# Saw Till



## Alf (8 Sep 2010)

Or How To (Maybe) Give The Impression of Being A User and Not A Collector.

As I don't actually finish projects very often, and this one has been particularly long in the making, I'm revelling in the novelty and thus this may get long with lots of pics. There's also much use of gratuitously beautiful and/or desirable hand tools with which I hope to lure potentially lapsed Normites. In other words :!: *Caution: Slope* :!: 

At what point workshop furniture for the exclusive storage of planes or saws got christened a "Till", I know not, but it's a recognised term in the neanderthal interweb world, and who am I to argue? Anyway, I needed one. Urgently. I have a, um... a "few" saws... And workshop stuff is always a good place to out in a bit of practice for us occasional project makers, so I decided to do the job properly. Apart from initial stock prep and a couple of small tiddly bits at the end, it was all done exclusively by hand. No table saw or router came near it.

I started with some old pine from chapel Sunday School benches and old window frames, like this:







and this:






Mix liberally with planer thicknesser to get this:






and this:






First up, the carcass. To get the necessary depth (11" - sorry, I think in Imperial despite my youth *cough*) I had to joint the boards to make wider panels.






Then a rebate was planed along both sides for the back. For the top and bottom, a rebate was run along two cleats that were glued top and bottom - providing a stronger spot to drive screws when hanging the till, and helpfully removing the complication of a stopped rebate. See how that Marples 78 has sailed through that knot? Lovely jubbly.






Then dovetails.






The useful corner clamp tip for holding these rather large unwieldy pieces still while I mark off the pins.






Dry run to make sure it all goes together and that a large handsaw will actually fit okay. Disston thumbhole rip, if you're wondering.






Glue-up with the ply back in place. I like clamp heads - can you tell?






Battens with slots at 1 1/4" centres to take the blades and a 3 1/4" ledge at the bottom to hold the horn of the handles on the larger saws.






But how to utilise the area top right for smaller saws? Why a bracket - and happily I had a defunct old saw handle kicking around that fitted the bill.






After something of a hiatus, I then started on the doors. After dabbling with the idea of tambours, I eventually opted for a pair of frame and panel doors. So first I ploughed the grooves in the rails and stiles.






Perfect.






Then I chopped the mortises. The wooden handscrew both holds the stiles steady and the jaws greatly reduce any risk of blowing out the mortise walls.






Not bad, eh?






All eight mortises chopped square and to the necessary depth.






Then onto cutting the cheeks of the matching tenons.






Look, Ma - arty black and white!






Then trimming the cheeks using the router plane trick. Ooops, did I say a router'd never come near this? Oh dear...






Final saw cut to form the haunch that fills the groove rather than leave an ugly gap.






Test fit, and it's all fair.






On to gluing up a pair of panels to go in the frames. The limitations of recycled materials kicked in big time, and they had to end up as something of a mixture in appearance from one board to another.






Approximately two and a half years later, they were trimmed to length. I did mention the gratuitous nature of some of these pics, didn't I...?






Planed true and flat.






Couldn't resist putting a wipe of shellac on them to see how they'd look. But back to business, and pausing briefly to make a panel gauge, the panels were gauged to final dimensions.






Then the panel raising plane I'd stopped off to make earlier in the project was used to raise the panels.






Then cleaned up with scraper and 220 grit.






A bevel was freehanded on the reverse so the panel would fit into the groove and a dry run showed all was good.






Some straight-grained oak scrap was driven through a dowel plate to turn it into pegs in order to make draw bore joints. 






A blow-by-blow account of the draw boring is on my blog, but just to prove that not even an electric drill got a look in on the action:






A finished joint. Tight as a drum and not a drop of glue.






Slide in the ready finished panel before completing the frame. That's important - trying to put the panel in afterwards is a bit tricky...






Cut off the horns, plane the frame square and flush, and apply a coat or two of garnet shellac.






Then to hang them. An awful lot of piano hinge of doubtful loveliness has been hanging around the workshop for some years, so piano hinge it was. I've noticed many a tool cabinet has fixed the hinges this way, so I went with it. It's pretty easy, and you don't get a huge expanse of brass hinge dazzling you when you open the doors to show off your tools. Er, I mean, get to your tools in order to labour over dead tree. Oh, who am I kidding? A combination of push drill and spiral ratchet screwdriver did the job admirably.






Oh yes, at some point I painted the outside of the till. The old pine was not lovely to look at, so why not. By the time I've finished hanging things all over it, like this bowsaw, you wont be able to see it anyway...






Almost done, but first a pair of door knobs, also made from old window frame.






And a few saw holders for the Wenzloff saws, so their lovely looks are on display. The bandsaw and a drum sander did come into the picture here - as well as the lathe for the knobs - but it was a forgivable lapse as I saw the winning post finally in sight, wasn't it?






The finished article.






_Et voilà!_






It's a long way from the works of art such as Waka's tool cabinet, but it's holding nearly all my saws ready to be used and I got to practice all sorts of stuff and have fun doing it. More fun than hacking up a sheet of ply and whacking it together with biscuits or screws anyway. That's a result. Proof that I do actually use the tools sometimes is always helpful too. 8-[ Thanks for looking. If you got this far, well done. Wanna buy a saw...? :wink:


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## CHJ (8 Sep 2010)

Oh for a workshop worthy of that little creation Alf, very worthy of a bit of self congratulation on your part, although I did cringe a bit at the use of a spiral screwdriver !


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## Karl (8 Sep 2010)

Nice one Alf. 

I looked at that LV saw recently on their website - how is it? I'd seen a few Disstons on e-bay go for about £15/20 and toyed with buying one.

Cheers

Karl


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## mailee (8 Sep 2010)

HOW LONG!? No seriously though Alf I just wouldn't have the patients to do all that with hand tools, got to admire you. Have to say it was well worth all the effort. Great looking cabinet. :wink:


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## Harbo (8 Sep 2010)

That looks great Alf and nice saw collection - wish I had any wall space left to hang such a lovely creation?

Rod


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## AndyT (8 Sep 2010)

I've followed this one from time to time on your blog and I think it really proves the point that the reason why you have a lot of tools is so that you can enjoy using them.

I know myself that there's no substitute for the satisfaction of putting theoretical knowledge into practice. 

I also really like your proof that it _is_ worth hanging on to nice bits of old wood - because they really do come in useful!

What's next on the starting block then?


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## laird (8 Sep 2010)

That is both a lovely WIP and a lovely end product. Thanks for sharing.


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## Paul.J (8 Sep 2010)

Great wip Alf and end result.  
I like the bw piccy


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## Paul Chapman (8 Sep 2010)

Hand tools rule, OK 8) 

Lovely job, Alf.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## CroppyBoy1798 (8 Sep 2010)

I hate looking at posts like this, they make me feel inadequate and my meager collection of knackered handsaws seem embarrassing! 

Seriously nice work and as mentioned really nice to see some traditional methods applied, loved seeing the plough plane in use and the joints being cut by hand. Its one thing to do them on a machine (and lets face it, anyone with a bit of limited training and cop on could do them on a machine) but to do them by hand is something special indeed gives the cabinet a whole different feel altogether.

Well done!! 

Oh a nice pics too!! I love the black and white ones with the splash of color on the focal points, nice!!


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## Orcamesh (8 Sep 2010)

Saw'ted, Alf!!  

Putting us all to shame as usual, outrageous use of _almost_ zero electricity, and all the money saved from not spending it on electric can now go into buying more handsaws!! :wink: 

Excellent photos, running commentary and final product! Well done! 

cheers
Steve


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## SVB (9 Sep 2010)

Very nice job!

Btw - what is the saw on the LH door that is half backed but deep used for?

S


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## Alf (9 Sep 2010)

Cheers, folks; glad you enjoyed it. I won't be troubling this board again for a bit, I imagine. :lol: 



CHJ":2p4u43iq said:


> ...although I did cringe a bit at the use of a spiral screwdriver !


Not a fan, Chas? Bit of practice and they're not the divot-making maniacs that they sometimes seem to be. It helps having older ones, where the spring's lost a bit of its oomph though. I also like them just as a ratchet screwdriver.



Karl":2p4u43iq said:


> I looked at that LV saw recently on their website - how is it? I'd seen a few Disstons on e-bay go for about £15/20 and toyed with buying one.


Which one, Karl? Not that it matters - I like them all. Took a little while to warm to the half-back, but that may have been a little too much bite left from the sharpening. It's great now. The tenon is really good too. I like Mike's saws an awful lot; they just seem to suit me.



mailee":2p4u43iq said:


> HOW LONG!?


Hah. Yes, um... I barely set foot in the w'shop for most of that time. But even so, I do hope a project never takes that long ever again.



AndyT":2p4u43iq said:


> What's next on the starting block then?


Workbench to take the Emmert vice that arrived _chez Alf_ earlier this year. Should be... fun. 



Hawk Moth":2p4u43iq said:


> Saw'ted, Alf!!


Groan! That's terrible, Steve. Wish I'd thought of it... :lol: 



SVB":2p4u43iq said:


> Btw - what is the saw on the LH door that is half backed but deep used for?


It's a sort of hybrid panel-come-back saw. So it gets used for smaller crosscuts and larger joinery. The half-back is supposed to lend a bit of stiffness to the plate while not actually getting in the way of a proper crosscut. They never really took off originally, but they're not a bad design for the modern woodworker who wants to occasionally use a hand saw for furniture work but not sufficiently much to justify a larger range of saws. Obviously I can't justify it on that basis - I got it after a running tease with Mike Wenzloff on the pointlessness of the design. In the end I put my money where his mouth was in order to try it, and the laugh's on me. Oh well, I can cope. :wink:


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## ro (9 Sep 2010)

Beautiful work, but the pictures are torture! I now know that I simply cannot live without a decent plough/combi plane :twisted: 

Seriously though, I don't know which is a better piece of work, your saw till or the wonderful write up of it.


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## houtslager (9 Sep 2010)

job well done there Alf , wish I could do the same, but been told NO WOODWORKING FOR * 6 MONTHS *


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## Karl (10 Sep 2010)

Alf":1y1f3811 said:


> Karl":1y1f3811 said:
> 
> 
> > I looked at that LV saw recently on their website - how is it? I'd seen a few Disstons on e-bay go for about £15/20 and toyed with buying one.
> ...




Sorry - hadn't realised they were all LV  

It was the half back saw I was interested in. 

Cheers

Karl


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## dedee (11 Sep 2010)

I am still disappointed that you did not go for the tambour up and over door

http://cornishworkshop.blogspot.com/200 ... chive.html

But a great piece nonetheless.

I will be fitting external piano hinges soon

Cheers


Andy


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