Day 168: Bridges, Bridges, Bridges

As much as I wanted to shoehorn the bridges bent on the side lamination form into the proper angles, they just were not acceptable. Owen Daly could tell from the photos I posted here and on Facebook that they were not okay and it was at his adamant encouragement that I embarked on a rebending exercise for the 8' bridge (the 4' will be next, but only if this works), only this time using a form I made on the original sheet of plywood I used for the first failed iteration (yes, I'm on Bridge Adventure #3).

As you can see, I ordered a dozen spring clamps and waited a week for them to arrive before embarking on the bending session. This time, I also steamed the bridge using my custom setup, rather than soak it overnight.

We use only the highest of tech here at Tortuga Early Instruments Worldwide Headquarters.

I steamed the 8' bridge and got it into the form using clamps I already had - they clamped tighter and held better. I ended up using only a couple of the spring clamps, but I'm sure I'll find a use for them from time to time.

The bridge currently sits in the form. I'll remove it toward the end of the week to see what we have to work with. I'm also waffling about running them on the band saw. I have a razor sharp drawknife and that beautiful new Veritas spokeshave - they should both make quick work of beveling should they not?

Speaking of Veritas, I made a management decision a couple of weeks ago. I decided that jointing anything in the shop will be done by hand moving forward. This meant I needed to dispose of the Delta 4" knuckle-shaver and convert all jointing activies to using hand planes. Cool Craigslist Guy purchased the jointer the first day I listed it.

The empty space is where it once stood. So much more room for activities. It was replaced with a Veritas low-angle/bevel-up jointer hand plane. While I was at it, I decided to go ahead and pick up their low-angle/bevel-up smoother, as well. The default blades for both of these planes are a 38-degree beauty. I'm not going to get into a discussion about the merits of bevel-up vs. "regular" planes here. There are plenty of other fruitful places to argue which is better/worse. I prefer bevel up. Period.

I will say, though, that on bevel-up planes, specific angles accomplish specific tasks such as hogging out more wood with a minimum of tearout or nearly emulating a scraper. In this case, the 38-degree blade combined with the 12-degree bed provides the basic 50-degree York cut that so many favor for smoothing. Since the 2 1/4" width blades are interchangeable between the planes, I also picked up 25-degree and 50-degree blades. There are many subtleties associated with using low-angle/bevel-up planes, including how microbevels are honed, etc., but, again, this ain't the place.

So, we welcome these two new team members to Tortuga Early Instruments.

The gadget at the bottom of the photo above is a jointer fence what will allow me to joint vertically, rather than setting up, say, an 8' horizontal shooting board, using the Roubo bench leg vise while not introducing unintended bevel into the process. If you've ever tried to freehand a joint, you'll know what I mean. Like the planes, the fence has a tiny, little set screw to keep things lined up and accurate. I also had a cleaning session to get the shipping/preservative goo off of the team members.

A little mineral spirits followed up with a some Boeshield T-9 (I silently thank Random Roger Green for introducing me to the stuff everytime I use it) will keep these fellas in good working order for many years to come. Who knows, I may even sell the Lie-Nielsen No. 62 and go with a Veritas low-angle jack, we'll see (John - that Lie-Nielsen large scraper is staying with me, sorry).

Until next time...