Essentials Oils Carrying Case part 8

Buenas días my friends from Costa Rica

Well it is still March 2nd here in C.R. I have quite a bit of information to get out regarding the carrying case but wanted to separate it into shorter posts. In the last post I had rough cut the pieces for the carcass. Today I want to talk about re-sawing the parts. The sides and the top are roughly 12" x 8 1/2". I built my frame saw on my own based on Tom Fidgen's design in his second book. The only problem I had was that I didn't have the funds to purchase the saw plates from Bad Axe tool works, of which I am praying that someday I will have them. Anyway, I set out to build my own with materials I had available to me here in C.R. I went to the local hardware store and bought a inexpensive Stanley rip saw and cut my frame saw plate from that. The length I was able to get for the plate was about 21 1/2" leaving me about 18 1/2" of actual blade to cut with. So if you factor in roughly 9" wide boards I had about 9" of cutting stroke. Bad Axe offers a 31" blade which would have been nice, but this worked out well. I just had to take my time on cutting.

So here all the parts are kerfed out and ready for re-sawing. I sure am glad I built the kerfing plane and the frame saw. The wood that is available to me here in C.R. comes 4/4 or larger so instead of trying to plane the material down to size re-sawing comes in really handy.

So the situation I ran into with my frame saw, and I am sorry I didn't get any photos of it, was that my frame saw seemed to always want to track off to the right once I got down into the wood a bit. On the drawer pieces, which were 3" wide I didn't seem to have that problem but at 8" something was causing my blade to veer off. My natural instinct, although flawed for this application, was to try to direct the blade back towards the kerf line. Problem was when I began to push the blade back to the left it was only occurring on the side I could see. On the far side it would actually track further to the right or left depending on which side your viewing from, which would be the natural direction the blade would go when I pushed it to the left on the near side. So then when I notice the far side was tracking right I switch side, still cutting in the same direction, but pulling instead of pushing the saw. Then I tried to push the far side back to the kerf, which again cause the other side to track back off the kerf. This back and forth attempt to compensate resulted in a bow effect with the blade. So the blade ended up cutting on a curve instead of straight. Once I got down to a point to where I needed to saw from the other end I would cut down to the meeting point only to find the actual kerf that was cut was way off the intended kerf thus creating a step in the wood. I think the photos can explain it best thought.

As you can see the one on the left as I planed it down there was still quite a bit in the center due to the bow effect. On the right you can see the worst example of the four. What I did notice though is that the blade always seemed to drift to the right and at the time the was the good side not the waste side. Therefore I concluded that the waste side always needs to be on the right so if a bow does occur, the side I need will actually have extra material instead of less. It is always better to remove material instead of having to add.

So here are the pieces after planing them flat. It took a little work but I think they turned out okay. Fortunately I re-sawed them at 5/8 and was already planning on having to plane to finish thickness. So after this experience I wrote on my frame saw on the right side "Waste Side" to always remember which side should be where. I don't know if this has to do with the tension of my blade or something else. But this is the process of knowing your tools and how they work.

So here is how the pieces look next to the drawers. What I am most please with so far is how straight and square the pieces are coming out, with out any twist in them.

Well, next up dovetailing the carcass and building the back panel. Hope you enjoyed this post and the journey of building this carrying case.

Well my friends, take care and as always God bless

Mark Hynek