Results 1 to 14 of 14

Thread: New house + dumb luck = my question

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Location
    Wheaton, Illinois
    Posts
    364

    New house + dumb luck = my question

    I have been a lurker here for some time. For the past year I have been house shopping and dreaming of building my bench, restoring and using hand tools, reading wood, and finessing it into furniture. Part 1 is done, I just bought a house.

    The house has a 22x12 family room addition from 1977 that is floor to ceiling 6" wide by 1" aromatic cedar (the dumb luck part), which may sound nice but its not.
    The previous owners coated the walls with polyurethane; they are dark and the original planer marks are visible in the finish. I was not even aware they were cedar until I found the blueprints which specified the wood as aromatic cedar. No trace of the original scent until the wood is cut or sanded.

    I am pulling down all the cedar, unfortunately the tongue and groove are splitting in the process. I intend to recycle the cedar to make shelves for the linen and bedroom closets and possibly line all the bedroom closets with cedar too.

    This is my first house, dads shop is a few hundred miles away, and I have little budget and no machines. Under these circumstances I think my best solution would be to buy a tongue and groove plane for this project.

    I have other planes - 1, 3, 4, 5, 605, 6, 7. This might be a nice "all hand tool project". Granted, I do not use the #1

    I imagine I can:
    Remove tongue/groove with jointer plane.
    Remove finish with scraper or scraper plane - I may know where a scraper plane is.
    Then get a tongue and groove plane - there lays the question.

    Should I spring for a Lie-Nielson #49 or try to save money and get a Stanley #49 and hope it is in decent shape?
    I can easily justify the Lie-Nielson purchase but wonder if a Stanley in really nice shape is comparable at half the cost?
    Are there other tongue and groove plans I should consider?

    The House will eventually have a shop:
    - I intend to put machines in the heated/cooled attached garage and roll them out when needed.
    - I reserve the basement area for hand tools only. A quiet space for civilized working; dust outside, chips inside.

    Side question. Are Maple Bowling Alley lanes considered a good surface for a work bench? They are 2.5" thick and nearly 40" wide. I recently saw somebody advertising lanes cut to length. I am cheating myself out of the joy of building my own bench top if I do this.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Tallahassee, FL
    Posts
    722
    You certainly can't go wrong with the Lie-Nielsen. They will have corrected a lot of the deficiencies present in the Stanley version (especially the blade).
    You might want to check on the real story of that bowling lane. We had a good amount of it in the last shop I worked in. It was some sort of high density particleboard like material with something similar to maple laminate on top and was only about 5/8" thick. It was certainly durable and hard. We used it to make a big outfeed table for the table saw. Maybe what you found is older stuff and would be more appropriately suited for a bench top. If it were me and I could afford it, I would get two slabs and glue them together for a 5" benchtop.

  3. #3
    I don't know what finished thickness you're looking for with a T&G plane, but if the boards are close to an inch thick and you're not going to do much to reduce that, I think you'd be best off with the stanley 48. I've had three stanley T&G planes, and all of them work exactly the way they're supposed to with the only extra challenge being that you need to adjust the depth of each iron independently.

    The fence mechanisms and accuracy in the stanley planes are just fine, though.

  4. #4
    They are picky about the quality of bowling stuff.If its a price lower than you can build it for ,sounds good .See if they will leave on one of the "tool gutters". When I built my bench,years ago ,I went to a lot of trouble to find beech.Its always mentioned in the ads as the 'traditional' wood for that purpose. Now,having used it and read about it ,I think woodworkers used it for tops just because they didn't want to use anything expensive. Incidentaly,the guy I bought the beech from had tried to sell it to a beer company that used to mention beechwood in all their ads . They told him its just used in the ads.

  5. #5
    I just picked up a bunch of maple from a demoe'd bowling alley. Only the first 8' or so is maple, after that it's yellow pine untill you get to where the pins sit. The slabs I got are from the first 8'. They're 2" thick, solid maple, but they're not glued up real well, and there's lots of metal in them. It looks like they put 5 or 6 boards together with a long nail, then added a few more, and kept going like that untill they got to full width.
    Is it nice enough for a workbench top? You betcha! Just do your initial cutting with a skilsaw, that way if you hit metal, you don't ruin an expensive table saw blade.
    I'm going to use mine for kitchen counters and try to remove the poly but leave the arrows and dots.
    Sorry, I can't help you with your t&g plane dilema.
    Paul

  6. #6
    The #48 is designed center on 7/8" stock. It will work 3/4" to 1 1/4". The #49 is designed 1/2" thick stock. It will work 3/8" to 3/4". The Lie-Nielsen is designed for 3/4" center. I don't know what your panelling is. Cedar closet lining is usually 3/8 X 4". Your's may be thicker if it is 6".
    I found stripping finish with a scraper a real pain. The scraper dulls quickly. If you are using the cedar as shelves or closet lining, what about flipping it over. Place the finish to the wall and lightly sand the cedar to bring out the smell.
    Some people develop allergies to cedar after a lot of exposure to the dust. Just something to keep in mind in case you or someone in the house is one of them.
    Good luck with the house. Happy homeowning.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Location
    South Coastal Massachusetts
    Posts
    6,824
    If the bowling alley section runs lengthwise across your bench - cut to the chase.
    There's nothing glamorous about laminating lumber.

    I also recommend buying your lumber milled to near your final dimension.
    Some enjoy those steps, but it's "talking monkey" work to me.

    Hours spent making your tools are deducted from hours making furniture.

    To repeat - if the bowling alley section runs "East - West" on your long axis,
    and it's near the price of raw lumber, your miles ahead.

    One caveat - I made a bench top with this stuff, once. There are often corrugated metal fasteners embedded in the top.
    Inspect an end to see if there are any exposed. These will dull a drill bit, quickly.
    Attached Images Attached Images

  8. #8
    IMHO, I wouldn't do anything just yet...save the project energy for the 2 dozen things you'll actually have to do to get your new house going. I've moved a lot in the last 15 years....almost certainly more than most....and have probably bought and sold more houses in that time than most do in a lifetime, so I speak from experience here. The first year or two is typically full of fixing all the stuff that the last owner let go ("I'll get to it next year"). You'll undoubtedly leave a lot of "next year" projects behind for the next guy.

    Anyhow, in the meantime, I would ask a local yard/mill what it would cost to clean up the boards, rip them to remove the T&G on the ones that need it, and redo the T&G. It's just not that much work when you have 3 or 4 guys running stuff assembly line style through the various machines. You may be surprised how cheap it is.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Location
    Centralia, WA
    Posts
    175
    Cleaning up the cedar is basically grunt work especially in the quantity that you plan on doing. Probably sacrilege in this forum but you would be ahead to buy a decent quality used table saw and a dado blade to redo the tongue and grooves. A cheap lunchbox planer wouldn't be a bad idea for initial cleanup of the old finish. Follow up by hand just to remove the planer marks. Save the hand work for where it matters.
    Rodney

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Location
    Wheaton, Illinois
    Posts
    364
    Cedar and planes,

    @ Casey Gooding,
    - I figured the Lie-Nielson would be a no-gamble purchase; it is going to be great without any fiddling.

    @ David Weaver,
    Already covered but for anybody who finds this thread in a search. Stanley #48 is best for wood over 3/4" thickness. Stanley #49 is best for wood 3/8"-3/4" thick. Same can be said for Lie-Nielson.

    @ John Collocia,
    I hear ya in regard to the house. Fortunately I do not have endless amounts of work ahead of me. The original owners were there for 49 years and took great care of it, everything is just updates at my leasure.
    Only major projects I have to make things livable are:
    - Refinishing 900 sq ft of oak floor (done this weekend with help from professional flooring friend).
    - New kitchen floor (subfloor will be laid this weekend and I will install cork when available).
    - Replacing cedar wall with drywall (will be done by end of next week)

    As for taking things to a mill, I have a hard time paying people to do things I can do myself. I will look into that as an option. It never occurs to me to pay people to do something I could do myself, unless it is a roof. I will pay somebody to put the roof on.

    @ Rodney Walker
    Table Saw and Planer are not in the budget right now. Those will be a year or two out unless I have some sort of windfall.

    I'm not sure how I am going to proceed with the wood, there really is no hurry. I will pick up a #49, if for no other reason that I WANT IT, though it may be a Lie-Nielson instead of Stanley. I will get a Stanley #48, they are cheap enough used that I can gamble on getting a good one.

    Measured last night, wood would be a full 5" wide after removing tongue & groove and is currently 3/4" exactly.

    About the Bench (Bowling Alley)
    @ Casey, Paul, Michael, & Jim
    - I think I will back away from the bowling lanes. In reality, I really dont have time to mess with a bench right now nor a way to transport an 8' section a couple hundred miles.

    It seems like it would be a real pain and nearly impossible to build a proper bench without some sort of initial bench to work from, otherwise I would be trying to work on the ground. The solution is to make a torsion box and a few very nice saw horses. I can cut up loads of wood while back home over the holidays and assemble when I get back here.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Dale Murray View Post
    It seems like it would be a real pain and nearly impossible to build a proper bench without some sort of initial bench to work from, otherwise I would be trying to work on the ground. The solution is to make a torsion box and a few very nice saw horses. I can cut up loads of wood while back home over the holidays and assemble when I get back here.
    You could do something as simple as building the base for your next bench and temporarily affixing an interior door to it. If you can hand plane, though, building a bench without having one already isn't really that much trouble. Get your top glued together reasonably close to flat, a little overthickness, and then just plane it flat and to final dimension.

    A solid core interior door (even if it was something you found at a home materials recycling place) would make it more accurate to start, though.

    When we built RC airplanes as kids, kids don't have money of course and you could build very nice and accurate .40 or .60 sized wing on a $20 hollow interior door.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Jackson, TN
    Posts
    130
    Tongue and groove planes are fine and a good thing to have if you need them, but if I were you I wouldn't try and make these boards T&G again. The wood is very dry and will likely have a tendency to splinter even more than when it was installed. Instead, I would make them ship lap if you want to make sure you have no gaps. I don't think you even need that for the shelves, but you might want it for the walls if you decide to take whatever is on the walls now out of there.

    I would also stay away from a torsion box unless you just want it later for an assembly table. A solid core door would have the advantage of having a bit of weight to it and you could use holdfasts and dogs in it easily. You could also do a Nicholson style bench with minimal planing. It would get you going without the difficulty of laminating a top.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    North Eastern West Virginia
    Posts
    104
    I was able to get a couple of 40" to 60" slabs of bowling alley lane. I wouldn't want to have to move a 8' section of it considering how heavy the shorter chunks were. The maple is good quality but in use in the lane it is almost unrecoverable in my opinion. Long HARD groved nails about every 6" and I found them driven through every layer and then another layer was nailed to that. Almost impossible to find a spot to cut or drill without hitting them. The lams are then hot sealed to each other with an injection system I guess. It ends up having a joint of semi brittle filler between the layers. I was able to salvage some 40" strips by pulling the nails ( ugh ) and splitting the lams. A heat gun allows the removal of the sealer gunk.
    A lot of work...what ever you do with it.
    JR

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Longview WA
    Posts
    27,347
    Blog Entries
    1
    For T&G it works fine for me to use a Stanley 45 with the appropriate blades.

    The #48 & #49 are good planes for doing one thing well. The #45 can do a lot of things well.

    Just my 2¢ Two Cents.jpg.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •