Essentials Oils Carrying Case part 6

Buenas días from Costa Rica my friends

It is a glorious day here in Sarchi C.R. Started the morning off with a great cup of coffee and time with the Lord. Instead of reading through the entire Bible this year I am just reading through the New Testament but am reading it in Greek. So I am just reading a chapter at a time as I review the vocabulary, the conjugation of the verbs, and the declination of the nouns. Hopefully next year I will do the same with the Old Testament, but for me reading Hebrew is far more difficult than Greek.

So getting back to the woodworking topic I glued up the drawers using hide glue. So far I am really enjoying using hide glue. I don't have a traditional glue pot though. I used a small inexpensive crock pot I got at Wal-Mart for $15. I don't put the glue in the crock pot but fill it with water and then put the glue in a smaller jar to be heated up by the water.I am actually able to get it to 145 degrees. Since my current project doesn't call for a large amount of glue this works just fine. If I have extra I just let the glue cool down in the jar and then place it in the freezer until I need it again. So far it has worked well for me without any problems.

So here you can see the glued up drawers with the beeding profile scratched in and some hardware added. I think they turned out okay. Yes there are some gaps in my dovetailing but practice will bring better results eventually, at least I hope so. But what I was most happy about is that they actually came out square with out any twists and were very close to being the same size. the depth is the same it is just the width is maybe a 32nd to a 16th difference, which can be planed down.

One thing I did wrong on the drawers was when I was giving the insides a wash coat of shellac I didn't pay attention to the back piece on one of the drawers and actually put shellac on the outside. Oh well, note to self , pay attention to how you labeled the parts. Speaking of shellac, I had to mix up some more and so I had an opportunity to use my cheap coffee grinder for crushing the flakes. It is just one of those cheap blade grinders you can use for coffee or spices. I think I got that one at Wal-mart as well for about $10. Man does that do a nice job on getting the shellac flakes to a fine powder, which helps in time of dissolving. I do a 2lb. cut but break it down to a smaller amount. On shellac.net they have it broken down well if you only want to mix 8 oz. I actually mixed up 12 oz. and put it in an old Power aid plastic bottle. I usually don't need more than that amount mixed up at one time. But before I got the coffee grinder I would try to crush the flakes myself but even with that it took a while for the flakes to completely dissolve. Well today I checked the bottle and much more has been dissolved today in comparison to when I didn't have the grinder. So you can say I am extremely happy with my purchase of the grinder.

So now I just have to smooth out the sides and sand the front and glue the bottoms on. I am going to wait to install the dividers because I need to finish the outside of the drawers before I re-install the hardware, and I can't install the hardware with the dividers in. But I don't want to apply finish to the outside of the drawers until the carcass is built.

So on to the carcass, but before I start making saw dust I have a few things to consider regarding construction. On this first picture you can see a crude drawing of the shape and grain direction of the carcass. I plan on dovetailing theses joint, and yes these will be exposed joints so I better to a better job on my dovetailing or I will be calling Dr. Woodrow Fill to help me out. The first question I had was should I build the lower part of the carcass separate from the lid or build a box, like in the picture, and cut the lid out. I am opting for the second approach.

The next consideration was that of the back panel with regards to grain direction as well as joinery. I believe the best grain direction would be going from side to side, that way if there was any movement it would be in the direction of the lid instead of putting pressure on the side joints if I were to run the grain direction from top to bottom. That being said I am still stumped on the joinery for the back panel and what would work best for this situation. As you can see in the photo below I am considering two options, but am open to more if any one has some suggestions. I am just not sure which would be the strongest and best suited for this project.

 

Well my friends, that is where we are today. I don't know if I will get to any actual wood prep the rest of this week but who knows. If you have any suggestion on my joinery dilemma please feel free to share. 

Thanks again for taking the time to read my blog.

Take care my friends and as always God bless

Mark Hynek

Essential Oils Carrying Case part 5

Buenas días de Costa Rica mis amigos

Well, actually I am writing this in the evening again after a good day working in the shop, cleaning the yard, and helping around the house. I took a few days off from the shop last week to focus on the ministry since I had the men's Bible study on Friday. The youth group activity on Saturday, and the music directors meeting on Saturday evening. Then Sunday morning service of course. I taught the teen Sunday school. Then in the evening we had the pastor and his wife and two of their children and their entire families over to the house for home made pizza and fellowship. I think we had 20 people including my family. Made 12 pizzas on the grill, two at a time. If it isn't wood working, preaching, or coffee, then it is pizza.

Well it is Monday the 23rd of February and I am back int he shop. I am finding that Monday and Tuesday are my days to work in the shop. Sometimes on Wednesday if I don't have the men's Bible study on Friday.

Well I finished building the parts for the two drawers and the dividers. I sanded up all the dividers and the insides of the bottom drawer and put a wash coat of shellac on them.

I also decided to scribe a beed into the front of the drawer. After I had started I thought I should have done a stop beeding and formed a rectangle line around the whole drawer front. Oh well, maybe on another project.

I will work on the other drawer tomorrow getting it to a similar stage as this drawer and hopefully glue of this drawer tomorrow and then the other drawer on Wednesday. I was looking at different hardware for the the top section and I think I will go with a nice looking lock and skeleton key for the lid along with a lid support and top handle made of brass. The hardware will be the most expensive part of this project but my wife is worth it.

The reason I had to sand them to a point ready for shellac was that I just can't get my Bailey #4 sharp enough right now for finish planing. But hope is on the way. April 7th is the date my friends. A friend of my wife's is coming down and hopefully she can bring down some sharpening stones as well as a shoulder plane. On Tom Fidgen's web site I ask in the one of the forums about which shoulder plane to by if it is your first and probably only one. The consensus was a large shoulder plane but from their three brands emerged, Lie-Nielsen, Veritas, and Wood River. I am opting for the Veritas large shoulder plane with the PM-V11 blade. On the sharpening stones I think I will try the diamond stones by DMT. Paul Sellers seems to like them and I really like his no nonsense attitude about things. Sometimes we tend to complicate the simple when we don't need to.

Well my friends, that is it for today. Hopefully I can give you an update tomorrow as well.

Take care and as always God bless
Mark Hynek

Essentials Oils Carrying Case part 4

Buenas noches de Costa Rica mis amigos

Well, it is Tuesday night February 17th. It was an extremely hot day today here in C.R. with the temperature reaching 86. In the afternoon when it is that hot my shop tends to heat up as well being that it has a corrugated tin roof. Well, that gave me the excuse to go for a walk and check our mail at the post office. So I went with my youngest son and of course we had to stop for ice cream on the way since it was hot out. I know I have said this before but I really can't find anything more enjoyable than spending time with my family. Cherish every moment you can with your family my friends. Life is but a vapor and we never know when it is our time to depart this world.

Well, in the last post I finished dovetailing the drawers, cutting the bottom groove and cutting the bottom of the drawer. Based on my level of experience and skill I think they turned out okay. So on to the drawer dividers. As I said before I opted to use hardwood in stead of plywood. I wasn't sure how I would do with pieces so small and having to plane or re-saw them down but I figured I won't know until I try. I had a number of small pieces, sufficient for the dividers, lying around the shop. Some were off cuts from re-sawing pieces for the Pochade boxes. They were a little over 1/4" thick but had warped. So I decide to re-saw some smaller pieces that were about an 1"to an 1 1/4" thick. The height of the divider is 1 3/4" so my wife can grab hold of the bottle lids. The bottle themselves are about 2 5/8" high. But before I kerfed up the pieces I took the kerfing plane to my band saw table or bed and pounded down the set of the blade. I had mentioned in an earlier post I was having trouble with the kerf being larger that the saw blade of my frame saw causing a ledge to appear and drift to occur. Well, as you can see in the first picture I still had a slight  ledge but not as bad as before and the frame saw tracked beautifully. You can also see I was re-sawing pieces at about 1/4" and then planed them down to 3/16".

Here you can see I was still having problems staying square to the piece. As I am kerfing I noticed I wasn't able to see the piece of wood and just tried to stay straight as best I could. So, how thin can you get? The last photo the waste piece was less than an 1/8 thick. I was actually pretty pleased with how my tools performed today.

 So here are some of the dividers cut and planed to size with the actual bottles in place.

There were some gaps in the cross joints, but overall this turned out quite well. I didn't have the last piece in because it broke when sawing out the joint. I can't believe I didn't break more. So that drawer will have enough slots for 40 15 ml bottles. If my wife gets every possible individual oil and the blended oils there is a total of 56. So in the next drawer I split it in half with half dedicated to 15 ml bottles and the other half to a larger spray bottle.

Once again the middle piece broke while cutting the groove but that is what glue is for. This took me two days to accomplish with only working a few hours each day in the shop. Next up, fine tuning the dividers preparing the inside for finish, I just want to throw on a few coats of shellac. I also want to scribe a bead in the front of the drawers and install the hardware. Then they will be ready for assembly and then final planing to size and finishing. Then once that is down on to the carcass. 

Well, my friends I hope your enjoying these posts, since I am actually doing a project with only hand tools. Which is what this blog is about, although sometimes other things tend to creep in.

Take care and keep up the good work my friends. And as always God bless.

Mark Hynek

Essetnails Oils Carrying Case part 3

Buenas noches  de Costa Rica hermanos.

So once again while trying to write this post this morning my computer started to act up. It is a small note book about 5 years old. Hopefully in April I will have a new laptop. I had a laptop but while I was  cleaning my shop and reorganizing everything, I went to put my miter saw, that I wasn't using anymore, up in the attack. As I ascended the ladder with the saw in hand, there was a clap that went with the saw to secure the piece being cut that came loose and fell off. I was at the top of the ladder and so the clamp fell about 6 feet to my bench, and wouldn't you know it it landed right on top of my laptop completely destroying it. It too was about 5 years old so I wasn't too upset. Those things happen though.

So here I am in the evening recounting what has gone on today and the past few days as well regarding the project. So in the last post I had gotten the parts for the two drawers planed down to finished thickness as well as cut to size for dovetailing. As I said before I originally had considered a different joint for the drawers but then decided against it opting for dovetails. Any practice I can get in cutting dovetails I will take it. So I did half blind on the front and through dovetails on the back. So, how did I go about cutting them? To say there is a plethora of manners, procedures, instructions, magazine articles, and books on how to cut dovetails is an understatement. In the wood working magazine world it seems every six months or so there is another article on how to cut dovetails. Some even suggest theirs is the final word. I just keep wondering if that is so why are there always more articles being written on the subject? Then you have the tails vs pins war on which should be cut first. To be honest I have no opinion on that. For me personally I have enjoyed watching the youtube videos by Rob Cosman, he seems to explain the procedure well with out getting bogged down in the theory part. The Layout procedure I follow is from Tom Fidgen's first book. I believe he pulled from Rob Cosman as well on some parts, but the thing I like best about the procedure is the lack of measuring you do. You simply use some dividers and layout from there. With this procedure you cut the tails first then the pins. I do like the 140 trick, using a Stanley #140 skewed block plane to shave off a small sliver from the inside of the tails, which helps when transferring your cut lines to the pin board. I don't have a #140 block plane but instead just used a chisel to pare away the wood. As you can see on the half blind dovetails, my gap garage for my truck came out really well. Hopefully with more practice and sharp chisels the gaps will get smaller.

I think on I left the pins way to small and I had used a 1:8 marking gauge. I think next time I might go with a 1:6 instead. I thought the through dovetails on the back turned out better though. Still some gaps but smaller.

After cutting the dovetails I needed to cut the 3/16 groove for the bottom of the drawer. Since this was going to be a rabbet I went through a number of different ways to cut it. Originally I was going to use my Stanley #78 rabbet plane.

I have had my ups and downs with this tool. First, it needs to be extremely sharp, like #4 smoothing plane sharp in order to work properly. But even with that, you are really confined to going in one direction even though you can place the lower fence on either side. That being said, even when you use the nicker, there is great potential for tear out, especially with Guanacaste.

So with such small pieces I opted not to use it. Instead I did some reverse thinking and asked the question, "if I was to cut this on a table saw, how would I do it?" My answer came with two possibilities, one being to use a dado blade to cut the full groove, which I would have done with the rabbet plane, and the other was to cut two kerfs with a regular saw blade. So I marked the cut lines and pulled out my dovetail saw and began to slowly cut down to the intersecting line.

So that worked well on the side pieces but on front one I was only able to cut on the inside face, the bottom needed to be a stopped groove instead of a through one. So once I cut the inside face I then cut notches on each end where the groove needed to stop and worked my way back to the depth line with a chisel. You can see in the pictures one potential problem being the bottom pins are out there all by themselves creating a potential breaking point until all is glued up.

That being said I think I broke all four of the bottom pins when I tried to dry assemble the parts. One thing I notice that I didn't do when selecting the wood for these parts is pay attention to grain direction. You can see in the photo below the problem I ran into.

I think next time I will use a story window, if that is what it is called, where you take a piece of paper and cut out the full size of your part i.e. front, back, and side for the drawers, making a window in the piece of paper, Then you place it on the wood and can orientate it to fine the best grain direction, trace the widow perimeter and you have your part with good grain direction.

So I finished the grooves and I think they also turned out well.

I then cut some plywood bottoms for the drawer. The reason I went with plywood was that I didn't know if cutting a piece of hardwood roughly 7" x 9" x 3/16" would be to thin and warp on me. The plywood is flat and it won't be seen when the bottles of oil are in. The only bad point would be when you pulled the drawer completely out and looked from the back you would see the white end of the plywood. 

And finally you can see how the 15ml bottles will fit in the drawer

So overall I think things went well. I know there is always room for improvement in my skills and abilities, but I really enjoyed the days work.

Next up dividers for the bottles. I was thinking about using plywood again but opted against it because of the white line left behind,. So I am going to go with hardwood and try my hand at re-sawing pieces 3/16" thick.  

Well, my friends it was another good day in the shop and am truly thankful for the blessing of being able to do something like this. I hope you enjoyed the post. Let me know what you think.

Take care, keep up the good work, and as always God bless

Mark Hynek

A Musing Saturday Afternoon

Buenas noches from Costa Rica my friends

Well, it is Saturday February 14th in the evening, I am sitting in my shop thinking about the day I had and truly enjoying a wonderful finish to a most wonderful day. I am sure your asking why I am in my shop and not with my loved one, well we both agreed to post-pone our Valentine's day celebration until tomorrow evening. My wife had her monthly women's Bible study at the church today, don't ask me why but all the women decide to have it on the 14th. 

Any way, back to my day. I started off the day as usual with a good cup of coffee and quality time with the Lord. After that I did some more quality reading for the ministry. I am currently going through 3 books along with the Bible. One of my favorite books, that I had mentioned earlier in this blog, is How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler. I am on my 3rd time through the book. Some may wonder why I would read a book more than once, well, I find when you go back you tend to see things you didn't see the first time around. I have a list of my ten favorite books, which tends to change at times, but I try to read through each of them once every year. It is like revisiting old friends, which I enjoy very much. In How to Read a Book Mortimer attempts to help one understand the difference between reading for information and reading for understanding. Unfortunately, most people, if they are reading at all, are reading for information and have no clue of what it means to read for understanding. I can read a book on woodworking or a magazine article regarding the steps to take when cutting dovetails, or (if the author is good) I can read to understand the concept of dovetailing a joint. One author can say do these steps and then you try. What you have obtained is information and are trying to put it into practice. Another author can show the steps but explain and effectively communicate the concept which helps with true understanding. For example, Lonnie Bird once wrote an article on cutting dovetails and he made a simple but profound statement that opened the doors of understanding for me. He said something to the fact that you are basically "cutting a straight line to a line". For me that was a lights on  moment. Another example was when I was reading something written by Glen Huey about building a chest of drawers. He made a similar statement to help in understanding when he said, "basically it is a series of boxes with in a box." Again a light on moment.  So as I read I try to read for understanding in place of information. If you ever have the chance, I highly recommend reading Mortimer's book.

So after reading a bit I worked a little on the "Essential oils carrying case", which I will be posting about later on in the week, then cleaned up the shop. In the afternoon since my wife was at her Bible study I took all four of my children out for ice cream. We walked down to the center park in town, all Latin american towns have a central park along side the Catholic church. We each got some ice cream and and then my boys played on the jungle gym in the park. After that we walked to the other end of town, Sarchi is very small, and bought some drinks and chips then went back home and watched the BBC version of Sherlock Holmes. I love spending time with my kids and am so glad my job allows me to be home most of the time. Kids grow up far to quickly and before you know it they are leaving the home. I want to cherish this as much as I can with them. That is why they will always take precedent over my hobbies. 

So why did I entitle this post A Musing Saturday Afternoon? Well, after Sherlock I came back out to the shop and was just looking at my drawers for the case and started to think of the carcass and how I would build it. I have a sketch book where I chronicle my journey in building projects. I also speak out loud by writing down my thoughts and questions on how I might go about building my projects and the different ways to do it. I had a wonderful time going through the musing process of constructing the carcass and coming up with some interesting questions I hope to post soon. Hopefully others might give me some opinions or suggestions to help me along.

Not much work was done to day but as I grow older, approaching 50 this year, I am finding the slower life is truly enjoyable. I can honestly say I am enjoying getting older. The pace of life here in Sarchi is truly peaceful. I feel I have time to think here with out the distractions or noise that usually accompanies life these days. There are many ways to live an unplugged life that do not necessarily mean ceasing to use electricity. Yet, the joy of watching your children play and enjoy life brings far more contentment and satisfaction than all the entertainment and riches this world could provide. Peace through balance and disconnecting from the mainstream view of how life should be lived. An unplugged life in a nutshell, cheers Tom.

Take care my friends, enjoy your day with the ones you love and as always God bless.

Mark Hynek

Essentials oils carrying case part 2

Buenas días from Costa Rica my friends

Well, it is a glorious day with the sun shinning, a gentile breeze passing through the shop, and a great cup of coffee by my side.

I had a wonderful morning with my wife, we went to the farmer's market, they have it every Friday here in Sarchi, to buy our fruits and vegetables. I love buying fresh fruits and vegetables that haven't been contaminated with harsh chemicals and such. Eating naturally here in C.R. is so much more easy than in the states, it is readily available and cheap. Speaking of fresh fruits, bananas anyone?

This is my back yard and I actually have four stalks of bananas waiting to be picked. As I always say life is good here in C.R, After the farmer's market I took my wife out for breakfast, just the two of us, and enjoyed a typical Costarican breakfast or desayuno, called Gallo Pinto. It means spotted rooster but had no chicken or meat in it at all. It is rice and beans fried together with a special sauce that is produced here in C.R. There is also sweet chilies and cilantro mixed in. You can get with eggs or just cheese. It also comes with natilla, which is a thick sour cream that they only produce here in C.R. as well. That along with a cup of coffee will start any day off well.

Well, to get back to the project, after rough cutting the parts for the drawers I needed to re-saw them down to 1/2 inch. All the wood here comes 4/4 or thicker. Being a hand tool shop I chose not to use my bandsaw, which is good because it does a terrible job at it. It is a finicky tool that is really only good for general cutting. Nothing special just a 14" woodcutting saw from Central Machinery, which you can by at Harbor Freight. So going about it with hand tools was really enjoyable, and once again I have Tom Fidgen to thank for that. In his last book he did two projects, one being a kerfing plane, and the other a frame saw. I built both using what I had on hand here in C.R., I would love to purchase the saw plates and hardware offered by Badaxe saws but just couldn't afford it right now. I bought a cheap saw from a local hardware store and cut the plates my self. As you can see in the photos the kerfing plane works quite well.

As Tom wrote the purpose for kerfing the board is to create a path of least resistance that the frame saw blade with then naturally follow. When I built these tools  I called them the Wal-mart versions because my skill and ability is no where near that of Tom's. They do work well though, but do have their limits.

(Side note: Hey Tom, the picture of the frame saw in use is for you buddy. Hope you can come down some time and put you in the photo.)The cutting portion of the blade for theframe saw is only 18" so that limits me on how wide of a board I can cut. It works well on small boards but can be difficult when pushing the width.

On one of the boards the blade did start to drift and so I had to flip it over and start from the other end.

The rest of them turned out fairly decent. One thing I noticed is that the kerfing plane seemed to make a wider kerf than the frame sas leaving slight ledge. I don't know if you can see that in the photo or not.

They were from the same brand of saw, but I think what is going on is the set of the kerfing plane is wider than the frame saw. I might try to adjust that, which could be the cause for drift occurring

So once the parts were all re-sawed I planed them down to 1/2" thickness. You can see in the photo I am using a planing board.

I got the idea, sorry for this but once again from Tom in his "Good Doctor's Medicine Chest". He used a planing board for thin items. All I can say is "man do I love it."' It works like a charm and perfect for what I am doing right now. It was easy enough to build. I just took some laminated particle board I had lying around they shop and glued some 3/16 thick plywood to it. It is square to each side and does a great job.

So the sides, fronts and backs for the two drawers are cut and planed to thickness as well as cut to final size. All parts were labeled and are now ready for dovetailing, which will be on the next post.

Well, my friends hope you enjoyed the post and please feel free to comment on my progress, any help will be greatly appreciated.

Take care, hope you are enjoying your day as much as I am with mine, and as always God Bless
Mark Hynek

Essentials oils carrying case part 1

Buenas días from Costa Rica my friends,

Well here we are back in the shop, praise the Lord, ready to make some shavings and build something for my loved one. Started the day off with a great cup of coffee and spent some quality time with the Lord. I do morning devotions reading through the Bible in a year, I am currently on my 15th time to read through the Bible and this is also my second time reading it in Spanish. As David said in Psalm 119:97, "Oh how I love your law (the word of God)! It is my meditation all the day." (NASB).

Well, my friends, buenas tardes, I had a problem with my computer this morning while I was writing this post and had to post-pone it until this afternoon. Once again I am enjoying a great cup of coffee, but this time am listening to some really relaxing music by Jay Unger. He writes traditional blue grass waltzes that are purely instrumental. One of my favorites is a tune called "Ashokan Farewell" which if you had ever seen the PBS documentary "The Civil War" by Ken Burns, you would know this tune as he starts every episode with it. Many thought it was original to that time period but was really written in the 80's. I encourage you to check him out, I think you will really like his stuff.

Before we get into the project at hand just wanted to show you some changes to the shop. I move the bench away from the wall to be able to work on all sides. My back faces the windows now but I really like where it is. I also took down my tool cabinet that had been attached to the wall, the termites were eating it up. So you can see my quick version of the Anarchist's tool chest (a Stanley construction box. I really like the cleaner look and feel of the shop now. You can also see the table saw is gone. I sold it to a fellow missionary in San Jose who is just getting started in woodworking. What a joy it was to see his smile as he used the saw and to hear how his building a number of things for his wife.

So all I have left now that is plugged in are my band saw and lathe. I probably won't be unplugging the lathe as that was a gift from my wife and I just can't bring myself to sell it. The band saw on the other hand is up in the air. It is good for quick cutting of small pieces. I will have to tell you the story of that saw in some other post but rest assured it too has a sentimental value to me.

So getting back to woodworking. I started the planning stage of the project and the initial rough cutting of the wood. I was trying to figure out how I can fit all the small bottles of oil my wife had in a small case, along with other items she needs with the oils. I didn't want it to be too big for her to carry as she is a small woman. In the first photo you can see plans to a tool box, which I had bought from Rockler a number of years ago. I actually built the box for a dear friend of mine, who is a Costarican police officer and lives in the northern part our country. The tool box is nice but is really for a machinist due to the small drawers and such. This one was obviously to big for my wife but the concept was what I was shooting for. I didn't want to put a cover panel on the front but just have some exposed drawers she can pull out.

 After playing around measuring the bottles and other items I started to draw out a drawer with dividers in it for the bottles and other items. I didn't have any large paper to draw the full size drawer on so I drew it on my bench, (I tend to do that a lot, Someday I would love to build the Architects table Tom Fidgen built in his last book for my shop), I eventually came to a size of 11" 3/16 long, 7" 7/16 wide, and 3" deep. I will use 1/2 thick wood. I am going to build two of those drawers with a half inch space in between them. The carcass surrounding them will all be 1/2 thick.Then on top there will be a 3"deep space with a 1" thick lid. I hope to be able to get some hardware from Lee Valley similar to the stuff Tom Fidgen used on his "Good Doctor's Medicine Chest." I really like the locks he used. I also will be using ball catches to keep the drawers from sliding out, once again similar to the Pochade box Tom build in his last book. I am sure you are beginning to understand that I really enjoy Tom's projects and his approach. Once again if you haven't visited his web site please do so, you won't be disappointed.

So here I was trying to figure out the joinery for the drawers. The plans for the tool box used a locking joint that I was considering but decided against that due to the wood I am using. Guanacaste is very fibrous wood. Now I know all wood is fibrous in that all wood is made up of fibers, but I hope you understand when I say this is fibrous wood I mean that the fibers tear easy and come apart easily. Hence to have a 1/4"  cross grain groove a 1/4" away from the end of the drawer pieces was really asking for disaster as it would break very easily. It looked like a challenging joint to make by hand but I didn't want to risk it so I went with dovetails, which came about during a "duh" moment when my inner self said "Mark, what are you stupid or something? Use dovetails for crying out loud." So that is what I will be doing for the drawers. I gives me an opportunity to improve on my dovetailing which right now usually results in gaps large enough to drive a truck through. But there is always hope.

So here are the pieces rough cut for the drawers. Right now I haven't come to a decision on the bottem of the drawers as I don't want the case being to large in height. It will eventually be 11"1/2 high right now. So I am having to have a fairly thin bottom which won't be too much of a problem since there really isn't too much weight to the oils. So right now I am thinking of using some 3/16 plywood I have lying around the shop. I know, using plywood on something like this is a sin but I really am not confident in my ability yet to tackle a thin piece of hardwood for the bottom. Also I am thinking of using plywood for the dividers but I will talk about that and the other options in the next few posts. 

So why am I making the drawers first. The entire case revolves around the bottles of oil, so based on their size and how to fit it all in a case that looks nice and my wife can carry causes me to start from the inside out. If you happen to check out Tom Fidgen's web site "anunpluggedlife.com" You will see that he and his members, of which I am proudly one of them, were doing a group build, building a simple cabinet. Sadly I couldn't partake of the project, but am on to my own right now. Anyway, although I am not building the cabinet I am taking away quite a bit from the videos on planning a project and then building it. 

Well, my friends, I must say it was a good day in the shop for me, I worked a little then would read a little for my main job, then work a little more. Keeping everything in balance and enjoying every minute of it. Hope you enjoy the post and look forward to more. 

Take care my friend, and as always God bless

Mark Hynek