Shop Time Part 5 - Breaking a Foot

One of the hurdles that I face with my woodworking hobby is that I have a rather small sedan and no roof-rack. That makes it a bit hard to transport wood for projects. When I built my farm table, I rented a van from U-Haul on a day when I gathered most of the materials. That works for when I have a large expensive project planned, but if I want material to stock up or just have on an ad hoc basis, I don’t want to have to schedule a rental vehicle.

My plan to deal with this is to build low profile Japanese sawhorses. These small work surfaces are able to be put in my trunk or the cabin of my car along with a Japanese style pull saw. Then when I go to the store for more wood, I can set up the horses in the parking lot and rough cut the material to sizes that will fit in my car.

I got the idea and the plans for this style of horse from Rex Krueger (check spelling; add link). It seemed like a good beginner project (especially since I’m trying to go back and do easier projects after biting off so much with the table). This project also gives me an opportunity to do some beginner joinery. I have to make a half-lap joint for each foot.

That’s where I ran into problems. I cut both of my foot joints too tight, and had a hard time assembling everything. I attempted to use a chisel to loosen up the joint a bit, but I still haven’t figured out tool sharpening so my chisels dulled rather quickly and I didn’t make good enough progress. Eventually, I was putting a foot on that was still to tight and I snapped the part.

This has been a pretty good learning opportunity. I think my next steps for this project will be as follows:

1. Get my hands on some better sharpening stones. I accidentally clogged the grits of my current stone with sediment from trying to sharpen my block plane. It might also be a good idea to get a stone to grind my current whet stone to return it to an appropriate grit.
2. Learn to use a coping saw to make some of the cuts for the piece. That way I’m not overly reliant on chisels.
3. Find a better improvised mallet to use. I have been using a claw hammer, and that’s too hard for the handles of my chisels. If I keep going in that directly, I might end up breaking a chisel as well.

Hopefully, I can follow up with all of the above, and make a field report of going to the story and cutting some of the material in the parking lot. That said getting a better mallet might have to wait on getting this project done. I really want to try and make my own hard wood joiners mallet, but since my only source for decent hardwood is a local lumber yard, I would definitely need the horses to rough cut the wood to fit in my trunk.