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This week I’m building a pair of portable workbenches for an upcoming issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine and spent yesterday turning lots and lots of threads for the vise and for the garbage can.
Instead of using a manual threadbox for these benches, I decided to try the Beall Tool Co. wood threading system. It uses a router to power the threadbox to make the screws. The holes are tapped as usual with a manual (but very nice) tap.
The Beall definitely makes cleaner threads than the current crop of new hand-powered threadboxes, but it also requires some finesse for good results.
I’m going to write up some details for the magazine, but here are a few hints.
1. Avoid store-bought dowels. I bought a few dowels to practice on and get the jig set up. Bad idea. Even though I picked the best 1-1/4” dowels from the rack, they were still oval-shaped. As a result, they would jam in the threader. Instead of buying some of the Chinese-made dowels that look like poplar, you should flush your money down the toilet – it’s the same thing. Threading those things was like shoving wet toilet paper into a kitchen disposal. The results were not pretty.
2. Hard, diffuse-porous woods such as maple seem to work better than ring-porous woods such as oak. The threads were less likely to chip out.
3. Beall sells precision dowel stock, but I just turned my own. I turned my dowels a few thou under 1-1/4”, which went through the threader smoothly.
4. Longer lengths are better – up to a point. I found that turning and then threading 12” lengths was pretty ideal. Longer lengths got wobbly on the lathe. Shorter lengths were more difficult to manage in the threader.
5. Little adjustments make a huge difference. Dropping the router a few thou was the difference between bad threads and good threads.
The video below shows what the process looks like. (The music is “Laid Ten Dollars Down” by the Black Twig Pickers.)
— Christopher Schwarz
• This bench is based closely on The Milkman’s Workbench that I wrote about last year. Check out the photos here.
• I’ve written a ton about workbenches here on the blog. You can read it all for free here.
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Hi Folks,
What kind of lubricant should I use to lubricate the wooden threads?
With the current state it’s noisy and hard to turn them.
Any suggestion?
Thanks,
Gus
Just at the website and 1″ is as big as Beall sells.
How did you get a 1 1/4″ dowel through that 1″ hole?
A friend of mine, who has a lathe, turned two blanks for me to thread for a Moxon vice I was making. After I threaded the blanks, he suggested I apply a coat or two of “thin CA glue”, that turners commonly use, to harden the threads. I tried it. The thin glue easily spread around the threads without any clogging of the thread “valleys”. It dries very quickly, and did not noticeably thicken the screw or otherwise make turning the screw any more difficult.
Chris,
Have you ever tried making your own tap and screwbox? In an early addition of FWW (I have it in their Technques 1 book) Richard Starr has a nice article about making your own tap and box. The technique may be limited in how small (in diameter) a screw you can make, but 1 1/4 inch screws would be possible. The article starts on page 74 and runs through page 80. Some nice drawings and pictures make it look like a straightfoward project.
Dave – Alcohol is certainly better than water, but it’s still a polar protic solvent (like water), and it will still swell hydrophilic materials like cellulose (wood). Doesn’t matter while planing end-grain, but when the tolerances have to be within a couple of thousandths, even a little swelling can cause problems.
Chris:
For threaded parts, have your tried using apple wood? I have found it to be by far the best wood that I have encountered for really fine turnings. A local orchardist who also owns a saw mill was my source apple wood.
Having read about your treadle table saw experience at the Woodwright’s School I would love to see you use a treadle lathe. Possibly stompin’ in time with some good bluegrass music. Shenanigans aside, I’m glad you brought up the Beall system. I automatically assumed a router based threading system’s price would be astronomically high, but after following the link I was pleasantly surprised to find out the kits are quite reasonably priced. And not being an Ebay thing they won’t be subject to the “Schwarz Effect”.
Two router-based videos in less than a month? What’s next… “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria! “
Chris you owe it to yourself to get a proper tap wrench for that!
Chris,
It was quite a shock to see the vice grip method. I took off points for visual style but the music evened it back up again. I guess the huge root on the apparently well made tap keeps it from tipping, jamming and breaking – or it’s too big to break.
-Dave
What kind of gouge are you using at the lathe?
I agree with you. The thing that makes me very frustrated, however, is why the retailers who sell the threadboxes don’t add $10 or $20 to the production cost and produce a quality product. I would gladly pay it, as would many others, because the current product is junk.
I may be wrong about the cost of upgrading the product, but it seems like manufacturing it to closer tolerances and upgrading the cutter would do the trick.
With the version of Jonas’s father’s bench that I’ve been working on, I’ve cheated with my prototype.
Not having a screw box, I bought 4 identical malleable iron clamps at $5 each. By undoing the clamps in a vise I popped the pads off the ends of the screws, so I could unscrew them fully. I sawed off all but the straightish piece leading from the threaded boss in the frame. This left a keyhole shape.
I spaced out where the vise screws should go in the front rail from Jonas’s pictures and description, then drew around the keyhole shapes. Using a brace and bit I first drilled a depression for each boss into the front rail, then cut out the tail of the shape with a chisel. When each piece was a tight fit, I marked the center through the threaded hole and drilled through for each vise screw.
With the bench assembled, the vise screws were screwed through the rail. Tightening these with their pads on the end against scrap wood popped the pads back on. This leaves four screws at the front of the bench permanently in position.
One tip to using the Beall system (or a manual threading box, for that matter) is to wet the dowels thoroughly with mineral spirits. The mineral sprits won’t cause the dowel to swell as water will, and it makes the wood fibers considerably less brittle, so the threads chip out far less.
I’ve also tried coating the lathe-turned dowels in hide glue. This works wonderfully to prevent chip-out during the threading operation once the glue’s been given a couple of days to cure and the dowel dries out. The disadvantage to this method is that some woods tend to change shape enough that one has to guesstimate turning the dowels about 10-20 thousandths undersized to ensure they don’t jam in a thread box.
I bought one of those things 20 years ago. I use it once in a blue moon but it’s worth the price. You’re right about store bought dowels, they’re worthless.