Rough Carpentry: Little Garden Fence

It all started when we decided of limiting part of our garden for avoiding access to Johnny.
Who is Johnny? Our incomparable Beagle!

So I thought of installing a wooden fence, 175 cm long, very  simple: two side pieces with a central gate. 

The project is quite simple but I showed its realization for a particular reason: the build was done without nails, screws or glue. 
For me is a new way of working wood. I must say I was satisfied of result: the fence is rock solid and time will tell me if the technical solutions were right.
Stiles and rails are jointed by mortice and tenon and reinforced by pins inserted through the joints; staves fit rails by a dovetail joint.   
For building the fence I used pallet wood (silver fir) without eliminate defects as nail holes, deep scratches or dead knots, all covered by a coulored paint.

Realization of mortices on the stiles.

After preparing pieces by band saw and hand planes I realized the  mortices on the stiles and the housings for insert staves on the rails. 

Trace on both the  head of staves the wished angle.

The first step was to create  the right angle on both edges of staves, with a 1:6 ratio (9,5° circa), as generally prescribed for dovetail joints on soft woods.   

The pencil marks drive for a correct bevel. 

The result. 

With angles traced on both stave heads, I utilized a jack plane for crating the bevel on both edges. 
The next step was to excavate the recesses on rails, realized with saw, chisel and router plane.   

Cut just to the inner side  of waste by a dozuki saw.

Remove the waste.

The router plane levels the bottom of stave recess.

At this point I created a double bevel  on the top of rails, so the rain can slide easily. 

The top edge of rails is bevelled in order to avoid the stagnation of rain water. 

Then realize the tenons, cut slightly wider of final dimensions. A rabbet block plane (Sargent 507) is used for the job. 

The block rebate plane is useful for giving the right dimensions to tenons.  

Because the work is glue free I preferred making tight joints, so that they was held by some mallet shot. The same was for stave insertion, apart the gate joints , held with drawbored pins. 
The holes are flared on top from both parts by a screwdriver of proper size. Pins, properly cut to the extremities, are held from both sides by wedges.   

The tip shape of a screwdriver helps to flare the hole extremities.

Pins show one or two cuts to the extremities for wedge insertion.

When inserted, the pin is held by wedges on both sides.

As said, rail tenons are fixed in their mortices by slightly unmatched holes. Drawboring was applied to fixed part of door lock, placed on one of the stiles: in this case a double mortice was made on the stile and the stop and two floating tenons are drawbored in both pieces.




I haven’t pics of this step, but I drew a sketch for illustrate the concept: 

Drawboring is used to fix the lock stop to the stile.

The fence is assembled in the shop before finishing.

Finish was two coats of cementite and two of  acrylic paint.

BMW....Ops...VBM 7 Serie

I use to utilize, with ample rotation, all my planes, many of which kept ready to use and sharp.
Today was the Sargent VBM 714 (I restored several years ago) workshift. 
VBM stands for Very Best Made

 The 7 serie has the particular feature of having the chipbreaker incorporated into the lever cap and adjustable by a screw, without to have to remove any component.

Moreover, its position remains unchanged, in the case the blade was removed for sharpening. 
Vintage Sargent planes (VBM planes were made in the second decade of XX century) haven't nothing to envy to the best Stanley planes of that period.


Unlike the Stanley ones, the frog is not adjustable, but this don't create particular discomfort in the use of a 714 (n° 5 equivalent). So, in the smoothing planes of the serie (707, 708, 710), the anti-tearout role is provided only by chipbraker and maybe is this the reason for which the mouth is kept rather abundant (at least in the 714 I have; would be interesting to know if this is true for smoothing models too).
Below all models of 7 serie are listed (with approx. lenght):

707, 7"
708, 8"
710, 10"
711, 11"
714, 14"
718, 18"
722, 22"

Tenon plane

Hand planes are main protagonist in all works I realize, few indeed, but satisfiing pleintfull my passion for classic woodworking.
Is the case of a little table I realized recently for a friend of mine.

Other than piece preparation by my wooden faithful bench planes, I had to face up to some traditional working, as tenon making, performed taking advantage from precision and efficiency of a well tuned plane.

The classic method for table building requires mortice and tenon assembly between legs and rails. Frequently, these tenons are quite large, not exactly easy to make by an handsaw.  
The uniform dimensions in thickness and lenght allow me to adopt an alternative method to the handsaw cut: I used a rebate plane (a moving fillister plane I made). The job success depends by accurate piece squaring and their uniform thickness.


Aligned pieces are cut on both sides. The plane depth stop ensures a mirror cut and the tenon appears uniform, neat and with square shoulders. Morever, the process is faster than cutting each piece by handsaws.

Moving Fillister: My interpretation

Being been inspired by the original Moving Fillister plane I own (image above), I tried to build this rebate plane with adjustable fence, capable of very good work along the grain as well as across the grain. 
Its skewed blade (20°) eases the cut, while a nicker, situated just before the main blade, has the purpose of pre-cutting wood fibers and obtaining a clean result across the grain too.

I used walnut wood for the plane body and wedge, while the sole, the parallel fence and the depth stop are of hornbeam, a wood particulary resistent to the wear and which creates an attractive chromatic effect when coupled to a darker wood as the walnut. A hornbeam piece is inserted at the top of the plane, too.

The parallel fence moves on the sole through two elongated holes and is kept in place by two M6 bolts which are screwed in the correspondent nuts inserted into the sole.

Scrub plane II

Here it is another scrub plane just terminated: beech body and wild olive sole (unfortunately this wood is ending......I'll have to ask again Michele (who lives in Puglia) for supplying me with another little amount of it. 

This time I tried to add a beading moulding to plane sides and I have to say I am satisfied. I cut them with a Stanley 50, equipped with its narrower beading cutter.

The front handle is inserted by a sliding dovetail joint, coupled with a round tenon in its bottom
A mortice and tenon joint has been used for fixing the rear handle, behind the blade. In both cases I used drawbored dowels for reinforcing the joint.
  


The building tecnique is based on cutting and gluing the plane body, so is easier to obtain the throat and cut into the sides for accomodating the wedge and blade.  
 

 






You can see a little hole on the front. Our woodworm friend (died!) loves wild olive, providing to the plane a vintage look.