Sideboard for the Dining Room

[gee-dub]

I may be jumping the gun on this one. I realize today that it is going to take a lot longer than it should. I jacked up the tendons in my wrist doing some domestic chores a few weeks ago. Finally went to the doc . . . blah, blah, blah . . . But, why not drag you poor folks along on my slow but sure process?

This is the general idea of where I am headed although some design elements are still being discussed.

I did the design based on a large piece of sepele I had that I was going to use for the legs. Woe is me. That board is mahogany and I do not have any sepele of the proper dimensions. I am trying to use up the material I have on hand and so I decided to do glue-up legs. I cut some fat veneer.

 

And glued up some not-quite-thick-enough sepele to meet the dimensional requirements.

 

This veneer will be machined down quite a bit.

 

The clamping method was basically successful but for the other faces I decided to use the vacuum bag.

I milled the first two faces down a bit and applied the perpendicular faces.

 

The vac method worked much more reliably.

I then milled the blanks just like you would single-piece blanks.

The side panels will involve some template routing. For those of us without a CNC, here's how we roll.

 

 

I used to use one half of a template and then flip it to make a mirror image. I then figured I could flip the template to make a better template and just roll with it.

 

And there you have it; a near perfect mirror image template without a CNC.

The gimpy wrist is definitely slowing me down but I want to be safe. This means that this thread may drag on a bit

 

[treeslayer]

count me in @gee-dub, always admire your work, looks like a long but fun project, we all slow down at some point, i just call it enjoying the process

[gee-dub]

On 3/23/2023 at 4:35 PM, treeslayer said:

I just call it enjoying the process

I'm going to go with that @treeslayer .  There are many typical operations that we do where we are confident in the strength of our grip on a piece of material, guide, or tool.  Right now I am a little one-handed.  I can get there but a few things take longer to set up than to do .  I've got some daily physical therapy that I am counting on helping me through this sooner rather than later.

[wtnhighlander]

This is going to be a cool journal, no matter how long it takes!

[Chestnut]

I really hope your wrist heals. I damaged some tendons in my wrist doing domestic chores as well i opted to take a 2 week break to have it heal. I couldn't turn a clamp handle or pick up a board with out a decent twinge of pain. Strength was reduced too.

Hopefully this just means you take more pictures and type a bit more the details are always appreciated.

[Mark J]

Just goes to show what I've always said, household chores should be avoided .

[Von]

Sorry to hear about the injury. Looks like you are off to a good start and I like how you have your shop organized from what I can see in the background.

[Coop]

Did you cut the veneer extra thick from the get go just so you would have extra meat to work with in the planing process? 

[gee-dub]

On 3/24/2023 at 8:24 AM, Coop said:

Did you cut the veneer extra thick from the get go just so you would have extra meat to work with in the planing process? 

That is correct  I was probably being overly cautions since I milled the inside material true and square.  For the veneer donor board I joint a face and edge and then plane the opposite face.  I then rip a face off, re-plane to parallel and rip off another piece.  This yields a milled face for gluing and a bandsawn face for later milling.  There is a bit of irregularity there and I wanted to be sure I would have enough "meat" to get to my final dimensions.  The veneers ended up about 1/16" to 3/32" thick.

[gee-dub]

It has been years since I confirmed the position of my router motor in my lift. Turned out it needed an additional strip of foil tape where a couple of others had compressed over the years. Setting up for some template offset routing is what made this catch my eye. All better now. My thanks to whoever got me the precision pin and collar sets from my wish list oh so long ago

It may be a weirdness of mine but I really enjoy selecting the locations in my material where I will take certain parts from.

These will be the top and bottom rails for the side panels. I tend to view these things from 360* and under different light. It is always disappointing to me to have a grain direction or figure pattern contrast in a way I don't want when the final piece is viewed from one angle or another.

I joint an edge and rip them to width. I then crosscut them to length.

These are pretty straight forward. You just need to be careful as the raised panels will track the cloud lift pattern at the top of the side panel assembly. You've all seen this rig before. I draw around the template, rough out at the bandsaw and then template route.

The top / bottom bearing bit lets me always route downhill minimizing the chances of tear out. A couple of quick passes and I end up here.

One down, three to go.

[Coop]

Must be the pollen count here, gosh dog it! I can see the advantage of a top/bottom bearing when routing with a pattern located on top or bottom of the piece. But how does that aid in climb cutting? 

[gee-dub]

On 3/24/2023 at 7:03 PM, Coop said:

Must be the pollen count here, gosh dog it! I can see the advantage of a top/bottom bearing when routing with a pattern located on top or bottom of the piece. But how does that aid in climb cutting? 

Not for climb cutting in this case.  The template is moved from the top of the blank to the bottom or vice versa.  The bit height is changed to engage the top or bottom bearing with the template . . . whatever is required to allow you to route downhill versus climb cutting.  I put a center line on the template and the blank.  This let's me quickly line things up if I am flipping the blank or moving the template from top to bottom.  There is no one-rule per se.  It is just a matter of having the flexibility to change the template or bit so as to allow routing with the grain as opposed to against it..  Those tight little s-curves in the cloud lifts can really give you the opportunity to blow out if you are routing up hill.

[gee-dub]

On 3/24/2023 at 6:52 AM, Von said:

Sorry to hear about the injury. Looks like you are off to a good start and I like how you have your shop organized from what I can see in the background.

Thanks Von.  There is a thread on the shop build a couple years ago here although it can be a bit of a haul and its not required reading

[Mark J]

11 hours ago, gee-dub said:

It has been years since I confirmed the position of my router motor in my lift. Turned out it needed an additional strip of foil tape

Showing my ignorance here, but what was out of adjustment?  I'm sure I just put my router motor in the lift and tightened the holder.

[gee-dub]

On 3/25/2023 at 5:18 AM, Mark J said:

Showing my ignorance here, but what was out of adjustment?  I'm sure I just put my router motor in the lift and tightened the screws.

I sometimes use a template guide in the table.  This is generally not a problem for something like a 1/4" bit in a 9/16" ID bushing.  For a recent task I was creating a part with a 1/16" offset from a multiple-curve template that would mate with another part.  Like with dovetails, all the sudden a small deviation becomes really obvious. 

With the smidge off off center in position and only 1/32" of clearance between the bit and the template combined with the type of cut it made sense to take a few minutes and dial the thing back in.  For some operations you just keep the work against the same location on the guide and all is well.  With this cut I had to pivot things around so the misalignment became obvious in the result. Not as important is that there is a scale etched into my plate that I use to get approximate fence positions. 

[Mark J]

So if I understand, you were adjusting to get the router bit in the exact center of the bushing?

[gee-dub]

On 3/25/2023 at 5:41 AM, Mark J said:

So if I understand, you were adjusting to get the router bit in the exact center of the bushing?

Correct

[Chet]

On 3/24/2023 at 6:08 PM, gee-dub said:

It may be a weirdness of mine but I really enjoy selecting the locations in my material where I will take certain parts from.

I enjoy this process as well.  I think it is time well spent to pick out features that nobody will notice except you.   Had a family member just notice the grain pattern on the three drawers of a sideboard I built in 2018.

[gee-dub]

One of my favorites is drawer pulls.  I take them all from a single blank so that the grain pattern is sequential.

I did a lowboy for a guy out of cherry using the same technique.  About a year later he texted me and asked "Hey, are all those drawer handles out of the same piece of wood?" . . . I said "Yep".

[gee-dub]

Just showing this as an example of using setup blocks.  The same template is used for the upper and lower rail.  The lower rail is 1" wider so I just step it off with 1-2-3 blocks.

I boogered one of the parts but not fatally.  A spoke shave saves the day.

Time to cut the leg blanks to final dimension.

I use a white pencil on darker woods for layout lines.  When things get a little more precise I like using a light colored tape, a .5mm pencil, and some Incra rules.

And 32 mortises later . . .

Time for the panel grooves and panels.

[Von]

On 3/25/2023 at 7:09 PM, gee-dub said:

Just showing this as an example of using setup blocks.  The same template is used for the upper and lower rail.  The lower rail is 1" wider so I just step it off with 1-2-3 blocks.

I just watched a vertical mill tutorial showing the use of machinist parallels in a similar fashion. It's amazing just how useful two identically sized pieces of material can be.

[gee-dub]

More cogitating today than sawdust making. I did manage to resaw out some book matched blanks for the floating panels in the sides but that's about it.

My wrist is a-singin'. I gots to go ice it a while.

[Chestnut]

On 3/24/2023 at 8:08 PM, gee-dub said:

It may be a weirdness of mine but I really enjoy selecting the locations in my material where I will take certain parts from.

I think this is just the next level in creating furniture and "painting with grain" as marc puts it. I'm not an expert at grain selection by any means but i enjoy this aspect as well. Good grain selection can take a plain boring piece of furniture and make it striking and impactful.

Not only does it help visually but selecting good grain can help in template routing to help minimize the tear out.

[gee-dub]

So here's my templates and a pair of panels that I need to shape.

I need to account for the 1-1/2" stile that will divide the book matched panels.

I will have a 1/4" tongue on all the panels so I use 1-2-3 blocks to account for the remaining inch during template setup.

I failed to take pics of this part BUT, I template route with a 1/2" hinge mortise bit. This leaves me a generous amount of room to trim the bulk of the waste at the bandsaw and I end up here.

I now use a 3/4" template collar at the router table along with a 1/4" bit.

The rabbet rides the collar and the bit cuts off the waste. The offset leaves me a nice even 1/4" tongue.

I now use the smallest diameter slot cutter I have. This lets me pretty much cut the slots to final dimension without a lot of fussy chisel work. It helps to have a healthy selection of bearings handy.

I cut the slots in the rails and stile and end up with this reveal.

The height of the cut on the legs will be different because the rails and stile are all set back about 1/2" from the outer face of the legs.

[Coop]

I’d put up multiple likes if I could! Very informative! Thanks for the step by step!