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
Looking great Mark !
ReplyDeleteA little Cabinet of Curiosities-; )