My Lathe: Part III The legs

Well the following is an example of how frustrating trying to apply European woodworking techniques to Australian Timbers.

I grabbed this log at the same time as the lathe bed log. It is from a much smaller tree (obviously) and is also a messmate. From the bark there is no suggestion of any spiral grain to cause a split to twist so that is a good start. Being 8"+ in diameter it should be big enough for the four legs of my lathe.

As you can see the first split has not started so well.

This is a relatively small log. Actually it is a small log and you can see the grief it is giving my gluts. As I said before so often wooden wedges die really quickly because I am asking too much of them. The ones in this photo are red iron bark which has a janka hardness of 13 kN and maximum crushing strength of 75 MPa compared with English Oak which is 5.5 kN and 52 MPa respectively. Also the grain is not straight and is quite interlocked (for Northern hemisphere peoples imagine Elm except hard).

All the way along this split it would not run true.

The second split on the other hand was easy (relatively). I've split ash and oak and excluding situations where there are knots or other defects in the log (nails or wire for example) you can often split a log of this size with just a froe and maul. Even in half with a clean split this one required a couple of wedges to help it along.

 The second half wasn't as cooperative and while this is not such a good photo you can see the much smaller quartered section second from the left. This quarter was so much smaller because of all the split and fractured wood which I had to trim off.

Fortunately it was just big enough to give a 2" tenon to fir the augered 2" mortice in the lathe bed.

All four legs in the lathe bed and while one of them is a bit undersized I hope it will be fine. Locating the thinner leg at the tail stock end should mean that less is asked of it.

My lathe: part II

Having finished the beam of wood that is to be the bed of my lathe I got a bit carried away and didn't take many photos of the first mortice that is to take the Head Stock. I remembered as I started the mortice for the tail stock.

I got this far and the thought of picking up the chainsaw and ripping two slots to rough out the mortice was very, very tempting. The tool lying on the lathe bed is a type of builders chisel. In German it is known by many names which roughly translate as Thrust or Push Axe or Mortice axe, while in France it is known as a Demi Bisaigue or a Pontache which as far as I can work out translates as Half Bisaigue or Pontache.

It is basically the equivalent of the English slick. I haven't managed to document this tool to the medieval period but its larger cousin the Bisaigue does appear in a number of manuscripts. The one below is from the 16th century

With the moritces cut it was time to work on the head and tail stock.

I cut a length of log off the other half of the log that the lathe bed came from.

First step was to roughly square it up by taking most of the sap wood off with the froe.

Then clean it up with my hewing hatchet.

Then I cut the tenon and through it a mortice to hold the stock in place with a wedge.

Very pleased with progress.

Making a new workbench...ah I mean a lathe.

Lately I've been going a bit insane waiting for a contract to fall into place. So to stay sane I've gone back to doing some woodwork.

Looking around for projects I decided on making some chairs because we need some new ones for home. If possible it would be great if they could be also could be medieval in style because then I could also take them to SCA events.

I had a rough idea  of what I wanted to make but the work area I have is pretty awful so I decided to start afresh with a new work bench.

I've been particularly interested in Chris Schwarz's take on the Roman/medieval workbench. The bench is very simple and would be very easy to make if I could find the right wood.

I went out into the forest and found a legal log (from a fire wood coup) which looked suitable. I'd show you a photo but I forgot the camera.

The first step to making the bench after finding a suitable log is to buck (cut) it to length. I have a number of crosscut saws but with Sarah off looking after the kids I pulled out the chainsaw.

Once the log has been cut to length it must be split in half. In Europe and America this is often started with an axe or froe in the end of the log and then continued with gluts or wooden wedges. My experience with many Australian hard woods is that they are not that easy. So I often resort to metal wedges because the force required of the wedges means that wooden ones don't last very long. Even when I have used such woods as red iron bark (one of the strongest woods in the world) they tend to fail after I've used them to split three or four logs. This means I often resort to metal wedges. The log I found was a Meshmate which is an excellent furniture and structural wood and sometimes it does split ok. Not this time however.

After getting started I quickly realised that the log was going to split in a mild spiral. In really bad cases I'd just cut the whole lot up for fire wood but it didn't seem that bad. Once I finished though I quickly realised that this log would not do for my bench.

In the photo you can see how much twist is in was in the log that I split. The end towards the back of the trailer is almost parallel with the floor of the trailer so you can see the amount of twist. I wanted the full length that I had cut for a bench but with that amount of twist it was not going to work. I could use it for a shorter bench but I decided to use it for something else instead. A lathe.

Before I was going to do anything with the log I needed some new trestles. These were pretty quick to knock up. I did one with three legs which I wont be doing again. The theory is that with three legs the trestle will always sit securely on uneven ground, whereas with a four legged trestle they tend to wobble on uneven ground. Well my experience showed me that while this is true the four legged trestles are so much more stable that I don't mind having to fafth around getting them to sit right. The three legged one keeps on falling over. I could have made the three legged trestle with the legs more splayed but even if I had what tends to happen is that if there is any sideways force on the three legged trestle, like when you are trying to move a log or timber across it, it tips at the single leg end. Not fun especially when moving a heavy log around.

Here is the now shortened half of the log with one of its edges trimmed secured onto the trestle with a dog. I've started flattening the face left by splitting the log in half with these:

The long handled axe is an East German central European roughing axe. The one above is a Germanic broad axe. The roughing axe is double beveled and is really good at cleaning up the rough surface left by splitting the log or after the log has been jogged. The German broad axe is single beveled and is used to finish flattening and then smooth the face that you are working on. Having finished the split face it was time to clean up the back of the log.

The next step of dressing the log is to cut jogs or jugs into the round surface of the log. If I was working on a full log I would do this on a much lower set of trestles or just some logs laid under the log I was working on. Having secured the log I cut three notches making four jogs.

 I did this with my Plumb 50's felling axe pictured below. The same axe is also the one I used to knock the jogs off the log.

This is the working face of the log after it has been jogged. Pretty rough but I did it by eye without snapping a chalk line and I haven't done this in a while.

After jogging I used the roughing axe to clean up the surface but I didn't bother with the broad axe since it is going to be the underside of the lathe.

I turned the beam over and cleaned up the last waney edge and it is now ready to work.

Started this blog as a place to document my projects numerous and varied. I hope things make sense as I go.