Arts and Craft Sideboard

[Chet]

I am starting a new project.  Its an Arts & Craft sideboard that was a project in Fine Woodworking back in 2015 done by Gregory Paolini.

At first I had opened to the group here a conversation about changing some of the dimensions and features.  But after looking at the plans closer I am staying with the original design.  The picture is somewhat deceptive in that it makes this piece look like it is shorter in length then it really is but it is over 50 inches long and I think the deception comes from the fact that the height of the of the sideboard's flat surface is 39 inches.  A normal china cabinet is about 32-33 inches.

The original piece in the magazine was done in QSWO, a traditional choice for Arts & Crafts but I am going to use Cherry.  So this is the pile I brought home from the lumber yard.  The project uses around 70 board feet but my stack is 120 board feet.  I went way over because I wanted to be pretty picky with all the frame work pieces.  I wanted all of the legs, stiles, rails and things like that to have pretty straight grain and then the door panels, drawer fronts and side panels will maybe have a little more character.

So the first thing I did was pick out and cut all my frame work pieces and I ended up with this stack.

After they sat for a couple of days, I went back through and bundled all the pieces with their corresponding parts to make sure I  hadn't missed any thing.  

Next up was milling all the leg pieces and gluing them up.  The legs are 2 1/4 inch square and I am going to get this by gluing 3, 3/4 thick X 2 inch wide lengths together to give me 2 1/4 in one direction and then I will glue a 1/8 inch X 2 1/4 inch wide veneer on each side to hide the lamination and and give me my 2 1/4 inch dimension on the other sides and with the help of a small chamfer the appearance of solid 2 1/4 inch thick legs.

In the clamps for the first phase of the glue up.

On the next part, when I glued the veneers on I wanted about an 1/8 inch over hang on each edge so to keep things oriented I stood the clamps up.  Jet clamps are heavy but for something like this they really shine because they can be stood up and the jaws stay open.

And the first two in the clamps.

When I added the other two legs to the stack I started to notice a problem.  The veneer that was on the very bottom was starting to open up gaps.  I don't know what it is but it seems that when I am in the midst of a glue up my common sense leaves the building.  So I just started throwing clamps at the situation, I got the problem fixed but ended up with what you see below.  If I had thought about this for even 30 second I would have come up with the better fix which would have been to take everything out of the clamps and put a thicker piece of stock on the bottom to act as a caul and the clamp rack would still be full.

That was the first glitch.  The second on I didn't see until I got things out of the clamps this morning.  And again if I hadn't been in a mild panic mode yesterday afternoon doing battle with my gap problem, I might have discovered this in time to fix it.  One of my veneers slide out of alignment.  It slid from being okay at one end but way off the mark at the other.  I cleaned up and flushed up the rest of the leg then tackled the problem.  I put a blade form my dado stack on the saw and then put the clean surface marked in the picture below (this picture is before the dado was cut) down on the table saw and cut a dado out of the leg that was 1/2 inch high and 1/8 inch deep.  This cleaned up the remaining glue and gave me an even surface to work with.  I then found a scrap that was close in grain but more importantly a color match and glued it into place with the help of lots of blue 3M clamps.

And this is my cleaned up result, the fix is on the right side and you can see in the second picture the end of the piece I put in just to give you an idea of where the glue seem is.

 

[..Kev]

Nice job on the fix Chet!  Great start to the journal!

[Chestnut]

There's a seam There? Nice work! This will be a fun one to watch happen.

[wdwerker]

Patch job looks good, but I would still face that side to the wall. 

[Coop]

I really like the piece you're making. Great progress and recovery on the mishap. Looking forward to the build Chet!

[Chet]

1 hour ago, wdwerker said:

Patch job looks good, but I would still face that side to the wall. 

Already planned it that way.

[pkinneb]

Great save there Chet! We all make mistakes its how you recover that matters and you did awesome.I look forward to following along. 

[JohnG]

Excellent fix! You'll be the only one that knows it was patched.

I'm looking forward to watching this progress!

[Chet]

2 hours ago, AnonymousAccountant said:

You'll be the only one that knows it was patched.

And everyone here. 

[JohnG]

6 minutes ago, Chet said:

And everyone here. 

True. And hopefully you aren't like me- the first thing I do when showing a completed project to my wife or other family members is point out all of the mistakes I made.

[pkinneb]

Just now, AnonymousAccountant said:

True. And hopefully you aren't like me- the first thing I do when showing a completed project to my wife or other family members is point out all of the mistakes I made.

I have stopped pointing my mistakes out to non wood workers...but I still point many of mine out on this forum and anytime a ww is looking at my builds...I mean I don't want another ww walking away thinking I didn't know about the mistake I made  

In the journals I think they are helpful for all of our learning and progressing in the craft.

[Chet]

28 minutes ago, AnonymousAccountant said:

point out all of the mistakes I made.

I got away from doing this quite a while ago.  But like Paul said I post them here for the "learn and grow" factor.

[Chet]

Got back out to the shop and finished milling the leg blanks to final size and added a chamfer just big enough to hide the glue line of the veneer pieces.  The legs were supposed to be 2 1/4 inches square but ended up a 2 and a heavy 3/16 inches.  Over all I am real happy wit the grain match on all four sides of the legs.

After this I laid out all my mortises for the rails and grooves for the panels.  Layout work like this is when it is handy to have a whole handful of the double squares.

This was my set up for cutting the morass and grooves.  Router, 1/4 up spiral bit and two edge guides.  

The mortises are an inch deep and the grooves are 1/2 inch deep.  I plunged to the full depth at each end of the mortises and then cleaned out the waste in several passes.  After this I routed the grooves in three passes.  

Ending with something that looks like this.

The mortise and grooves that face in, toward the center of the cabinet are cut down the center of the legs front and back.  The mortise and grooves that face front and back are off set.  I did all the centered cuts first.   I flipped one back and one front leg, end for end so that they were mirror images of each other.  That way if my router was even a fat pencil line of center the cuts would still match up.

So the pieces where oriented like this in relationship to each other.

All the center cuts.

Then I adjusted the router and did all the off set cuts.

 

I ended the day by re-sawing some panels for the sides and doors.  We are starting a mini heat wave and the shop is getting a little warm.

[..Kev]

Very methodical!  Nice!

[Mick S]

I'm enjoying this build. Do you mark your gauges to keep up with which one is which?

Nice job on the leg veneering. I did something similar on the Morris chair I just completed. I used a slightly different technique. It looks like you did two opposing faces, then the other two. I did one, trimming the overlap on just one edge, but leaving it on the other edge to butt against with my next face, working my way around like that. Takes more time but I had such limited material to work with that I had to maximize every little bit. I was really happy with the book matched result.

[Chet]

4 minutes ago, Mick S said:

Do you mark your gauges to keep up with which one is which?

Normally, but today there was enough difference between them not to have to.  I could of just used two, layout the centered mortises and then changed them to do the off set mortise, but I wanted to leave the squares set up in case I messed up a leg with the routing and needed to lay out another one.

 

9 minutes ago, Mick S said:

It looks like you did two opposing faces, then the other two.

I only veneered two opposing faces.  I laminated three pieces that were 2" wide X 3/4" thick, this gave me 2  1/4" thickness in one direction.  Then I placed the 1/4" thick veneer to cover the glue lines of the first glue up, that gave me 2 1/4" thickness in the other direction and then chamfered the edges to hide the veneer glue line.

[Mick S]

Ah - missed that. Pays to read the text, not just look at the pretty pictures.

However, in paying closer attention I might offer one suggestion that may minimize the slipping alignment problem you ran into. I used a similar technique on a floating table I did a couple of years ago. Rather than stacking the legs veneer face to veneer face, put two layers of waxed paper between the veneer layers. The slippage will be between the layers rather than putting pressure on the veneers and causing them to slip.

[Chet]

57 minutes ago, Mick S said:

Rather than stacking the legs veneer face to veneer face, put two layers of waxed paper between the veneer layers. The slippage will be between the layers rather than putting pressure on the veneers and causing them to slip.

Thanks, I will have to remember that.  I always have wax paper in the shop anyway

[..Kev]

I'd suggest parchment paper rather than wax paper..  But, great idea!

 

[Chet]

Actually both are in the drawer.

[Chet]

Continued on by milling up all the pieces for the rails, nine long pieces and four short pieces for the sides and two muntins that go with the back panels.  I put one of the dado stack blades on the saw and set the fence and made two passes flipping end for end to center my 1/4 inch groove.

After this to cut the 1 inch tenons, I put on the the whole stack and set the height to 1/4 inch with my set up block.  

The muntin tenon is only 1/2 inch long so I cut the four of those first using the sacrificial fence and miter gauge. 

After that I remove the sacrificial fence and set the regular fence to 1 inch from the out side blade and made two passes to get my 1 inch length on the rest of the tenons.

I then rounded the ends of all the long tenons to fit in the routed mortises.  This is the first time I have done it this way, in the past I have squared up the mortises.  I have to say, I think this was faster.  I used a chisel and small rasp.

And everything done.

First dry fit.

Next I cut and milled the long narrow panel that goes in the very top, back section. (no photos of that piece, sorry)  Then I cut all the back panel pieces which will be ship lapped.  They are all 1/4 thick and 18 inches long.  There are 8 pieces 4 inches wide, 4 pieces 3 5/8 inches wide and 4 pieces 3 3/16 inches wide along with the two muntins that have all ready been made up.

Here's the 16 pieces.

The ship laps are 1/8 inch deep and 3/8 inch wide so I put on a dado stack that was 1/2 inch wide and set it to 1/8 inch high,  put the sacrificial fence back on and set it to 3/8 inch from the out side edge of the stack.  Using two grippers to safely hold the work down against the table and keep it from trying to float a little, I made a pass on one edge then flipped it to do the opposite edge on the opposite side.  Rinse and repeat 15 more times.

Done.

I thought I would give this stretch wrap technique a try to keep them from warping or cupping.  Has any one else tried this?

More to come.

 

 

 

 

 

[..Kev]

Looking awesome Chet!  Always rewarding to see a dry fit!

I think Marc did that wrapping thing recently for a class he's going to go teach..

[pkinneb]

Looks great Chet! You are moving right along. Btw that is the nicest sacrificial fence I have ever seen  

[Chet]

1 hour ago, ..Kev said:

I think Marc did that wrapping thing recently for a class he's going to go teach..

That's where I saw it.

 

38 minutes ago, pkinneb said:

Btw that is the nicest sacrificial fence I have ever seen

When I needed to make it I had a nice chunk of red oak just sitting around doing nothing.

[Chestnut]

Loving this project! I'm seeing clean lines and cherry. I love both of them. This design would also look great with those raised panels that just have a very small gap? Groove? I don't know what you'd call it.

I had all my morris chair parts sitting around for months unwrapped. I provided good air flow around them and they never moved. If you start with stable wood i don't see why it's going to change it's mind and not be stable. Also if it's that big of a worry, and for in marc's case where they were unsuported, wouldn't you want to find out if it moves before you complete? That way you could remake said trouble part. For marc his boards made the top and were un supported and dropped in. I don't know it just seems like one of those overreaction internet things, like wearing 2 belts and 3 suspenders.

Also after you unwrap them what's stopping the sudden humidity change from making the part move more than if it was subject to a slow humidity change?