Small Precision Neander Work.... (help!)

I bumped up against the limits of my ability over the last few weekends, not sure how to proceed...

I'm trying to make a stacking oil stone box:

Attachment 253327

The oilstones are held into place with a hardwood mitered moulding:

Attachment 253326

...which is giving me trouble. How to make it?

The stock I need to create looks like this:

Attachment 253325

The widest dimensions are 1/2" x 3/8". The flats are 1/8". The slope is 45o. It needs to be accurite to about 1/64" or so, because the bottom moulding "locks" into a mirror image top moulding on each section of the oilstone cover.

Yesterday I played with plow planes and scratch stock, but couldn't quite get the profile uniform enough.

(I think mitering and fitting the corners will be the easiest part, using a miter a shooting board, but if I get the moulding figured out, that will be the next challenge!)

Any suggestions?

-jamie

I'm guessing that the issue is that you need to cut a 45 degree on the back side of the molding that you pictured so that the moldings with stack. If I was doing that by hand, I would probably cut the backside 45 degree first (on square stock), then hot-glue several precision-made 45 degree wedges on the back of the stock so that I could clamp it upright in my sticking board.

If the issue is just straight-forward "how do I cut this" on the face side of the molding, I'd cut two rabbets in the square stock - one to the finished depth of the front fillet, and one to the finished depth of the 45 degree chamfer. Then I would use a wide shoulder plane to cut the 45 degree chamfer. Precision would be achieved by accurate marking of the back-side flat, and by accurate creation of the full depth of the front fillet. That gives you 2 lines to plane to, and you adjust the slope of the "45" by tilting the shoulder plane so that you will hit these 2 lines equally on the last pass.

Thanks David, you zoned in on the difficult cuts.

It's interesting that you are essentially saying slowly work to the lines. I got sidetracked building jigs that would take me right to the line, but errors kept creeping in. (e.g., using a plow plane to cut the rabbit right to the line, and invariably some part of the cut would wander just a little... or e.g., putting a 45o guide block on my shoulder plane)

Now I'm realizing I need to work away from the line (e.g. cut away most of the rabbet away from the line) and then tune the cut with a fine set shoulder plane. I suspect it's that simple.

And I need to work on better clamping, thanks for the hot glue suggestion! I can already tell I'm going to be doing that a lot.


-j

I figured I would post a final version of this project. Cutting the trim pieces was difficult, especially because I didn't have "extra" wood. If I was doing this again, I would make the trim pieces longer and cut off the ends. The ends are where the errors seem to show up the most.Attachment 264897Attachment 264898Attachment 264899

Very Nice! It certainly beats the plastic box that I keep my oilstones in.