A Fisher Celebrity build project
Between other projects and bitter cold weather, I haven’t gotten anything done on the plane for a while. With one project essentially finished and the workbench finally cleared of it, I took the opportunity to fit the entire bench top. It looks like I’ll need to shorten the supports on the left end to get the left side extension level… I’ll need the chop saw for that.
For obvious reasons, I want the top of the new work table to be dead flat. As I set the top pieces of particle board on the bench, it became obvious that there are (and I know this already) some high spots on the frame. Obviously the 2×4 dimensional lumber I used was not perfectly straight, so no shock there. The bench was constructed on top of a bench that is pretty much dead flat, but is covered with a layer of indoor/outdoor carpet – so there’s some room for high spots to compress the carpeting. Anyway – it needs to be flattened.
I suppose a person could attack this with a sander and some really coarse grit paper to knock material off where it needs to be. It would work, but it’s inefficient and in my humble opinion might lead to a “wobbly table” scenario, where you progressively over-correct making legs shorter to try to stop a table from wobbling until you end up with a Japanese tea table on 6″ legs. I opted to plane the wood. I didn’t own a plane, so I went and bought a couple. Lowe’s had two planes on sale for good prices, so I took a risk that they would be usable. They may not meet the demands of a professional producer of hardwood cabinets or something, but they’re certainly good enough to take consistent paper-thin shavings off of a pine 2×4. One is a 10″ bench plane, the other a 3-1/2″ block plane. I’m not taking the top off of the bench to start flattening it just yet; I still need to stain and attach the fancy quilted maple veneer to the gossip bench while I’ve got a working bench. Once that’s done, I’ll slide the particle board back off and get a flat surface to screw them down onto.
Since getting the bench pieces all home yesterday, I’ve been knocking out a couple of backed up tasks that needed done. Lisa needed a larger rectangular overlay for her ironing board – useful for ironing quilt tops and such. I cut out a 24″ x 56″ piece of half-inch plywood and, with he outline of the existing ironing board top traced onto the bottom side, attached some guide rails cut from 3/4 particleboard. I wish I’d used pine instead, of course.
With that done, I’m currently working to determine the best approach to staining the quilted maple veneer for the gossip bench. I tried the same red mahogany stain that I used of the rest of the piece — it really just obscures the beautiful grain patterns of the quilted maple. My next attempt will be with the same stain, applied after a wipe down with mineral spirits. A quick test on a scrap of particle board (which soaks up stain like the maple veneer does) looks pretty promising.
I’ve got the main top and one of the extension tops in place. I haven’t screwed the main top down, because the top frame is not flat. I’ll probably hit Lowe’s on Monday and pick up a hand plane to fix that. Now I’m wishing I’d grabbed Dad’s old planes when Mom was having the estate sale. At the time I didn’t see that I’d ever have any use for them… too soon old, too late smart, as Dad was fond of saying. I’m sure a new plane will require some work to turn into a really nice tool, but for right now I just need to knock some high spots off the edges of a few 2x4s. It’s not high precision work, but after all of the work and money I’ve put into this bench I’m not going to end up with a top that’s not flat. Once I get the central part flat and secured in place, I can work on getting the extensions properly aligned and get everything screwed down. I did screw one extension top in place, just so I could get the supports under it.
Along the way I’ve been thinking about how I was working over at Stu’s shop. I had the bench littered with tools and materials. I’d often spend several minutes looking for a pencil, knife, saw, or something else that was underneath or hidden behind a spar or something. Then I had a 24 x 40 inch rolling table covered with other stuff, and usually had a box of clamps sitting on top of the wing as I was building. I don’t have rolling tables here, nor do I have room for any. Time to work smarter. Rather than leaving the large shelf under the bench open to collect everything in a big jumble (it’s happening already), I want to figure out exactly what I use or will use for construction, and design some under-bench storage to make sure everything is close at hand, quickly and easily accessible, and can quickly and easily be put away.
I’ll likely want a drawer for the large number of spring clamps, though I wish there were a better solution for them. I want a carpenter’s square and a speed square hung onto the edge of the bench. I want one place for the epoxy syringes, mixing cups and stir sticks, and disposable brushes. I want both the coarse and fine razor saws close at hand, and marked so I know which is which just by glancing at the handles. I want masking tape and marking pencils within easy reach. The list goes on, but you get the picture. I figure if I do this right, I may be able to trim a month or so off the build time just by eliminating the cumulative time I spend trying to find that blasted tool I just had in my hand.
I’d write this all down or draw up a plan, but I seem to have mislaid the mechanical pencil I just bought. Sigh.
On Thursday I picked up the particle board and plywood and Stu helped me — er, that is to say, Stu cut the sheets up for the top and shelf of the new bench. He’s got a massive SawStop table saw, and he’s a virtuoso using it. It seems to be a challenge for me to rip a 2×4 in half on a table saw; he can zip a 4×8 sheet of 3/4 particle board through that thing like it was a sheet of paper. I try not to use his saw, because even though I’ve never in my life hit the blade of a running saw with a finger, sure as hell I’d trigger his SawStop and add the ignominy of replacing a blade and cartridge to my list of accomplishments. I have, however, found that when I do use his saw things go a lot easier. My old table saw was a challenge to use — for most of the time I owned it the fence wasn’t parallel to the blade, and once I got that fixed the blade was dull. It was actually halfway decent in the end, for smaller pieces. Once I got it finally set up and a brand new carbide blade on it, some asswipe stole it… so now I get to buy new, some day when I have a place to put one. But I digress.
The tops are two layers of 3/4″ particle board, glued and stapled together. The lower shelf is 1/2 plywood, mainly because I had to buy some anyway for another project. The shelf is in three sections, so I’ll need to join them with some scraps of particle board or something. I plan to build some sort of storage to slide in on top of that shelf.
My casters and levelers also arrived Thursday afternoon, so on Friday I went over and installed those. I also cut the plywood for the lower shelf to fit, cut some corner blocks to keep the top square, and made the diagonal supports for the two extensions. Those are lengths of 2×4, notched on the lower end and with a double 45 cut on the upper end, that will brace between the lower shelf support and the top of the extension on either side.
The last thing to be done before final assembly is to flatten the top. As the bench was built with dimensional lumber on top of a workbench with a carpeted top, it’s “more or less” flat but the 2x4s aren’t perfect by any means. In a perfect world I’d have used a 6 foot jointer and a thickness plane to turn them into perfect boards before building, but I didn’t have access to a jointer. I know for sure one of the long edges of the table frame has a hump in it, and I want the top to be FLAT. I’ll evaluate how much needs to be done to make that a reality and see how I’ll make that happen.
I guess I missed a chance to make this Episode IV for a catchier title. Ah, well.
Today I bought some 2x4s, did some measuring and cutting, gluing, screwing, clamping, and ended up with a new work table mostly built. I’ll try and finish it up tomorrow. The main section is 60″ long by 36″ wide (that’s roughly 152 x 91 cm for you metric folks). Each end has a 30″ folding extension, so you can have a 5′, 7.5′, or 10′ total length depending on your needs. For most of the airplane build I’ll likely have it fully extended, but it will be nice to be able to shorten it when needed.
I used the basic EAA 1000 work table plan, with a few changes. The width is increased, of course, from 24 to 36 inches. The folding extensions are another departure. I also lowered the shelf to about 4.5″ from the bottom of the legs rather than the original 8.5″. In hindsight, I kind of wish I’d made it even lower, but it’s fine. Tomorrow I’ll be adding some corner blocking to keep it perfectly square and solid. I still need to install the top (two layers of particle board) and the supports for the extensions. Those will be simple lengths of 2×4, with one end notched and the other cut to fit into the extension, Stu has a similar setup on the work table I have been using at his shop, and it’s absolutely rock steady and completely flat.
I thought long and hard about how to put retractable casters on this bench. I’ve seen a lot of different ways to do it. I had another work table, 3′ x 8′ with a setup on it that worked, but was a little more involved than I wanted. I’ve seen a few more designs on Youtube, several of which look kind of fidgety – making custom steel latches, etc. Anyway, in the process of working that out I managed to forget to re-add 1.5″ to the legs that I’d subtracted for one of the designs. Then I came up with what I think is an absolutely brilliant method, and I think it would work really well… on any workbench that does NOT have folding extensions that will block access to the end of the bench. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson…
So, I have ordered some retracting casters from Amazon that will be here tomorrow, and will cut some blocks of 2×4 for the bottom of the legs. No biggie. Perfection is the enemy of completion.
I think it’s very likely that I’ll build some sort of cabinet, shelving, and/or drawers under the top. I can only imagine how handy it would be to have all of the woodworking tools, clamps, glue, and so on right there at hand, and storage to keep it well organized and clean. That will wait until I have the bench at home and set up in the garage; that way I can cut the wood and do the assembly there. I can think of a long list of items that I will want to always have within easy reach, and more importantly have a place to put it within easy reach so I don’t end up with tools and supplies scattered everywhere.
Of course the very first thing the new bench will be used for is finishing the rebuild of the “gossip bench”. The veneer for that should arrive later this week.
I’m nearing the end of the gossip bench rebuild, but that’s on hold while I wait for some fancy quilted maple veneer to arrive. It’s been stripped, sanded, reassembled, and stained. Only the curved plywood and veneer remain, then it will get lacquered.
While waiting for that, I decided to attack my rolling tool table. I’d built it years ago when I was working on an RV-7. It’s a 24” square rolling table, with one tool on each corner – tabletop band saw, belt/disk sander, drill press, and a buffer with a cloth wheel on one side and a 3M Scotchbrite wheel for smoothing aluminum on the other. It had become a bit of a junk collecting place, so I’m cleaning that up. It need to come down a bit; the newer drill press is a foot taller than the old one. I’ll either put smaller casters on it, remove them altogether, or just take a couple inches off the legs. It is awfully nice to be able to easily roll it anywhere I need it, and quickly rotate it to bring the tool I need to the front.
My drill press is a Wen benchtop 10 or 12” model with laser lines to mark dead center of the drill bit with a nice red X. Well, they do that with two straight line lasers, and one is dead. I’ve got a new one coming, so hopefully that shows up this coming week along with the veneer.
On the plus side, I’ve got a final plan for the work table, a materials list, and a cut list for the 2x4s. I may build that while waiting for the parts. I can always make the gossip bench the first project for that. Oh, and the extended top my wife wants for her ironing board…
Yesterday I built a storage rack on the back wall of the garage. I call it the back wall; it’s the “back” only from the perspective of the door from the house to the garage. It’s the side of the last garage space. Anyway… Three 8′ 2x4s and an hour or so with a chop saw, pocket hole jig, glue, and screws, and I had the three wall brackets. I spaced them 32″ apart and screwed them to the wall studs. Each bracket has three 18″ horizontal supports on which I can stack lumber or whatever.
Going through my stock of random left-over lumber from previous projects, one of the things I found was a 1×12 board about 10′ long. I suspect it was left over after disassembling and old Van’s Aircraft shipping crate, though it may have been something else. It’s a pretty crappy board, and I can’t imagine using it for anything else, so I cut it to length and used 67″ of it to screw to the bottom supports as a shelf for shorter stock.
One task remains – finishing up the “gossip bench” – before I can get a work table built and get back to building. I discussed the general plan for the work table with Stu yesterday, I just need to figure out exactly how I want to build it.
Tool boxes have been swapped, a cabinet moved, more cleaning and organizing done. I’ve made a calculated decision to take a side trip to disassemble, sand, reassemble, and refinish an old “gossip bench” or telephone table that belonged to my wife’s grandmother. It’s been sitting in the garage for many years, rickety and falling apart. The top portion is an enclosed shelf made with a curved piece of plywood with solid beech for the top and bottom – you know, to hold a phone book. The plywood got cracked by something long ago, so I’ll use some new birch plywood and bend it to make a replacement. I figure a week to finish this up, then it can come inside the house for my wife to make a new seat cushion and find a place for it, which she has assured me she can do. As long as it’s not in the garage, I’ll be happy.
Now on to figuring out how to wedge in some wood storage.
I’m getting really tired of not being able to get any building done. This has really been driven home for the past few weeks of non-building. During the summer there’s plenty of yard work and other projects to fill int he gaps and keep one from getting bored. When it’s this cold, though, it becomes obvious that something has to be done. Rather than dive into a “just do something, anything” mentality that invariably leads to a big stalled mess, I’ve been taking the time to figure out exactly what the obstacles are and how they can be overcome.
Obviously, one of the biggest factors is space. There wasn’t any. The garage is packed pretty full, but a lot of it is just clutter. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been cleaning things up, putting things away, figuring out what can be tossed, and just generally rearranging things. I have a day or two left to go on the big parts of that effort. Right now I have about half a garage space completely cleared, and will extend that another couple feet as I get rid of some junk that needs to go. I also plan to move the riding mower from the garage to the back patio, and cover it with an all-weather cover I bought for it. I have some rodent repellant balls I’ll use to try and keep mice and squirrels out of there… we’ll see how that works. The balls are strongly scented with peppermint and some other stuff; it’s non-toxic and doesn’t stink. I’ve also got two tool chests that I’m swapping around and getting all of the tools organized. I’m terrible about not putting tools away, and as a result they tend to end up scattered everywhere, and I’m trying to fix that.
The next issue is climate control. It’s a garage. The temperature out there is more moderate than it used to be, since we insulated the walls and ceiling several years ago when the new siding was installed. Still, it gets too hot to work out there during part of the summer, and too cold in the winter. Epoxy won’t cure properly when it’s 40 degrees in the garage, and working in 90-plus heat or refrigerator temps leads to careless and sloppy work. I’ve got a 1500W infrared space heater going out there now to keep it at sweatshirt temperatures just so I can get the cleanup done, but a betters solution is going to be required. I’m looking at installing a ductless mini-split heat pump. That will require a new 220 V circuit installed, and some cabinets will need to move, so as one might imagine it just leads to a stream of new projects and complications. I do have a. plan, though, even if its implementation is not as quick as I’d like. I’m also going to need to seal up the garage doors better than they are — the rubber seals are old and leaky. I suspect we’ll probably end up with new garage doors, which we’ve been wanting for a while anyway.
Then there’s the work table situation. There is none. I’ve been looking at what I’ll need for tables to assemble the upper wings, tail, and fuselage. I have full size prints for everything, so I know that a 3′ wide table will be enough or everything. Wider would be good for wings, but 36″ will cover the distance from the trailing edge to the main spar, so it’s enough. I already know I’ll need at least 10′ for the wings. That will also be enough for the tail; the biggest piece is the horizontal stab and elevator at 8′ span. So, a 10 foot long table will be enough for everything up until I start the fuselage. For that, I’ll need 14 feet (I just checked the drawing; it’s 13′ and change). That’s probably a year out, though. After discussing with Stu, I’m currently planning to build a work table with folding wings on each end, similar to the one in his shop. He’s suggesting a 36 x 60 inch table with 36 x 30 inch wings; that will end up 10′ long when fully extended. When it comes time to build the fuselage, I’d need to add a second, smaller table to extend it to the length required. A standard 24 x 60 inch EAA 1000 table should be enough for that; I can build one if nobody has one I can borrow for a couple of months.
Lastly, there’s storage. Right now, in order to move everything home I’ll need a place to store wood and parts. The longest pieces are the eleven-foot-long upper wing spars. There’s a lot of 6- to 8-foot stock, a stack of wing ribs, and so on. I need to set up something accessible on one wall of the garage to store that stuff. Also, I’ll need other load of lumber for the tail and fuselage; that will need to be stored as well. I’m thinking I may place an order with Aircraft Spruce and drive out to Oshkosh this year to bring it home in the truck. I haven’t been to Airventure since 2018, I think, so it’s about time for another trip out there anyway. I’m also scouting for lumber yards tat would carry good quality southern white pine, as that can be used for a good portion of the fuselage and tail according to Fisher.
Onward. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garage getting things cleaned up, organized, and re-organized. I want to get this under control and get back to building ASAP.
A little different sort of woodworking today. I got a wing rack built so I will be able to move the two lower wings to the airport for storage.
