case joinery

When dovetails are mentioned people generally think of a drawers construction - attaching a drawer front to a drawer side etc (like last weeks post).
The same joinery can be employed to attach cabinet pieces together. One example is much like a large drawer and simply involves joining the case sides to the top and bottom

There are of course other ways to use this joint, one being the sliding dovetail joint.

I start by cutting a dado in the top and bottom panels the same width as the gables.

Then I follow up with a dovetail bit in the router to cut the slot.

Now it’s time to fit the gables (or in this case the stiles)

I start by roughing out the kerf on the tablesaw, than I make my layout marks for the dovetail with a marking knife.

I finish the shoulder cuts with a handsaw...

And pare away the waist with a sharp chisel.

Now I repeat these steps on the other side.

Once the stile is finished I check it for fit. I want a tight fit that requires very little glue to hold it in place.

a tiny drawer

Dovetailed drawers have long been a staple of fine cabinetry. In today’s 'super-efficient' society they are often produced by machine (I’m not knocking that, in fact I own a dovetail jig that I use often) however sometimes the joint is used as much for visual appeal as it is for function. In these cases I opt for hand cutting them to get the proportions and subtleties of a fine handmade piece of furniture.

I start by laying out and cutting the tails on the sides of the drawers. I use a saw to cut to my layout lines and a sharp chisel to remove the waste.
It’s important to have crisp layout lines, so I use a knife that I keep honed to a razor sharp edge.

I then use the tail boards to layout the pins on (in this case) the drawer front.

A sharp chisel is used to chop away the bulk of the waste between the pins...

Leaving a clean and accurate surface for the tails.

Life is made much easier in the shop if the tools are kept sharp, so I generally keep an 8000 grit wet stone handy for a quick honing. It only takes about 10 to 15 seconds to restore an edge if it’s done often.

The next tail socket is done the same way.

Now is the time to do any other work on the parts of the drawer that might need work, such as smoothing inside surfaces and adding decorative scroll work.

It's finally time to add some glue and fit the drawer together.

The drawer bottom and back are fitted next, and are fine tuned to fit in their respective slots with a pass or two from a sharp block plane.

Once everything fits snugly it’s time to glue the pieces in place and finish any final scraping, planning or profiling.

Occasionally I find new uses for very old tools. In this case an old Bedrock 605 makes a good weight when gluing a base onto an 18th century pipe box!

Working with planes

There are several reasons in my mind that hand planes are superior to sand paper for flattening a large board and for final finishing. Not the least of which is the reduced noise and dust.

  Recently I have been working on some large cherry panels for a project that will be finished with french polish, and there is no better preparation method for french polish than a glassy hand planed surface.

First the boards are machine jointed (See this post for information on that) and thicknessed to rough dimension and then labeled based on their purpose in the finished piece of furniture.

They are then glued up into panels.

The panels have a fair amount of glue squeeze out that gets removed with a paint scraper.

The surface is almost ready for planing at this point.

I use a pencil to make guide marks all over the board so I can easily tell what areas I've planed and what areas need more work.

Now it's time to choose the right plane, and get to work!

A number 5 is a good choice for the first step.

I set the blade for a fairly aggressive cut and work it diagonally across the gran to remove material quickly and to do a preliminary flattening. The pencil lines remain visible in the low areas.

The result is a board that is fairly flat with all of the highest spots removed. The plane marks are clearly visible diagonally across the board.

I draw on another guide coat of pencil lines...

And switch to a number 8 plane for refining the surface to get it dead flat.

Lots of elbow grease involved here.

Once the surface is dead flat it's ready for the smoothing plane. There are some choices here; I usually go with a number 5 1/2 for the bulk of the work, and turn to a number 4 1/2 for the tough grain. the number 4 or even a number 3 is used only for the most stubborn areas.

Although the work involved in hand planing is fairly time consuming, it is much faster than the time that would be required to get an equal surface quality with sand paper - and far less messy.

The result is a board with exceptional smoothness and a texture that can only be achieved with hand planes. The surface is ready for finish as it is, but I will be giving it one more hit with the smoothing plane once the piece is assembled.

Pine storage units

This Pine wall unit is part one of two. The client wanted some much needed storage space with window seats for guests. Earlier I wrote about the process of taking lumber from rough stock to finished dimensions: This piece was used for that post.

Here is the finished project.

Although it is not readily apparent, there are no fillers or spacers used in this piece. Fillers are often used to fill those little spaces between a wall and a cabinet that would otherwise be a gap. instead of using fillers we measure the exact size of the opening and build the furniture to fit perfectly, thereby giving the furniture a perfect built in appearance. Many cabinet makers would rather build to the nearest inch and fill voids during the install, but we feel that having no gaps and no fillers in a mark of real quality and attention to detail.

Drawers are fitted for a perfect 1\16" gap all the way around.

Hand cut dovetails are left with scribe lines intact for that classic look and unmistakable hand cut detail.

Solid Pine

These past few weeks have been very busy! I finally replaced one of the machines in the shop with a larger and much more powerful version (more on that later). I've also returned from vacation, and started work on the latest project.

This project is being made from veneer core pine plywood and solid pine for the trim and doors etc. Here is a shot of some of the materials at this point:




When it arrives at the shop its in rough form and looks like this:





It gets sent through the jointer (new machine I mentioned earlier..)




First I clean up one face...





Then i joint one edge exactly 90 degrees to the face.




It then gets sent through the planer to make the opposite face parallel to the first face and to thickness it down to it's (almost) finished thickness.





As I'm working the pieces I keep track of them by using pencil lines to mark the faces that are as good as they can get using machines. The final surface will get finished by hand from this point on.




Finally the pieces get ripped to width (in this case 2 1/4" for rails and stiles).





All that's left to do now is cut them all down to length and we'll have our rough pieces ready for milling into rails and stiles.

Cherry and maple

Here are some photo's of a recent project. Hard maple and cherry always look great together, especially once the cherry begins to age.