Breadbin, hand tools wip

[MikeG.]

Not the plane. It's really not as nice as the oak (any oak), and it would be a peculiar mix of oak/ chestnut and highly figured plane. Not a great mix in my view. I reckon the door is going to be a bit small for a panel, isn't it?

 

[AndyT]

Not the plane. It's really not as nice as the oak (any oak), and it would be a peculiar mix of oak/ chestnut and highly figured plane. Not a great mix in my view. I reckon the door is going to be a bit small for a panel, isn't it?

I thought you might say that. Hence my doubtfulness.

The chestnut and plane don't match but they don't contrast either.

I do have some other, thicker oak which might be a better look than this old cupboard top or whatever it was and be close enough to the ends to look ok beside them.

 

[thomashenry]

I've corrected my last blunder. It didn't take long.
I cut along the dud join on my little Burgess bandsaw. Not a hand tool but it's the right one for the job and takes a nice narrow kerf. A minimum of planing, then fresh glue, into the clamp and very carefully checked. You can imagine all that, I'm sure.

Today's pictures are to ask for help making up my mind.

As I said, although I'd picked out an old bit of oak for the rest of this, it doesn't look very nice. It was built up in a factory with no regard to grain or colour and it just looks boring.

My first thought was to make a framed panel for the front. These two last bits of chestnut would yield enough for stiles and rails:

and I have an assortment of bits of thin oak to make up a panel of some sort.

I could even try something challenging that I have never done, like a bead and flush or bead and butt panel.

Alternatively, I do have a rather nice chunk of rippled plane wood. I bought it about 6 or 7 years ago. When I visited Custard in his workshop (those were the days!) he kindly re-sawed it on his big bandsaw.

I have these two pieces, 1/4" thick and 6" wide which would make a front.

I only need the front to be 8 1/4" across but the length is right.

And these two 3/4" thick by 4½" wide would make the 7½" top.

What should I do?

A) Stick with the ½ oak I have started on?
B) Make a framed panel for the lid and find some nicer oak for the top?
C) Switch to plane?

I think A. The oak looks fine to me. I'll be honest that rippled wood gives me a headache!

 

[thetyreman]

it might look too blingy with the london plane, I'd save that for something like a jewellery box or drawer sides on the right project, the oak seems to fit the aesthetic more.

 

[Racers]

I would use the london plane, but I would try to straighten out the grain by taking out a wedge in the middle.
The shakers used nice bits of ripple etc in there furniture.

Pete

 

[xy mosian]

As always a good demonstration of hand tool use, in what might be considered an everyday task.
Good stuff.
xy

 

[AndyT]

Thanks all. You're helping but I'm still not sure. I'm in the workshop now, trying to get a nicer finish on the oak first, before starting on the alternatives.

I could always use some mahogany...

 

[AndyT]

Gosh, it's Saturday already and I haven't updated this thread. You'll all be falling asleep if I don't get a move on.

There has been a little progress since Tuesday. I've sharpened up a plane or two, had another look at the bits of oak and decided to stick with them and see how it goes.

Last time, I cut and reglued one of the pieces which will make the ends. Before cutting it into two, I needed to get the top and bottom cut straight. This seemed the perfect excuse to use my big Disston mitre box saw. To help me keep it straight, I clamped a bit of MFC in the right position.

It worked just fine.

This was followed by a diagonal cut, which I hope shows how I managed to get two ends out of a single piece which was only just long enough without wasting much at all.

and quite a bit more fiddling about to make sure both pieces matched the drawing and each other.

Workholding can get tricky with angled pieces but I really like the simplicity of these bench dogs. I've shown them before - they are just turned pieces of holly which fit snugly in the holdfast holes.

Another good tip - which I learned on here - is to make up a pack of shims to prevent the vice racking when you grip something on one side of it only. These are plywood and thick card.

and get used like this

And so, I eventually ended up with a base, two ends and a top, all pretty much the right size. The base and the top need a bevel at the same angle as the sloping parts of the ends. I just roughed this in for now; it can get adjusted later when the thing goes together. I should have arranged the grain of the wood better - to get a smooth surface I had to reach over and plane the far side. A bit easier than doing it left handed, or with the wood flat on the bench.

On to the dovetails. Not so many photos now - you all know how to do dovetails.

I laid them out by eye on paper first, so I could rub them out and start again if I needed to.

I thought this time I would try using a fretsaw rather than a coping saw. I don't have a fancy titanium frame, but this is one of the few tools I have which was my father's - so it's probably about 90 years old already. It seems to still work.

I couldn't resist a bit of a trial fit, even before paring the bottoms of the sockets.

You can just see a darker area at the top where the wood has smudged the pencil mark. This gave me a clue on how much to pare away.

Before paring the socket bottoms, I knifed in the faint gauge line, cutting between the pins only.

And so that brings us to this stage.

Still to come - after more dovetailing off-camera - working out the details of the sliding mechanism and the back.

 

[marcros]

What is the dovetail marker, Andy?

 

[MikeG.]

..........This seemed the perfect excuse to use my big Disston mitre box saw. To help me keep it straight, I clamped a bit of MFC in the right position.

.......

101 ways to skin most woodworking cats. I'd have never thought to saw that. I reckon I would have cut the diagonal, then clamped them together in the vice and planed it off, or used a handsaw on the saw horses to remove the bulk, then finished with a plane. Or, more likely, just changed the finished dimensions of the box!!

 

[MikeG.]

Re-reading my last post, I can see that it might be thought of as a criticism, which was the last thing on my mind. I was trying to say that your approach was one I wouldn't have thought of, not that it was wrong.

 

[AndyT]

What is the dovetail marker, Andy?

It's from George Ellis's "Modern Practical Joinery."

as pointed out here by Graham Haydon - george-ellis-dovetail-bevel-t78037.html

A nice, neat design.

Paul Sellers makes a similar one with a right angle section added at the top.

 

[AndyT]

..........This seemed the perfect excuse to use my big Disston mitre box saw. To help me keep it straight, I clamped a bit of MFC in the right position.

101 ways to skin most woodworking cats. I'd have never thought to saw that. I reckon I would have cut the diagonal, then clamped them together in the vice and planed it off, or used a handsaw on the saw horses to remove the bulk, then finished with a plane. Or, more likely, just changed the finished dimensions of the box!!

Re-reading my last post, I can see that it might be thought of as a criticism, which was the last thing on my mind. I was trying to say that your approach was one I wouldn't have thought of, not that it was wrong.

Mike, no need to apologise - I took your comment the right way. As I said on your bathroom cabinet thread, one of the pleasures/challenges of woodwork is that there are always so many different possible ways to go about something.

I guess in this case it's different for me as I am not well set up for sawing down low. I don't have a pair of sawhorses or room for them. (And the Victorian concrete floor in my workshop has gentle waves in it like a sandy beach - they would never stand level. )

If I really need to cut something low down, I will unfold the Workmate and wedge it level, or at least not wobbly. But I'm more likely to cut on the bench, and with this piece about 18" long, and having mentioned that odd long saw recently, it just seemed a good chance to use it. The cut came out nice and straight, and was (of course) planed down to the line afterwards. Despite appearances to the contrary I am skipping over quite a lot of details in this account!

 

[MikeG.]

A three legged sawhorse would stand level on your floor, but you'd have to be careful with the design, and with how you used it.

 

[AndyT]

A three legged sawhorse would stand level on your floor, but you'd have to be careful with the design, and with how you used it.

It would have to bring its own floorspace though! The room never was very big. It used to be ok until I put the treadle powered metalwork lathe in - which I am very glad to own and would not want to be without. The obvious thing to do would be to get rid of the not very good and very seldom used tablesaw - which is mostly used as a table - but the chances of selling that are slim at present and once in a while it's useful.

 

[AndyT]

I've been cutting the rest of the dovetails. The oak is good to work with - hard enough to chop rather than pare, with no risk of crumbling. The chestnut is good too, though there are clear bands of harder and softer wood.

I didn't take a lot of extra pictures of all this. But just to show that I really do get distracted into trying out different ways of working, here are a few.

Earlier, I showed tails cut out and a sharp pencil used to get down and mark round them.

There's just enough room for that to work.

But I also used the technique where you make the saw cuts, then transfer the markings by pulling the tip of the saw across the end of the other piece, like this:

The marks are nice and definite

but I still chose to colour them in with a pencil so I could see them easily. I found that I needed to saw so I just touched the pencil line without splitting it.

Both ways work - how do you choose which one to do?

When it came to removing the bulk of the waste, I stuck with the hand fretsaw, but found it was easier to control if I laid the work flat on the bench and held the saw vertical.

With a bit of practice I dared myself to cut closer to the line but managed not to go over it.

And that's it for now.

I know I shouldn't knock dovetails all the way home, but I couldn't resist a bit of a check to make sure they all fitted.

More soon, but maybe not very soon if the weather turns too hot and sunny to skulk indoors all day.

 

[Andy Kev.]

Out of interest, how does that very long fretsaw feel in the hand? It must be OK or you wouldn't be using it but it looks like is would be terribly unbalanced.

 

[AndyT]

Out of interest, how does that very long fretsaw feel in the hand? It must be OK or you wouldn't be using it but it looks like is would be terribly unbalanced.

It's ok, but the handle is too small.
To be fair, it was probably sold in a fretwork set designed for a child, not an adult. I think it was a normal size frame. If I was likely to use it more, I'd put a bigger handle on. I did use my other hand on the top some of the time - but not while taking the photo.

 

[Andy Kev.]

That's interesting. I have a steel framed fretsaw of about 3" capacity and use it for most such cuts. It is of course more or less defeated by wider boards so I bit the bullet and bought a posh Knew Concepts saw with a much bigger gape (if that's the word), while hoping that its size would not lead to a balance problem. There is no problem at all as it is so wonderfully lightweight.

It's interesting that you mention the handle. I imagine that the ability to hold it with both hands would be of great benefit with a saw that wide. I suppose that all tool design turns on the compromise between purpose and the limitations imposed by the qualities of materials.

BTW, your third picture down above illustrates the use of the saw to mark the pins well: holding the tip down with the finger must be the key to stability. I'll give that a try.

 

[MikeG.]

.........your third picture down above illustrates the use of the saw to mark the pins well: holding the tip down with the finger must be the key to stability. I'll give that a try.

I find it easiest to use a gents saw when doing this, because a finger along the top of the spine adds enough downwards pressure that you can make a distinct mark with only one scrape. This method produces loose dovetails unless you deliberately mis-align the gauge line of the tail board from the face of the pin board.