Last night I processed image files until the wee hours as I waited for word that Mike Siemsen’s new DVD “The Naked Woodworker” was ready in our warehouse. We’re still working out a few little bugs, but it will go up for sale in the store no later than Monday.
Meanwhile, I woke up this morning with crossed eyes – I couldn’t bear to look at a computer screen. So I got a jump on the knockdown Nicholson I’m building this weekend. It’s based loosely on Mike’s design in “The Naked Woodworker,” but it incorporates some knockdown bolts that are both super-easy to install and robust.
Judging from the comments on an earlier post about this bench, there is some confusion about how these work. They aren’t like threaded inserts. I’ll have more details tomorrow or Sunday when I get to that part of the project. I think you’ll see why these tee-nuts are superior to other solutions out there.
I’m not doing everything like Mike does on his DVD, as you can see in the photo above. Mike assembles the legs with screws so you don’t have to have clamps. I have clamps, so I put those to use this afternoon.
So I’m not fully naked. To the great relief of my neighbors.
A common bench-builder’s lament: “My home center stocks terrible dimensional wood. I went to every store in a 20-mile radius and didn’t find a single board.”
This blog entry is my retort to that complaint. I’ve bought dimensional stock in every region in the United States for workbenches, sawbenches or other workshop equipment. I have never walked away empty-handed. Here are my strategies.
1. 2x4s are for suckers. I buy the widest, longest stock my vehicle can carry. Not only is it clearer, as a rule, but it is cheaper per board foot. The last time I bought a 2×4, Ron Reagan was in the White House. Go for the 2x12s or 2x10s – rip out the pieces you need.
2. Know how the store stacks the wood. The front of the pile is always – always – junk. I’ve watched home center employees carefully stock the dirtiest, knottiest, splittiest, warped junk at the front of the pile. Their strategy: To snare a sucker who is in a hurry, doesn’t care or doesn’t know the difference.
I will unpack the entire pile if need be. (And I will stack it back neater than it was when I walked in.) Near the bottom of that pile is gold that has been pressed flat by the bad sticks above it as it dried and waited for a woodworker.
See how the pith is tangent to the face of the board? I like this.Here is the face of that same board. Nice.
3. Look for the pith. Many people will avoid boards that contain the woody sapling in the middle of the board. The pith can cause the board to split, after all. I love these boards that are near or contain the pith. If a small amount of the pith is in the board, the board is going to be quartered or rift-sawn. If you find a clear board with the pith fully enclosed in it (sometimes called a “boxed heart”), grab it and rip the pith out.
Look for tight growth rings. These boards will be denser and more durable.
4. Watch the end grain. I look for slow-growing trees where the bands of earlywood and latewood are close together. These boards will be dense and incredibly strong – even if the boards have a few knots.
The wide bands of dark latewood are a sure sign that this board will weigh a lot more than its neighbors.
My favorite boards have wide bands of the hard latewood and narrow bands of the soft earlywood. These boards are like iron.
5. Grab what’s good. I always have a shopping list for how many linear feet of wood I need to buy, but I always over-buy, especially when I hit a nice vein of clear wood. Earlier this year I was at an Indiana Menard’s with a group of students and we found a bunk of the clearest, straightest, driest yellow pine I’d ever seen at a home center. I said only three words: “Buy it all.”
They did.
Today I bought four 2x12x12’ boards, five 2x8x8’ boards and one 1×10 to make a knockdown Nicholson bench this weekend. I also bought all the bolts, washers and screws I necessary for the project. I have enough material for an 8’ bench and spent $130.
I avoid dealing with large organizations whenever possible, and that is because I am not Chinese.
Somewhere, somehow, some nutjob in the Cincinnati medical community put a note in my file years ago that my preferred language is “Chinese (Mandarin).” While that doesn’t seem like a big deal, it’s a never-ending source of inanity when I go in for a medical test and they hand me forms so they can hire a Chinese translator to be present during the procedure.
This has been going on for years. No matter how many times they delete the reference to Chinese, it keeps resurfacing, even after we switched health insurers.
Exhibit 2: A certain percentage of the times that I fly, I am questioned about why my name on my passport doesn’t match the name on the passenger manifest.
Here’s why the names don’t match: Some computers only allow you to enter 10 characters for your first name. “Christopher” is 11 characters. “Christophe” is 10 letters and is the French version of my given name. Que the cavity search.
So I’m French. Or Chinese.
After many years as passing for an English speaker, I ran into the Chinese problem again today while scheduling a medical test. After going through the whole “you don’t sound Chinese” conversation, she asked me if this test was related to a worker’s compensation claim.
“Yup,” I said. “I was in a rickshaw accident.”
I’ve filed this entry under “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
I’ve built a lot of knockdown workbenches in the last 15 years, but I’ve never been 100-percent happy with my knockdown mechanisms.
The problem: barrel nuts, bedbolts or whatever you want to call the cross-locking nut.
When installed, these things work OK. But installing them so they work smoothly is a lesson in precision down to the gnat’s angstrom. This summer I’ve been noodling a bench design that is inspired by three things.
Mike Siemsen’s Nicholson workbench that he built for “The Naked Woodworker” DVD (coming very soon!) and has been taking to woodworking shows.
2. Planemaker Caleb James’s knockdown version of Mike’s bench, which used hardware found in woodworking jigs. I saw this bench at a Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event in Charleston, S.C.
It was No. 3 that pushed me over the edge. I have vowed to build a 6’ version of this bench this weekend using the surface-mount inserts and 3/8” hex-head bolts. Why are these inserts special? They can be screwed to the wood. Most tee-nuts use simple prongs that grip the wood. And these prongs have all the holding force of a fetal squid.
But these surface-mount inserts should stay put.
I’ll be documenting the build in my driveway and will post photos, a shopping list and several animal similes. And if you live in England, I’ll be teaching a class in building a bench like this for The New English Workshop next July. Peter Follansbee also will be teaching there at the same time (yup, read it here). And other yet-to-be-named people whom I like.
“This was the work of my workshop dog Charlie, a curly retriever x lab. I have to admit this book not only got read by Charlie, but it may have been thrown across the backyard toward him I after I found it sans cover. Not a page loose.”
