A pair of bedside tables or nightstands

[Mick S]

I like the chamfer on the inner walls. That's a very nice and very usefull detail!

[TerryMcK]

 

Bedside tables (nightstands) - Part 10d - Drawers front pin boards 
I'm making half blind dovetails on these table drawer fronts - they are also flush mounting drawers. This is still very easy to do but you can only use the saw to cut a 45 degree kerf into the pin board. I had already cut the drawer front Again start by lightly marking a line with your marking gauge on the end grain and on the inside face of the pin board.
Then using a method I have described in another article clamp the pin board vertical in the vise protruding very slightly above the benchtop. Use a square to ensure the adjacent face is square. (I'm showing through dovetails on these next few photos but the principle is exactly the same.)

 

Mark up the tailboards to ensure you don't get them mixed up. Place one of the tailboards with the chamfered tails inner-most onto the pin board and line up the base of the pins with the edge of the far (the edge furthest from you). Then using the square make sure the tail board is square to the bench apron and level with the edges of the pin board.

Mark around the tails with a 0.5mm mechanical pencil or a knife.

Using a 0.5mm mechanical pencil

Then after removing the pin board from the vise use the marking gauge to make more distinct lines in the waste of the pin board. Some people mark the waste with an X to avoid confusion.

Clamp the pin board in the vise, waste towards you and use your favourite dovetail saw to cut in the waste side. You should start at around 45 degree angle and aim to be as close to the graphite as you can without cutting into it much, keeping the saw plate vertical.

 

Then you can use the same method of chopping and paring as before to remove the waste. Vertical chop needs to be around 1/16" from the baseline (Franks method) Finally finish off with a shallow vertical chop at the base line. Regular bench chisels work well with this as long as they have bevelled edges. Square edged firmers are not a good idea but bevelled edge firmers are the best (tapered slightly front to back).

Of course you may get the management occasionally inspecting the work.

"What's going on here? You're slacking"

Anna's seal of approval

It is time consuming to do this by hand and you have to make sure you get into the corners of the sockets to remove all waste. The Veritas marking gauge is great to use as a depth gauge to check progress too. It can be used to gauge both the height and depth of the pin.

Veritas gauge used in depth mode to ensure the pins are to depth

and length

Pin board after clean up

Do a test fit and if you have to remove any stock remove it from the pin board. First undercut the pin slightly and then pare the sides of the socket on the face that is tight. In general if you have been accurate with your sawing and chiselling you should get it to fit first time.

Remember when doing a test fit you need to keep the boards square to each other and you are aiming for a light press fit. If you get a sloppy fit it's not the end of the world as look down at your feet. You see all those bits of end grain shavings? Well you can slide them in the loose fit afterwards with some CA glue and when sanded and finished it'll look just like the surrounding wood (assuming you use the same species!)

[Mick S]

Very nicely done, sir!

[mat60]

I agree with Micks and the cat is cool also.

[shaneymack]

Awesome Terry. Feel like im in furniture making school when i read your posts. You do a fantastic job teaching!

[..Kev]

Awesome job as usual Terry!

[moonjam]

Beautiful craftsmanship (and cat!)

[TerryMcK]

Thanks for all the comments so far - hope you are enjoying the build.

 

Bedside tables (nightstands) - Part 10e - Drawers - completion. 
Once the front pin boards are completed and they mate perfectly with their corresponding side tail boards it's time to take a measurement from the table to cut the tailboards to length. I normally make the tailboard about 3/16" to 1/4" shy of the full inside length of the drawer compartment. Then while the pinboard is attached to the two side tailboards transfer the measurement to the tailboard.

Dimension measured from the table
 

Dimension transferred to the drawer with the front pin board attached.

Then the tailboards are separated from the pin board and cut to length. I just do this on the tablesaw with the crosscut sled keeping the parts square to the blade.
Then proceeding exactly as before the tails were cut, transferred to the rear pin board and then the pins cut. This time they are through dovetails. This type of dovetail can also be done very easily by cutting the pins first, transferring the pins to the tailboard and then cutting the tails. It's entirely up to you which way to cut dovetails and I generally like tails first.

Rear thru dovetails complete

Once all dovetails and pins are cut lay the parts out on the bench and with a pencil (scribble) mark the position of the groove for the drawer bottom. I find this bit is essential as it's so easy to get the part the wrong way around on the router table when doing this. The drawer bottoms on these drawers are 6mm (slightly less than 1/4" plywood. I used a 1/4" bit in the router table to cut the grooves. The pin boards are easy through cuts but the side tail boards need stop cuts on the rear edges. This is to ensure that the groove does not show through when the drawer is glued up. The front of each tail board can be through grooves as they are covered by the front pin board (half blind DTs). I run the grain for drawers left to right when you look inside from the front.

A test dry fit

Then I cut the drawer bottoms to fit into the grooves. The grooves are 3/16" deep (on 1/2" stock) and the drawer bottoms are cut 3/32" less than the dimension from bottom of each groove to the corresponding part on the opposite side.

Drawer groove dimension 14 1/2" - 3/32"  (368mm -  2.5mm) 

The very next job to do is to remove the machining marks from the inside of the drawers. I used a random orbit sander up to 180 grit but could have just used a smoothing plane set to remove an absolute minimum. I also sanded the drawer bottom panel to 240 grit making sure I didn't burn through the veneer.

Then all parts were glued up with Titebond II dark, the drawer bottom inserted into the grooves and the final side board pressed into place. When clamping I like to use a couple of clamping squares on the inside of the drawer, I normally place them on the front panel to the side panels (one on each side). Then at least the front/sides will be square. The rear panel to the sides can be slightly out of square to each other but it won't matter as that is not seen.
Then the drawers were placed into parallel clamps and left to setup overnight.

When removed from the clamps each drawer had their respective joints cleaned up with a combination of hand planes and sanding. Then each drawer would fit perfectly with a piston fit in each drawer aperture.

Drawers complete.

Sometimes drawers can rock about on their guide ways and a simple planing the high spots away cures it. On this occasion I didn't need to do anything and they actually fit perfectly (first time that has ever happened to me).

[..Kev]

Looking awesome Terry!

[Coop]

Terry, I always learn something while following your builds. 1) Using the marking gauge as a depth gauge is a great idea as well as using the spacers in the vice 2) I've got to get me one of those skew chisels!

Great job and teaching on the drawers. Thanks for the through instructions!

Edited September 3, 2015 by K COOPER

[Chet]

Nice fix Terry. It would never have occured to me to put a slice of veneer along the entire length of the piece. I would have been trying to fill the tear out with a carefully whittled replacement chip. I like the option you chose and will keep it in mind for the future.

And once again...your project journals are a treasure trove of first class instruction.

 

Yes I will definitely be filing away this repair technique.

[TerryMcK]

Terry, I always learn something while following your builds. 1) Using the marking gauge as a depth gauge is a great idea as well as using the spacers in the vice 2) I've got to get me one of those skew chisels!

Great job and teaching on the drawers. Thanks for the through instructions!

Thanks Ken. You need a pair of skews left hand and right hand. If you have any old chisels in the collection you can of course grind a skew. A Tormec would help there but far cheaper to buy them new.

Yes I will definitely be filing away this repair technique.

Chet glad you picked up that tip. Much easier than trying to do a local repair that will forever draw your eye to it.

[TerryMcK]

Bedside tables (nightstands) - Part 11a - Table tops preparation 
The table tops are each made from 2 boards jointed and glued without any alignment (biscuits or dominoes). I milled each board to 22mm thick (around 7/8") and cut them to length. They were jointed and glued and placed into clamps to setup overnight.

After jointing the boards were checked on a flat surface

The boards are glued , in this case with Titebond II dark, placed into parallel clamps on my assembly table and left overnight to setup.
I have some heavy duty pond liner covering the assembly table to protect the surface from glue drips.

A final check with a straightedge ensures that the boards are flat on the clamps. If not tap them flat with a deadblow.

After emerging from the clamps the joint lines are cleaned up.
I sanded the boards both sides to 80 grit with a ROS.

The boards were then cut to finished width on the tablesaw. I then found that the boards would not fit into my crosscut sled . I'd needed a new CCS for a while so next I made a bigger sled.

[shaneymack]

Top looks great. Lovely grain.

[TerryMcK]

Bedside tables (nightstands) - Part 11b - A cross cut sled 
I know this a departure from the job but needs must. As my existing crosscut sled wasn't deep enough between its fence and the support member to cut the tabletops I had to make another. This was long overdue.

I made another from 1/2" MDF sheet and some oak and sapele scraps I had. I won't go into the constructional details of this but suffice to say it follows a similar method to Marc's XCut Sled and William Ng's sled construction techniques. Real easy to make and this is about my 6th one over the years that I have made. It took about an hour to make and setup no great shakes - no rocket science. The other smaller one is still ok (ish) and will be used for smaller items.

No fancy shaping of the crossmember and fence. 
I find it better leaving straight as you can clamps things to the fence very easily.
There is a single mahogany quartersawn guide rail secured to the bottom of the sled and the whole underside has had a few coatings of wax applied. If the wood warps I'll just make another. It's good at the moment.

You can see my zero clearance insert on the table saw in the photo. Look how close the sliding table is to the blade (about 1/8" to 5/32"). So the wood on that side is thin but supported by the metal of the slider. The insert is made from some plywood and I have a bunch of them.

[TerryMcK]

  

Bedside tables (nightstands) - Part 11c - Top shaping 
After cross-cutting the tops to length on my new table-saw sled it was time to produce the bevels on the underside of each top.
I have designed the tops to have a bevel on three sides only as the rear is flush with the legs and has no overhang. The bevel measures 1/4" x 1" and a pencil line is transferred onto each relevant face using an adjustable square.

6mm (1/4") deep - underside of top is facing upwards

25mm (1") wide

My table-saw is a right tilt blade which means the blade tips in to the fence. This is quite limiting as it means I couldn't construct a jig to hold the work-piece vertical whilst running on the fence to produce the bevel with the table-saw blade.
It does however have a sliding table on the left side of the blade onto which I could mount a jig to do the same thing. This is a bit of overkill for so few bevels and it is far easier to do them by hand with a few planes. This is what I normally do and it doesn't take very long.

First of all place the tabletop upside down onto the bench preferably with a spacer (some plywood is ideal) in between. The spacer servers two purposes it raises the work-piece so you are not risking planing the bench and also ensures any embedded crap on the bench does not get transferred through to the tabletop. The first bevels to create are the cross-grain ones. On the far end I like to apply a slight chamfer just in the area where the plane comes off the wood. This is to minimize break out.

Then using a series of planes starting with a block plane, in my case a Stanley #130, set for a heavier cut I started establishing the bevel.

As more and more wood gets taken off it gets difficult doing this with one hand so I then use a #5 jack plane. I keep checking that I am getting close to the line on both faces and when almost there I stop.

Then using a low angle bevel up smoother just work slowly until you kiss the pencil marks on both the top and side faces.

I then finish off with some 80 grit self adhesive sandpaper applied to my wife's favourite grained piece of oak scrap. If you read my posts on the forum often you will be familiar with this particular "beautiful grained" item of scrap.

I then did the other cross-grain bevel using exactly the same method. The final bevel was established on the front edge with the grain. This has the benefit of cleaning up any tear-out that was produced by going across grain in the previous operation.

If you get it right the bevels will intersect with a nice 45 degree mitre. It takes me about 5 minutes to do each bevel. It would have taken me a day or so to make a holding jig to do the same on the table-saw and it wouldn't have necessarily produced results as good as this (on my table saw at least - yours might be different).

Thinning the edge of a table top down gives it the appearance of slenderness even though the actual table top is substantially thick.
The final process was to run a small ovolo bead bearing guided router cutter around the perimeter of the upper face (not shown in any of these photos but will be seen in the finished pieces). This gives the appearance of an even thinner table top but it is of course just an optical illusion.

 

[Immortan D]

So you basically just eyeball the angle? Wish I could do that and get those consistent results!

[shaneymack]

Very nice work with the hand planes Terry. Looks perfect!

[TerryMcK]

So you basically just eyeball the angle? Wish I could do that and get those consistent results!

Yes you develop muscle memory if you use a hand plane often and it really is quite easy. You can also set a sliding bevel to the angle you want and angle the plane sole at that approximate angle. Work slowly and steady, use a straight edge along the length to ensure you are keeping it all flat and your should be good to go.

[Immortan D]

Yes you develop muscle memory if you use a hand plane often and it really is quite easy. You can also set a sliding bevel to the angle you want and angle the plane sole at that approximate angle. Work slowly and steady, use a straight edge along the length to ensure you are keeping it all flat and your should be good to go.

I will try this method.

Last time I cut raised panels I tried with my hand planes first, had a lot of trouble working across the grain. So I ended up cutting them with my bandsaw, and got very inconsistent results, as the bandsaw blade deflects and follows the grain when the piece being cut is not perpendicular to the blade.

[Coop]

Terry, Your hand plane work and mine can be described using the same word but totally different meanings. Using the word dynamite for yours meaning outstanding results. For me, it simply means that crap gets blown everywhere with no straight line in sight.

Great job bud!

[TerryMcK]

Bedside tables (nightstands) - Part 11d - Intermediate Tops (and some veneering) 
The shelves were next and they were produced in exactly the same way as the top, two boards jointed and glued together.

Then I noticed a huge problem - I only had enough sapele wood for the two bottom shelves. I had miscalculated on the amount of stock I needed and didn't have enough for the iPad shelves underneath the drawers!!
Fortunately I had some baltic birch plywood 18mm thick (3/4" nominal) 

and I have a heap of veneers - some of it are rolls of sapele. So I set about veneering the top face of some of the birch ply. Normally I would veneer both sides of a substrate to ensure flatness but this is 18mm thick and won't bend appreciably.

I don't currently own any vacuum veneering equipment yet and normally use the veneer pressing method. Essentially this involves using some cold press veneer adhesive, gluing the veneer to the ply substrate and then applying a plastic covered caul over the top of the veneer with a large weight and a few clamps holding it down while it cures.
This works fine for flat even shaped panels such as this.

Preparing the veneer

The first thing to do was to crosscut the veneer to approximate length. I use a proper veneer saw with a craft self healing mat as a backer. I also use a safety rule as a straight edge. No point in risking your fingers whilst pressing down on a regular ruler.

Self healing cutting mat and a safety ruler

The Pax veneer saw - Sheffield England made.

When I had cut up enough lengths of veneer I needed to get it's moisture content up to stop it from bending or potato chipping. There are a few veneer conditioners that are available in the US but I can't get any of them or anything like it in England - not sure why nobody makes it over in Europe as it looks great. Anyway I just use regular tap water to spray on both sides of the veneer.

Liberally spraying with water

I first placed a sheet of ply onto the bench and a layer of paper shop rag. Then each sheet of moistened veneer is placed in alternate layers with shop rag in between making up a sandwich of veneer and shop rags.

1st sheet placed onto a plastic covered ply caul with a layer of shop rag underneath

Subsequent layers of moistened veneer and shop rag are placed on top to create a sandwich.

The final layer has another layer of shop rag placed over the top.

Then another plastic coated caul of plywood is placed on top and held down with some stage weights (or anything heavy you may have in your shop).

The sandwich is left overnight

Veneer glue-up.

The next day I came back and had a look at the now flattened veneers. All was good. I then used a straight edge to cut a straight line down one edge of the veneer. I also did another piece and butted them together. Sometimes you have to have another go to ensure that you get it straight.

Cutting a straight edge

Then I applied veneer tape to the upper surfaces of each leaf to hold it together. Glue was spread on both the veneer and the baltic birch ply substrate. The veneer glue I use is Titebond cold press veneer adhesive. I apply it with an ink roller.
The veneer was then applied to the substrate and pressed down with a veneer roller.

Pressing down from the centre to the edges with a veneer roller.

The plastic faced ply cauls were brought back into use again and used to clamp the veneer/ply together and left to cure overnight.

Stage weights and extra clamps were used
Cutting the boards to size.

I had already cut the plywood substrate to size in a previous operation. When the newly veneered board was taken out of the press all that was left to do was to cut the excess from the board.

Excess cut off with a veneer saw.
You have to take care in this process as you can chip the edges and the show face of the veneer unless you are careful. The board was turned over and the veneer tape was removed. The boards were then cleaned up with a random orbit sander taking care not to burn through.

A finished board. I used 180 to 220 grit on a random orbit sander to clean up.

Rabbetting (rebating) the edges.

 Each of the 4 shelving boards (2 per table) then had a 4mm (5/32") deep rabbet applied to the underside to ensure that the top of each shelf came slightly below the shelf support rails. We had decided in the early stages of the design that this slight lip would prevent items such as pencils rolling off the shelves.

Rabbet was applied by hand with a Record #778 Rebate/Rabbet plane

 

So I dodged a bullet there and the moral of the tale is always ensure you have enough stock to complete the project or learn how to veneer.

[TerryMcK]

Bedside tables (nightstands) - Part 12 - Finishing
Sapele, like mahogany, is quite an open pored wood. It can be finished after sanding to 220grit with most finishes but leaves slight pock marks or small microcraters in the finish. To get better results I find it is best to pore fill. You can use something as basic as shellac to do this but in my years of making stringed instruments I find a proprietary sealer much better.
The one I use all the time for mahogany is a oil based thixotropic pore sealer called Jecofil made by W.S. Jenkins & Co Limited. The one I'm using for this project is Jecofil JO27 Mahogany.

This is a coloured sealer that is first applied with a foam brush with the grain. Then you work across the grain with the foam brush to prevent it being pulled out. The spirit in the sealer evaporates but before that you simply wipe across grain with a rag. It tints the pores slightly and the mahogany one I'm using gives a slight red/brown colour to the timber.

The sealer has the consistency of mud when stirred and it is very time consuming to do. The results when you apply finish though are simply stunning it is well worth doing.

I applied it to all the show surfaces of each table, the tops, intermediate tops and the drawer fronts. W.S.Jenkins also make Jekofil for oak but I left the secondary oak wood of the drawers natural and unfilled.

Finish.
I decided on this project to use my dwindling supplies of Arm R Seal semi gloss. After pore filling and leaving overnight I lightly sanded with 400 grit just to provide a key. This got rid of any rough bits of Jecofil that may have been remaining on the surface.
Then I gave each part of the project 2 coats of wipe on Seal-A-Cell (according to General Finishes best results with wipe on Arm-R-Seal are with SAC on first! - not me speaking )
After rubbing down between coats with 600 grit with a mineral spirits lubricant to make sure that I got a smooth base layer I then applied two more coats of Arm-R-Seal. On the horizontal surfaces I gave them 2 more coats (6 coats in all on the horizontal surfaces).

Some photos after two coats of Seal-A-Cell are below. There isn't much colour variation in real life as there are in the pictures. Digital camera has lied!

Intermediate tops and one drawer

Another drawer

The tables

The table tops

The results of a wipe on finish are stunning. You do have to watch for runs though and wipe them off before it cures. Good lighting is recommended when applying any finish. Once you have completed the job get out of the shop. Dust nibs can fall by air movement caused by you walking around in your shop - especially in the majority of home woodworkers non dedicated finish areas. As you build up coats the wood takes on more and more of a depth. Both Seal-A-Cell and Arm-R-Seal have tints and this changes the colour.

I left the finish to cure for 2 weeks before the next stage.

In a future project I will be using black Jecofil on an ash bodied 5 string bass guitar. You may be interest to see what happens to the wood grain on that project. I'm not sure myself but my customer was really stoked by the thought.

[davewyo]

Beautiful work Terry! I always love the pay-off when the finish hits the wood.

[shaneymack]

You do phenomenal work Terry! Always a pleasure to follow your journals.