An Simple Edge Treatment By Hand
When I was growing up I could count on my dad to say “You’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached.” It was useful that my head was attached but otherwise I thought him a bit harsh. Afterall, I only forgot half the time.
Today I experienced that half. I was preparing to assemble the carcases of my two vanities and it suddenly occurred to me that I’d forgotten to round over the edges of the top and bottom pieces. I suppose I could have done it after I did the assembly but this is much easier when the pieces can be clamped in a vise. And so I did – clamp them that is.
I began by working the cross-grain ends. The one thing that I needed to do is make sure I didn’t blow out the back edge so I began with a block plane, relieving/shaping that rear edge. Then I switched to a spokeshave to remove a bunch of material quickly. In this particular case I used a very sharp Stanley #63 (small, curved sole) and it was quick, easy work.
I followed the spokeshave work with a block plane to refine the curve, skimming off the high spots between the spokeshave cuts.
The front edge is easier but different. I was working along the grain and along a curve. Combined, these two things required that I work from the center out in both directions so that I was always working “down” grain. Working wood along the grain with a spokeshave is a treat. There’s something friendly about it, or maybe I’m just easily amused. In any case, I did this sequence on all four pieces and smoothed all the edges with a scraper and a bit of sandpaper. The following photo shows a piece with some mineral spirits wiped onto it so I could take a look at the results. Now you can too.
Cheers — Larry
168 Holes in a Couple of Small Cabinets?
Only a silly man drills 168 holes in a couple of small cabinets. Meet one silly man. The vanities I’m creating will hold who knows what and so I decided that the shelves, which may be wood or glass, needed to be fully adjustable. I decided that adjustment in 2″ increments would be sufficient but even so, this meant 14 pairs of holes in each of the four side pieces – 128 holes. I also wanted a 5-dowel join at each top/bottom joint which meant 10 holes for each joint for a total of 40 holes. Swiss cheese cabinets, coming up.
Hole Jigs
To accurately place the holes I created two simple jigs. One was a block of wood with a couple pins that projected from both sides and, offset from these, a set of holes to guide a drill bit. The other jig, for the dowel joints was a block of wood the thickness of the side pieces, a short ‘fence’ on one end, and the 5 holes located where I wanted the dowels to be in my pieces.
Shelf Holes
Notice that electrons were burned in the making of these holes. I like my egg beater drills as much as the next guy but my electric drill is just as clean, nearly as quiet and a whole lot faster for this sort of work. I marked out the first two holes 2″ from the bottom of each piece and drilled them. It’s very important to get these right as the jig depends upon their placement. Once drilled, the jig pins were inserted and the next set drilled. Leap-frogging the jig along the side piece generated a nifty set of holes.
Doweling Holes
When I built my last cabinet I was asked how I did the dowel joints; whether I used a _fill in fancy jig name here_ or something else. I guess this stuff doesn’t get talked about much in magazines or in cyberspace.
Let’s face it; dowel joints are frowned upon by many woodworkers as they’ve concluded them to be second class, while still putting James Krenov on the lofty pedestal he and his work deserve. I’ll not attempt to explain that paradox but when design leans to having an overhang on the top/bottom of cabinets, without the use of mouldings, dowel joinery is just the thing to make it happen. I like them and take solace in the fact that Krenov did too.
I clamped the jig to the bench top, with the fence sticking out onto and parallel to the bench top. I slid a cabinet side piece up to the jig, align the back of that piece to the fence, and clamp it in place. With everything fixed in place, it’s an easy matter to drill the holes. I mark the desired depth on the drill bit with a Sharpie marker.
The important thing here is to always put the back edge of the parts towards the fence as the fence is used to orient the jig on the top and bottom pieces by pressing it against the back of these pieces (the front are curved) and lining up the jig to the layout lines.
I’ve seen the fancy jigs, some costing a small fortune. Personally, I prefer these simple jigs as I can custom create them for each project.
Holes Everywhere
The end result is a bunch of pieces of cherry with some rabbets and a whole lot of holes. When I put them together they start to look like cabinets…almost.
Cheers — Larry
Stopped Rabbets with Hand Tools
To a (silly) man a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Seems I’m that guy. A few days ago I talked about my new Lee Valley plow plane and how much I liked it. I was thrilled at how easy I was able to do the through rabbets for the backs on my vanity cabinets. I also lamented that it was going to take me much longer to do the stopped rabbets on the top and bottom pieces because I would have to chop out a long portion of each end so the plow plane skate to pass.
[much egg drips down Larry's face] When I actually started the job I realized that by the time I chopped the relief for the skate in each end of a 12″ long rabbet, there wouldn’t be much left to plow. This grim reality, and only this reality, was sufficient to jar me into actually turning on my two neurons and realizing that there just might be a better way.
You see, I have this thing called a “router plane.” What the heck could that be for? How have I used it in the past? Shazaam…this should be a piece of cake! And it was.
Marking and prepping the rabbets
I used a cutting marking gauge to mark out the rabbet, and a 1/4″ chisel to mark the end points. In both cases I made these cuts as deep as I could.
With a chisel, I opened up a notch on one end that ran almost down to the 1/4″ depth of the rabbet I wanted to cut. This was so that the router plane cuts could end before the blade reached the end of the rabbet.
On the other end I opened up a ‘mortise’ (is it still a mortise if it’s open on one side?) that was 1″ long and a bit less than my 1/4″ depth. The dimension here was determined by the space required for my router plane blade AND because it was convenient to do with a 1″ bench chisel. I chopped some of the wood out with a mortise chisel but worked the wall and floor with the bench chisel to achieve smooth surfaces. This, by the way took very little time as not much wood was removed.
Routing the rabbet
I atttached the router fence to my router plane. If you’re used to power routers, this works just like a router fence on the noisy variety and the Lee Valley router plane/fence is a peach of a tool. For the first few passes I took very fine shavings to establish the edge. Then I started increasing the depth of cut and took very heavy shavings so it took almost no time to bring the rabbet near to depth. Then I returned to fine shavings to finish up the rabbet and smooth it. That’s all there was to it. Rabbets done….drilling holes, coming up.
Cheers — Larry
A Quick Look At My Vanity
Yes, it’s true. Carly Simon was singing about me and my vanity problem, or rather my vanities project. Get it? Yeah…horrible pun. But I’m old – have some mercy.
I decided that before proceeding I needed to check the fit on my vanity carcase pieces and mark the joinery locations prior to drilling dowel holes. This short blog post is the result. Ho-hum at its best. Always do your best even with ho-hum.
Fortunately, this turned out to be a good surprise day as everything squares up nicely on both cabinets. The doors are just a bit longer than their eventual resting place, so I can fit them once the carcase is glued up, but I could use them to verify the width dimensions. Sorry this post is not more exciting for you to read but these results sure made me happy.
“You’re so vain….you probably think this song is about you.
You’re so vain… you think something you did made this happen.
You’re so vain…”
Isn’t that how the song goes?
Cheers — Larry
Cutting Curves Without a Thin Blade
I’ve been very busy lately, and haven’t gotten a lot of shop time. What time I have gotten has been spent prepping pieces for my vanity build, generating piles of shavings. I could have photographed a sequence to show this but mostly it just looks like this:
I was faced with cutting the curves on the front of the top and bottom pieces on my vanities and it would have been easy to just shove them at my bandsaw but that would have required a blade change and getting my brain into power tool mode.
Instead, I cut a small template that traces the half-curve for each piece and cut it with my bow saw. Then I lined up the template with the side/front of the top/bottom pieces and drew the curve. I did this on both sides of those pieces.
I quickly cut away most of the waste using my Wenzloff carcase saw. I made two cuts and this eliminated most of the waste.
From there it was a simple matter to use a drawknife, rasp and block plane to remove everything outside the curve line. Ultimately I’ll be rounding over these edges so “perfect” wasn’t required at this point. I didn’t round the edges at this point as I want to retain square sides of these pieces from when I’m laying out their intersection with the cabinet side pieces. I’ll be using dowel joinery for that connection.
The other thing I’ve accomplished was to do the mortise/tenon joints for the door frames. Because of the rabbets on the back I used asymmetric tenons (for details see here and here) which worked out nicely. These were glued (hide glue) and drawbored together.
I’m hoping to get more time in the upcoming week but this is turning into a VERY long, simple project, though the actual work time is going smoothly.
Cheers — Larry
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