I have completed all the functional aspects of my workbench and it has already greatly improved the quality of my woodworking. Now it is time to turn my attention to some of the creature comforts. I find myself crossing back and forth across my shop to get a bench hook or a shooting board and I need to put in a shelf to store all of these accessories.
This episode came out longer than I had planned as I really try to keep them under 30 minutes. However, I find that oftentimes woodworking shows can be frustrating by telling you how to do something without actually showing it so I decided to keep in all of my footage of cutting the tongue and groove joints by hand. So I apologize for the 200+ MB download (even after compression) but I hope you will enjoy the show.
5 responses so far ↓
1 duncanjmurray // Feb 3, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Great episode Shannon, what a lot of fantastic info. (Don’t apologize for the size of the download, it’s not that big and when the content is this good, it’s worth every MB).
Are there any advantages to tongue and groove compared to other joints, e.g. shiplapped?
2 Shannon // Feb 3, 2010 at 5:06 pm
The same principle applies with regard to wood movement but the immediate advantage I can see with a T&G joint is that is locks the piece together and you don’t need to fasten them to the case anywhere other than the sides. A shiplap is just a rabbet and can be pushed apart easier than the housed aspect of a T&G joint. In essence I think it is stronger and will control warping more than a simple ship lap.
3 Bob Rozaieski // Feb 4, 2010 at 8:44 am
Great episode Shannon! I love using my match planes. When properly set up, they are really fun to use.
There was one thing that I caught that I think the modern LN match plane got wrong though. The two shoulders of the tongue were not traditionally even with each other, nor were they intended to be. The shoulder on the non-reference side would traditionally have been ever so slightly deeper than the shoulder on the money side. This is so that when the joint is brought together, the show side of the joint is gauranteed to close tight and any gap at the shoulder would be hidden from view on the non-show face. Similarly, the groove would be just a bit deeper than the tongue so that the tongue wouldn’t bottom out and prevent the joint from closing tightly. Of course this makes very little difference today as we have time to fine tune the joint if it doesn’t fit right, however, the joint can be planed much faster and without any fiddling post planing with the plane set up to make the joint as mentioned. This was actually an advantage of the separate irons that Stanley used as it would be easier to offset the hieghts slightly. The LN iron, and similar split irons on vintage planes, need to be sharpened at different heights, which can be challenging, especially if you use a honing guide.
4 BedrockBob // Feb 4, 2010 at 9:09 am
Great episode. I have been looking at the Tongue and Groove Plane since Lie-Nielsen introduced it; really enjoyed seeing it used in a project.
I think it would be great for gluing up a wide table top. To help in creating a gap free joint on the top you could use a marking gauge to make a deep knife line on the tongue side of the board. Of course you would need to figure out the exact height of the tongue, set the marking gauge, make the knife line and then cut the tongue.
Bob
5 Jeroen // Feb 6, 2010 at 9:20 am
I agree with Bob Rozaieski, the joint setup is a little wrong. But because you use the same iron to create the bottom shoulder and grove. You can correct this by shortening the other iron a bit and you´re done.