The Blogs A Hungry Beast

The blog is a hungry beast, devouring two posts every week. Alas, Im running a bit behind this year. Ive installed a bathroom fan and gotten bit by a stomach bug. Neither is woodworking, but both more time consuming that Id imagined.

Careful marking for the weight holes.

Tonight I did finally get some basic woodworking in. It really only consisted of drilling, but it was with my boys, so it was still quite worth it. With everyone finally feeling better, we got to work on our Pinewood Derby cars. The race is this Saturday, so were cutting it close.
I do have a few good posts in my head and will get back to proper woodworking in the next post or so.
For some proper woodworking right achoice, check out my buddy, Tom. Hes been busy in the shop and alchoices seems to find the time to write about it.

Night, night, Tom.

Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

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On Benchtop Benches

Benchtop Benches provide woodworkers with small, portable benches that have almost as much clamping versatility as a full sized bench while still fitting in a suitcase.

I first noticed the Sjoberg Smart Vise due to its prominent placement in the Rockler catalogue I recently received. The Smart Vise caught my eye because it solves an issue Ive had before and I know many woodworkers have had: How to clamp and work pieces without a proper, formal bench?

This image of the Sjoberg Smart Vise is from Rocklers site.

The Smart Vise is a 14.5” x 14.5” benchtop with a wood jawed vise along one side. There are dog holes in the vise and bench. It even comes with four (4) small bench dogs.

What makes the Smart Vise so interesting is the lip which runs around the sides. By clamping the lip onto any work surface, you mount the Smart Vise and get a small, extremely portable bench to work on.

This notion of a small, clamp-on bench has recently been popularized by Chris Schwarz and his “Milkman’s Workbench”. The Milkman’s Workbench is a small (about 30” x 7”) wooden bench. As is true of the Sjoberg Smart Vise, the Milkman’s Workbench is meant to be portable and simply clamped to a table for use. The original Chris saw accomplished this with fancy wooden clamps built into the bench. In the version Chris built, he used much simpler angle iron and F-style clamps.

Mark Hochsteins Milkmans Workbench. (image from gunpowederwoodworks.com)

Though not designed to be quite as portable as the Smart Vise or Milkman’s Workbench, Jeff Miller’s Benchtop Bench is also in this class of bench - in that it can be put on about any table and used as a bench.

Jeff Millers Benchtop Bench from finewoodworking.com

The difference is that unlike the Smart Vise or Milkman’s Workbench - which are essentially portable benches designed to be transported and used when a standard formal bench isn’t available - Miller’s Benchtop Bench is designed to be used on, and in conjunction with, a formal bench. It’s made to raise the workpiece to a more comfortable height for certain operations, similar to a Moxon Vise. Though the stub legs which give it the added height also make it a bit bulkier than the others, I think it would still work as a portable bench too.

Among these benchtop Benches, I think the biggest deciding factor is “Do you want to build or buy?” If you want to build, you’ll then need to figure out if you want the unique clamping ability of the Milkman’s Workbench or the height and bench surface of Miller’s Benchtop Bench. If you want to buy, then you just need to figure out where to get the Sjoberg Smart Vise (Woodcraft and Amazon seem to be the cheapest).

All three (3) of these benchtop benches provide working bench functionality for anyone without a formal bench or who needs to woodwork on the road. Though I won’t be putting one (1) on my to-do list ahead of the formal bench I still need to build, I think there versatility means one (1) of them will be in my future.If the Milkman’s Workbench has caught your eye, be sure to check out Mark Hochstein’s blog posts about building one himself.

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Updated Woodworking Blogs

Im looking to revamp my website. I loved the HTML 5 goodness of my previous, Dynamic View template. Unfortunately, it had errors displaying the side column info and, more importantly, the comments. Back to my current, traditional Blogger template I moved.
Ive not been the only one changing the look of their blog recently. In Fact, a few others have not just changed, but massively improved their blogs.
Matts Basement WorkshopMatts the Podfather of Woodworkers. Hes been around forever and for good reason. Over that time his site has gone through a number of revisions. Thanks to the success of his recent fundraising campaign (& the generosity of the woodworking community), his brand new site is fantastic - his best yet. It now features much less clutter, a focus on the most recent videos and a much better search.

American Craftsman Workshop

Todd Clippinger is a woodworking machine. He seems to be in his shop 24/7 and his constant encouragement to the community is to get into the shop. Todds a SquareSpace user, and hes recently upgraded to SquareSpace 6. This has brought his site to a new level of navigational ease, content accessibility and UI cleanliness. It also improves Todds content management experience.

Todds in the shop as you read this.

I need a vacations worth of time to work on, change and upgrade my site. When I do, Ill likely go SquareSpace. Until then, I hope you dont mind the current Penultimate Woodshop too much.

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Plow Plane Blade Sharpening

After years of hand woodworking and using hand tools I have become well aware that the variety of blades to have to be sharpened is so broad as to preclude the possession of only one guide for sharpening. Thus, there is no universal guide! I proceeded to own different devices that allow me to securely support most of the blades. For plow blades I prefer to use the Stanley guide. It has the advantage of having a rear support that compensates very well the narrow width of the cutting edge, preventing the device, leaning on one side, could affect to obtain a perfectly square edge, as is appropriate for this kind of  blade. The Stanley guide, however, was designed to sharpen chisels or wide blades. Metal  plow blades are thin and is difficult to tight them enough. To remedy this problem I put a small wedge between the blade and the lower floor of the guide, getting a firm grip, without risk to affect the stability of the system during sharpening action.

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