I Need More Clamps; Trying Out Miller Dowels

I started assembling the sawbench.  I decided to try Miller Dowels instead of screws.  I thought the toddler would enjoy whacking them in as we built something together, plus shop projects are a good place to try something new.

Almost all of my clamps.

Miller Dowels don’t pull the pieces together like screws would, so you have to clamp everything together before you start drilling.  Construction lumber isn’t very straight or flat, so it took a lot of clamps to get everything in the right place.  The toddler got excited when the clamps came out and brought her tools over and gave everything a whack with a mallet every chance she got.  The hardest part of the whole project was getting everything lined up just right and as soon as I thought I had had it, whack, whack.  If I was a smarter man, I’d have kept the mallet out of sight.

Drilling was pretty straight forward, except that the clamps were in the way, so I had to do it in two steps – the top yesterday and the bottom today.  The rest is really simple, a squirt of glue (I always use too much),

insert dowel,

and drive it home.  I kept everything clamped up overnight to make show the boards didn’t sproing back to their native cupped, twisted, and bowed state and fling the dowels out of their holes.

Miller Dowels are incredibly easy to use, I’ll definitely use them again, but next time I’ll make sure I’m starting with square and flat lumber.  I’m not crazy about the look, so they’ll probably be relegated to places where they won’t be seen.  They seem perfect for places where you’d use a screw and plug; I bought black locust dowels for building patio furniture.

*I still haven’t gotten anyone to compensate me for my tool reviews.

**Tool purchases justified: Miller Dowel kit and a couple more Clamps.

***Shoptunes: Mason Jennings a formerly local folk singer.

Block Plane Shoot Out

My block planes as seen through a smudgy camera lens.

My sawbenches are getting an upgrade.  While I’m content to let shop furnishing languish unfinished, toddler furniture needs to be nice.  So I decided that I’d paint the benches.  Which meant properly cleaning up the end grain, which meant block planes.

I almost never use one, usually a #4 is somewhere on the bench and it’s my go-to plane for trimming.  Anyway, the first plane I dug out of the pile was the Record 60 1/2.  This was the first plane I ever bought, but I never had good luck with it.  The blade seemed sharp and it sliced through the end grain nicely, it worked much better then I remembered.  Curious, I pulled out the ancient Stanley 9 1/2 clone to compare.  It also worked well.  Now, I wanted to know what was best, so I grabbed the Veritas Low Angle for my first ever tool test shoot out.

My planing jig demonstrating my need for a real bench.

To make it fair, I sharpened everything on the P600/P1200/green rouge strop set-up that was still sitting out.  All the planes were all set up with about the same projection and a real tight mouth (less than a 32nd).  I chamfered the ends of the boards, going in from the corners to avoid blow out and went to work on the end grain.  This was followed by a swipe along the edge to remove the planer marks.

They all worked equally well on the first board,leaving a glossy/waxy surface.  The Veritas was the most comfortable, but it was much heavier.  The Record was somewhat uncomfortable to hold, it felt too squat and wide.  After a couple of boards the Record’s edge was toast, it crumpled and was smushing instead of slicing the end grain.  It was tossed back into the tool pile.

I had a hard time picking a winner among the Veritas and the Stanley-clone.  Both left a waxy surface, the Stanley perhaps worked quicker, but I’d assume that was due to slight differences in set-up.  The Veritas also worked better on the edge of the board, it handled the reversing grain by the knots with ease, perhaps due to the additional mass.   As you would expect after a hundred years of use, the adjuster on the Stanley-clone had several turns worth of backlash, the Record had a couple, and the Veritas had very little backlash.  The Stanley-clone seemed like it started sharper, but the Veritas stayed sharper longer (due to the A2 blade?), except that it started to leave tracks from mircro chips on the edge after only 10 or 12 boards.  I’ve had this problem before, I wonder if a slightly steeper bevel would make the edge more durable – it’s currently at ~23 deg, if my haphazard sharpening wasn’t good enough, or if I got a bum blade.

Update 1/22/11: While trying to make curly shavings with the toddler – a task she is eager for, but not ready for – the Veritas plane was dropped several times from about two feet.  It suffered no apparent damage, all I had to do was adjust the blade and tighten the cap.  Yay for ductile iron!

Blogger’s Choice Award: Veritas Low Angle Block Plane.

Best Value: Ancient generic Stanley 9 1/2 at $10; I think I’ll look for more next time I go to a MWTCA meet.

*I have not been endorsed or compensated for this review.

**Shop-tunes: Radiohead’s Pablo Honey