Roubo Bookstand

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Chris Knight

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A recent posting of this little bookstand by Dave R in this post

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intrigued me enough to have a go at making it. In principle, it's easy but in practice., I found it quite challenging. What was particularly difficult, at least the way I did it was separating the two halves of the board once I had cut the angled mortices and bandsawn the two leaves as far as the joint. I thoughtl I could knife through the wood remaining between the fingers - not so and in the process of trying, I broke off a couple of blades in the cuts and couldn't get them out. needless to say the presence of a piece of blade hindered further work in the cut!

I finally tried drilling though with a fine bit and using a hand-held piercing saw blade to complete the cuts. This didn't work well either as I was unable to maintain. the line of the cut very well and I ended up breaking blades and leaving more steel inside the cuts.

Finally in frustration, I decided there was nothing for it but brute force, reasoning that I had removed enough material that the wood remaining between the fingers would shear - it did but not before breaking one of the leaves in two (unsurprisingly, the one with only two fingers).

I was able to glue them together and the join is not very visible fortunately. More of a problem is the poor surface between the fingers created when I sheared the joints loose. Still, overall it looks not bad.

If I were to do another I would not aim for trying to get a very fine cut between the fingers. Instead, I would try to use an electric jigsaw blade as the tool to separate them, although starting the cut would still be bit of problem.

Also, because I was concerned about the strength of the fingers, I started with a board one inch thick but this was probably a mistake as it made for more wood to cut through to separate the two halves. I might have managed with the craft knife blades if the wood head been say only 3/4 inch to start with.
 
You don't hang about do you Chris?? :lol:

Well done it looks great. I must say I was moderately tempted to build one as I could think of a use for it. But your experience has scared me off like a fox chased by a hound ;)

Although I think a variation could be made like Steve's (promhandicam) chair that he brought to Waka's bash.

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What an amazing grain on that!!!

How intriguing a project. So this was cut out of a two inch stock and bandsawed into two pieces while joined. Did you have a plan or did you do this on your own? It is pretty damn cool.

Thanks for sharing.

Couldn't you drill a very fine hole and put a fret saw through to cut? just an idea.
 
Yes, it's well figured! I started with a 2 inch thick piece of walnut which I re-sawed into two one inch thick pieces, I used one of these for the bookstand. I used the drawing in the Sketchup model that Dave R posted as a guide.
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I positioned the fingers at the point where the grain offered maximum parallelism with the cross-over of the fingers. (The blood is from fitting a new blade for the resawing!)

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I did drill a hole for a piercing saw blade and would have used a coping saw blade, except I was still trying for a very fine cut between the fingers. The little pins at the end of the coping saw blade would have required a much larger hole than I wanted to drill had I wished to keep them on for use in a saw frame. I don't have a deep fretsaw frame but if they make them with blade clamps rather than pinned fasteners, then that would probably work pretty well.

Tom, the chair solution would be cheating! :D

It's actually a good exercise in precision planing, marking out and chiselling. Everything has to line up perfectly front and back and it is surprisingly hard to get really clean angled mortices. There are five each side.

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My excuse is my bandsaw won't resaw that deep :oops: :wink:

Chris, I notice you have a Grripper? How do you find them? I was just thinking of investing. I think you can only get them from Roger Phebey over here.
 
Tom,
I forget where I got mine - I might have ordered it from the USA. I find it very useful and although it does mean your hand passes over the blade which will get all the HSE types in a lather, I think it is a great aid to safety.

Of course, it would be a nice exercise to saw the thing by hand... :D
 
waterhead37":f9xd9jc6 said:
I did drill a hole for a piercing saw blade and would have used a coping saw blade, except I was still trying for a very fine cut between the fingers. The little pins at the end of the coping saw blade would have required a much larger hole than I wanted to drill had I wished to keep them on for use in a saw frame. I don't have a deep fretsaw frame but if they make them with blade clamps rather than pinned fasteners, then that would probably work pretty well.

This probably isn't much help to you now, but I ordered Pined blades for my Scroll saw with out checking that it needed not Pined blades, but I found with one quick tap with a small hammer I could knock the pin out and it would be easy to knock back in. So you might be able to do the same with your saw if you encounter the problem again.
 
This is really interesting. I might have a go at some stage but I've spent far too long thinking about it already. I don't remember what they are called but at college we have a very thin saw blade that was round and cut in any direction (abrasaw maybe?) I think that would do it. I remember them being very controllable.
Simon
 
Thats really impressive - one of those things that looks simple, but I am quite prepared to believe that its not straightforward to execute!

One for a rainy afternoon I think.

Ed
 
Ooooooooh, what a fun little project! Nicely executed, from what I can see. Difficult to know how I would tackle those cuts.........

Mike
 

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