Let's Build Something Together

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

[IMG]Bugbear

HA HA Bugbear now that's a n blast from the past.
You still see references to this handle all over the internet.

Nice DT tut' ya got there.

[John Powers]

Robert, I'm enjoying your thread. can you till me how you got your wife to let you move your stuff into the living room. I can't get out of the garage. I do have plans to put your cabinet into that garage soon.

[Robert Rozaieski]

Robert, I'm enjoying your thread. can you till me how you got your wife to let you move your stuff into the living room. I can't get out of the garage. I do have plans to put your cabinet into that garage soon.

She's very understanding. It's nice being inside . Another benefit of not having any machines. The shop is actually a small (7½' x 13½') room that is attached to our family room. Look at the first picture and the fourth picture in Part 1. That's basically the entire shop except a wall and door behind me. The long wall with the window fits my workbench and not much else. But I really don't need any more space than I have. I'm not sure what the original intention of the room was but it really isn't good for much but maybe an office or home gym...or a shop . I had a choice of the garage or this much smaller room. I chose climate control and a window . Actually the room is neither heated or cooled but it is insulated. The family room and this small add on room were an addition to the back of the house done before we bought the house. As such all the walls and ceiling are all insulated, except for the wall between this room and the family room. This cuts down on the noise I make in the rest of the house so I can work while the kids are sleeping. But because we don't have a basement (we're on a slab) or attic space above the addition, there is no ductwork into the shop. I have a small space heater for the few real cold days of winter but no AC. It can be warm in the summer.

[Zahid Naqvi]

robert, thanks for taking the time to record and share this project.

[Robert Rozaieski]

Ok, well after a busy weekend doing other things, I managed to get a little shop time to get a little more work done on the cabinet.


Now that the face frame all fits together well, it's time to do some assembly. Start by heating up the glue pot. Here's my hot hide glue setup. You don't need an expensive electric glue pot. My cast iron double boiler style glue pot was $10. The hot plate was free. I like hide glue because it is reversible, repairable, doesn't cause blotching like yellow glue and in dry form it has an infinate shelf life. Just mix it up with some water and heat up. I don't measure the temperature either. It's really not that critical as long as it flows freely and doesn't burn. Hold your hand to the outside of the outer pot. If it feels too cold, it is. If it feels too hot, it is. If it feels like a hot cup of coffee, it's perfect. Leave the water at that temperatue for awhile until the glue runs from the end of your brush like maple syrup. Then you're in business.


Outline the position of the tenons on the face of each stile. This wll serve as a rough guide while boring the drawbore holes in the mortises.


Bore the mortises for the pegs. I bored all the way through both sides, boring from the back when the lead screw started to poke out the back. If you don't want the pegs to show in the final product, bore them from the inside face and don't bore all the way through the front. I don't bore mine centered on the mortise, rather I offset them to protect the fragile mortise walls.


Place the tenon in it's mortise and using the same bit, mark the position of the hole on the tenon with the lead screw.


Remove the tenon from the mortise and bore the hole in the tenon about 1/32" - 1/16" offset from the mark you made. Offset the hole toward the shoulder of the tenon. This will force the joint to pull tight when the peg is hammered in. Drawboring this way keeps the joint together when the glue eventually fails 100 years from now. It also means you don't need any clamps to assemble the frame.


Taper the pegs to ease their entry into the bored mortise and help align them with the offset hole bored in the tenon. I'm just using poplar dowel stock here. Traditionally riven hardwood pegs would be wittled roughly round and pounded in. The riven stock is stronger than sawn stock since it is split along the grain. However, this is not a joint that will receive a lot of stress like chair joints would and these dowels are fairly straight grained so they will work just fine for this application.

[Robert Rozaieski]

Once your mortises and tenons are bored and your glue is ready, apply glue liberally to the tenon and fit it to its mortise. Then tap the peg through the drawbore from the front face. There should be sufficient glue in the hole already to hold the peg in place so you don't need to add any more. It will just make a mess on the piece as it is scraped off as you tap the peg home.


Allow the glue to dry, then trim the pegs. Plane the face surfaces of the face frame to clean them up real nice and finally, you can cut off the horns. Don't plane the edges yet. This will be done after the face frame is attached to the case to ensure everything is flushed up nice.


While the glue was drying on the face frame, I cleaned up the front edge of the case where the face frame will eventually be attached. Be careful at the corners where the grain changes. This spot is very easy to tear off a big chunk, especially in this soft pine. Turn around the corner, go slow and take a light cut to avoid a major disaster.


I used a block plane and a card scraper to clean up the inside of the case. This is easier to do now, before the face frame is attached.

[Robert Rozaieski]

Once the case was cleaned up, I moved on to making the shelves. First, I straightened the edge of this board and squared up the left end on the shooting board. Then place the squared up end in the dado and mark the length. Scribe the length with a square and knife, cut it to length with your panel saw and make any minor adjustments to length on the shooting board, checking the fit in the dado as you go.


Once the shelf fits in the dado, align its straight back edge with the back of the dado (not the back of the case, we still need to add the back boards inside the rabbet). Mark the depth of the shelf so it will be flush with the front of the case. Mark both sides of the shelf in case there is minor variation in the width of your case sides.


Connect the marks with a straight edge, then rip the shelf just shy of finished depth. Clean up the sawn edge with your plane.


Fit the shelf to the case every couple swipes of the plane and sneak up on the final depth. This allows you to make minor corrections to one side or the other and end up with a perfectly fit shelf.


I decided to add a double bead detail to my shelves. This bead serves two purposes. First it removes the sharp arrises of the shelf edges and keeps them from breaking off from the occasional bumps they are bound to receive when placing things into the cabinet later. Second, they make the shelf look nice. Here I'm using a side bead molding plane to make the bead on one side. This plane has a built in fence and depth stop and makes perfect beads every time with zero setup time. With the iron real sharp and set for a light cut it will even do a good job against the grain, which will be necessary when I bead the opposite corner of this shelf.


Here's the finished shelf edge detail. Two nicely formed beads that require zero sanding.


Finally, I attached the finished face frame to the case with glue and nails. Liquid hide glue is a better choice here due to the limited open time of hot hide glue. You can add urea to hot hide glue to increase the open time but the liquid stuff is just easier to use for these applications. Cut nails would have been more traditional, but I don't have any and being just a shop cabinet, I settled for standard 2" drawn wire finish nails. After the face frame is attached, slide the shelves in from the back all the way against the face frame. No glue or nails are necessary here as the back boards will keep the shelves in place. Finally, plane the outside edges of the face frame flush with the case sides. This is also a good time to plane the dovetails of the case flush if you have not yet done that. I'll make the back boards next.

[Robert Rozaieski]

Here I've gauged the height of the back boards off of the rabbets in the back of the assembled cabinet, cut the boards to rough length, squared the ends and adjusted the final length on the shooting board. The back is made up of three pieces that will be shiplapped and beaded. This method of constructing cabinet backs allows for seasonal expansion and contraction of the back boards and prevents them from cupping or splitting.


Normally, in a deep case, I would just leave the back boards at whatever thickness they were milled to since a difference in depth of ¼" or so doesn't typically matter. However, in this case I want to maximize the interior depth of this case since it is a very shallow cabinet, so I will need to do some grunt work. I gauged the backboard thickness from the rabbet that was planed on the cabinet backs. I then planed the first two boards down in thickness taking very thick shavings until I got close to my scribe line. Then I took thinner shavings until I reached the final thickness. This was a lot of planing and sweating so I decided to resaw the third board. It was just about the same amount of work but did go a little faster than planing all the extra material away. The final board thickness was in the area of 7/16".


This is the third board after resawing and some cleanup planing. You can still see some of the saw marks that need to be cleaned up yet. I've found that resawing from each of the four corners and meeting the four cuts in the center of the board is the best technique for me. I don't do it often enough to be good at it and I find that I have the fewest stray cuts when I do it this way. This means less planing to clean it up after the cuts.


After the boards have all been brought to final thickness, I planed the rabbets. The left back board has a single rabbet on its right edge on the top face. The center board has two rabbets. One on its left edge on the bottom face and one on its right edge on the top face. The right back board has a single rabbet on its left edge on the bottom face. The rabbets are half the boards' thickness deep. I achieve this depth by setting the depth stop a little shy of finished depth and sneaking up on the final depth with gradual changes in the depth stop. I work on the mating rabbets of the first two boards at the same time, constantly checking the two mating boards until they mate flush. Once the first set of rabbets are done and the first two boards mate flush, the rest of the rabbets go quick because the depth stop is now set to the final depth needed to achieve a flush fit. Alternating the rabbets helps to keep the boards flat against the back of the cabinet.


Here I'm planing a bead inside each of the top rabbets (right edges of the left and center boards only) in order to protect the fragile arrises inside the cabinet and hide the small gaps that will appear during seasonal movement. The bead also looks nice. The back faces do not get beaded, only the faces that will show inside the cabinet. The fence of the side bead plane sits in the rabbet as I plane, and because these boards are so thin and the rabbets so shallow, I had to increase the projection of the iron slightly with each pass after the first couple in order to get the profile full depth. This is not necessary when working thicker boards with deeper rabbets but can be with these thin boards and shallow rabbets.


Here are the finished back boards before being attached to the case. You can just see the bead at each joint. I used the same size side bead plane as I did for the shelves, mostly because it's the only one I have but it also ties the cabinet together nicely having the same bead on the back and shelves.


Finally, install the back boards with nails. Again, cut nails are traditional but I did not have any so I used 1½" wire finish nails. Any adjustment to board width should be made to the un-rabbeted edges of the two outside boards. There should be some room for the boards to expand and contract as the seasons change so don't make them a perfect snug fit.

The boards are nailed in the top and bottom rabbets in the center of each board width to allow for seasonal movement. I leave some play between the boards to allow for this movement. I also put a nail in the center of each board width into the backs of the shelves to help hold the back boards and also provide additional support to the shelves. In the winter when the humidity is at it's lowest, I allow a larger gap between back boards as I expect the boards to expand. In the summer, when the humidity is at it's peak, I allow almost no gap between back boards as I expect the boards to contract. At this time of year (or in the fall), I allow a moderate gap between 1/16" and 1/8" as the boards will need room to move in both directions in the coming months.

If you are satisfied with a simple open cabinet, you can stop here, apply a finish and put it on the wall. It is certainly very nice as is. But I'm going to take this cabinet a few steps further and add some moldings and a raised panel door. I'll work on the moldings next.

[Greg Cole]

Robert,
Once again thanks for the effort.
I also like the delivery in nuts n bolt terminology seems to stick in my noodle that way.


Cheers.
Greg

[James Mittlefehldt]

Regarding the resawing I hink it woudl be eaier to do that then take the boards down to width with a plane. In his book the complete dovetail Ian Kirby said it is generally faster to saw than plane or chisel.

I have done a few boards that way white ash and walnut, no fun but no big deal either.

Keep it coming Robert it is almost like looking over your shoulder watching you build your cabinet, something I have to do this summer I think, though what I need to do is a saw cabinet, they seem to be having babies out there, as there are more every spring.

Thanks for your trouble, it is really appreciated.

[Dan Lee]

Great thread. I'm mostly a power tool user but am really enjoying this.

[Robert Rozaieski]

Regarding the resawing I hink it woudl be eaier to do that then take the boards down to width with a plane. In his book the complete dovetail Ian Kirby said it is generally faster to saw than plane or chisel.

Really about the same amount of work I think. The resawing went a little faster but my rip saw is a 5½ point. The teeth tended to clog up with sawdust and then I'd have to stop cutting, clear the teeth , start cutting again, etc. A coarser pitch would be nice for this kind of sawing. Maybe 2½ to 3 points per inch. Planing wasn't that bad but I needed to take a pretty thick shaving to take off as much material as I did. I did work up a sweat with both methods though.

[Joe McMahon]

Robert, very nice job but may I digress? In some photos we see your shop and the tools mounted on the wall behind your bench. They look neat and very well organized.

On behalf of the myriad of untidy persons such as myself, would you please post more pictures of the wall behind your bench, concentrating on your tools and their mounts, and especially their mounts?

TIA, Joe

[Don C Peterson]

VERY cool Robert. I usually don't think about taking pictures of my projects until I'm nearly done...

[Robert Rozaieski]

Robert, very nice job but may I digress? In some photos we see your shop and the tools mounted on the wall behind your bench. They look neat and very well organized.

On behalf of the myriad of untidy persons such as myself, would you please post more pictures of the wall behind your bench, concentrating on your tools and their mounts, and especially their mounts?

TIA, Joe

Joe,

Sure, I can take some pics of the tool boards. But, I'll do you one better. I'll start a new thread called Tool Storage & Organization rather than hijack this thread. That way, the tool storage won't get lost in this thread and will be easier to find in a search later. Also, I'm sure a lot of other folks on the site have good storage ideas and could contribute as well.