Shopsmith Forums

I have banged nails into wood and used chisels, planes and drills to cobble a few wood-based projects together in the past from shelves to kitchen installations and some remodeling.

Now I have a project, a Shopsmith and a barrel load of frustration.

I need to create (from 1.5" by 0.75" red oak) frames using 11" and 14" lengths.

Basically the external dimension of the finished frame is 14"x 14". The joints are butt jointed. I plan(ed) to use dowels to join; 3/8" x 1.5" (sorry (0.375" x 1.5") mixed the metric and fractions there) 2 at each join (Titebond lll).

Two frames will be connected with three 16.5" stringers (screws through the frame into the stringer) and need to support at least 40-50lbs

I have jigs that use the SS horizontal boring option. The Shopsmith (MK5 510) was retro-fitted with 10ER way tubes as the original tubes were a little droopy. I am pretty happy with the table/drill alignment although the slop in the quill (not the bearings) is maddening.

I want to create a lot of these frames so the plan is to set up several operating modes and cut/drill.sand/etc. many of the same before assembly to limit the alignment/jig/stop setups.

So today was 'bring it on day'. After 8 hours I wanted to jam a spinning drill into my wrists.

I'm pretty confident the jigs can accommodate the dowel hole alignment (yes, we are getting to the subject/title of this post) but I am not getting consistency of finished dimension with the stock I am buying. Some joints exceed my expectations and others......

Alignment of the finished joint is the problem. The goal is not to have a sanding operation after assembly. We are only talking 1/64th +/- 1/128th or so but it looks like crap.

Would milling my own stock be the answer? Would wood suppliers mill to tighter tolerances if asked? Wood/would I need a jointer and a planer? Is a planer just a big jointer? What about the Jet 8" jointer/planer?

Rambling; it's getting late, I want to watch a movie, I've drunk a little too much wine and I was humbled driving a Ferrari 360 around Spa in GTR2 and I can't get good joints; doesn't get much worse than that (actually it does but that is another story).

Excellent doweled butt joints are really simple to make. The only things simpler are the mistakes that screw them up.

Use a sharp drill bit (minimal pressure to complete the hole)

Stock should be exactly the same thickness.

Edges must be perfectly square to the face.

End cuts must be perfectly square.

Opposing pieces must be exactly the same length.

Drill holes with face surface down (tight against the table).

Holes must line up (jigs and spacer blocks only - no pencils or rulers).

Other than that - it should be child's play.

Beer and or wine hardly ever result in perfect joints the next day.

PS: A glass smooth joint is going to be hard to get. I just came from the shop after building 4 test joints. The best I got was about .003" offset. I was using some scrap MDF all cut from the same sheet. What I experienced was flexing (slight unwanted movement) or the table and/or fence. Attached are a couple photos so show how I minimized the unwanted movement.

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Stabilizes Table Under Downward Pressure

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Stabilizes Fence Against Drilling Pressure

After-the-fact leveling of joints with a handplane can be very enjoyable, too!

[quote="alfatipo"]
Alignment of the finished joint is the problem. The goal is not to have a sanding operation after assembly. We are only talking 1/64th +/- 1/128th or so but it looks like crap.

Would milling my own stock be the answer? Would wood suppliers mill to tighter tolerances if asked? Wood/would I need a jointer and a planer? Is a planer just a big jointer? What about the Jet 8" jointer/planer?

Rambling]

Yes, milling your own stock would be the best answer in my mind. Yes, you need a planer (also known as a thickness planer).

A jointer will not do the job of getting uniform thickness on multiple pieces. Only smooth surfaces.

Thickness planers are expensive but also, demanding exact uniform thickness from a wood supplier would also be expensive. If you have a local woodworking shop that will agree to plane your stock, this would be the cheapest solution. If you want to get uniform stock in the future for other projects then a thickness planer would be the better bet.

Remember - wood is always moving (changing dimensions), however the movement is slow and follows seasonal relative humidity changes. Wood planed in the recent past will probably stay that dimension for a few months.

Excellent feedback. Thank you.

I hadn't considered relative humidity. That probably also explains the dowel fit from a recently made batch (back-ordered, Dowel-It had run out) to some sitting around in a dry environment for a few months. I'll look into that.

Dusty, thanks for dragging yourself out of bed in the wee hours to help with this. Great photo detail. Love the under-the-table table support. I will definitely look into a similar solution.

I am using DeWalt brad point drills that are as happy with metal as wood and cut real easy on the end-grain with a barely perceptible resistance so the fence backup support is more than I need.

A bigger problem is the SS miter bar. As it only has one point of location when I clamp the workpiece the handle end lifts negating the benefits of the jig. I can clamp that but it is off-center so need a larger mouth clamp as it twists (even with very light clamping pressure on the workpiece). The guy (Paul in Vancouver, WA) I picked the 10ER tubes up from suggested adding a second T-Track washer which seems reasonable.

The following photo shows an original corner joint. Note that all edges have a relief on them which reduces any obvious mismatch.



The next one shows my effort (actually the first randomly selected pieces from the bag of trial and effort from yesterday so I must be doing something right, it is pretty much perfect).



Any suggestions on drills (make and/or type for wood) appreciated. I also have some Confirmat screws for assembly that I have the Snappy drill set for (7mm x 40mm) but that seems to be the only option for them.

Thanks again to all (you don't want to see what I can do with a handheld plane). Sadly, my long-dead Grandad was a cabinet maker by trade. Piano making at one time. I'm sure he spins in the grave frequently (how does that work with cremation?). He would have loved to help on this project.

Jef, you are welcome. I have the time and I enjoy doing things like this. I even doweled together three or four butt joints yesterday just to see if I could practice that which I preach.

I never did get what I consider a perfect joint. Even though all the pieces were from the same board (presumably same thickness), I always had a little rig at the joint. Minimum sanding would do the trick but NO SANDING to perfect the joint was the object.

Had to cob together a hold down to keep the pieces tight to the table. Could have used clamps but I dislike clamping onto the Shopsmith main table because of the irregularities on the underside.

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