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An old Millers Falls #1285C miter box

December 13, 2010 By

After reading an article by Ron Herman in the Woodworking Magazine Blog, and the companion article in Popular Woodworking Magazine, I wanted a good miter box with its matching backsaw. Why? Because I can use it even when the power is off; because I don’t need dust collection for it; because…That’s what I kept telling myself, and it is also what I told Sandy. Of course, she understood what I meant: “…I need a miter box because they are cool, and because Ron Herman wrote that they are cool…” Really. They are cool. And they are also very accurate, as I later found out.

I advertised in the regional edition of a well-known online web site, and a few days later I received an e-mail that a man in the region had a Millers Falls miter box with saw, for $60. After some communication back and forth, we agreed on $40 for the miter box with its massive companion backsaw. I brought them home (about $20 in gas for the truck), cleaned up some of the grime on the box that accumulated in a basement for decades, and tried them out.

Everything works great; I had to use a little WD-40 to loosen machine screws, and to help with grime removal from the metal surfaces. Corrosion has done away with much of the nickel plating on the box, but a) it is complete, and b) everything works great. The bearing surfaces on the saw guides are perfect, and the elevator pins work perfectly (WD-40-assisted), effortlessly locking the saw in the raised position. The swing lever works smoothly, and the locking levers snap perfectly at each automatic indexing notch. Finally, the lever clamp locks the swinging lever such that it cannot be moved at all.

With everything working properly, I went about making several cuts. The first cut was on thin quarter sawn sycamore, and later on 7/8″ thick quarter sawn white oak. Although the saw worked flawlessly, it seemed just a bit slow for 11TPI. I suspect that sharpening by a competent person will speed up the cutting action. Note to self: Learn to sharpen saws! Let’s see: I need a good saw clamp; and some files; and a head-mounted magnifier; and…I am sure I forget some items.

This is the 1285C, ready to go to work:

Millers Falls 1285C miter box.

The back saw is massive: the blade is 28 inches long; it is 5 inches wide under the back, and it has 11 TPI (teeth per inch); the back is steel. The handle is some sort of hardwood; it has some nicks and paint splatter, and a hand-carved symbol that resembles the emblem of Zorro, the legendary masked hero. All the screws are tight, and the medallion is perfect and grimy. It appears to be a Disston #4 backsaw, from the 1940s, according to some of the saw experts on the WoodNet woodworking forum:

The Disston #4 backsaw.

The blade is not etched with the Disston logo; in fact, some research suggested that it was never etched — it might have been painted on the blade — or not. The back is cast steel:

Disston stamp on the cast steel back.

I waited until a few experts on old saws provided feedback on the best way to clean the grime from the blade, as I did not want to remove the nice patina from the blade. I wanted to remove only as much grime as possible. I finally cleaned the blade as much as possible, and applied some Boeshield T-9 as corrosion protection and lubricant.

While doing all this I also shot a 7-minute video of my first use of this miter box. If you have any suggestions on what else I should do to this miter box and/or backsaw, please leave me a Comment in the section below.

Millers Falls 1285 at Sandal Woods
Duration: 7:20 minutes

I learned the terminology for the miter box from the excellent manual Instructions and Parts List for Mitre Boxes by Millers Falls Co.; it is available available as a free download at WKfinetools.com .

Enjoy!

— Al Navas

Filed Under: Blog, Hand tools, Joinery, Miter, saw, Shop tools, Tools, Video Tagged With: , ,

Fail-safe miter joints for boxes and picture frames

November 30, 2010 By

A shoulder injury two years ago forced me to make a lighter crosscut sled than the much larger, heavier sled I had used for many years. But now that my shoulder is much better I have found a new use for the lighter sled: miter cuts for small boxes. However, mitered crosscuts result in thin and fragile edges on the sides of the kerf area, where the table saw blade runs.

I came up with a solution: make a replaceable insert for the miter crosscut sled – and simply replace this insert as needed. I cut off and removed some plywood from the sled, and sized and inserted a new, removable red oak insert. After setting the blade angle precisely using the Wixey Digital Angle Gauge, I cut the new kerf in the insert at exactly 45°:

Crosscut sled to cut miters on box sides.

I use a wood block to get repeatable length on the box sides:

Detail of removable insert on crosscut miter sled.

The same afternoon I also made a 45° frame sled, fashioned after Gary Rogowski’s picture frame sled, as it appeared in FineWoodworking.com. In the following photo I am confirming that the 90° angle is accurate. The thick walnut fences are screwed tightly against the MDF reference triangle I had screwed to the plywood base:

Close-up of MDF triangle used to align and set the 45° miter fences.

Also shown in the previous photo are short blocks on each walnut fence; these will allow clamping of extension wings, for various attachments.

In the following photo I show the picture frame sled in use. One side of the miter joint is cut on one fence, and the second side is cut on the opposite fence – this way, the miters will always be perfect, as any angle errors are canceled out:

Sled used to cut 45° miters on frame sides.

I now share my results. First, the the miter corner on the little box I featured a while back, in the article Letting the wood speak:

Mitered corner on a small box.

I will also be making some picture frames. My first test using the picture frame sled shows a perfect miter:

First miter corner test on a frame - the frame is still on the frame clamp.

I am finally confident that my miters will be perfect!

I would love to hear from you:

  1. How do you currently cut your miters?
  2. Are you happy with the results?
  3. What improvements would you make to get better miters?
  4. Are you already cutting miters with a variation of these sleds?

— Al Navas

Filed Under: Blog, Box making, Design, Jigs, Joinery, Miter Tagged With: , , , , , ,

A simple stop for the fence on the router table

June 7, 2009 By

Stickly-style leg

I am making a stand-up desk with thick legs. And to make the legs I am using a technique first developed by the Stickley brothers one century ago; they developed the technique to make legs that showed quarter-sawn oak all the way around. This technique was documented very nicely in the November/December 1996 issue of Fine Woodworking magazine #121 (Stickley-Style Legs, A router bit and two jigs yield quartersawn figure on all four sides, by Patrick Nelson). I am also using a modern router bit, and walnut instead of quarter-sawn white oak.

Click on all images to enlarge them.

The Stickley brothers (Albert & Gustav) used shaper bits not commonly available today:

stickley-leg-profile
From the FWW magazine article:
On the left, the Stickley version; and
on the right Patrick Nelson’s profile
— very similar to mine —

The modern equivalent of the joint is typically made with one router bit in two passes, at the same fence setting, and without changing the height of the router bit – the inside face of the boards is always facing down on the router table:

  1. The first pass is done with each of the four sides flat on the table, and
  2. For the opposite edge on each board, the pass is made with the board on its edge.

The following is the router bit I use for this operation – the Sommerfeld Tools lock miter bit:

45deg-lock-miter-bit 45deg-miter-bit

The diagram above, and the right, illustrates the perfect setting for the router bit height: The edge of the board will be razor-thin, and the interlocking teeth will be centered across the boards. Depending on the wood used and the sharpness of the router bit, the edge of the boards will have a razor-thin edge, which is very fragile. If the wood has a tendency to splinter, or if the router bit catches even slightly, there is a chance that the edge will be damaged and a large chip could result in an edge that must be trimmed (best case), or a new board machined (worst-case scenario).

To minimize the risk of damage I built a fence stop, which allows me to set the fence to the deepest cut  with great accuracy – i.e., with the fence as far back as possible to result in a razor-thin board edge. With this stop I can now make each of the cuts in 2 or 3 passes, with the final pass very shallow. The best part: I know the fence will always be at the same depth of cut, regardless whether I am making the pass with the board in the horizontal, or in the vertical position.

Now some details:

My router fence is the Sommerfeld fence. It pivots on the right-hand side; it is anchored with a retractable pin. The left-hand side of the fence is locked with a large knob; moving the fence farther back, or closer to the front, allows deeper or shallower cuts with the lock miter bit. As a result, I needed a fence stop only for the left-hand side of the fence.

fence-stop-5

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In the photo on the right I show the stop against the fence; I am  looking from behind the fence, toward the right-hand side of the table:

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In the photo on the left, the fence stop rides on the T-slot anchored to the router table.

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fence-stop-3

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In the photo on the right I show how the micro-adjustable stop can be secured using a nut against the metal insert I used to hold the bolt:

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I am very happy with this fence stop. It will allow me to machine each of  the boards that will become the desk legs in several passes, with minimal risk of blowing the edges of the boards.

In a future blog post I will show in detail how I make the legs using a century-old technique. But, instead of using quarter-sawn white oak, I will use walnut.

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Filed Under: Blog, Cabinetmaking, Design, furniture, Miter

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