After extensivenegotiations with the Boss, I finally got approval of a furniture design I’ll can use at work to spread out papers so I can see them (whatever happened to the paperless office?), and ultimately may end up as a sofa table behind the couchat home.
I wanted to build Garret Hack’s sideboard, which is more of a shaker style, but the Boss said that certainly wouldn’t go with the home decor and I needed “something with more curves and carving”. We finally reached a “negotiated settlement” for a Chippendale lowboy in Franklin Gottschall’s “Masterpiece Furniture”. I highly recommend this book for the experienced woodworker; lots of projects that I personally like, with simple, no-nonsense descriptions. The plans are way too small for my eyes and will have to be enlarged, but gives you all the basic information you need.
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Regrettably I had to change the dimensions to make it a little narrower and shorter per the Boss’s specifications. Of course this means I can’t just rely on the plans/dimensions in the book, so naturally I will have lots of opportunity to screw up the conversions.
I’m building it in cherry, because it’s one of my favorite hand tool woods and I already had some in the shop left over from another project. I told the boss I would probably only need about $100 worth additional lumber - turns out I was off by about $300-let’s hope I have something decent to show her before she sees the bill J.
One of the things that made the biggest improvement in my furniture project over the years is not to skimp on the initial layout of furniture components on the rough lumber. Here’s a picture of my shop is with rough lumber spread out on pretty much every horizontal surface for the layout process:
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I like to lay outall the major components about 1 inch oversize in crayon and write the final dimensions in pencil, circled on each piece so I don’t forget what’s what. I tried to match figure/grain as best as possible for components that will be adjacent to each other.
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Due to my thrifty Scottish heritage, I used to layout to try and get as many usable components as possible by cramming as much as I could into every single board. One of the things I enjoy most about hand tools is they give you the flexibility to pick out the grain and figure that best fits with the individual components, regardless of how their oriented in the original board. I’m sure you can do this with power tools, it’s just easier for me to “draw the line, see the line, cut the line”.
Here’s a picture of what I hope will be the top drawer front:
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I’m trying to make the top appear like a single board by matching the grain for the glue up. The middle section of the top is to the left and I’m hoping I can glue up these two pieces from an adjacent section of the same board to frame the middle piece so that the top looks like a single board. Certainly won’t fool and experienced eye, but might be close enough:
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Here’s the 12/4 that will become the ball and claw feet and the carved central drawer front:
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wish me luck Im definitely going to need it!
Originally Posted by lowell holmes
