The Home Stretch

Some days are just fun. Today we made it to the home stretch. The door is sanded and glued up, the drawer fronts have been selected and cut to size. Perhaps we will get this wedding present done in time. Only 11 drawers to cut dovetails for. No problem, oh I have to hang the door, cut the mortise for the lock, stain and oil it, glue the feet on... well maybe I have a bit of work to do. I have two more
Saturdays, I can do it.

Drawer Fronts being sized.

The door is glued!

Getting there!

My Finish Sander.

My son tuning up my Grandfather's Stanley #6.

The Door

The last three days has been a challenge for me. To build the door I first needed to resaw boards to make the stiles and rails. I also resawed the board for the bookmatched panels.
Hand planning to thickness was called for because the curly maple did not plane well. This was not too bad but I am sore.
My son helped out by chopping out the mortises for me while I cut the tenons.
Today I cut the panels and now I am ready for glue.

My Son Came to Work

Today was a good day. First day of our Thanksgiving Break and it was nice. My son came in to town and he helped me mill the wood for the door and drawer fronts to the Spice Box. It took some time to figure out how I wanted to cut the board to get the best figure for the door panels. I think it is going to be nice. We planed them down and with each stroke of the plane the grain looked better.

Book Matched with practice door stiles and rails.

My son working on the door panels.

I felt a bit like Tom Sawyer with the planing. He wanted to help and well, I have plenty to plane so help he did.

Top of Chest. Tops of Dovetailed tails.

Curly Maple for the door, This will be book matched.

Spice chest ready for the door and drawers.

Attaching molding

Still Working....

The job that pays the bills has been getting in the way lately but I have made some progress.When I assembled the spice chest the first time, I must have been tired or in a hurry because it was out of square big time.

So....I had assembled it with hide glue and decided to test the reason I used hide glue by taking every thing apart. It worked! Sort of. I had one side of dovetails that I did not soak enough in hot water and a couple of tails broke.

As luck would have it, they were on the top and the most visible. Well if the mark of a good craftsmen is hiding his mistakes, I must be getting close to being one because I think I did a fair job.I grabbed my new Bosch Pin router and routed away the tails and inserted patches. The sides will be covered by the trim so I only had to worry about the top 1/4 inch or so. The router made short work of everything.

I made the trim the other day using my new Bosch router and a bit that I had laying around, plus the table saw and my shoulder plane. Although I would have liked to have made the trim with hand tools only, time is running out and I had to make do. I am fairly happy with the results.





Another job I tackled was making the tongue and groove back for the Spice Chest. I used Eastern Pine because I like the smell of it.

I used my LN 1/2" T and G plane for this task. There is a learning curve to using this plane. I found out quickly that the proper way to plane is to begin at the far end of the  work and work backwards. This creates a grove or a tongue, depending which part of the joint you are working with, for the plane to track. Otherwise it is easy for the plane to drift off and ruin the joint.

Yesterday my son and I made a trip to a new lumber yard, The Wood Yard, ran by Rick Wood. His store has been up and running in Griffin, Georgia for about 2 years or so. This was my first trip. I was not disappointed. He has a good selection of exotic and domestic woods and has everything arranged so that it can be easily picked through. I was looking for curly maple and I am pretty sure he has the largest selection I have seen in the Atlanta area so far. We took our time there looking and talking to Rick, who not only sales wood, but is a woodworker himself. I came home with the curly maple I needed (I almost bought more than I needed!) and a board of curly maple with a fungus on it that I plan to use book matched for the door.I plan to head back to The Wood Yard as soon as I can because I spotted some exotic wood I would like to try. First, finish the Spice box. I gotta keep focused.

Spice Box Project

The summer is coming to a close and I am pretty far along with the spice box. My deadline was and still is December 1st!

I started out with the intention of doing it all by hand, and I have completed a good deal by hand! That said, I have cheated on some things. (Things that I don't do well or I just prefer to use a machine because its faster.)

Hide Glue Thoughts

This week I have been trying to get the case glued up and I had success today. I wanted to try hide glue for no other reason than I have always been curious. I have been reading up on it and to be honest, I couldn't see a down side. (Keeping it heated is a hassle but not really.)

Yesterday I tried a rub joint with the hide glue and I was impressed at how quickly it set up and how easy it was to do. One of the pluses with hide glue is it supposed to clean up well and not leave a residue. I'll be able to say more about that later when I start finishing. (Just  a note, the hide glue I used had no bad smell, or none worse than me covered in sweat.)

Today, I only had one real problem with the glue up. I walked out of the shop to let the glue heat up and when I returned the crock pot had warmed to 180 degrees. This was way hotter than what I had read was advisable. In fact, one source said that if that happened, to toss the glue. Being a cautious guy, I threw out the glue and made a new batch. (I was glad I had not made that much.)

One thing I noticed was that the hide glue did not bind as much as yellow glue. This is a good thing  especially when gluing up dovetails. If the hide glue holds the joints together then any hassle with the heating of the glue is worth it.

TOOLS

I have been using my router planes this week and am surprised at how handy they are. If I had any doubts about buying them I take them back.

I like doing as much by hand as possible, I figure its good upper body strength building and I hate the gym. Anyway, I was using my back saw for crosscutting some boards to length. I could not figure out why my bench hook kept coming back towards me with each stroke. Then I remembered, my backsaw looks western but the teeth are set to cut on the back stroke, similar to a Japanese saw. I guess I could hook the bench hook on the opposite side of the bench so I would have the support of the hook when the saw is taking a bite out of the wood. That just seems wrong to me. I think I may be shopping for a decent saw to use with my bench hook.

Large Router Plane

Laying out for Dados.

Cabinet ready for glue up.

Feet almost ready to glue on.

Summer in Maine

We returned from Maine a week ago. As usual, we enjoyed ourselves.