Jewelry box guild build

[Chestnut]

35 minutes ago, Cliff said:

I did work at home for about 6-7 years before these last two jobs. It was a huge adjustment. 

I can't even fathom software that requires a fob. Nor can I fathom the use of a serial port anymore. Do your printers use parallel ports? heh.

Yes I swear out KIP plotter is from 1995. Enginnering software, Heck i had to use software that didn't have a GUI. I think the program was originally written for punch cards and new fangled tech brought it to notepad editing. BAH hijack lol sry.

[Cliff]

I'm having an issue, if anyone can advise, I'd appreciate it. I decided to try and make my bottoms flat, because of previously mentioned table saw issues. So I clamped them the best I could to my table and used the low angle jack with 50 degree blade. 

 

 

Cleaned it up, no doubt. But it was actually worse in terms of flat. I don't know if it is my technique or if it's because those festool clamping things pushes the board up slightly at one end (very annoying) or if it's something else. I got full length shavings. I'm really trying to get these things flat without going back to the jointer because I'm concerned about taking too much off. My drawers are already too short, anymore and I'm in danger of having to remake them, and in this case that means buying new stock.

Also when I try to plane the face of these, I basically can't. It's severe chatter, I guess is how I would describe it. I don't know if it's just so hard to push and I'm not doing it right or if I messed up sharpening the blade. I used the Veritas honing guide to sharpen it. This is why sometimes I just feel like giving up on planes, I can't seem to get them to work right.

[treeslayer]

Cliff, do you have to make them absolutely flat, is anyone going to notice but you?

[Cliff]

43 minutes ago, treeslayer said:

Cliff, do you have to make them absolutely flat, is anyone going to notice but you?

I'm worried that the gap won't be even across the drawer length. Like it might be 1/32nd in the middle and then somewhere between 1/16th and 1/32 towards the end. To me, if I can fix it, I should. 

[treeslayer]

3 minutes ago, Cliff said:

To me, if I can fix it, I should. 

I get it now Cliff and i think you're right to fix it, i don't have an answer how but i'm sure someone here has an idea.

[Chet]

How about raising the in feed side of your Jointer to something less then 1/32 and just take a few shallow passes to clean them up.

[Coop]

Do you have a vise that you could clamp it from the sides? Is the edge square to the sides after planing? 

[Cliff]

1 hour ago, Chet said:

How about raising the in feed side of your Jointer to something less then 1/32 and just take a few shallow passes to clean them up.

That's what I'm going to try, I am just worried about going too deep. I think what annoys me is that I should be able to resolve this with a hand plane. 

 

39 minutes ago, K Cooper said:

Do you have a vise that you could clamp it from the sides? Is the edge square to the sides after planing? 

Not sure on the squareness. And yeah I realized I do have that type of vise after I vented my frustration on here. I am getting rid of that workbench but it's still here because I broke the garage door so I can't get the bench out til I fix it. But I had erased it from my brain. 

[pkinneb]

Cliff can you get a flat cut on a piece of scrap? That would rule out a plane issue. What size plane are you using since these are small parts a #5 or something similar may be hard to keep flat throughout the cut. Make sure you have a freshly sharpened blade maple is hard enough and with the birdseye it will be difficult under any circumstances...those are the only things that come to mind.  

One more thing if it is a balance issue an you have a shooting board you could shoot the length on it.

[Cliff]

21 hours ago, pkinneb said:

Cliff can you get a flat cut on a piece of scrap? That would rule out a plane issue. What size plane are you using since these are small parts a #5 or something similar may be hard to keep flat throughout the cut. Make sure you have a freshly sharpened blade maple is hard enough and with the birdseye it will be difficult under any circumstances...those are the only things that come to mind.  

One more thing if it is a balance issue an you have a shooting board you could shoot the length on it.

Alas no shooting board. It's high up on the list of things to deal with, because of saw issues. I'll have to try a few things out. I was only able to go out for 20 mins the other day to try and flatten those drawers. Nothing more frustrating than having 20 minutes and it gets wasted. I was using a low angle jack with a 50 degree blade so the figure doesn't tear out. I got a smoother, an LAJ and a block plane. So not a lot of choice. And blade was freshly sharpened.

[Cliff]

Today I got my Bell Forest order for 20bf of curly cherry, at least 8" wide. This is the case for the 2nd jewelry box. Looks nice. Though I expected more curl. I've literally never worked with cherry so I can't wait. I'm probably at least a month or more from starting #2.

[Cliff]

I was able to get out into the shop today for a bit. I tried to get the lightest possible pass on the jointer I could. I think I did well because it took 5 passes to take off table saw burn marks. 

These are the drawers after cleanup, I didn't get them absolutely perfect but like I said, I'm really worried about taking too much off. You can definitely tell on the ends where the gap is bigger. These views also really show you how many defects this wood has. I'm starting to get to the point where I wonder if I shouldn't find a different wood for drawer fronts. Hell I could do the curly cherry. I have plenty of it. Would love some of thoughts from you guys on how you would handle this. If I replace it, I need to make that decision very soon, because I don't want to cut the dovetail sockets twice. 

I scribed my line and marked out my dovetail sockets as well. 

Now for the BEST news. I got a 10% raise today, starts as of January 1. There is a very good chance I can get my Sawstop by early March, maybe even sooner. So I'm pumped about that. 

[Alan G]

4 minutes ago, Cliff said:

Now for the BEST news. I got a 10% raise today, starts as of January 1. There is a very good chance I can get my Sawstop by early March, maybe even sooner. So I'm pumped about that. 

Congrats on both of those!!! Great news!

[wtnhighlander]

Congratulations, Cliff!  

[Chestnut]

13 minutes ago, Cliff said:

There is a very good chance I can get my Sawstop by early March, maybe even sooner.

Woo!? lol Hopefully sooner.

[drzaius]

I feel really bad for you because that wood is gorgeous, except for the defects. I don't know how you can get past that, but make new fronts.

[pkinneb]

Won't the fronts get a curve cut on them will that remove the defects? If not I'm with drzaius and would make new ones.

 

[Chet]

4 hours ago, Cliff said:

There is a very good chance I can get my Sawstop by early March, maybe even sooner. So I'm pumped about that. 

Someone is watching out for you.  Nice that you didn't follow your thought on getting a saw to hold you over.

[Cliff]

3 hours ago, drzaius said:

I feel really bad for you because that wood is gorgeous, except for the defects. I don't know how you can get past that, but make new fronts.

I agree. I was fine with some defects but the ones that bother me are the ones that are on the bottom or top so it makes the gap between drawers look like a 4 year old built them. I wish I could get more birdseye maple but apparently it's really hard to get right now.

 

2 hours ago, pkinneb said:

Won't the fronts get a curve cut on them will that remove the defects? If not I'm with drzaius and would make new ones.

 

That's a great point! Should take care of some of my issues for sure. 

 

1 hour ago, Chet said:

Someone is watching out for you.  Nice that you didn't follow your thought on getting a saw to hold you over.

Well, I'd like to agree with you but I was given the raise because they completely screwed me on something and knew I was going to quit because of it. Still I'll take it for now. Though I did try to negotiate for 15% but blah blah budget blah blah.

[Cliff]

Today I took an hour drive to the nearest hardwood dealer (as opposed to lumber yard that is only 15 minutes) and took a look at stock. First, for some reason they had the Woodpecker TS-32 on sale for $99, my stepdad bought one. They also had Festool stuff on sale. Makes me think they will be in big trouble if Festool finds out. 

I found a piece of birdseye maple that isn't a bad replacement for my drawers. It was something like 16' long and 6" wide. But only about 3 inches of width had birdseye and figure. 

Unfortunately, I spotted something else and decided that I'd pick this board up for $90 (in total over 8' long, but only 45" has spalting, so the other piece will be drawer bottoms)

So this is my thinking on drawers:

 

 

[JosephThomas]

On 12/8/2017 at 1:58 PM, Cliff said:

Now for the BEST news. I got a 10% raise today, starts as of January 1. There is a very good chance I can get my Sawstop by early March, maybe even sooner. So I'm pumped about that. 

Pay off your debts first homie, you won't regret it.

 

I think the drawers faces look much better, I'd be willing to bet you could even out the gaps with some light passes with a smoothing plane, and continue forward. 

[Cliff]

26 minutes ago, JosephThomas said:

Pay off your debts first homie, you won't regret it.

 

I think the drawers faces look much better, I'd be willing to bet you could even out the gaps with some light passes with a smoothing plane, and continue forward. 

There is zero chance I'm waiting 4-5 years to get a new saw. 

[Cliff]

Been a couple of weeks since I had a chance to work on this. And of course I had to start by rebooting the drawers. Luckily I returned back to exactly where I left off in just a few hours. Not only that, but my drawers are almost dead perfect now on the heights. I think the gap may be slightly big in between the top drawer and second, but I'm much happier with this. 

As for the wood, it's in better shape but there are places where it's soft. I can dig a finger nail into the backs of some of the drawers. I don't know if this is normal for a spalted board or what. 

[pkinneb]

Those look great Cliff!

 

[bleedinblue]

Good choice on replacing the fronts.  I know I mentioned early on how I loved the birdseye stock, but that was before I saw how extensive the worm damage was.