Building my workbench and other items.

Buenas diás from Costa Rica

It is another sunny 70 degree day here in CR. The rain has really tapered off and so I think it is safe to say we are now in dry season or summer, as the Costaricans would say. I wasn't able to get back to the blog for the last week for various reasons, but I guess that doesn't really matter as no one is really reading this blog. Of course there are so many blogs and You Tube channels that I guess you really have to find a nitch to get noticed. Oh well, I will keep writing and building and see where it goes.

I wanted to show you all a small version of the conversion of my shop to a hand-tool only shop which is mainly the building of my version of the Roubo workbench built by Chris Schwarz. I built it out of a wood called Melina, which is produced here in CR. I bought 4 x 8 3/4 sheets of it and ripped it into strips of 3" for the stretchers, 4" for the top and 5" for the legs. I think it turned out well and I really like it. I didn't have a tail vise or screw for the leg vise but had two faces vises from my previous work bench. So I installed the face vise, which racked horribly but served it's purpose. I then used the other face vice and came up with my own version of a wagon vise. I did a reverse with the plate that is usually mounted underneath the top and the face jaw. I mounted the face jaw where it wouldn't move and let the plate float underneath. It's not pretty but it works great. One day I was trying to figure out how to use the other face vise as a tail screw for the leg vise. I didn't want to take it apart or cut any metal, but one day I was ruff cutting some wood on my sawyers bench when I look at my vise with my head cocked to one side. Suddenly the lights went off and I realized I could turn the face vise sideways, take out the supporting bars and mount the guide plate behind the leg. Again it isn't pretty but works great. Originally I used a piece of 1 1/4 thick wood for the vise but that bent horribly in the center so I laminated another piece to it which thickened it up and works great now. You can see in one photo the make shift bench I built on my table saw which I used to plane wood but was horrible as the table would move and I ended up chasing the table around the shop.

The other photo is of the project I am currently working on  for a fellow missionary in San Jose. He has a place out on the western side of CR near Dominical, a famous beach for surfers. He has a small bathroom and in one corner wants a small vanity top for his sink. He wanted it to be a floating top with a butcher block look. So here is what I came up with. This was my second completely unplugged project. He also want a shower floor built which I am currently working on designing.

On the subject of the rocking chair you can see Christmas came early with the arrival of some tools and products I have been waiting for. I got the hide glue which I am looking forward to working with. I also got a pound of shellac flakes, I am currently searching for pure alcohol here in CR, I think I might be able to get it at the pharmacy. Most people will say use denatured alcohol, one, they don't have it here in CR, and two, I was watching a YouTube video on guitar making, weeping Z guitars, where the guy had a video on french polish. He made the statement that he didn't like the poisons they put in denatured alcohol to make it undrinkable and preferred to work with a more pure safer product. He was using 95% alcohol. Another guitar builder on YouTube, Obrien guitars used Everclear which is 95% alochol with out the dangerous poisons. I also got some pumice for filling the grain, a scorp, drawknife, and some leather with some green sharpening compound to make a strop for the scorp. I am still waiting on one more package which should arrive next week with some items I need for working on the seat of the rocker. Hopefully next week I can pick up some wood if the funds permit it. Well, my friends take care and let me know what you think.

God Bless
Mark

Building my shop in Costa Rica part 2

Buenas días from Costa Rica,

It's a little rainy today as we begin to come out of the rainy season. They have a saying here in CR that the rainy season officially ends on November 15th. I always wondered if the president had a switch in his office to turn it off because it does happen pretty close to that date. Anyway I am continue to work on a project for a fellow missionary here in CR, who needs a vanity top for his bathroom. It is a small area for the sink and will be a floating top with out any cabinet underneath. I will see if I can get some pictures in on the next post. I am doing that while still waiting for some tools to arrive for the rocker, should be the end of next week. Along with that I have become even more unplugged, or should I say less apt to fall to the temptation of using a router table. Today I sold my router table, router, and all the bits to a fellow  Costarican woodworker from my church. This is his profession so I wanted to help him out and gave him a good price for quite a few nice bits and a good router, I think he will enjoy it. He is also a great resource for wood and getting it at a great price.Down here in CR if I go to a supplier alone they are likely to give me a gringo price which will be a little higher.

I have learned their system of determining the board feet of a piece for pricing. They do something different which in place of selling a piece of wood according to the board foot they sell it according to what is called a "Pulgada" or literally translated "an inch". As with many Spanish words, just as in English they can take on different meanings (you should see how many meanings they have for the word "Taco" here in CR). What they do is measure the width, say 12 inches (and they do use inches in this determination although the country uses the metric system) and divide that by four, so you have 3. Then you multiply that by they length which is measured in "Varas", which means pole or yard stick. The length of their "vara" is 33 inches, don't ask me why. So say you have 3 varas, you would multiply your first 3 by 3 and come up with 9 which is then designated as how many pulgadas you have. I hope that makes sense. Then you multiply the price per pulgada by 9 and you have your total for a board. The average price right now is 1,000 colones, the currency used in CR which is about $2.00. So 9 pulgadas times 1,000 colones is 9,000 colones which is about $18.00 for a 12 x 99 x 4/4. They do measure the thickness by inch and usually stick to 1, 2, and 3 inch thickness rarely going in between those numbers. So I hope you enjoyed that lesson in buying wood in CR.

As you can see down below in the photos from my shop I am using metal posts for the structure and then corrugated tin for the upper sides and roof. My father was a welder for 40 years in Milwaukee making car frames for the Detroit car manufacturers, so I picked up that trade from him. His younger brother my uncle had the cabinet shop that my brother eventually bought and where I eventually worked for 7 years, with my brother before being called into the ministry. I enjoy working with metal and welding but still find more joy in working wood. I would not brag on my welding abilities, the beads are kind of like giant blobs but they hold and the shop hasn't collapsed yet, praise the Lord. I really enjoyed building this building (kind of redundant) but wouldn't want to do this for a profession. As I said originally this was going to be a power tools wood shop so I added plenty of outlets, my dad was also a great electrician and taught me much about that trade as well. I think the shop turned out well and I am truly thankful for it. Is it perfect, who knows because in a subjective way perfect is different for each person, in an objective way no one can really know what perfection is, so in one sense it is and in another it isn't.

I also included more pictures of my first Maloof rocker I built.

Again thanks for visiting my blog and please let me know what you think

God bless,
Mark Hynek

Building my shop in Costa Rica part 1

Buenas días from Costa Rica my friends. It is a glorious day here in CR sunny and 70, which happens to be the average temperature here all year round. I know it is tough living here, but somebody has to do it. Any way, while I am still waiting to get started on the shaving horse and the rocker I thought I would share with you some photos of my shop I built here in CR. Along with that I just want to share my heart with you regarding my transition to hand tools and to give honor to those who helped me. As I said I have always been involved in woodworking but have for the most part of my life been a power tool guy, I always wanted a New Yankee workshop just like Norm Abram. About a year ago I started to build my shop and had planned it to be a power tool shop. The problem was I live in the center of town here in Sarchi. This is a town full of woodworkers, but a number of years ago the municipality passed a law that you couldn't have a professional wood shop in the center of town due to the noise and saw dust. Mine isn't a professional shop but my planer and table saw made quite a bit of noise causing some of the neighbors to complain. That intern lead to a visit from the ministry of health telling me I couldn't have a wood shop. Having explained that I wasn't a professional shop was good enough for him he just suggested I find a shop outside of town to plane down my wood, which I agreed to do. In the process of building my shop, last March my son Jonathan had ask for a set of woodworking tools for his birthday, that led me to want to build him a small bench. I didn't want to take the time to drive to another shop just to plane down some small pieces of wood so I broke out my handplanes, which I had purchase a number of years ago, blew of the dust and tried to get them into shape for use. This is where I would like to give honor where honor is due. One book that helped me greatly in getting the planes ready for use to where I was actually able to use them was "Hand Tool essentials" by Popular woodworking. Reading the articles on sharpening by Chris Schwarz really helped me obtain a decent edge to work from. (Someday if I ever meet him I will have to apologize for messing up his name. I always thought it was Chris Schwartz with a "t".) I didn't have any sharpening stones but was able to use my bench grinder, and it actually worked! When I tried out the plane it actually produced a decent shaving and I thought to myself, "Wow maybe I can do this." So that was the start of my journey into hand tools. Along with that book another book I had purchase that had been sitting on the shelf for about 4 years was "Made by Hand" by Tom Fidgen. I thought it was a cool book at the time but also thought I will never be able to do what he does, and at the time I thought he had some crazy hair. One day though I decided to e-mail him about one of his projects and ever since then we have been in constant communication. What can I say about Tom but that he is an incredibly inspiring guy. He has an awesome web page www.theunpluggedwoodshop.com, a great YouTube channel and just recently started a membership website www.anunpluggedlife.com that is like nothing else, might I suggest you visit it and sign up. Anyway those books and men helped me in pursuing something I wasn't sure I would be able to do or even wanted to do but in these last 8 months I have found and incredible joy and satisfaction that I had not gotten from using power tools. Please don't get me wrong I am not one of those guys advocating the elimination of all power-tools. There is nothing wrong with power tools, but for me the joy of building grew ten-fold when I started using hand-tools. I feel closer to the wood and it has truly become a spiritual journey for me, sorry if that sounds to religious or hippyish. Well, I am going to leave it at that for now. Enjoy the pics and I will post some more on the building of the shop and personal thoughts as well.

Take care and God bless
Mark  

The pictures are of preparing the area for concrete, and pouring the concrete. Might I add after that experience of pouring concrete by hand I can confidently say that God has not called me to be a mason.

Intro part 2

Hey there, it's Saturday morning here in Costa Rica experiencing a beautiful sunny 70 degree day with a great cup of coffee. Spent a couple hours in the shop working on a project for a fellow missionary here in Cost Rica, I'll post some pictures when I am finished. I just wanted to say again to anyone who stumbles upon this blog to please leave a comment. I know there is not much now for content but hopefully we'll have more in the coming weeks. As I said the original point of this blog was to take you with me as I build a Maloof inspired rocker with only hand tools. While I am waiting for a few hand tools to arrive in Costa Rica so I can get started I thought I would show you some projects I have already built. Along with that I will be building a "traditional English shaving horse" using the plans from Leevalley to help in the building of the rocker. The photos I have posted today are of a project I did for a family from our church. This was my first project completely unplugged project and I have to say I thouroghly enjoyed the journey. Here in Costa Rica they don't built traditional kitchen cabinets but instead build the sides with cinder block and pour a concrete slab for the top, then they tile it all and add a wood face.frame with drawers and doors. The wood I used is a comon wood used here in CR, we call it Guanacaste for the region it is harvested from but the Nortamerican name is Elephant Ear. It is a beautifully grained wood that can be difficult at times planing, but in the end was worth all the effort. Thanks again for your your comments and input and please keep visiting the blog..

Take care and God bless
Mark Hynek

Introduction

Hello, my name is Mark Hynek and I am a Christian pastor and missionary living in Costa Rica. My primary job is to preach the word of God, help existing churches, and work with youth groups. A secondary job, or hobby is woodworking. I love working with wood building many different things. This has been a passion of mine since I was a young boy. I live in the town of Sarchi Costa Rica which happens to be the furniture capitol of the the country. The people here have a passion for handmade furniture. I am new to blogging so there may be some bumps along the way, but I want to throw my hat into the blogging community to share my passion of building fine furniture. This last year I have converted my shop to a hand tool only shop leaving behind the noisy, dangerous machines, along with the nasty chemicals of modern day finishes and glues. My greatest satisfaction in woodworking is found in the process or how I like to put it, "the joy is found in the journey." I hope you enjoy the content and please comment on what you like or don't like. Please give suggestion on how you might approach a certain technique or aspect of building a project. I hope to take you along the journey of building various projects, through the difficult parts and through the triumphs of learning something new. There is a plethora of teaching videos and blogs regarding woodworking so this won't be so much a teaching blog as it will be sharing how I build and how I find the joy in the journey.

Take care, stay in touch, and God bless.
Mark Hynek