There’s No Word Like “Done”

Measure not the work until the day’s out and the labor done. – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The woodworking community spills most of its ink in discussion of process.  We talk about what tools to use and how to use them.  We talk about choosing woods.  We talk about what joints to use and how to create them.  We talk about finishing – what finishes to use and how to apply them.  Only rarely do we spend much time talking about objects made from wood.

But let’s face it, we can hand cut the best dovetails or sand a glass finish with our whizbang Festool sander.  Unless we actually complete a project, however, most of it is meaningless.  This is hard for me to say as much of my motivation to be in the shop doesn’t come from the need for an object made from wood unless it’s shavings and sawdust.  I just like carving up wood.  I like the feel of it, the sound of it (the reason I work mostly with handtools) and I enjoy the serenity of it.  Nevertheless, if I never produce anything I would question my sanity.  And it does feel good when I actually complete a project.

I’ve talked about the creation of a set of bathroom wall cabinets from my gleam-in-the-eye concept activities with SketchUp and, along the way, I’ve discussed steps I’ve taken to remove wood from wood until the remaining wood resembled parts of a cabinet.  I’ve talked about assembling those pieces into cabinets.  If you missed all that excitement (?) you can find it here.

Finally, however, the cabinets are done.  I haven’t presented the finishing steps as they were conventional.  I applied some boiled linseed oil to achieve an ‘older’ color from the cherry, waited a week, and then applied a couple coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal polyurethane.  I used this because these cabinets were going into the moist environment of a bathroom.  For the same reason I use porcelain knobs on the doors rather than my more typical wooden door pulls.  The doors are held closed by small magnets.  They’re held to the walls using French cleats.

I apologize for the photograph.  The bathroom is very narrow.  I’m standing in the bathtub to take the photo and if you look in the mirrors you can see behind me the next job in the remodeling effort – tiling the bathtub wall area.  If they made bath tiles from curly maple I might be more interested in that job but not by much I’m afraid.  I still have to create a shelf under the center mirror.  It will reflect the same curve as the top and bottom of the cabinets.  I’ll dado the shelf into a decorative backplate to complete the scene.

So there you have it; the work is done.  I’m satisfied, or at least as satisfied as I ever am.  Mostly I’m thrilled that I can move on to the next gleam in my eye.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Installing Cabinet Mirrors

I’m finally able to get back to my vanity cabinets and really, there isn’t much to do before I start finishing.  I’m using a small magnet to hold the door closed and simple, no-mortise hinges so the only operation worth talking about is the installation of the mirror panels, using cherry backer strips.

These strips will be removable in case the mirrors break.  It may also be the case that I’ll get sufficiently irritated by the lack of a wooden back plate on the mirror and remove them so I can add one at a later date.  The reason I’m not doing so now is that I’m concerned about door weight.  Seems something got lost in translation (story of my life here in Quebec) and I ended up with 3/16″ mirror panels rather than 1/8″ thick panels.  The upside is that they’ll be very strong.  The downside is that they’re fairly heavy and I’m concerned about how the 1 1/2″ wide frame pieces will hold up under the weight.  Anyone with experience with thick glass like this – chime in please.  I guess the virtue of building something to put in your own bathroom is that you can take a ‘wait and see’ attitude towards some of this stuff.

Sizing and Fitting the Pieces

I started the process by ripping a bunch of 3/8″ strips from a board that was just a bit more than 7/16″ thick.  These dimensions were because I needed backers that would be 5/16″ wide and 3/8″ deep.  I took the width down to 5/16″ as I smoothed the faces.

I started by cutting/fitting the pieces to the frame.  This required a bunch of miter cuts but it’s a straightforward, measure/cut process.

I placed all of the frame pieces in the frame and behind the mirror panel.  As I planned, these stuck out of the back of the frame by about 1/8″.  I wanted a reveal of around 1/16″ to form a border.  Using a smooth plane so the process would go slowly, I started bringing the 4 strips down to the desired height.

Once I got the height I wanted I pulled the pieces and rounded both edges.  Here It’s good to do one piece and then, slowly, round over the adjacent piece(s) to match the roundover to the existing piece.

This is the result.  At this point the pieces aren’t screwed in place, nor has the frame been finish sanded.  But you get the idea of what I was after and I was happy with the result.

Installing Backers

So, the pieces were pulled and holes drilled for screws.  These holes were countersunk as well.  At this point I finish sanded the inside of the door frame as well as these pieces.

This photo is to remind you that it’s best never to drive brass screws, even if you’ve pre-drilled holes for them.  They’re soft and it’s easy to break one off in your piece, ruining your whole day.  Here, I installed a backing piece with 2-4 steel screws.  Then I removed those and, one at a time, replaced them with brass screws.

Here’s a photo of one of the cabinets, needing a bit of finish prep and then it’s on to applying finish.  You know, it’s hard to take a photo of a mirrored piece in a shop. The cases already have a coat of boiled linseed oil and I’ll add that to the doors as well.  I’ll be applying some polyurethane I think, since they’re going into a bathroom.

Shelf-making Without a Neander-buddy

I’m getting back to my bathroom vanities project and decided to make some shelves.  I need 6 of them and they’ve got to be 12 1/2″ x 4 1/4″.  I targeted a thickness of 5/16″.  This last dimension was the most work.

Once upon a time I had a frame saw that did a decent job of resawing by hand.  Sadly, when I built it I built it too light and it broke.  So here I was faced with the need to resaw 3, 13″ long, 4/4 pieces of cherry.  This is when I start wishing I had a Neander-buddy.  Those of the power tool set call them bandsaws.

I find it sad that I bought into the “buy a table saw first” dogma when I started in woodworking.  Nothing wrong with table saws and if you’re never going to develop hand tool skills this advice probably makes sense.   But if you can handle a hand plane and quickly true edges, a bandsaw provides much more versatility, in a lot less space, and it’ll do it more safely than will a table saw.  When it comes to resawing, a bandsaw is THE tool to use if you’re going to burn electrons.  I have a baby bandsaw that I’ve used in my modeling work for decades but it’s not up to the task of resawing 4 1/2″ cherry.

Enough of the whiny lamentations over a tool I don’t have.  I cut three 13″ pieces of cherry from a 4/4 board.  Above you can see two of those boards and two shelves that result from the burning of many calories.  I did the resaw steps with an old Spear and Jackson 5 tpi rip saw. I think it’s time to put it in the vise and sharpen it as it was slow going.  Maybe I’m just getting old.  Who am I kidding.  I am getting old.  Where’s a Neander-buddy when you need one?

Once I had divided the boards I shoved the resultant planks through my thickness planer, taking them to 3/8″ and finished up getting them truly flat and smooth using hand planes.  Here are the finished shelves.

Some day I may buy a Neander-buddy but right now I think I’m going to build a new frame saw.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Fitting Cabinet Doors

I’m closing in on the end of construction of my vanity cabinets.  With the cases assembled I was faced with the task of fitting the doors.  I tried to think of a way to show this process in a photo sequence but, I’m afraid, I failed miserably.  Most of the process is mental and my camera doesn’t do well at recording that stuff.  And so I’m left with some babbling that will have to suffice.  Apologies in advance.

I prefer to build the doors first when building cabinets.  I figure if I can get square and true doors, and build to those doors I’ll end up with a decent cabinet.  I know others who prefer case first construction and they don’t suffer for it.  But when I build my doors, I build them just a wee bit wider and taller than the cabinet they’re going to fit.  “Wee” is defined as 1/32″ to 1/16″ wider/taller.

And so, because these particular cabinets have top and bottom overhangs, the doors don’t fit into the space once the cases are assembled as they’re too tall.  So, I start by planing the bottom style so that 1) the door can be scrunched (technical woodworking term invented by Moxon I think) into the space, 2) that the hinge side of the door aligns with the cabinet, and 3) that the door bottom is parallel to the bottom of the cabinet, like this:

This generally shows me what must be done on the top of the door to get the top to fit.  Below you can see where the door is hitting the top of the cabinet (circled).

Because the bottom and hinge side are in proper alignment, it’s easy to mark what has to be removed to achieve proper top/bottom fit.  The resultant top gap should be twice the desired gap as this gap represents both the top and bottom door gaps.

Doing this with hand planes is really easy as you simply mark the area to be removed and plane down to the line you’ve drawn.  Because you must plane across the end grain of the rail a sharp blade and a fine cut are required.

Here are the cabinets in their current state.  It’s an example of “Clients – you can’t live with ‘em and you can’t live without ‘em.”  In this case, the client is my wife, Chantal.  She’s been fairly passive about this project thus far, mostly because most times, when I show her something I’ve built that isn’t a shop thingie, it has left our house and resides elsewhere.

I think I caught her by surprise to finish something to stay in our home. When I wiped down the cabinets with mineral spirits so she could get a feel for what they’ll look like, she got excited…i.e. involved.

“Wouldn’t it be neat to have some engraving on the mirrors?”, she said.

“Sure, remember the SketchUp drawings and the trim pattern I proposed?  Maybe we could have it engraved on the mirrors”, I said.

“I was thinking more like flowers and leaves”, she said.

“Oooookay… the only requirements for that are that you give me 1/4″ perimeter around the mirrors that will be hidden behind the door frame AND, that you negotiate whatever you want with the glass company.”, I said.

And the cabinets sit in the corner of my shop.  She has all the dimensions and the cabinets I’m waiting for their flowery faces as she investigates the possiblity.  I’m pondering my blue tape approach to hinging and latching.  It may not hold up.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

Revisiting Dowel Joints

There are various points in a project that excite, scare and even provide relief.  I always get excited when I get an idea to the point of cutting wood.  Between this point and the glue up, for me, is the real “fun” stuff of woodworking and my emotions run more along the lines of “kewl” and “this is so relaxing.”  I just like to feel and see wood change from flat stuff into useful, or even whimsical pieces.

But as I approach the time to glue up a carcase I always get scared.  Not Stephen King scared – more like the “about to give a speech” kind of scared.  As an aside, I’ve tried imagining the piece I’m going to assemble in its underwear.  It doesn’t work.   At this point in the project I run everything I’ve done through my mind.  Did I square every edge properly.  Is the joinery ready for assembly?  Is the glue fresh?  Do I have enough clamps.  Any chance the UPS guy is going to show up?  What have I forgotten?

And just as there is this anticipation, once the glue up is done and the piece comes up square, there is relief.  There’s still a lot of work to do at this point but, for me,  it’s all downhill from the glue up stage.  It’s back to the fun stuff.

And that’s where I’m at with my vanity project.  The glue up went smoothly, though I managed a fat hide glue thumb print on one of the cabinet sides everything is as it should be.  A bit of glue squeeze out to deal with but that’s a minor issue.  It’s door fitting time.

Dowel joints

But I’m writing this for another reason.  I’ve just had an email dialog initiated by a question about how “loose dowels rattling around in holes” could provide a good joint.  At least that was the start point.  I realized after this discussion that possibly the reason so many think doweled joints aren’t strong is that they aren’t doing them correctly.  What was clear from this discussion is that at least some are compromising precise fit to get their dowel joints to fit together.

I’m probably going to get myself in trouble for saying so but I believe doweled joints must be done as accurately as mortise/tenon and even dovetail joints, though there are cosmetic goals with dovetails that aren’t required for doweled joints.  But if you’re creating a carcase where the dovetails will be covered by mouldings, there is more room for error in those dovetails than in proper dowel joints.

If you look at a doweled joint it is essentially a butt joint of end grain to long grain without the dowels.  Nobody would consider this to be strong enough for a cabinet.  Thus, the strength of the joint comes from the surface area provided between the dowels and the holes in the two cabinet pieces.  If those surfaces aren’t tight, you lose.

It is simply not an option to drill the holes larger than the dowels so that it’s easy to fit  the joint together.  The only way to do these joints properly is to 1) use a significant number of dowels, 2) drill the holes in both mating pieces very accurately, and 3) ensure that the dowels fit in the holes sufficiently tight that you have to at least pound the joint together with your hand.

I showed how I made a jig and drilled the holes for my vanity cabinets and how I used it to drill accurate sets of holes.  Unfortunately, I didn’t include any other details about doing dowel joints.  My bad, and now I have no photos to show of the assembly process.  Maybe a description will be sufficient.  Hope so.

For these cabinets, which are small (14″ x 24 x 4 1/2″) I used 5 dowels per joint.  These were 5/16″ x 1 1/2″ fluted dowels which are actually just a smidge (I think this is metric ) larger than 5/16″ and they fit a 5/16″ hole tight enough that if I put one in a hole, it’s difficult to pull it out.

To do the actual glue up, I glue the dowels into the side pieces and let the glue set up.   Then I do a dry assembly just to ensure that everything is going to fit properly.  I use a rubber mallet and/or the palm of my hand to persuade the pieces together and get them apart again.  Then, and only then, do I add glue and clamp things up, checking the case for square as with any glue up.  I use liquid hide glue for this as it gives me a longer open time than hot hide glue.

I hope this helps a bit.  I’m sorry I don’t have photos of this process but James Krenov’s The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking, a book that every woodworker should own, has a good set of photographs of the process.

And while the glue dries…

Oh, and while the glue was drying I made this planing bench hook, modeled after one described in Tom Fidgen‘s Made By Hand book.  Have I mentioned lately that I like this book?  It’s one of the best books available on using hand tools to build furniture.

Those who follow the blog might remember that I first bought a bunch of red oak for my current cabinet project.  It was just not satisfactory and I switched to cherry.  This left me with a bunch of red oak vanity parts.  I took a couple top/bottom pieces, jointed them as a pair, using my trusty #7, and glued up the panel.  The rest came from my scrap box.

And I’ve learned something – I think.  Until a year ago, my bench appliances were all made from pine or plywood.  I decided to “upgrade” and these were replaced by equivalents made from hard maple.  I’ve never liked the result because the maple is just too slippery, which isn’t great if the goal is holding parts while you work on them.  And so my most-often used bench device has been a quickly-assembled bench hook  for small cross-cuts and made from pine scraps.  It works great but it’s UGLY.

I think red oak might be a fine compromise and I think I’ll build a replacement for my other bench appliances too.  I oiled the new plane hook but otherwise left its surface “oaky”, so you can feel the open grain of the wood.  I think this will hold wood just as well as pine and yet be more durable.  Maybe I’m kidding myself but maybe not.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com

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