De-nailing reclaimed wood

I got loads of 2x4s from my other halfs' dad who recently redid his kitchen floor. I planned to build a small wood shelter next to the shed so my wood collection can have a more appropriate home (and I can take down the tarp from the wall that was meant to be a "temporary" solution)

I checked the weather forecast for today and it was meant to be dry during the day which is good as I don't have an indoor workshop. Unfortunately I forgot to check the weather forecast for the night... it rained and all my wood is wet so I couldn't do anything with it apart from de-nailing it.

Picture 1 Workmate with footrest
did a really good job

I thought I would be clever and look up how that should be done properly.

The general advice is to use a bit of scrap wood between your hammer/pry bar and the wood in order to protect it (and pry bars are supposedly better, but I don't have one). The scrap wood not only serves as a protector but can also help you to get stubborn, long nails out (Picture 2) I used a claw hammer (metal shaft) and a rubber hammer, which worked absolutely fine. I used my Black and Decker workmate (Amazon link) to clamp the wood and bring it to a more accessible height. I was really surprised how well it worked. Yes it does move and wobbles a bit, but what do you expect of something so portable and light? I spent an extra 20 quid to get the one with a footrest, so I can hold it down and that usually does the trick.

Picture 2 a bit of wood makes pulling out
 long  nails a lot easier

The 2x4 had all sorts of rusty nails in it and some were easier than others. The ones with small heads where the most difficult as their heads tended to bend and leave no bit to get a grip on the nail. The method I found worked the best for pretty much all nails was to use the claws of the claw hammer to get under the nail, hold the hammer just over the T so I could use the rubber hammer to hit against the handle. I started hitting the handle low to loosen the nails and then gradually went higher to get the nail out completely (usually 4-5 strokes).

Picture 3 Holding the hammer just over the T to keep it in place  and  have the handle free to  hit with the Rubber hammer. I start by hitting the lower end first to loosen the nail first and then gradually hit it the handle higher to increase the force exerted on the nail (without me having to hit harder). This way it is less likely that you destroy the head of the nail without pulling it out (making it a lot harder to get out)

Physics will tell us that if we have more leverage we exert a greater force, thus the higher you hit on the handle the more force you will have to pull out the nail. So naturally one would assume that using a lot of force to get the nail out is good. However this is a sure way to bend your nail head or snap the nail. At the beginning you just want to "shock" it to loosen it a little bit and then gradually pull harder to get it out completely. This method worked consistently with all the different nails today (even with the ones that barely had a head).

Sometimes however you will encounter nails that haven't got any head anymore (or never had one to start with). Then you can use the rubber hammer to hammer the claws into the nail by hitting the hammer head of the claw hammer (picture). This way your claws will bite into the nail and get some grip. Be sure to start gently when you then pull it out otherwise it is really easy to destroy the little grooves you just created in the nail. Usually it takes a few times from different sides to get the headless nail out. 

You can bend what is sticking out of the nail over one of your claws (with a second hammer). This way the bent nail will act a bit like a head, if you nail is very rusty you might break it off though.

If a nail proves tricky to come out, have a little look whether you can find out which way it is going in the wood (Not everybody nails nails straight...). If you are trying to pull it the opposite way you'll make your life a lot harder and risk splintering the wood. So try it from different angles, this way you'll gently loosen it and find the correct direction in which you should pull it out.

Once you get in a rhythm de-nailing becomes fairly easy. Added bonus of the "increased handle-height hitting" technique is that you don't have to vary how hard you swing the hammer, physics does that for you.

So after a morning of de-nailing I am left with this pile of 2x4s ready to use (once they are dry again).

Picture 3 My nice pile of "new" wood

Picture 4 The pile of old nails I took out today

Picture 5 Variety of nails I encountered today

Additional cupboard space

Any additional cupboard space in the kitchen is good space. In our kitchen we had a cupboard under a work surface that was completely empty, so I wanted to build some "built-in" shelving space. I found an MDF board and some varnished 2nd hand shelves. I cut this all to size (which by itself sounds boring), but I haven't got a table saw so my sawing is not quite so straight and smooth. However this gave me an excellent excuse to use my new plane! It is really a beauty to work with. 

The finished work is OK, the angles aren't all 90 degrees, but hey everyone has to start somewhere and lessons have definitely been learnt (like cutting everything to size and then assemble it all together rather than piece by piece).

This weekends job is to build a wood shelter so the scrap wood I keep collecting doesn't render the shed useless.

The cardboard boxes

My tools have arrived! all wrapped up nicely in bubble wrap and cardboard boxes (which are currently inside and not in the recycling bin as I am constantly being reminded of).

So now I have a "work bench" (a workmate from Black & Decker) which is very convenient as it folds away quite nicely so I can put it away in the shed (I definitely want a garage with the next house). A couple of F-clamps and G-clamps to clamp things down (hear hear!) have arrived along with a nice Plane (Stanley 4 Smooth Plane 2) and a set of 4 chisels (Stanley).

I also got a gouge (LUX) to finally finish my chopping board "crumb catcher".

All the tools look reasonably sharp, but what do I know? The chisels came with a honing stone, but I want to give the "Scary sharp" technique a go (previous post).

Scary sharp

So now that I have all these nice tools they need to be kept in shape. My dad introduced me to the concept of "Scary sharp": a honing method where one uses sandpaper instead of oil/Waterstones to sharpen ones tools.

The sandpaper is attached to a glass board in order to have a nice sturdy flat surface. The nice thing about this system is, that once the grit of the sandpaper is gone, you can just replace it. Sandpaper itself is fairly cheap and available readily available online (even the higher grits). This also means you can have all the different grits on one big board to keep it nice and organized and don't have to switch honing stones.

The Polthaus video series explains "Scary Sharp" technique very well (much better than I ever could) and I would highly recommend his 3 videos on it:

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

His blog in general is tremendously useful to learn all sorts of techniques and the history of tools, not to mention great fun to read as Polthaus has an amazing sense of humor (in my opinion).

To get hold of some sandpaper was no trouble at all, however to find a nice glass board that is thicker then 5 mm was rather tricky, or so I thought. (It should be thicker than 5 mm to stop it from bending) 

So I started looking for local glaziers to ask them if they had any seconds, that no one wanted, that I could buy for as few pounds as possible. However I had to go to a small chain homestore shop to pick up some plastic boxes and had a brief look through their kitchen aisle and found a 1 cm thick glass "working-surface protector"! It even had some rubber blobs on the backside to stop it from slipping and all this for less then 10 pounds. So definitely worth checking if you are looking for one.

Polthaus recommended using sandpaper that already has adhesive on the back or use spray glue to fix the sandpaper to the glass, I chose the second approach. I wasn't quite sure how much glue was necessary and end ended up with 3 or 4 strips of sandpaper where the glue formed blobs underneath it. Luckily it takes some time to dry so I could use a small roll to even it out, but ended up with some glue on top of the sandpaper due to general clumsiness.... so practice is required (or sandpaper with adhesive strips).

This is a picture of my first attempt of a Scary Sharp board and I am actually quite chuffed with it. It has a range of grit on it varying from 100 to 1200.

To get the chisel angles right I have invested in a honing guide (Veritas MK 2).

Now I just have to sit down and hone away!

To clean the metal dust of the sandpapers I got a strong Neodymium magnet (Amazon Link). I would advise to wrap some paper or plastic around it when hovering over the sandpaper. This way the metal dust does not cling to the magnet, which is otherwise impossible to ever get off the magnet.

Welcome

Hello hallo! This is a tiny little blog hoping to grow in the future to a slightly less tiny blog. 

I recently started expanding my DIY "skills" to woodworking, as in making objects that should normally have 90 degree angles. 

I thought it would be nice to keep a list of the things I have attempted to build to see whether I have learned anything from previous mistakes, so one could say this is my blog of failures.  I myself found other peoples blogs of failures incredibly helpful to realize what one could do wrong etc. so maybe this will be helpful to someone, if not it could be good for a laugh or procrastination.