Drawers Fit

Here is a shot of the shavings I was making while fitting the drawers. The No. 4 did a really good job of this, but my only complaint with it is that the handle is a little small, and didn't really fit my hand well. My No. 5 fits my hand better, but I like the control that the No. 4 gives me.
I think I have a drill under there somewhere...



The problem with perfect fitting front faces is that I had to take quite a bit of material off to get it that way. When the drawers are in the open position, you can see what I'm talking about. I showed it to my wife and she didn't notice it until I told her. It didn't bother her, and I don't think that it will bother me. Maybe.

Drawer thickness is off.



Here is a shot showing the drawers in there open position.

Drawers open.



After about 45 minutes of planing and checking, here is the result. False drawer fronts that are flush with the front.

Drawers fitting nicely.



Lots of work, but I'm sneaking up on the fit that I want.

Drawer installed showing me how far I need to go.



With the dowels fit, it was now time to work on the drawer fronts. When I bought the boards, they were S3S. (surfaced 3 sides) The problem with this is that the grain on this board was pretty wild, and there was a lot of chipout, because the board was run in the wrong direction. It's like petting a cat in the wrong direction. So I took some time and sharpened up this plane, and used it to smooth out the board.

Starting to plane down the drawer front with my "new" No. 4 Stanley.



I drilled a 3/8" hole in the legs, and installed the dowels. The closer I'm getting to the end, the more nervous I'm getting because the margin for error is getting greater and greater. Well, the dowels were a little large, so it was back to the lathe. By the time they fit correctly, there wasn't much of a shoulder left.

Dowel serving as a drawer support.



A couple of cuts at the bandsaw, and the dowels are complete.

Dowels complete.



With the drawers installed, it was time to turn my attention to the dowels that will hold the drawers up. I squared up a piece of QSWO and put in on my lathe. After it was round, I took a parting tool, and a couple of open ended wrenches and made a 1/2" dowel, with a 3/8" tenon. If the drawers don't fit, I'll chuck the dowel in the lathe and turn it down until it fits.

Turning the dowels.

Glue Ups and Drawers and Hinges oh my!

After some fuss, I finally got the look that I was going after.
Shot of where I am.



The dust frame I knocked out of some red oak, and I just used pocket screws to tie everything together. I didn't glue anything together, because I want the freedom to work on it in the future if I need to.
My original design was to have the two drawers be independent of each other, but after some "thought experiments" aka daydreaming, I concluded that if one drawer was going to be open, more than likely the other one would be open too. Hence, the design changed to one sliding drawer that accepts two drawer fronts.

Another shot of the drawer back.

After thinking about it for a few hours, a mock up or two, and talking to some friends about what to do, this is what I came up with. I made a dust frame that sits in the groove and will slide back and forth. To lift the drawer, I'm using some European hinges from some cabinets that never got their doors. The hinges aren't strong enough to hold the drawer up by themselves, so I'll have to add a dowel to the side to help with that. I'll also need to put a stop of some kind on the bottom because these hinges close past 90 degrees.
The beauty of these hinges is that you can dial in the doors, or in my case drawers, in all three directions.

My solution.



With a 1/4" stacked dado, I cut the dado in the boards. It took three passes.

Slides completed.



I knew that I was going to need something for the drawers to slide in, but I still wasn't sure how it was going to work. What I had designed was just too complicated, and didn't offer any adjustment whatsoever.

Stock for the slide.



I need to cut a notch in the corners of the shelf to fit around the legs. I went old school on this. I used my dovetail saw to cut the wood against the grain, and a chisel on the other side and chop the piece out.

Layout of the notch.

Now comes the beginning part that is going to slow me down. I not sure how to attach the shelf. I know that I don't want to cut into the sides, and the panel being solid wood will need to float. the solution was a cleat that will be screwed into the sides, and the rails. I don't think that there will be a need for glue here. This picture just shows the rail being held in place with carpet tape.

Shelf support.



Same drill as with other panels. Joint one edge, rip opposite end, joint ripped edge, biscuit, glue.

Board glued up, scraped, and sanded smooth.



With the piece now completely assembled, it's time to turn our attention to the shelf that the electronics will sit on. This is the board for that shelf. 4/4 flat sawn white oak. Lots of sapwood, but you will never see it.

Board for the shelf.



With the ends glued up and dried, it's time to glue up the lower shelf and rails. In a true example of playing checkers instead of chess, (or a poor game of chess) I didn't sand the bottom shelf or rails because I knew that I would have a joint to sand at the center stile, so I didn't. It's not that big of a deal, just a little more work in the future.

Glue Up

Glue Up!

To help prevent chipout from moving this piece around, I chamfered the bottom of the legs.
Closeup of the chamfer.



I didn't get a picture of the full mortise from the lower shelf, so here that is.

Picture of the full mortise.



With the lower shelf complete, I decided it was time sanding the piece, and I cut the chamfers in the legs. Glue on the tenon, and in the mortise, assemble, and clamp. All of the spindles are floating. After I got the piece in the clamps, I wiped off any glue squeeze out with a damp paper towel. After it's cured, and the piece is dry, I'll sand back any remaining glue.

First end panel in the clamps.

Bottom shelf work

Well, after cutting the shoulders, I got to thinking, how do i go about cutting the notch in the shelf to make the two tenons? My solution was to not worry about it, and I took the rails back to the mortise machine and made one continuous mortise. I made the tenon oversize, and now is the time to trim to fit. It's really slow going, given my compliment of tools, but after a couple of hours, I had them fitting pretty darn good.

OOPS!

Can you see my mistake? Check the top spindle mortise. It's larger than the others. I think it was a result of not being tight up to the fence when I cut it. Thankfully, it was still small enough that the spindle covered it, but I did have to glue some material to the tenon, and then trim it back to fit. After assembly, you'll never be able to identify it.
Dry fit.



To transfer to the other rail, it's just a simple matter of extending lines, and ticking them over to the other piece. I only need to worry about the ends, because the depth will be set by the mortise machine fence.

Transferring to other rail.

Layout for the mortise is like before. I put some X's in this one because I am planning on doing two mortises, and I don't want to chop farther than I need to.

Layout for mortise.



With just what you see below, I clamped up the table so I could get a measurement for the lower shelf. I have already glued that together using the same techniques that I used for the table top. I was really scratching my head on how to attach this, and my "Mission furniture, and how to make it" book in the end gave me my answer. My concerns were racking forces, and if a mortise and tenon was going to be strong enough. I thought about using cleats to help, but I couldn't find examples of that in the book, so I decided to keep it traditional.

Clamp-up for measurements.



With the spindles done, I thought it would be a good time to cut the arches in the bottom rails. I laid it out using a flexible ruler, cut it at the bandsaw, and smoothed it with a drum sander mounted in the drill press. Here is the result.

Arch cut into the rail.

Spindle work

Here is a shot of my progress fitting the spindles. It's pretty slow going, but it's nice and quiet working with a chisel. I'm not sure why it seems like I'm a sponsor for titebond, there's a picture of it everywhere. The strange part is I haven't glued anything up yet.
Fitting the spindles to the sides.

To make the spindles, I took my pieces, and jointed 1 edge, then went to the surface planer and thinned them down to 1/2". Then it off to the tablesaw, where I ripped them to 3/4" I cut the tenons strong, and fit them using a chisel.
Spindles with mortises cut.



Since I had the rails complete, I put it together to get a sense of size for the piece. I have a strange phenomenon of projects growning when then get into the house. They look small when I'm working on them, but then get larger when I get them into the house. This piece is still looking good. Since this picture, I did add a center stile to both the front and rear rails.
First dry fit showing overall size.



Now that the ends are pretty much complete, it's time to start work on the spindles. At the time I wanted to start them, I didn't have enough scrap material for them, so I did make the front and rear rails, and cut the tenons in the legs for them. That gave me the stock I needed for the spindles. You may notice another mistake in this picture. When I was laying out the mortise for the top rails, I couldn't help but notice how close I was going to be from coming out the top, so I decided just to run the mortise out the top to prevent a serious blowout. It never occurred to me until I cut the front and rear rails to honch the tenon. I'm thinking I'll fix that by pegging the rails, but I've got some time to ponder this.
Fitting the top rail.



Fitting the front and rear mid rail.

End workup part 2

I mentioned that the mortises were centered, but that isn't very accurate. It's really hard to get it exactly centered. So, I took steps to make sure that the faces were cut on the same side, so if they were off center, that they would at least line up with each other.
First set of mortises cut.

After a little time with setup, I have it pretty well centered.

Starting the mortise cutout.



I got the other side dry fitted last night, and started the layout for the mortises. I am going to have a wide center spindle, flanked by 2 smaller spindles on each side. You can tell in the picture, that I only have the X/Y layout lines, and only a Z line on one board. The reason for this is because after I get it setup in the mortise machine, I don't need to worry about it.

Layout complete for mortise.

End workup part 1

After fussing around with the 6 tenons, here is the result. Shoulders are nice and tight, piece is square. Finished up a little after midnight, and didn't feel like doing the other side.
Dry fit of one side.



I don't have a Lie-Nielsen medium shoulder plane (GREAT GIFT IDEA, HINT HINT!) so this is what I came up with. I clamped the board to the bench, and gave it a couple of strokes with the block plane. I noticed that if there were really tight and started taking a lot off, that the tenon was starting to get a bevel, so I took a chisel and squared them up again. There is a mistake in this picture. Can you find it? I forgot to cut off the cheek cuts on this side. Good thing I didn't break down the saw.

Fitting the tenon.



I put the dado blade in the saw to make the cheek cuts. I did have my standard blade in the saw, but then remembered how many I had to cut, and that was going to be a lot of nibbling. This makes quick work. Also note in this picture, that the cheek cuts are a proud of the shoulder cuts. The shoulder cut should have been fit, but when I ran the cheek cuts, it was loose, so I widened them up a little. In hindsight, it should make fitting the tenons easier.

Making the shoulder cut.



Here, I'm cutting the cheeks on my shop made tenon jig. It rides on the table saw fence. It's nice and high, which keeps fingers far away from the blade. As before, i made test cuts before running the stock through.

Making the cheek cut at the tablesaw.



Saw is setup, and now it's time to run some stock. I'm going to have 1/8" shoulders on all 4 sides, so it's a matter of running the piece through, rotating it, and running it through again.

Running pieces to establish the tops of the shoulders.



After some tweeking, I got to this, which is the thickness that I want.

Test piece.



After the piece was marked for tenons, I set up a stop on the fence, and used a 1/8" drill bit to set the height of the blade. Here I'm running a test piece to check the amount of stock to remove. I'll double check this with the leg to make sure it fits.

Setup piece to determine height.



After the legs were mortised, I need to prepare stock for the rails. I skipped taking pictures, but it was just cutting down pieces on the chop saw, ripping them to width, and trimming them to final length. The result is the picture below. Next I'll lay out the tops of the tenons, and cut them on the saw.

Stock cut for the rails.



Now that the legs are to final size, I took some time and laid out where the mortises will go. On the sides, I'll have the bottom rail, a mid rail, and a top rail. It sure is nice to have a mortise machine in the shop. It makes quick work of this task. The mortise is 1/2" by a strong 1" deep. I'll have to either miter the tennon, or notch them when it comes time to cut the stretchers.

Legs with 1st set of cut mortises.

Leg workup part 1.3

Legs are finally done. They aren't perfect, but I think that they will look pretty good by the time they are chamfered and finished.

Closeup of the glue joint.


Legs trimmed to final length.



Now that the legs are out of the clamps and planed flush, it's time to trim one end, then trim them to length.
Trimming the legs.

Leg workup part 1.2

I broke the first rule of troubleshooting, which is changing more than one thing to find out what is wrong. I took a chopped up 2x4 and used it as a caul, and I did not clamp the pieces to the table. I did continue to use Titebond III. After I clamped up the next leg, (only 1 side of a glueup) I still had a little bit of a gap. I think that by the time I chamfer the corners, it will not be not be a problem.

After the clampup was cured enought to take out of the clamps, I cleaned up the edges, and then I ran all 4 pieces through the surface planer to get all the pieces back to a uniform size. After that, i had to resaw a new board, and plane it down to thickness.

Again, it was time for a glueup. I decided to put all of my eggs into one basket, and switched to Titebond ILO Titebond III. My thinking is that the Titebond III was maybe a little more flexable, and was pulling away. I also decided to glue the entire stack together in one clamping.

Leg workup part 1.1

I'm thinking about what went wrong with the leg, because the second glueup did the same thing. I think what's wrong, is that the sides are not parallel to each other, and is being clamped into square. At any rate, I'm going to plane down the leg, resaw another board and try again. To be continued

Leg workup part 1

Oops!!! I must have taken them out of the clamps a little soon, because the glue released. Thankfully, I was able to pull it all off, and scrap it clean. I'll glue it back again and leave it in the clamps longer this time.

With the pieces machined, it's time to glue them to the blank. I'm clamping them to the bench and using a board as a caul to help distribute the pressure.

You can never have too many clamps.

I was shooting for 1/8", and as you can see, I'm still a little strong. It's not a critical dimension, just one that I was shooting for. I still have sanding to do, so I'm sure it will be close to that.

Checking the piece for thickness.

When I did my test piece, I ran it through the planer and tried to thin it down to 1/8" on the bed, but I had a blowout. The solution to this is to attach it to a backer block, and run through on that. I'm using carpet tape to a piece of 5/4 stock I have lying around.

Boards thinned down to thickness.

The boards have been split in half, giving me a bookmatch. I'm not going to worry about bookmatching on this project. My crappy bandsaw does a surprisingly good job of resawing, but it is thick, and it's a rough finish.

Boards ready for planing.



Next, it's over to the bandsaw, where I have a fence attached. I'm using a dowel as my fence, so I don't have to worry about blade drift.
Getting ready for resawing.



Now that the top is glued up, I am going to start working on the legs. The problem with quarter sawn white oak, is that you only get it on 2 sides. The other 2 sides are flat sawn. There are many ways to get quarter sawn on all 4 sides. I am taking 8/4 stock and gluing strips on the flat sawn sides. My first step is taking some ripped down pieces of 4/4 stock, and marking a centerline.

Board marked and ready for resawing.