Woodworking on $1.50 per day - Part 2

It's been a month since you last went out to buy tools, and you're getting tired of nailing joints together.  You really want to cut some better joints, but you're not sure how to get started.  Well, that's what this month's purchasing is, so let's get going!

Month 2

This month we're going to find some chisels and sharpening tools.  This is where you get to make some choices.

Chisels:

For chisels, you want bevel-edge chisels in at least 1/4" and 1/2" sizes.  Adding a 1" chisel will make your life easier, but isn't necessary for a lot of things.  If you look at Amazon, you can get Irwin Marple chisels for $8-$9 each.  That's about $18.  I'd recommend buying a 1/4" and a 1/2", and spending the rest of this month's budget on sharpening stones.  If you don't want to order from Amazon, Sears and Home Depot have similar chisels at similar prices.  You can also keep an eye on thrift stores, flea markets, and yard sales:  those are a bit risky, because you're not really going to have the tools to restore a badly damaged chisel, but you might find a fantastic deal.

Keep in mind these are not high-quality tools.  They're not going to be very sharp out of the box, and they probably won't hold an edge all that long.  That said, I worked with a set of Craftsman chisels for a few years, and while they sucked, they still worked.

Sharpening:

Talking about sharpening is like tap-dancing through a minefield.  Given a budget of about $25, though, you're pretty limited.  Given that, I'm going to go with the two cheapest initial cost options.  There are a lot of excellent videos on how to sharpen, so I'm not going to cover it here.

Sandpaper:

First things first, you need a flat surface.  There are two cheap ways to get one, although neither will be perfect.  First, go to a home store and buy a granite floor tile.  They should run around $5-8, and will be flat enough.  The second option is to talk to a granite supplier.  See if they've got an off-cut too small to sell as a countertop, but big enough for your use.  You probably want something around 8"x2" at a minimum, and ground smooth on at least one side.  Larger is better.

Next, you should be looking for sandpaper.  You want wet/dry paper, and for routine sharpening you can probably start with 400 grit.  I'd go 400, 800, and 1000 grit.  If you want to, you can go up to 2000, but I mostly didn't bother when I was using sandpaper.  When you go to sharpen, drip some water or windex on the paper, set it on the granite plate, and sharpen.  

So what's the catch?  The catch is that while the initial investment is low, the long-term cost is high.  Yes, sandpaper is cheap, but the cost adds up.  You can't use the same sheet for very long, or you'll run into issues where half of the cutting edge is sharp and the other half isn't.

Oilstones:

Oilstones are a slightly larger initial investment, but not horrible.  You can get a three-grit set on Amazon for around $25, which is just within our budget.  Similar options may be available at local stores, or they may not:  it's hard to guess in any given area.  You're mostly going to want fine and extra-fine grits, not the coarse one.  That's really for working on a damaged blade, which hopefully you won't have.

Is there a catch?  I've never used that particular set, so I don't really know.  In all honestly, I greatly prefer a diamond plate, and so I've switched to that exclusively.  But they're not cheap:  the combined price for the set I have is something like $150, which is absurd for a $45/month budget.  If you have a windfall, sharpening tools would be a great way to spend it, but for now just put it on your "someday when I'm rich" list.

What can I do now?

The addition of chisels makes a big change.  You can now cut dovetails, for instance.  For practice, I recommend buying a piece of 1x4 or 1x5, and cutting a set of dovetails every day for at least two weeks.  Try to get a little better every day, and fix something that didn't quite work right the day before.  At the end of two weeks or a month, you're likely to be cutting them fairly quickly and quite accurately.

So that means you can make dovetailed boxes, or drawers for a case that's nailed together.  You can make housing dados and rabbets if you're careful, which means you can make a pretty solid book case.  You can now make mortise and tenon joints in softwood, and in hardwood if you're cautious.

This is, honestly, the point where you can start making furniture.  You don't have a smoothing plane or a big range of sandpaper grits, so making fine furniture is a challenge, but you can make things.  For that matter, you now have the critical tools for making a workbench:  I didn't have much more than this when I built my small bench.

So spend the next month practicing sharpening and making joints, and I'll figure out what you should buy next.

Woodworking on $1.50 per day - Part 1

I recently saw another "I want to start wood working, but I really can't afford to spend much money" post, and it got me thinking.  There used to be good options for buying things gradually, but at this point it's pretty much high-interest credit cards or nothing.  There used to be books titled things like "Europe on $5 a day!", so I thought I'd do something similar.

Even as a college student, I probably could have put away a dollar or two a day, so I'm going to think of the available money as $45/month.  It's a nice round number to work with.  Before I go any further, though, I'm going to try to address the cost vs. quality problem.  With woodworking tools, you generally get what you pay for.  On $45 per month, you're not going to be buying heirloom tools.  You're going to be buying tools that you'll probably start wanting to replace after a couple of years.

So what's the value here?  Aren't you just throwing money away?  Well, yes.  You are.  But not everyone can afford to buy top line tools from the beginning, and if you're going to insist on Lie-Nielson tools on even $5 per day, it's going to be years before you can get much work done.  This is a "Get in the shop as fast as possible" list.  You can keep the tools in a cardboard box until you build yourself a better tool box.  And now I'll get back on track.

What do we need to do?

To start with, what are the critical tools or operations?  In no particular order, here's my list.

• A saw that can make rip cuts.
• A saw that can make cross cuts. 
• A saw that can make fine joinery cuts.
• Chisels for shaping, cutting joints, etc.
• Some sort of smoothing tool.  Card scrapers, hand plane, sandpaper, or whatever.
• Marking tools... the usual choices being a marking gauge, marking knife, and so on.
• Ways to drill large and small holes.
• A hammer (for driving nails and just generally smacking things) and screwdrivers.
• A way to make long board edges straight after being rip-cut.
• A way to cut rabbets

The actual tools.

OK.  So that's a rough tool set.  Let's talk about actual tools, then.  As a guideline here, I'm going to go as cheap as I think is practical:  this is not a kit of heirloom tools.  This is a set that will let you get going as cheaply as possible, and which you'll replace over time as you come up with more cash.  I'm also going to try to think about order of operations here, so I'll split things up by month.  

Note 1:  I get nothing if you follow these links.  I get nothing if you don't follow these links.  I'm pretty much writing this for fun, and the only profit I get is the excitement of checking to see whether anyone has read this.

Note 2:  Prices are as of the day I wrote this.  I'm not going to keep updating, but the basics should stay pretty similar.

What am I including?

Before I start the actual list, a quick note.  I'm only including durable tools here;  no wood, even though it's a major cost.  Why not?  Because you can do quite a lot with cheap or free lumber.  Dimensional lumber from the home store, scavenged pallet wood, and things like that.  

Month 1:

This month, you're going to Sears.  No matter what you do, you're eventually going to need to drive nails and screws, so we'll deal with that and see what we have left.  First, pick up a 16oz Curved Claw Hammer.  The curved claws are good for removing nails, and I happen to like wood handles.  Also, it's about $5, which seems right for this project.  Next up, pick up a cheap 6-in-1 screwdriver.  I have this one, and it works fine.  It's about $9 right now:  if you see one that's cheaper, grab that instead.  You'll want #1 and #2 Phillips head, and 3/16" and 1/4" slotted heads, which most of that style have.  We're up to $14 here, so let's add a saw and call it a day.  I have a Shark brand Ryoba (there's a review back near the beginning of the blog), which I quite like.  At the moment Sears is listing them at about $29, so it will bring us up to $43 before tax.  I'll call that good!  If you're willing to splurge a little on month one, I'd add a few sheets of 180 grit sandpaper and a variety pack of nails.  That will bring you up to around $50-55, but allow you to start woodworking immediately.  You could also put off the screwdriver until next month... it's not really critical if you only have nails.

What can you do with this set?  A surprising amount, actually.

I'd start with a Japanese-style toolbox such as this:

Build it to the length of your saw, and ideally out of something like 1x10.  It will hold and protect your tools, but it doesn't need to be perfect.  All the joints are butt joints held together with nails, so there's no complex joinery.  It also doesn't have to be perfectly smooth, so sanding the ends of the boards with 180 grit sandpaper will be fine.  Just wrap it around a piece of scrap and get going.

This toolset will also allow you build a standard five-board bench, like this:

And that should be enough to keep you busy until it's time to think about your second month's purchasing...

Cutting Mitered Corners, Part 2

At my last post, I was waiting for the glue to dry so I could put a top rail on the jig.  Once it had, I planed a 45 degree angle into the rail, and screwed it in place.

While I did do my best to make sure the rail was actually 45 degrees, I realized it didn't entirely matter.  The top rail is there for one reason:  to support the edge of the plane as it slides across the jig.  As long as the sole of the plane is 45 degrees to the bed of the jig, nothing else really matters about the rail.  It could be square, as long as it holds the plane at the correct angle.  Once I had the angle planed in, I used my #5 plane to figure out where it should be attached, and screwed it down.  I may take it up and glue it, but it seems to be fine the way it is.

And that's it... the only thing left is to try it out.

The holdfast on the left doesn't add much, but it does at a little bit of downward pressure, which is a plus.

Yep, my bench is a mess.  Here's how the jig looks with a plane sitting on it, though.

Shaving from 1/4" poplar.  It works, and I'd say the plane is probably sharp enough.

Now that I know the thing works, I'll add a rail to the bottom that I can clamp in my leg vise.  That should simplify work holding quite a lot, and make it a lot quicker to set up.

Overall, a successful project!

Cutting Mitered Corners, Part 1

I have a few small boxes to make, and I wanted to do mitered corners with splines across them.  Unfortunately, miters are really hard to cut accurately in wide stock, and my Langdon miter box can only hold small stock vertically if it's pretty long and not too wide.  So what am I to do?

Enter the miter shooting board.  My first attempt was for a jig that would sit on my regular shooting board, with the miter at the bottom, so I could just treat it like any other board.  Unfortunately, that turns out not to have worked, for several reasons.  So after some tweaking (and muttered curses), I decided to go with a more standard design.  Something more like this, from the Unplugged Workshop:

I happened to have a fairly large piece of pine (around 10" by 14") that's been in my shop for over a year without cupping or twisting, so I decided that was probably stable enough to use for a base.  The first step was cutting the groove for the plane to ride in.  I have a scratch stock I keep meaning to use, so I started by making a 90 degree cutter for it, so the sides of the groove would be at 45 degrees to the surface of the wood.  Cutting cross-grain in pine is hard, so I started out with a knife line, and cleaned it out to a little less than 45 degrees by eye with a chisel.  Once it looked about right, I used the scratch stock to make sure the sides were actually at the right angles.

Next up were the sides.  Those are simple pieces of 2x2 pine, and the angles were cut on the Langdon miter box.  I don't use it a lot, but when I do it reminds me why I bought it:  the cuts wound up essentially perfect straight off the saw, with a fairly clean surface.

It's a little bit of a challenge to use in the space I have available, since my bench isn't actually deep enough to accommodate it, but clamping it to a sawbench works fine.  For scale, that's a 30" backsaw blade (I think... maybe 36"?), so it's quite a bit bigger than it looks in the photo.

Once those were cut, I glued them to the base, making sure they were square to the groove and met it at the same place on both sides.  Right now the glue is curing (I was impatient, so I used Titebond instead of hide glue), and hopefully I'll be able to get the final piece installed tonight.  Then, finally, I'll be able to start working on those boxes!

Design Notebook: A New Bench

Another "thought exercise" sort of post.

Background & Purpose

One of the projects I've been (slowly) working on is clearing my garage to a point where I can use it as a shop.  It's going to take some time, since I'll also have to insulate it, but I've made a start.  One thing I've recently started giving serious consideration to is the bench.  What I'm using right now is roughly two feet deep by four feet long.  It's great for the space I have, but if I'm going to have more space, I want a larger bench.

I've been going back and forth on this internally for quite a while, and it may happen again, but I think I've figured out roughly what I want.  My two initial impulses were an English-style bench, with a wide apron and nothing underneath, or a Shaker style bench, with lots of built-in storage.  I think I've settled on the Shaker type, largely because I like the way they look.  The other advantage is that I know from experience that I'll keep piling things under my bench until any open space is full, and a Shaker bench will at least force me to get things somewhat organized.

Requirements

What I've thought about so far:

1) Weight.  It needs to be heavy to stay still, and shouldn't need to be moved within the shop very often.  A Shaker bench is good for weight, given the drawers.  However, I'm sure I'll move house again, so it should be possible to either break it down or somehow make it, if not portable, then at least moveable.

2) Tail Vise.  I'd like a tail vise of some sort... I'm leaning towards something like this, which seems to be the new standard.  It should be both more solid and easier to build than a traditional vise, and more useful than a wagon vise.

3) Front vise.  I'm torn on this one.  I love my leg vise:  If I were doing it again, I'd build it out of something harder and stiffer than pine, but using it is great.  On the other hand, it does have some shortcomings.  I'd really like to try a shoulder vise, which is something that would fit a lot better on a large bench than my little one.  What I'll likely do is build up a shoulder vise and attach it with Timber Lok screws, which would certainly provide enough strength to keep it stable.  If I end up not liking it, I'll either install a metal quick-release vise or another leg vise.

4) Holdfasts.  I'm not willing to give up my holdfasts, so I'll need to leave a gap under the benchtop.  The top plus the gap needs to total about 7", which is quite doable.  I'd like to shoot for a 3" top with 4" underneath.  I'll probably leave that space open, since it's not ideal for storage, and hang a shelf over the bench for the things I store there now.

5) Board jack/sliding deadman.  One of the things I dislike on my current bench is trying to support long pieces of wood.  I'd originally planned to replace it with an English-style bench with an apron, but I think I like the idea of the board jack better.  It will also leave some space for...

6) Storage.  I'm torn on this.  On the one hand, I can always use more storage.  On the other hand, I like working out of my toolchest, and I'm not sure I love the idea of having access potentially blocked by whatever I'm working on.  I think the drawers will likely end up filled with things like hinges, fasteners, and the like, with maybe a few rarely-used tools to fill out the set.  I can't know what I'm going to wind up putting in them until I've got it built, though, so I'm not going to worry about it.  One thing I do know is that I want the drawers to be transportable:  What I'm thinking at the moment is that for each drawer I'll cut a piece of wood (possibly 1/4" ply) for a top, and store it under the drawer.  When the time comes to move, I'll be able to pull out the drawer, tack the top in place with nails, and stack it in the moving van.  That way I can move the bench without all the drawers, and the drawers can stay packed while I move everything.

7) Top.  My current bench is just about 24" deep and 50" long.  I don't love either dimension.  The back 6-10" of the top really only get used for tool storage, which shouldn't be happening.  50" isn't really long enough to work on large assemblies, though I've been making it work.  The traditional Shaker bench is significantly deeper than I want, and I'd like to try out a tool well.  So my current thinking is to make a solid top about 18" deep, with a tool well behind that. I can always put spacers in the well if I need the extra space, and in the meantime it should stay useable.

Design Considerations

I built my current bench out of Douglas Fir and 3/4" plywood.  I like the Douglas Fir:  it's hard, it's stable, and it looks good.  The plywood I'm not such a fan of... it's stable and reliable, but I don't much like the look.  I'll probably stick to a frame of DF, probably in the form of 4x4.  I might just use 4x4 for the legs, and use either 2x stock for the rails:  that will depend on how much overkill I want to go with and what lumber I can find.

For the top, I'd like to go solid wood.  My current bench has a plywood top, and while it's OK, drilling dog holes really isn't practical with hand tools.  Since I'm planning on a tail vise, what I may do is make the front 3" or so out of some hardwood, maple or oak for preference.  I can cut square mortises in that before gluing it in place, and have a good way to deal with surface planing long boards.  Behind that, I'll almost certainly go with laminated softwood;  pine, more DF, or whatever's cheap and straight at the lumber yard.  Either way I'll want the top at least 3" thick, to provide a good grip for my holdfasts.  Alternatively, I may buy a prefab laminated top, if I can find one thick enough (or two at a good enough price).

I do intend to paint everything but the top and the leg that will likely be used as a vise:  the more photos I see, the more I realize I want some color in my shop.  I'm planning for white walls and ceiling to add light, so any color is going to have to come from the furniture.

Conclusion

None of this is settled, but at least the rough outlines should work well.  With luck, I'll be able to start on this project this summer.  Without... well, design work is good mental exercise, and maybe it'll help someone else who's trying to figure out what to do for a bench.

Plane repairs

About six months ago, I bought a wooden moving fillister plane on ebay.  It's a design I hadn't seen before, but looked like it was in pretty good shape, and the seller was able to confirm that all the parts moved the way they should.

Also something I hadn't seen... those lines on the side of the body are depth markings.  They're perfectly parallel to the sole, and are mostly in 1/8" increments.  It's not perfectly accurate, but it's close enough for a rough setting.

Once I got it, I touched up the iron (it still needs a more thorough sharpening, but it's workable), and gave it a try.  On long-grain cuts, it worked quite well.  It showed a little bit of tendency to jam, but was otherwise fine.  On cross-grain cuts, it was pretty bad.  It worked, but the edges were ragged.  After a little poking, I realized there was no problem at all with the nicker: the slot is worn enough that it needs a shaving for padding behind it, but other than that it's fine.

The problem was that the iron wasn't original, and was too wide.  On a moving fillister plane, the iron needs to line up pretty exactly with the nicker.  On this plane, the iron extended almost a full 1/16" beyond the nicker, which mean the nicker couldn't do its job.

So last night I spent close to an hour filing down the outer edge of the iron.  I could have used a grinder, but I hate using them and I didn't want to risk overheating the blade.  Eventually, I got it down to just about the right width, and it works far, far better now.

It can always get better, but right now it's in perfectly useable condition, at least in soft woods.

Toy Chests for my Nephews

This was a fun project in a lot of ways.  It was also the first time I needed stitches for something I did to myself while woodworking.  Oops.

Last year, my sisters suggested -- possibly in jest -- that it would be cool to have a pair of toy chests that would fit under the windows in their sunroom.  I agreed that would be cool, and carefully didn't promise anything.  In the end, though, the temptation was too great, and I got to work over the summer.

Design

What do toy chests need?  A lot of space, a lot of strength, and air holes.  Especially if you've got twin boys, SOMEONE is going to end up trapped inside one of them sooner or later.  Size was more or less a given:  they couldn't be more than about 22" high and still fit under the windows, and they couldn't be more than about 32" long and fit on the oddly shaped wall.  

Everything else was taken directly from the lumber I was using.  I decided to build it frame-and-panel, since I don't much like doing big glue-ups (more commentary on that later), so I sat down and worked out sizing.  I don't have a power tool capable of easily ripping to a given width, so I wanted to have as few rips as possible.  I therefore sat down with a table of common widths of pine to work out sizes.

I knew that I wanted to use 2x2 for the legs.  It was cheap, convenient, and easy to get.  So that's 1.5" on each side, for 3" total.  I wanted to use 1x5 for the stiles, which is about 4 1/2" each, less about 3/8 for each groove.  Assuming two stiles, two legs, and six grooves (two per stile, one per leg), that's (very) roughly 2 x (1") + 2 x (3 3/4") = 8 1/2".  It turns out that two 1x10 panels and one 1x8 panel brought it up to about 32", which was right where I wanted it.  Each panel was rabbeted 1/4" in from the edge to fit in groves in the frame.

The sides I ended up doing as flat panels, which I now sort of regret:  I'm pretty sure the panel to leg joint is going to be the weakest point in the whole chest.

The lids are groove-in-groove.  I would have like to have thicker (or at least stronger) lumber for that, but 1x was what I had easy (and cheap) access to.  Doing it again I might buy more expensive materials, since I'm not thrilled with the final strength.  The lid wound up being (I think) 1x6 frame and 1x12 for the panel. I build the lid, then sized the side panels to that.  That meant two not very visible rip cuts, rather than one very visible rip.

Construction

This was the largest "finished furniture" project I've done.  My bench is larger (although not by much!)

In general construction was very simple, since everything except the ends and bottoms were frame in panel, and the bottom was just shiplapped planks.  My combination plane got a good workout on this one, and so did my rabbet plane!  I was quite pleased with how well both worked on endgrain, and in pine.  There was a little bit of spelching (pieces breaking off) at the end of the end grain cuts, but not enough to be a problem.

This photo shows work on end grain:  lots of dust and fine particles, no shavings.  In the bottom left you can just see some of the long curls I got going with the grain.

To be honest, the larger part of the time spent once I finalized the design was just production line work:  Cut all the rails.  Cut all the stiles.  Cut all the panels.  Cut all the legs.  Mark all the legs for mortises.  Mark all the rails for mortises and tenons.  Mark all the stiles for tenons.  Groove everything.  Mortise everything.  Cut all the tenons.

Digression:  On why tools should always be put away

Near the middle of the mortising process, I made my first massive woodworking mistake:  I put a chisel down on the bench, rather than in the rack.  A couple of minutes later, I put a screwdriver down next to it after adjusting the plow plane, and went back to work.  When I saw the screwdriver rolling off the bench, I grabbed for it without looking... and found out it was the chisel.  Four stitches later, I was left contemplating the pile of boards I had yet to mortise, and the fact that I couldn't really use my left hand for any of it.  Finally, I gave in and bought a mortising machine... and the chisel broke partway through the first mortise.  I ended up just waiting for the stitches to come out and doing the rest by hand anyway.

Back to work!

Doing things production line style means a few things.  I was able to gang-cut a lot of the pieces, which made life easier.  It also ensured that, whether or not anything actually matched my planned measurements, everything was the same, which was the most critical part.  I think I ended up cutting the rails too short, which meant a few strokes of the plane to narrow down the outer panels, but it really didn't matter.  Since everything was the same, the chests still came out square.  It also meant that I was able to do things in batches, which worked out well time-wise.

That's the piled up pieces, with all of the frame pieces cut and grooved, waiting for me to cut tenons on the stiles.If you're wondering why there are an odd number of narrow panels over on the left, it's because I wasn't sure how I wanted to shape them other than the rabbet, so I cut a bunch of extras.

Once I finished with the shaping, it was time for the first test fit!

I was pretty pleased at this point.  The frame slipped a little before I took this photo, but I was able to get the top rail almost flush, and plane to fit after it was assembled.  I test fit all four assemblies, and labeled them to be sure I could get them back together:

Then it was matter of break it down, fit it on the dining table (on top of cardboard, to protect the table), and start painting!

Painting

That's almost the entire chest (one panel is missing, although I don't recall why, and the end panels were still being glued) laid out and painted.  I chose Old Fashioned Milk Paint for two reasons.  First, it doesn't smell the way latex paint does, and we were running very close to departure time, where we'd need to spend a minimum of two very long days in the car with these chests.  Second, it's pretty much non-toxic, and these chests are intended for small children.  You can bet they're going to lick or eat some of the paint sooner or later, and I figured it would be nice if that didn't poison them or something.

We (that would be me and my wonderful partner, M, who kindly agreed to help with the painting.  She deserves a lot of the credit for this actually being painted before we left!) did three coats, and wound up loving the colors.  The paint was easy to work with, went on smoothly, and looked terrible for the first coat.  After that it got better pretty quickly.  Sanding between coats was with brown paper bags, torn into rough squares.  It worked quickly, and we never sanded through the current coat.

The final assembly

Everything was painted, and the clock was running down on departure time.  We were driving to Indianapolis from Massachusetts, so whatever was done had to have time for the glue to cure before we left.

 Interestingly, the glue up I was most worried about, the side panels, was the easiest.  I decided to use liquid hide glue on this project, largely because it's reversible and I expect these to take a lot of abuse and, potentially, damage.  I decided to try a rub joint:  I knew the two boards matched very closely, and I figured it couldn't do any harm to try.  The big advantage of a rub joint is that it doesn't really need to be clamped:  the hide glue holds it in place.  I knew it was risky trying it with liquid (rather than hot) hide glue, but I tried it anyway, and I'm really glad I did.  It worked beautifully, better than any other long-grain joint I've glued.

I glued up both fronts, both backs, and both lids, along with the side panels, before leaving.  I got one full assembly done (except for hinges, which I picked up along the way) at home, and then was out of time.  I nailed and glued rails all the way around the bottom before gluing up, and was able to fit the bottom as well.  As it turned out, it was just as well I only had one of them fully assembled:  fitting a second into the car would have been something of a challenge!  Finally, in Indianapolis, I was able to glue the second chest together, fit the hinges, and put some toys in them for Christmas morning.

The unpainted strip just below the lid is a spacer:  I mounted the hinges so that the barrel makes a spacer, and fit a wooden strip along the front to match.  That way there's an air gap almost all the way around, and the lid and hinges still feel solid and secure.  When the twins are old enough that they don't need that anymore, I'll likely re-mount the hinges and remove the front spacer.

Conclusion

I'm extremely pleased with how these came out.  There are things I would do differently (hardwood for the lid, frame and panel for the sides, not cutting myself with a chisel...), but in the end the product looks good and feels solid.  Once the bottom planks were in and the end panels nailed in place, they show no tendency to rack, even empty.  Once they're full they should be even more stable.

All in all, a fob fairly well done.