Hanging Tool Cabinet (with WIPS - long)

[Good Surname or what ?]

I've finally made some progress in building my Tool Cabinet

I have a large amount of sawn beech... you can see some of it stacked to the left of this picture showing my "Heath Robinson" approach to roughing out. I don't have a tablesaw so made do with my baby bandsaw and a cheap circular saw (£25 from Aldi)

(I coudn't have done this while swmbo was around - she hates dust on her car!)

I do have a nice p/t. So machined everything to oversize and stickered it for a few months. Not my choice but workshop time has been in short supply .

When I finally got started again, I brought everything to final dimension by hand. I hope you like my "bench slave" supporting this board for edge planing. The observant will notice that the patternmaker's vice is on the right of the bench - that's so it's close to the garage door. I use it to hold awkward pieces while shaping with a drawknife so needed the room. It's not so great for holding stuff while planing.

Again I don't have a sophisticated way of accurately cutting to length so did it by hand.

Ok - I know you want to see more of the Wenzloff :roll:

I'm using this piece to try techniques I've not used before so the shelves will be fixed with stopped tapered sliding dovetails. I routed the majority of the waste...

... and pared the rest out using a tapered guide block.

Someone convinced me to try houndstooth dovetails ...

The main cabinet will be 1100 wide by 1000 high by 245 deep. I've found this to be an inconvenient size to work with in all sorts of ways. Holding the boards securely while marking pins from tails being just one. Anyway, I guess Axminster needs the money more than me

I'm currently cutting pins... when that's done I'm almost ready for glue-up. Weather permitting this Bank Holiday should see that done.

 

[Pete W]

Some good-looking wood there, Phil. Some good-looking dovetails, too

And that's either the smallest bandsaw I've ever seen, or the biggest circular saw! (Or possibly some extreme perspective distortion in the photo )

 

[Fizzy]

And that's either the smallest bandsaw I've ever seen, or the biggest circular saw! (Or possibly some extreme perspective distortion in the photo )

My Thoughts exactly ....... I still keep going back to look at the pic just to work out sizes ......... I even think I might just copy the pic into Paint Shop Pro and resize the circular saw just to stop me from going back to look ... I need to stop taking the drugs :shock: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Can't wait to see the finished product .. keep the pics coming and good luck .... hope the weather holds and SWMBO stays away with the car :lol:

 

[Shultzy]

Good Surname or what ?, are those clamps the "Axminster Lightweight Corner Clamps" and are they any good?

 

[Evergreen]

Phil

Great work so far. And good luck with the glue up - it won't be easy with a carcase that size and weight.

Regards.

 

[Good Surname or what ?]

Schultzy - they are indeed http://www.axminster.co.uk/sessionID/OQE/product-Lightweight-Corner-Clamp-21098.htm

Pete,Fizzy - the bandsaw is small - Scheppach Basato 1. The circular saw is large - cheap thing from Aldi. But then there is a little bit of distortion too.

Evergreen - I'm going to try to persuade swmbo that the dining room floor is a good place for a glue-up ](*,)

 

[woodbloke]

Those clamps look like a good idea and I suspect that the corners are pulled up really tight. However, I've found that the tails need to overhang the pin board by the tiniest fraction, .5mm is probably too much so that the shoulder line is fractionally iinside the tail board. Provided that the pins and tails are not cleaned up at all (just clean up to the shoulder line) you'll then find that the dovetails will draw up right to the bottom of the socket when the joint is assembled. Just a thought - Rob

 

[Good Surname or what ?]

Rob,

Thanks for the advice it sounds good. But I suspect I'll end up doing more cleanup than that. Between dimensioning the stock and marking out the pins from the recently cut tails, the boards have moved fractionally. RH is very different to what it was 2 months ago and my garage is far from ideal in terms of temperature/humidty control. So when I tried to line the tail board up on the pin board for marking I could see the base line of the tails was not parallel to the pin board surface (does that make sense?)

Fitting and glue-up will be fun. These are my first ever dovetails on a real piece of cabinetry and the first I've cut in 15 years!

Phil
Motto: Don't waste time learning to walk go straight for running a marathon

 

[Wanlock Dod]

Phil,

Do you not keep your timber inside the house when you're not working on it? I certainly find it a pain to carry it all about at the begining and end of every day, but if I do so then I find that everything remains good and stable, and most importantly will continue not to move when it finally gets to reside in the (centrally heated) house as a piece of furniture.

Cheers,

Dod

 

[Good Surname or what ?]

Dod,
It's a tool cabinet designed to stay in the garage. If it was a piece of furniture for the house I'd be fighting with swmbo about the stack of wood under the bed :roll: But at least it would be stable!

Phil

 

[Anonymous]

Someone convinced me to try houndstooth dovetails ...

.

And very good they are looking so far Phil :wink:

Nice wood for a cabinet, I'll be following this one with great interest - keep posting WIPs

 

[Good Surname or what ?]

Well SWMBO had a day out with her mum today. So I got 6 hours of woodworking.

I finished my pins.

... and not being Rob Cosman I decided NOT to go straight to the glue-up. Damn good job too. As you'll see from this picture, fitting the right side to the top, I can only get it halfway together - and I've already spent a half an hour paring to get this far. If all the others are this tight I'll not get the glue-up done this weekend.

 

[woodbloke]

Phill - not wishing to get into the egg sucking department, how are you pulling the joints together? On a large set like I generally have a trial fit by pulling up with sash cramps and suitably shaped blocks that rest on the tails only. If there is clearly a lot of pressure needed to wind them up (they will 'squeek' as they go together) then they are too tight and some careful paring is needed on the sockets only. As they get wound up, its useful to also mark in pencil those that appear tight so you know what to pare. In your last photo, the joints are shown as going half way, if they went easily together without too much pressure then the chances are that the joint will pull all the way up. In any case, it's best in my view to pull these up tight to check that the mitre at the corner will close. Nothing will look worse than a carcase mitre like this that hasn't closed up . Cabinet looking good so far, more pics to follow, I hope - Rob

 

[Chris Knight]

Phil,

If you mark the arrises of the tails with a soft pencil, the graphite will smear as the joint closes and reveal the high spots that are contributing to the tightness.

 

[Benchwayze]

Looking good.... I was going to make a tool-chest. I won't bother now!

I suppose you gravelled the drive to lose the sawdust?
I have to sweep up on 'herring-bone' pattern paviors. A pain in the groove!

My car is getting covered in dust from a building site a half-mile up the hill!



John

 

[Good Surname or what ?]

Well that was a lot of paring, and I thought I'd "split the line" with my saw.

Status: 3 of the joints now pull up well but because the pins stand just <1mm proud of the tail board I can't quite close the gap. I've been (hammer) the joints together but am now convinced I need to make 4 clamping blocks with cutouts for the pins and squeeze the joints together with clamps. My mitres look good so far though :-$.

Oh the 4th! I wondered if you'd think of that.

Ok, the joint was almost together but I needed to pare a tiny bit more - so I separated the boards only to find that a bit of a small pin decided to stay with the tail board. :shock: The remnant is now safely reunited with its pin. When the glue is completely dry I'll finish paring [-o< .

So much for this being the big glue-up week-end :roll:

PS: I'm on a dovetailing course with DC in June. At least I'll have an idea of the things I need to work-on.

 

[lucky9cat]

Phil, I'm following this with some interest as I've got plans to do something about my tool storage. Your project is setting new standards though! I'm impressed with your measured approach; I'm too eager to get the finished article and hence don't spend the necessary care that I should.

On the subject of wood movement, I've taken to storing my project wood in the dining room. I'll plane it down to about 3mm oversize and only take it to final size when I'm ready to work with it.

Looking forward to the next installment.

Cheers, Ted

 

[Chris Knight]

Phil,

I prefer to make my tails/pins a tad shorter than the thickness of the boards - this means that you don't need a special caul to clamp the joint together. It is also of great advantage when making drawers as the width of the board used for the drawer front can be set to exactly what you need and it won't change when you plane the joint.

 

[Good Surname or what ?]

Chris,

In retrospect making the pins/tails just short of board thickness would really have helped with getting the joint together. My thinking, originally, was that proud tails/pins could be easily planed flush with the carcass - avoiding smoothing larger areas.

The wonder of hindsight... :roll:

 

[Good Surname or what ?]

Well today I went for the big glue-up. It went together more easily than I expected. - but the wood has moved so much that it isn't really square. I used my bessey's to try to pull it square but found that it isn't possible to get all 4 corners to be right-angles !

Making the doors is going to be a problem :roll: