End of Week Five

Tomorrow I start on the sixth week of the course.  I can't believe that I've come to the half-way point. I've been pretty busy, and so haven't been making regular entries here, although I have been taking notes along the way.   I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep up writing every day or even every other day.  It quite often happens that I am so tired when I get home, that I don't feel like writing at all.

Anyway, here's a recap of what's been going on since last Monday.

7 July 2015
Planed, jointed, cut to width piece for the long vertical divider for the cabinet.

I needed some wood for testing machine set-ups.  Selected a piece of poplar 62" by 7-1/2" by 4/4 @ $2.40 per BF = $7.75  Cut off a piece of that about 1-1/2 feet long to use for test cuts for the sliding dovetails I describe below.

8-9 July 2015
I learned how to cut tapered sliding dovetail slots in the top and the horizontal divider pieces.  The instructors spent most of the day Wednesday describing how to do this, and created a template to make it possible.  In my case, the sliding dovetail slot goes from the front to the back of the top and center horizontal divider in order to take the vertical divider.  Ordinarily, if I were making a cabinet for myself, I probably would only have cut a straight dado ( a plain slot) of the thickness of the a vertical divider, and then just glued it in place and be done with it.  However, I am here to learn how to make fine furniture, and so a stronger and more permanent joint is called for.

A rough drawing of what we are trying to
achieve with the tapered sliding
dovetal

An example of the tapered sliding dovetail,
with the key part partially inserted. The slot
is "stopped" and a little notch is cut
in the key piece, so that when it's inserted
all the into the slot, it looks as if
it was two board butted together.  Tricky!

Here's the example dovetail slot, and
the associated dovetail key that
fits in the slot.

A long dovetail could be substituted for the dado I mentioned above, in order to make the joint stronger, but then a problem arises when you try to glue it up.  That would work ok if the joint was short, say four inches or less, but it will be 8-1/2 inches long on my cabinet.  The problem comes when you try to slide the vertical piece into the two slots. Even if it didn't have glue on the edges, it would most likely seize before you got it all the way into the two slots.

So, the tapered sliding dovetail is the answer.  Because it is tapered, the piece being inserted doesn't actually meet the sides of the slot until it is almost "home."

Anyway, it took me about 4 hours to cut the slots with a hand-held router and a template, and the dovetail keys on the ends of the vertical divider.

The cabinet with the newly made vertical
divider, complete with sliding dovetails,
inserted. 

The next job was equally time-consuming.  The instructors and I had decided that the back of my case piece should be a frame and panel construction fitted into a rabbet cut into the back inside edges of the cabinet.

After a lot of fiddling with the table router, trials and errors using another poplar test piece, I routed a 3/4" rabbet all the way around the inside of the top, bottom and side boards.  It is 3/8" deep on the inside of the cabinet.  It's a stopped rabbet so that it will not show through the dovetailed corners.  That required some care and some delicate chisel work to not break off the end of a dovetail pin

One of my dovetail pins after
routing the rabbet in the back of the
cabinet

Until I figured out how to do this, actually did it, and then verified the measurements, I could not completely design the case back.  The original plan called for a groove to be cut in the sides, top, and bottom and a matching tenon to be cut on the back frame.  This would have required different dimensions for the back pieces.  But, having done it, I was ready to start building the back panel

So, I picked out another maple board 4/4 X 11" X 120".  That is 9.2 BF @ $6.00 per board foot, totalling $55.20.  The cost of this thing has just gone over $200 for wood, and not counting hardware such as hinges (Just bought 2 pair for about $46)

I cut the board into 3 pieces about 25 inches long each for the back panels, and dedicated the remainder of the board, about 40 inches,  for the other parts of the back, mostly the rails, as I already had some leftover material for two of the stiles.

Rails and Stiles.  What are they?  They are parts of frame and panel construction, such as I'll be using for the back and for the doors.  I mentioned the frame and panel construction in a posting a couple of weeks ago.  A good picture is available at Wikipedia

Anyway a frame and panel door comprises five parts.  The top and bottom board are called the rails, and the side pieces are the stiles.  They are usually grooved to accept the panel.  The panel is the problem.  Because it can be fairly large, it will move.  So it is cut smaller than the depth of the groove around the inside of the frame.  On top of all that, you need to account for the humidity of the atmosphere at the time of the year it was built, and the location.  Maine's humidity changes at a seasonally different rate than North Carolina's, so strictly speaking, I have to consider both when cutting the panel to size.  Who knew?

I planed all of the pieces of this new board to 3/4", even though the panels will eventually be 1/2" thick.  Better to leave the wood too thick at this point, rather than coming up too short later.

Then, I did some recalculations for the piece requirements for the rear panel.  After a lot of scribbling on my original drawings and my part spreadsheet, I decided that I needed to completely redraw the back panel.

10 July 2015
I redrew the back panel, making some significant changes, after I recognized that many of the things I had originally designed in to the back would not be visible once the cabinet was mounted on a wall, and the drawers were installed.  This meant that some of the things I had planned for when cutting up the board were not going to happen the way I had imagined.  Fortunately, I was able to piece out the new requirements from the boards I already had cut and planed.  Thank goodness I didn't plane them any further than 3/4"

Next I spent some time looking at the three boards I had designated as the panel boards.  I laid them out on my bench and rearranged them until I found two pieces that I liked in a particular grain orientation.  I planed the two  boards to 1/2" thickness.  Then I ripped (I think I explained earlier that "ripping" a board means cutting it with the grain, and cross cutting means across the grain)  a 2 inch piece from the side of one of the boards, and glued it on to the side of the other board. Like the doors on the front of the cabinet, the back is designed to have two different sized panels and a center stile piece.  By ripping a piece off of one panel board and gluing it to the other, I ended up with two panels that are both somewhat wider than their final size.  My original plan had been to glue up the wider panel from two 25" boards, and use the third panel for the other panel.  By doing a glue-up like this, I end up with two panels from two boards, and because I took some care with grain matching, the glue-up of the wider panel should not be obvious.  And, I have another 25 inch wide 3/4 inch thick available for some other part.

11 July 2015
No workshop work done today.

After breakfast and a quick tidy of the apartment, I went to the Lie Nielsen Toolworks open house in the morning, took a tour of their facility, talked with the vendors who were displaying their wares, bought a new dovetail saw from Lie Nielsen, and signed up for a relief woodcarving course to be taught next weekend at Lie Nielsen by Mary May.  That's kind of interesting that I had to go to Maine to get into her woodcarving class.  She lives in South Carolina.

I returned to the apartment in the afternoon.  Silvia and Scott, who are house-sitting for Margo, my landlady, were having a bunch of friends and family over for a barbecue and invited me to join them.  I had a good time, met a lot of very friendly folks, several of whom attend the church I've been going to while I'm here.

Later in the afternoon I left the barbecue and returned to Lie Nielsen for the evening Lobster Bake.  As usual, eating lobster is a very messy undertaking.  It was aided by beer on tap, and dinner included corn, boiled potatoes, coleslaw, watermelon, and clams.  After dinner we were entertained by Roy Underhill, the "Woodwright" from North Carolina.  What a hoot!  Anyway, I ate too much, but I enjoyed myself.

Here are some pictures from the day.

Plane castings

More plane castings

Bronze castings

Plane parts

One of the vendors showing
his technique for cutting dovetails

Vendor demonstrating his very expensive
but very effective shooting board

I'm not the only one with a plane cabinet

Mary May demonstrating woodcarving

The dinner line

Fresh cooked lobster and clams

Some more

Roy Underhill telling one of his tall tails.

12 July
No woodworking today.

I went to church in the AM, then to the Hannaford store (local supermarket) in Rockland  to stock up with groceries.  The rest of the day has been spent reading, paying bills, working on my drawings, etc.

As I'm sitting here working on this blog entry, I heard what sounded like a calliope playing.  I looked out the window and a Good Humor truck went by.  It must be nearly a half century since I've seen one.  Maine is different.