Building a garden gate

[RichardA]

Terry, is that a dovetail cut into the drawer bottom to tie the drawer back to the bottom?  If so, that's really different!   Hope you enjoyed the wine tour!

[TerryMcK]

HI Richard, no the drawer bottom was rabbetted to fit into the slots running in the sides and front. The rear of the drawer was dovetailed into the sides and the drawer bottom simply lies on the bottom face of the rear. The actual dovetail pins were cut very long with no attempt at shortening them - I suppose the cabinet maker was in a hurry and knew that nobody (apart from us) would notice it. BTW the dovetail nearest is a half dovetail the bottom is just straight not angled.

 

Yes the wine tour was fantastic and I do have a few more pieces (not a great amount!) to show.

[RichardA]

HI Richard, no the drawer bottom was rabbetted to fit into the slots running in the sides and front. The rear of the drawer was dovetailed into the sides and the drawer bottom simply lies on the bottom face of the rear. The actual dovetail pins were cut very long with no attempt at shortening them - I suppose the cabinet maker was in a hurry and knew that nobody (apart from us) would notice it. BTW the dovetail nearest is a half dovetail the bottom is just straight not angled.

 

Yes the wine tour was fantastic and I do have a few more pieces (not a great amount!) to show.

I noticed that angle drawn on the back, and where it meets the drawer bottom it looks as though there's a dovetail ! I saw the rest, but that angled line and color change made me wonder.

[TerryMcK]

I see what you mean. Yes it does look a bit strange. I think that was just a flaw on the edge of the wood - probably runs into a stop inside the case and it has marked it. The bottom boards have their end grain running in the grooves in the sides so we see edge long grain in that last photo.

[RichardA]

I see what you mean. Yes it does look a bit strange. I think that was just a flaw on the edge of the wood - probably runs into a stop inside the case and it has marked it. The bottom boards have their end grain running in the grooves in the sides so we see edge long grain in that last photo.

Well, I just had to ask... One never knows, does one?

[TerryMcK]

Here is another one that shows the value of dovetail joints:

 

 

La commode

 

Otherwise translated as a chest of drawers.

This piece was quite large, not sure of the age (again more knowledgable readers could suggest a originating period) and worn in several places. It had veneer in several places and really was in need of sympathetic expert restoration. Essentially it comprised a base unit with 4 wide drawers, and upper unit with a mirror and two integral small drawers.

The top was damaged probably by water and the veneer was missing in several places.

The bottom has some turned features with interesting square details ending in turned feet. A simple frame and panel construction before plywood was invented probably!!

 

A side view in situ

 

One thing that shows the integrity of a dovetail joint was that most of the drawer fronts no longer had any glue but still the handcut dovetails were as strong as the day they were made.

 

 

Nicely proportioned chest of drawers with ornate mirror unit on the top

 

The bottoms of the small drawers appeared to be resawn from a single wide board and the underside still had the saw marks clearly visible. The edges had been planed down on an angle to form a angled rabbet that slid into grooves in the drawer sides and front.

 

Very wide drawers simply running on top of a web frame.

The owner of the house was an expert upholsterer and she had renovated the chair seen in this shot.

 

The value of using dovetails is clearly evident on this piece.

There is little if any glue left in the joints!

 

Small upper drawers

 

Here you can clearly see the resaw marks on the underside of the bottom panel.

Maybe Monsieur Roubo used one of his saws on this?

Also note the angled rabbets. Interesting.

 

Again the value of dovetails. The pins have shrunk a little here.

 

The camera has not bent that front panel of the drawer. It was actually bent like a banana!

You can see the damage to the veneer on the top here too.

 

This was a wonderful piece in the bedroom of the first chateau we stayed in. The owner had collected many pieces like this over the years and she had amassed a huge collection of antiques in every room in the house.

 

I'm going back in the shop tonight to do some more work on what the thread is entitled!

[Coop]

Terry, These are some really neat pieces. Thanks for sharing. So your trip actually wasn't 100% wine and roses after all

[TerryMcK]

It was hard work pressing the shutter button on my iphone Ken I'm only too pleased to share.

[wouldwurker]

Very cool, love the GIANT hand cut tails and the tiny pins.

I knew things were pretty ooh la la in France, but that's certainly the classiest commode I've ever seen.

[TerryMcK]

So in the shop last night doing some sign making for the gate.

 

Carving letters and numerals

 

There is a New Yankee Workshop episode (Season 17 episode 12) where Norm Abram showed how to make carved wooden signs.

This was a really interesting show where Norm was showing how to cut letters and numerals in several ways:

 

• By hand using carving tools
• By CNC machine
• By hand using a router.

 

The latter was most interesting to me for this project. I set to work practising a new skill by routing by hand. Essentially the bit used is a chamfer 'V' groove cutter without any bearing like this one:

The old timer who demonstrated the method of how to cut the characters had a fixed base router with a powerful incandescent lamp fixed to it. I decided to use a modern LED lamp on mine.

 

On your computer choose a font you desire to use and type the characters into your favourite word processing program (I used Word 2010). Then change the size of the font to the desired size. The font will then need to be set so that it shows just the outline. In word you have to select the characters and then choose font. Go to Text Effects and choose No Text Fill,

 

 

Click onto Text Outline of solid line and change the colour to black (it defaults to blue otherwise).

 

 

Click OK and the resultant image looks like this:

 

 

Then it is a simple matter of printing the text out with a scale of 1:1. The paper can be then either glued to the timber to be routed using 3M spray mount or you can use carbon paper (can you still buy it?) to trace the outline directly onto the wood.

 

The font I choose (as did Norm) was Times New Roman as it is a serif font that produces a nice pleasing results. The timber I used was some western red cedar I had left over from a previous project. It started out life as a longish rectangular board about 19mm (3/4") thick. After the numerals were routed I used a combination of bandsaw and oscillating spindle sander to shape it. I finally finished the edges with a chamfering bit, the same one I used to engrave the numbers, in the router table.

 

There was a little burning where the router idled for a while and I also had to clean up some parts with some light sanding. The piece will be finished by sealing it and applying polyurethane external finish. Then it will be gold leafed as per the process outlined in the video.

There will also be some more lettering to denote the house name and possibly the road name. That will also follow the same process.

 

The signs will be embedded within the oak so they protrude about 6mm (1/4") and I'll document that later.

 

[tim0625]

Nice sign Terry....make sure and show the finished product.  Thanks also for the France pictures.

[Coop]

Good job Terry. The gold leaf is going to look great

[wouldwurker]

Terry - like the numbers a lot. You can also route the 'negative' of the number letter as well for a cool effect. This is the only pic I happen to have on my phone of one I did similarly, but the '1' is fully routed through, and the '2' is negative (for lack of a better word). The result is a really cool shadow line, especially if the character has middle bits. You could even relief cut into it slightly with a gouge for even more shadow effect.

[Coop]

Terry, I was reading back over this build and see that the initial design (template, Aug. 28th) has the tenon on the end of the rail being straight and in the end, you tapered them. Was that the idea to begin with, if not, 1) why did you taper them? 2) was there a formula that you used to determine the taper? Also, was the mortise in the stile not drilled straight thru as well? I might have missed something in my quick read thru.

[TerryMcK]

Terry, I was reading back over this build and see that the initial design (template, Aug. 28th) has the tenon on the end of the rail being straight and in the end, you tapered them. Was that the idea to begin with, if not, 1) why did you taper them? 2) was there a formula that you used to determine the taper? Also, was the mortise in the stile not drilled straight thru as well? I might have missed something in my quick read thru.

Hi Ken, yes it was always the intention to have through wedged mortise/tenons. Essentially it provides a really strong joint that should last many years outdoors and are not the same as a cabinetmaker would do (tapered mortises and split/wedged tenons). Door and gate construction does tend to use this method for ease of manufacture.

 

The taper angle is 10 degrees (empirically worked out as it seemed good to me) and I made sure it was the same on all tenons hence the use of a marking template. The mortises go all the way through and these were drilled first of all to remove the bulk of the waste finishing with a long router cutter (seen in the thread). I also used chisels to clean up. The mortises are square (not tapered) and when I insert the wedges they will ride up the tapered tenons and lock against the parallel edges of the mortise. Of course the tenons, mortises and wedges will be heavily coated with epoxy glue. Clamps will still be used to hold the parts together when driving the wedges in (unlike a tapered mortise when driving the wedge in actually pulls the shoulder of the tenoned part in tighter negating the need for clamps).

You can see an example of a cabinetmakers wedged tenon joint here.

 

And an example of a through wedged mortise tenon joint used in gate making here (Figure C although it incorrectly shows the tenon as having parallel edges - artists license there - they should have been shown tapered.)

 

Glue up this weekend if all goes well and I'm not asked a honey-do.

[TerryMcK]

I mentioned that we went to a brandy making place in Cognac and I was taken by the barrel making process. Well here is a taster of what we saw.

This was in the Henessey brandy maison in Cognac, France. Here is an ancient jointer made from cast iron and driven by a line shaft - although they had replaced it with an electric motor.

I wouldn't fancy lifting this one onto the back of a truck. I think it may have been 8" wide but couldn't get too close to it so may have been 10" wide. The oak staves (one shown on the jointer bed) were 1" thick,

 

A serious chunk of iron.

 

Sorry about the quality of the images but it was a little dark in the shop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The shop

 

 

Barrel making paraphernalia

[Coop]

Terry. I had seen where your description said wedged mortise/tenon but thought that was only because the tenon was shaped like a wedge. I never thought about coming from the outside with other wedges to make up the space. Pretty cool.

Thanks

[wouldwurker]

Very cool pics!

[RichardA]

I mentioned that we went to a brandy making place in Cognac and I was taken by the barrel making process. Well here is a taster of what we saw.

This was in the Henessey brandy maison in Cognac, France. Here is an ancient jointer made from cast iron and driven by a line shaft - although they had replaced it with an electric motor.

I wouldn't fancy lifting this one onto the back of a truck. I think it may have been 8" wide but couldn't get too close to it so may have been 10" wide. The oak staves (one shown on the jointer bed) were 1" thick,

 

A serious chunk of iron.

 

Sorry about the quality of the images but it was a little dark in the shop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The shop

 

 

Barrel making paraphernalia

That's a hell of a work bench.  Bet it's solid as a rock.   Thank's for sharing your vacation with us droolers!

[Coop]

Richard, You're double drooling like me. One over the tools and the shop and two, over goodies that might have been or going into those barrels!

[TerryMcK]

We tasted some of it and can say it was superb. The maison has brandy still in huge barrels stored for years and years. The oldest one they have is from 1800. All the stuff older than 1953 is behind bars. The younger stuff is not under lock and key but in the warehouse gently ageing. It was a spectator sport to find the year of your birth but I found mine. The latest barrel they had, which was empty, was a huge massive barrel marked with 2015. It will be filled late next year or maybe in early 2016 (it's got to be the year of its growth on the vine) to celebrate Hennesey's 250th anniversary.

 

We also walked past the Martell maison and in the town are also Otard, Camus and Remy Martin. About 9 miles East of Cognac is Jarnac, home to Courvoisier but we didn't go there.

Surprisingly there was no smell over the town unlike those towns with breweries. Once you went into the warehouses though there was the heady smell of brandy leaching through the oak barrels. Wonderful  .

[RichardA]

Richard, You're double drooling like me. One over the tools and the shop and two, over goodies that might have been or going into those barrels!

We just gotta stop meeting like this.... People are gonna talk!

[Coop]

Seems that both of our passions are woodbooze

[TerryMcK]

Some routing of shallow mortises to house the various signs was done today but no glue up. A honey do got in the way. I'll be starting the glue up tomorrow night Monday now.

[TerryMcK]

As there were many more letters to be carved I decided to have a look at the Milescraft Signpro. Essentially this is a routing template comprising letters, numbers and some punctuation marks.

The set I have is the 1212 which has a full range of 2.1/2" high and 1.1/2" high characters. It also has 2 different diameter long series router cutters, various low profile clamps, universal router base and various accessories to enable the user to make long signs.

 

In use the template couldn't have been simpler to use but after routing some letters still needed some work with a chisel to clean up. Also some light sanding cleaning up the routed characters was needed.

The finished results were acceptable and saved a lot of time. I know I could have done it using Norm's manual method as mentioned in a previous post but I'm all for time saving measures.

 

I then had to route pockets in the oak cross rails to inset the signs into. The reason for this is the stock I used to make the signs was 3/4" thick and I only wanted the signs to protrude around  5/16" or so.

 

 

Cleaning up the end of the pocket in the mid rail

 

 

The mid rail pocket ready for the road sign

 

The sign with the house number on needed a routing template making due to the various curves. This was very easy to do using a guide bush and collar to produce the template using the sign as a model.

Then using the template the shaped pocket was easily routed with the collar on the guide bush.

 

 

Plywood routing template made from the finished house number sign.

 

 

Finished pocket for the house number

 

The 3 other signs were rectangular and is was easy to define the edges using a marking knife. The routing of the pockets for these was  by hand holding the router with its edge guide. I also arranged a series of stop blocks to limit the travel of the router stopping the cutter around 1/8" before the knife line. Then using bench chisels the ends of the pockets were chiselled out.

 

 

Starting to cut the minor sign pockets. Cutoffs are used as limiting stopblocks

 

 

Gradual adjustment of the edge guide positions the cut.

 

 

Rough routing done

 

 

Squaring the ends of the mortise with a corner chisel. The glove is to stop blood dripping onto the work. Yes I cut myself with a chisel!

 

 

All the mortise pockets completed.

 

There was a little more work to do on the lowest cross member to cut biscuit slots for the diagonal pieces. Also corresponding biscuit slots were cut in the bottom of the mid rail. Of course the diagonal pieces needed mating biscuit slots to complete the joinery.

 

 

Cutting biscuit slot in the top of the lower rail. Everybody knows what a biscuit jointer looks like.