RobertMP Sideboard [Beginner] Final Submission [Complete]

[RobertMP]

Not a lot to show so far as I've been away for a week and only just getting back to things

The idea is to keep updating this thread as I do more parts and hopefully see it through to completion at some later date (later than I expect based on past form!)

Anyway the sideboard is for use in our conservatory and will be subject to a bit of heat. I bought the beech for it some time back and planks for the top have been in the conservatory acclimatising. They were also getting in the way so I have started with the top panel so that it can be stood up out of the way while I do the more interesting bits!

The boards.

Planer.

1st pass. Was hoping to end up with 24mm thickness but the boards don't seem flat enough.

all flat on one side after 3 passes. Then edged one edge on all of them.

Slit the short piece into 2 for the ends then thicknessed everything.

finished pieces. Came out to 22.5mm time all the sawn face was gone so not too bad.

Marked the edges for biscuit positions and made a simple jig to set the cut length when routing the slots.

ready for some glue!

I tend to be a bit heavy handed with the glue . Also learnt that glue is a pain to get off the bessey clamp bars with all that knurling - hence the plastic bags.

Watching glue dry. Put a steel rule across and it was nice and flat.

I made a quick cutting jig for the router thinking that would give me a nice straight square edge. It almost did but wasn't perfect so I gave the panel one light pass on the planer afterwards to make it true.

I don't have anything long enough to clamp the ends on so after cutting the biscuit slots I made some oak wedges and fixed end stops to the table. Apply clamps to the wedges... and it worked and squeezed the glue out! More plastic bags to stop me gluing it to the bench.

So plenty of cleaning up to do now. Joints seem fairly flush and I could level it with the 1/2 sheet sander. Now might be a good time to ask how I *should* level it off? I don't have a scraper - should I get one?

Once ready I thought I might give it a coat of sanding sealer with the idea it might help keep it stable until it gets a proper finish. Finish will probably be a polyurethane lacquer when I get that far. Sound like a good idea?

To be continued.....

 

[Waka]

What I always do when gluing up is wipe the excess glue off with a damp colth before it drys, I find it harder to remove when dry.

Correct me if I'm wrong but have you added breadboard ends? If so have you glued these in position?

 

[Paul Chapman]

Robert, if you have glued those breadboard ends you will almost certainly get problems. Wood expands and contracts across its width but hardly at all along its length, so there is going to be a conflict between the ends and the rest of the top. However, all is not lost. I would saw them off and re-fix them without glue, but using something like loose tongues, pegged, but with the holes in the tongues elongated so that the top can expand and contract across its width while the breadboard ends remain stationary.

Apart from that, it's looking good.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[DomValente]

have started with the top panel so that it can be stood up out of the way while I do the more interesting bits!

Robert store it flat if it's going to be a while.

Dom

 

[RobertMP]

The man who never made a mistake, never made anything.

Didn't take me long :lol:

I think I'll correct the problem towards the end and leave it for now... be less painful then

Think I chose the right category..... 'beginner'

 

[Paul Chapman]

Robert, I've never done breadboard ends but, giving it a bit more thought, I think the right way (or at least one way) to do it would be as follows. Groove the breadboard end and the table end to take loose tongues (these could be stopped or through grooves). Glue the tongue (plywood would make a good tongue) into the breadboard end. When this is dry, fit it to the table end and drill through the table and tongues for the pegs. You can do this from underneath if you don't want the pegs to show through the top. Remove and elongate the peg holes in the tongues, but leave one of the holes (roughly in the centre) and do not elongate this one. Re-fit, gluing in the pegs but don't glue the tongue or the groove. This should enable the top to expand and contract around the central peg without splitting.

As I say, I've never done one of these before so if I've got any of that wrong no doubt someone who has done it will come along and put us both right

Hope this helps

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[RobertMP]

I've just won a jet bandsaw on ebay so it looks like I may have a job lined up for it.

Obviously wrongly, I thought as the wood was well dried and growth rings were pretty straight across the board (quarter sawn?) it would be fairly stable as long as it was sealed against moisture. Does it expand from temperature , moisture or both?

I don't doubt that being glued is wrong and needs correcting. Just wondering in what way it would fail - breaking glue joint? distortion?

 

[mr]

I haven't ever done a table top so no direct experience but the theory goes that the top will expand and contract across it's width so if the ends are glued on the best that can happen is that the glue joint will break but I suspect that the top would pull itself apart parallel with but not necessarily along the "seams" of the edge lamination. The glue joint between planks being stronger than the wood probably the damage wil be to the wood rather than the glue joint. Of course the best that can happen really is nothing at all but that's probably not the case.
Re your other question about leveling the top. You need to get the glue squeeze out off which I would have thought was quickest done with some kind of cabinet scraper. Veritas do a nice one which doesnt seem much more expensive than the Stanley version and being Veritas seems to be a better design. (It's base is longer so it's easier to control at start and end of cut) You could also use a normal diy stylee paint scraper, being careful not to dig into your top, or a cisel though that might be difficult to use over a table top - cranked chisel perhaps? After getting rid of the squeeze out you'll want to flatten the top and get the laminations to the same heigt unless your original thicknessing was spot on and your glue up miraculous For that I would use a no 7 hand plane or longer. I would have thought sanding would take hours and risk not getting the finish you want, not to mention being noisy messy and leaving you with tingling fingers. Another method you might want to look at is the sort of sliding jig with a router in that I think Byron Black used to flatten his bench top (search the forum). The idea being that the jig allows the router to take a minute cut at a uniform depth all over the top. I would have thought you would have to hand plane it anyway after that but I could be wrong.
Cheers Mike

 

[Paul Chapman]

Obviously wrongly, I thought as the wood was well dried and growth rings were pretty straight across the board (quarter sawn?) it would be fairly stable as long as it was sealed against moisture. Does it expand from temperature , moisture or both?

I don't doubt that being glued is wrong and needs correcting. Just wondering in what way it would fail - breaking glue joint? distortion?

Robert, if you look at any top made with breadboard ends you will find that the breadboard end is not level with the side. This is because of expansion and contraction. However well wood was dried and however it is finished, it will absorb and give out moisture. How much depends on the situation the piece is in. As your top will be in a conservatory it is likely that it will suffer from more extremes of temperature and humidity than if was in a normal room. Exactly how the top will move and what damage will result is difficult to predict. The best precaution is to design out any potential problems.

Hope this helps.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Lord Nibbo]

Pauls writup is spot on with problems on breadboard ends.

Here are some pics of a coffee table I did earlier this year.

Only the centre had glue, and now some six months later the main body of the table top has shrunk at least an 1/8" leaving the breadboard ends sticking out on each side, now if I had glued the ends up completely there would be a split of at least 1/8" somewhere in the top.

 

[woodbloke]

The advice given so far has been bang on the money. If I were you I'd remove those breadboard ends much sooner rather than later....would save a lot of - Rob

 

[RobertMP]

I've just been setting up my shiny new Jet JWBS-14 bandsaw and it is about ready to go. Cricket is getting interesting though so it may have to wait another day

 

[RobertMP]

Right two steps forward, one step back, a bit of work and I'm back to where I was

I've bought 2 new toys this wek and am well impressed with both of them. I mentioned the bandsaw previously but have only just come to realise how useful it is! All those fiddly cuts are now easy. OK you don't get ultra precision but it does not take much to fettle things afterwards.

The other thing I bought was a Metabo random orbit sander. Sanding is so easy now! Should have bought one sooner. Anyway I digress..

I cut the ends off along the joint line but forgot to take a picture so this is a posed shot after the job was completed.

I used the ROS to level the joints before I cut the ends off. Didn't take very long as the alignment was quite good.

I needed to make slots in both pieces exactly the same distance from the face so I clamped a bit of angle iron onto the router. it was very secure.

I thought carefully about the techniques mentioned for holding the end piece in place but could not see me producing sufficient accuracy to get a closed joint. So I took advantage of the fact that the frame pieces will be covering the joint area and drilled for a screwed joint. The screws are in oversize holes so movement is possible. You can see the pilot holes in between the slots I cut. The 2 pieces at the back are balanced on the clamps just for the picture. A batten clamped to the panel helped with router stability.

I ran a strip trough the thicknesser until it was a tight fit in the slot then cut it to length. End pieces I changed the grain direction for more strength. They are all a couple of mm shorter than the slots.

Assembly. It was pretty rigid without the screws. A bit of blue colour came off the angle iron but it comes off easily.

Screws fitted.

The final joint was pretty near as flush as the original sanded glued joint. The panel is still a little over width (and I may trim it down) but is 2mm under the intended length - not that it matters at all.

Not as elegant a job as a joint with sliding pins but I'm happy with it.

 

[MooreToolsPlease]

With as many screws as you have used, will this not have a similar effect as before?
I have always been curious as to how much a table will expand and contract.
On my recent trip to New England, I visited a shaker village.
In the foyer there was 2 or 3 tables of about 8 feet by 3.
They had bread board ends, But the tennons extended to the extreme edges of the bread board end.
On all 3 of the tables, the table top extended 1/4" past the bread board end front and back!
It wasn't an original shaker piece, but I was amazed at just how much they had expanded!

 

[RobertMP]

Well it wouldn't surprise me to find I'm wrong again!

I did find a web site showing a similar method which gave me the idea. The screws are 3mm and not super tight. It is only 18 inches wide so shouldn't move much. I'm not convinced yet it will move at all but there is no point in talking to those more experienced if you don't listen

 

[Paul Chapman]

Hi Robert,

I think that looks as though it will be a lot better than you had it before. I would keep an eye on it and see how much movement you get. If it does move and looks as though the amount of movement has reached the limit set by the oversize screw holes and the clearance in the slots for the loose tongues, you could always take it apart, increase the size of the screw holes and reduce the width of the loose tenons.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[RobertMP]

Well I'm back from a nice break in Scotland dodging the showers and taking lots of pictures. I made the legs and main frame rails for the sideboard before I went and took pictures so I'll get them uploaded in the next day or so.

Thought I'd better let you know I'm still around

 

[RobertMP]

Must be getting old - couldn't find the pictures I thought I took... so maybe I didn't :roll:

So took a few more just now. Not really got back into it yet, think I'm still in a holiday frame of mind

Keep thinking I should get around to a proper router table but the B & Q cheapie is doing the job. I threw away the plastic fence and just use a clamped on batten. The tenons were all cut this way using my home made mdf squaring sledge. This was taken with the router off and me just holding the work in place. Can't stand properly out of the way and take a picture

Mortices I make by drilling accurate holes 12mm diameter at the ends of the mortice then removing the rest with a mortice chisel. Works really well - they are square to the work and the right length with not a lot of effort. Can't see me buying a morticer.

The axminster compound vice combined with a digital vernier makes it easy to repeat the process for more identical mortices. I line one pencil line up with a scratch on the jaw as a starting reference point... position the drill for the first hole using the slides - then all i have to do is wind one slide by 'x' millimeters for a correct length mortice.

The corner posts/legs are fabricated as i only had 25mm thick material. They all matched OK but I put the best matches at the front with the solid face on the visible cabinet ends.

Overview. The back horizontals are off while I make mortices for the verticals that divide the back panel.

Few more joints to make yet for the front components that are currently just sized blanks and lots of grooves for panels to rout.

While i think of it....
The drawer faces are a 'breadboard' style. From memory about 160mm deep. Do I need the same type of floating construction used on the top for something that narrow? Got a feeling the answer will be yes

 

[RogerM]

This has all the makings of a really nice piece. I just love the WIP threads. You can learn more here than in any book. Many thanks for the commentary and piccies Robert - much appreciated! FWIW, I think Paul's approach to breadboard ends is spot on.

And I love your practical method of producing M&Ts - and without having to throw money at it.

 

[RobertMP]

Some more progress to report.

The rails for the doors have been cut, morticed and tenoned but are still to have the groove cut to receive the panel.

The divider pieces to go between the drawers and longer version to carry the middle door hinges are done.

I've made the drawer faces with their breadboard ends and glued them up with just a spot of glue at the middle point to allow the ends to move.

Some pictures..

As before mortice drilled to length and depth then just cleaned up with a chisel.

The in between bits!

Door rails and drawer fronts before assembly.