cut and the finish it left behind. It was super smooth to the touch and the surface glistened under the room light.

This was only true for the first two boards. The following boards however didn't finish as smooth as I could feel gritty dust-like particles on the boards. There was a mention about Nyatoh timber and high silica content as I recall from a previous post. I finally concluded that the iron must have blunted somewhat but the finish was nonetheless acceptable i.e. shiny smooth. I would like to hear if someone had a similar experience and/or an alternate explanation.

In conclusion, this was an excellent exercise. Lots and lots of learning and loads of experience points earned especially in using hand-planes. To top that off, so much FUN! Truthfully, I am a whole less afraid of planing now and have discovered it to be an invaluable tool in woodworking. Dare I say, it was quite pleasurable too.

Off to cutting joinery now.

Mother's Day Jewellery Box - The Glue-Up

To start this project, I needed wood preferably S4S (Surfaced 4 Sides) as I have no access to tools nor skills required to true and square my own lumber. From memory, I was able to recall a shop which sold what seems to be surfaced wood for woodworking.  I decided to pay this shop a visit.

It turns out this shop, known as Hoctrade Sdn Bhd, carries numerous shapes and sizes of surfaced wood for cabinetry work. Most of their Nyatoh timber stock is however surplus from orders made by customers in advance. This simply meant that one may not find the same shape and size of wood the next visit although an order could be placed for a specific configuration if it is so required. This would be a little more expensive I was told. Despite that Hoctrade is still a haven for beginner level woodworkers like myself. A few visits later, I  had myself a small lumber yard at home of various shapes and sizes.

I decided to make the front, back and sides from 1/2' thick x 2' wide boards glued-up to make 6' wide boards. Also, the 2' wide boards were roughly cut to the individual lengths of the top, bottom and sides before joining instead of attempting to glue 40+' long boards. I had neither the confidence nor enough clamps for the latter task.

Glue-up of the front piece.

Due to the lack of experience, I went ahead and glued-up two 2' wide boards first. After those were dry, I then glued the third piece as shown in the picture above. These steps were repeated for the back and two sides of the box.

The completely glued-up front piece.

I learned from this exercise that a rehearsal, as suggested by numerous other woodworkers, was an absolute necessity. Also, once the two edges were joined, I used my fingers to gauge that the edges were meeting to produce a flush face without minding the glue. This technique was suggested by Christopher Schwarz on either his blog or book. I adjusted the two edges until flush before clamping across the middle. I repeated the same steps before applying clamps across the sides. Only then did I wipe the excess glue off with a damp cloth. After which I clamped over the joined edges to ensure a flush face while the glue sets. These were roughly the steps which I eventually came to while attempting to produce a flush edge-joined board.

The front (left) while the back piece is under clamps.

I would have to agree that one can never have enough clamps but do spend a little more on quality. Its sound investment. A casualty resulted from the glue-up process. These Rolson's were cheaper alternatives to the Irwin clamps bought at Ace Hardware.

Glue-up casualty. Quality does matter.

At the end of the process, I had glued-up all the pieces which I needed for the box. The glued-up edges in all the resultant boards were not as flush as I wanted as I was trying to save myself the effort of planing the boards true. I guess the use of the smoothing plane is inevitable but that would be covered in another post.

The resultant boards after the glue-up.

Notes on Nyatoh timber :

• Foreign sources advice against its use as it is claimed to be irresponsibly harvested. The Malaysian Timber Council however don't seem to have such a stand.
• Warning! Some sites mentioned that certain species of Nyatoh have high silica content which would rapidly blunt cutting edges.

Hand Tools - The Initial First Few

Below are some pictures of hand tools I recently purchased to kick-off learning woodwork. This set was bought some time in February at, now my go to hardware shop here in Kuala Lumpur, See Hup Hardware.  A German made soft-faced hammer and some Irwin Marples chisels seem worth a mention. The owner was too kind as he actually allowed me to go through his stock to find the perfect hammer.
I have since acquired a whole lot of hand tools over the past few months. I'll post more pictures since I actually have a reason to now.

My first few hand tools. The highlight of the lot, a Record No. 4 plane.

I was surprised to find a Record No. 4 smoothing bench plane and better yet, its a "Made in England" variety.

Record No. 4 smoothing bench plane.

You'll see this printed on the box in some of the pictures. Specifically, it says "Made by Record in Sheffield England". I went a little over the edge with the photos and have decided against posting all of these here on the blog. Instead I have compiled an album which you can view here.
Now its time to tune-up the hand plane. After watching hours of videos on hand-plane tuning, I can say this is going to be a lengthy but an exciting process.

Mother's Day Jewellery Box

What better way to kick-off learning woodwork by making something for the person who pretty much made you who you are today. Yes, I am talking about mothers, in particular my mother. Mother's day is around the corner and so I thought of making something special for my mother. Browsing through Pinterest, I found this jewellery box which stood out and caught my attention.

What's even better, after following a trail of links, it brought me to Jeff Greef's woodworking site where this project is available with free plans. The immediate down-side as I was going through the project's site was that the woodworking instructions were for machines. The pun is unintended. But the project is still doable with hand-tools I reckon. Anyway, hand-tools are all I have so far.