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
No comments:
Post a Comment