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Carver's Chest Build-along
I've never done a build-along, mostly because I make small things mostly, toys, boxes etc., etc. Plus, I rarely think to stop and take pictures at key points. But I am now building a Gerstner-like carvers chest to hold my most used, tools. Now they are scattered about, a tool roll here, stones and slip there, so this will put everything into one place. The motivation for doing this is I have signed up for a carving class in March. So I can transport my tools in a handy way. Here is the collection of tools it must accommodate, the only thing missing are my sharpening stones and slips.
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The problem with Gerstner chests (I own several) in terms of carving tools are: The chests aren't deep enough to accommodate carving tools, typically 9-10-inches long. The tools could be put in sideways, but that limits how many can be stored and on most Gerstner chests, the drawers are too shallow for much else.
So I decided to make one that is 12-inches deep, about 10 inches tall and 18-inches long. It will be built in a similar way to Gerstner's but with some differences that I will point out as I go along.
This gave me the opportunity to use some wood that I've been carrying around for decades. The story goes that my Grandpa made a small bookshelf for my Grandma soon after they were married. The bookshelf is Chestnut and I remember it in the house where I grew up as a young child in the 1960s. It got moved when that house was sold and was stored in the basement, which repeatedly flooded and the shelves, sadly, were in very poor condition. My sister gave them to me. I determined that nothing could reasonably be done to restore it, and even if it could've been restored it was too small and shallow for anything but paperbacks. So I knocked it apart and stacked the wood, waiting for some special project to use it.
I didn't take a photo of the shelves together, but they were built like you would expect. A carcass, base with a decorative skirt, and on the sides, two rows of holes for shelf pins. there were only two shelves that came with it. The back was very thin plywood that had delaminated and crinkled.
The first thing I had to do after designing the box was to cut out and thickness the stock. I should mention that I resolved to make this entirely by hand, no power equipment at all! I assessed the wood, laid out all the parts and started cutting
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The shelving unit was painted black on the outside, but the inside had been varnished, but this was some type of faux woodgrain technique that I has seen on other furniture that he made or refinished. It had a thick coat of paint over which was a tinted varnish that made it sort of look like wood. No real attempt to comb grain into it was evident and like most of his painting/finishing, it was pretty sloppy. (Sorry Grandpa). The boards were all just under 3/4-inch and my chest would be 1/2-inch stock so there was a bunch of planing to do. It was complicated by the painted material, almost certainly lead paint. So I donned my respirator, and jack-planed off all the paint after cutting most boards to rough length. Then vacuumed and mopped up.
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I had just barely enough wood to make the chest, so I had to be careful with the layout. I Split the long sides down through the row of shelf holes and planed down to remove the holes, but maintain the maximum width.
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Then as is my habit to start off I flatten and surface one face, shoot one end, and joint one edge nice and square.
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First I flatten one side. The chestnut generally planed beautifully, I really like working it. But in some spots the grain ran contrary and caused some significant tear-out. The wood was pretty straight grained, and the boards were narrow, could he have glued up strips, not caring which way the grain went? Lets take a look.
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Yup, nearly every board (even after I ripped them to narrower dimensions) had one or more joins. But once I dressed the ends I could see that these boards were commercially joined with shallow match joints. I do not believe that he did this, so either the wood was purchased, already joined, to make a wider board out of narrow strips, or maybe he did not make the shelves. Maybe he reworked something else into the shelves, or maybe he just refinished it. A mystery, and there's nobody alive to ask. The shelf pin holes were not perfectly aligned, so that's a vote for him drilling them (they weren't gang-drilled). But who know?
So I had to take the flattening the one side slowly, I abandoned the scrub plane and set the jack to a shallow cut and was carful at the edges to avoid blow out.
Once I got into the rhythm, it went smoothly enough. I got all the wood flattened on one side, one edge shot and one side jointed, then the other, prepared for glue-up.
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Glue-up went smoothly. I did try both to match grain and run it all in the same direction, to make the next step easier. Then I thickness the board. I had to remove about 3/16-inch of material. I normally start with a scrub plane, until I am about 1/16th off the penciled-in scribe mark, then a jack down to the just above the line, then a jointer to flatten everything, finally a smooth plane to make pretty. Then trim to final size. Next, the results of this step.
Note: the pix are all sideways (click on them) I couldn't delete the final attached thumbnail so the results are in the next post.
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Carvers Chest Build-along- Next Steps
Installment No. 3!
Firstly I have to say that I have a lot of respect for Derek and Steven for the number of build-alongs they do and post. It requires a great deal of time and organizational skills, both of which i have only a short supply of. I worked on the chest most nights this past week and I am making progress!
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The next step was to dovetail the sides and back together. This chest is different than Gerstner's in terms of construction, they use rabbet joints and locking drawer rabbets (not sure of the terminology there) and I am dovetailing the back to the sides and the top rail will be dovetailed as well. The bottom will fit into rabbets all three sides. The bottom doesn't really have a big role in the structure of the box. The doors hang from runners in the sides. So the bottom will have no weight on it, it just has to hold everything square.
I cut tails first. I laid everything out on the CAD system, there's a lot going on with the joinery and I wanted to get it right the first try.
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The layout was important because there will be dadoes in parts that I didn't want to dovetail through, but beyond that, not too much that's unusual.
Derek, if you are following along, that marking knife shown above, I somehow associate with you, either you designed it, or sold it to me, or it is based on your design. Anyway, it works wonderfully.
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So, those are cut, I saw out the waste with a coping saw, which was how I was taught in school. Then chop down to the knife line.
I know people don't like shoulder vises, but here is where they shine. No need for a Moxon vise.
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Here's the back done, at least with the dovetails, I still need to run a dado for the till base and a rabbet for the bottom.
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I forgot to take a picture of how I transfer the tails to the pins, but it's the way lots of folks do it, each side is clamped in the shoulder vise with the top edge flush with a plane on its side and then the plane is moved back to support the tail board level and in position and the pins marked from the tails with the knife.
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They went together alright, not my best dovetails, but certainly not my worst either! I like the wider spacing, if they are too close together they look machine made to me.
After this I had to dado the sides and back for the till bottom (floor?) then rabbet all around for the chest bottom. I didn't take pictures of those things, but I use a Stanley 78 followed by a No. 10 for the rabbets, and for the dadoes, I knife them deep as I can, then chase the knife mark with a fine toothed saw to depth, then waste with a chisel and clean up with a router plane. I have dado planes, but I rarely use them on short little dadoes like these.
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Here's the carcass just clamped together, while fitting the till floor and the chest bottom (in progress). Somewhere along the way I dovetailed the top rail. The whole thing goes together without protest. There'll be lots more to do before I glue it up. The sides need dadoes for the drawer runners, the till floor needs one for the top drawer divider that will hang from it. The design is for two full-width drawers at the bottom, and two half-width drawers above, so I need to hang a divider that I can mount the drawer runners to. I was going to use a sliding dovetail for that joint, but have decided to instead run a dado cross grain and glue the divider in and secure with screws, they'll be covered by the felt.
Until the next installment...
DC
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Beginning to glue - up and drawer part prep
I started to glue the sides to the back. The boards had cupped ever so slightly in the past two weeks. So it was a bit of a wrastle to get them into position. I ended up knocking together a quick toothed caul to exert pressure directly to the tails so they would sit flat. I think you can see a bit of it under the pile of clamps.
I designed the box to go together one piece at a time. So one side can be glued up to the back, and then the other. Then the front rail can be glued up to to the side/back assembly. I like it this way better than gluing it all up at once.
Here's the first joint together.
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So, that's pretty much the plan today, glue up a joint and then wait. While waiting I decided to get to prepping the material for the drawers, starting with the sides and backs. The sides will be 1/2-inch thick, and the backs about 5/16-inch. The wood is more of the old growth pine from my stash.
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All of the drawers will be 1-3/4-inch tall. So I took the board and laid out all of the parts, trying to miss knots and other defects. I had just enough. Then I got out the old rip saw. After all of the chestnut, ripping this pine was a pleasure. Probably I should've gone out to the garage shop and gotten the 28-inch, 5 TPI D-8 that's out there, but it's cold out and it snowed again yesterday, so I made do with the LN 7 TPI 24-inch panel saw. It went well enough. it took just under an hour to break it all down, including laying it all out and then bucking to length. The saw was recently sharpened and it sailed along taking only about 6-8 strokes per inch. There was 15 linear feet of ripping all together.
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It was a nice little workout! I did take several breaks between rip cuts. I'm not as young as I once was.
As mentioned above, my process is to joint one edge straight, then dress one face, and shoot one end. Then gauge a line for width and trim to the line to get the final width, then I thickness. Finally, I mark and cut to length, shooting the remaining end. I'm not sure exactly why I do it this way, it just makes sense. I do it in a sort of production line, with all of the parts having the one operation performed, then moving on to the next.
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Here is a shot of my setup, I have a bench hook that acts like a shooting board. I clamp the hook in the tail vise (this is another reason I like the traditional European tail vise over the wagon type, I can just clamp the Hook in the vise and now I can use the length of the bench to run the plane). I need to make a longer one though, because any board longer than about 18-inches doesn't really fit. Not an issue on this project. So, this is how I shoot the edges straight and square.
If I have more than 1/8th-inch to trim off an edge, I will use the jack plane (No. 5). When doing this, I slip a piece of 1/4-inch drywall or plywood under the workpiece, because my jack plane blade is cambered at the edges, and if I didn't the cut would be way off square. I follow this with a jointer, and finally a smooth plane. Next I'll thickness them all.
DC