Blanket Chest

[gee-dub]

Even though the new bedroom is a ways off I think I am OK starting the blanket chest that will stand at the foot of the bed. If I get done too early it can stand at the foot of the current bed without being too much in the way. I dug out some cherry to do my parts selection.




I then had to immediately move a bunch of it again to clear the table I use for the vacuum veneering operations.



I don't know if any of you have seen the YT videos where someone spends lot of time explaining why you cannot cut veneer against the fence. He makes a good case but I have been doing this for many years and plan on just going ahead with "not" being able to do this.



Here's a batch of 1/16" veneer cut from the 6/4 blank you see them setting on.



I ran out of gas for today but will glue these to a substrate tomorrow. I will try to post a picture of the general idea of the design tomorrow as well.

[Coop]

Where are you getting your design, from your noggin? 

[gee-dub]

On 6/12/2023 at 7:38 PM, Coop said:

Where are you getting your design, from your noggin? 

Yeah. Empty as it is anymore I still manage to shake something out now and again .  The style will be echoed in other items I have planned for the new master bedroom.

[RichardA]

I had a tendency to draw from the roots of my grey hair as well, I was lucky, it generally worked out.

[Mark J]

By the by, how's your wrist healing up?

[gee-dub]

@Mark J - The wrist is doing well, thanks.  I am a big fan of physical therapy since it has cured so many of my ills over the years.  Way better than going under the knife .

Here's the general idea. I have grown lazy in my old age and do not do highly detailed renderings anymore. As long as I can pull the dimensions and joinery details I am happy with "shop drawing" level images. I quickly and crudely colored this one to give you the idea of where I am going with this build.

This is a re-scaled piece using the dressers for my own home that I have been playing around with for the past few years (not built yet) as a source design. The plan is for figured cherry veneered panels within a typical frame and panel design. Height and width are purpose driven. We plan to have a cushion made for the top so we can sit on it to slip shoes on and off and such. The width is driven by a king size bed. Ergonomic scale is all too important in designing things if you don't want to bark your shins on odd-shaped objects

[gee-dub]

I am always pleasantly surprised at how dust-free this little saw is.

Cutting MDF indoors with almost no visible spoil? Great!

My bag is not terribly large so I have to do sets of parts. Here I layout four panels to be glued (two showing).

Prepare the mighty veneering engine.

And vacuum four panels.

My pump is oil-less which is nice and clean. I did however cheap-out and not get one that self-regulates. Essentially this pump just plain runs for as long as it has power and fails to burn up. I have a timer on it and run it for about 3 hours. At that point I can pull the items from the bag and put in the next set. The pump is more than happy to run 24x7 but I am not

[gee-dub]

Having some decent layout tools makes drawing out these more complex shapes much more pleasant.

We have all seen those "What do you use your edge sander for?" threads from folks who are trying to make a decision. Among many other tasks, fairing curves is a breeze on an edge sander.

Oh yeah, and there's this . . .

A cool thing about using MDF for your templates (I use 1/2" and 1/4" depending on the scale of the piece) is that if things are not quite what you want, simple shaping tools work the material easily.

Once you are happy with your template some glue-size or shellac will harden the working edges. Here's a comparison of the dresser leg template that has been waiting in the wings for a long time (ya gotta love working with the city) next to the blanket chest leg.

Once I have the template it will not only serve as a router template but also helps with figure selection when laying out parts to be cut.

More to come . . .

[gee-dub]

So I rough these legs out on the bandsaw and template route them. We've all seen template routing before ;-)



I need the base of the foot to be perpendicular to the back of the leg. A sled serves me well here. Once again the tablesaw is a joinery machine in my shop as opposed to a ripping and crosscutting machine ;-)

With the leg's foot milled I can use it as a reference point for the overall length of the leg.

I end up with four identical legs.

One of them needs a knot filled.

A bit of epoxy and some TransTint dye and I am all set.

I will come back in about 10 minutes and pare the epoxy flush.

[gee-dub]

Ever onward . . .

I use a spoke shave to fine tune the match between leg pairs.

I often look at other (read more) spoke shaves but this one and a few other old dogs I have always seem to get me through.

I bandsaw the other "side" parts to rough dimension and face joint each piece.

I then plane to final thickness, joint one edge, and rip to final width.

I cross cut to final length. I will be using dominoes so these are basically butt joints dimensionally.

Here is a side frame roughly put together.

There will have to be some grooves for the panels and some edge treatment of some sort. At that point I can start looking at gluing up sub-assemblies.

[gee-dub]

There are certainly more impressive places to stop for the day but I started early. Wait . . . doesn't that mean I should have gotten more done???
Here is another use (and another reason to take some time and make a version 2 of) the L fence. It allows me to place an edge on the substrate a specific distance from the veneer; in this case 5/16".

I use this known edge to size the blank.

I use a wheel gauge (use whatever works for you) to strike the 5/16" point for the rabbet.

I use the router table, a rabbet bit, and the fence to lay in a rabbet just shy of 1/4" from the front. I then use the same setup to lay in a rabbet from the back.

This gives me a tongue that is positioned, front to back, so that the veneered face will be just shy of the plane of the frame. I have not cut that groove yet but his shot will give you the idea of where I am going.

I hope to get at least the two side assemblies done tomorrow BUT, there is some rumbling about out of town guests and an early dinner out so we will see.

[gee-dub]

Really!?! It's been a week since I updated this??? In my defense I had to take time out for birthdays and Father's Day celebrations. Whadda ya lookin' at . . . Back to work . . . I use my favorite little Millers Falls plane to profile the mating edges of the frame and panels.

So I get this.

Ready to fit the legs.

I lower the speed on the router table to minimize burning on the cherry.

#5 is about 18k RPM on my router.
I profile the leg edges that require it.

The panel sets at a 5 degree tilt between the legs. I am doing this to emphasize the stance of the piece.

This means I need a 5 degree tilt at the top of the side as it will meet with the lid when closed. Quick work at the tablesaw.

So I'm here . . .

Here's a quick show and tell about mounting panels amidships with the Domino.
I want the side panels held between the legs at a 5 degree angle.

I have layout lines for the angle.

I position the panel at the layout line, place a support . . .

. . . and lay the panel down.

I use the layout line to assure I am in the proper position. Here I am purposely offset to show you what I am talking about.

I correct the position and clamp things down.

I have trouble eye-balling things due to some eye issues in the past. To help me avoid a misfire I place a piece of tape to bridge the gap on the Domino 500 and use a square to extend the center-line.

This lets me line up to the positions I have chosen for the Dominoes. The cuts are made into the panel using the BASE of the Domino for reference.

Ta-Da.

Then using the SAME marks and the same BASE as a reference I cut the perpendicular mortises. Again, a spare leg gets used as a properly thickness'd support.

Alignment to the SAME marks is done using the built-in line on the BASE of the Domino.

This yields matching mortises with a matching offset from the to-be-joined parts.

Lines up like so.

And looks like so

Three more sets of holes to go and I can glue-up.

[gee-dub]

I have shown this before but realize that others may come behind us and want the whole deal .
I am using the spindle sander to make this arc on the side panels of this build. My previous chunk-o-scrap fence was too short so I grabbed a piece of ply out of the junk pile and ripped a piece reliably 5" wide. This piece of "stuff" needs to be milled true and be at least twice as long as your blank. I then cut a hole at the center with the bandsaw to allow for the spindle.

This creates a bearing surface for shaping the ends of the curve and specifying the depth of the arc/recess.  The bulk of the waste is cut out on the bandsaw.

Once I am happy with one of them I use it to mark out the second.

And there we go; all happy.

[Chet]

That's a great setup on the spindle sander.  I will be using that in the future.

Thanks.

[gee-dub]

On 6/25/2023 at 9:48 AM, Chet said:

That's a great setup on the spindle sander.  I will be using that in the future.

Thanks.

LOL, yeah . . . it's like spindle-jointing .

 

As long as I am grooving these stiles and dividers I may as well detail a use of the Grr-Ripper. I have a few Grr-Rippers with a variety of doo-dads that go along with them. This one is basically setup as their GR-200. I set the push block height just shy of the material height to allow pressure down on the rubber pads. I use a steel rule to create a bit of a gap between the block and the fence.

This lets me set the hook/plate tight against the stock while leaving a bit of a gap between the whole rig and the fence. I should mention that I remove the rule before doing the operation.





Now a decent amount of pressure down and toward the fence provides a sort of a moveable featherboard action holding the stock tight to the table and tight to the fence for the duration of the operation.

I find this gives me the cleaner cut we are used to from a featherboard, keeps my hands well away from the business end of things and provides a stock hook to give consistent forward motion through the cut.

I am not sponsored . . . just a fan.

[Immortan D]

What do you use to clean the pad on your grrrippers? I was unable to use mine in my last project because they were not gripping the material at all. I cleaned them with 70% alcohol to no avail. BTW my grippers are about 5 years old but they did not see much use.

[gee-dub]

I use denatured alcohol as a rule with varying success.  Like most pads the rubber component is the weak spot.  I have ones that are 15 years old and still functioning but my environment is pretty mild compared to other parts of the country.  I have lightly sanded by wiping them across a sheet of 220 grit stuck to a board for the really old ones.  This seems to provide some extension of pad life.  Certainly if the push pad slips it is not something I want to use .  I also have some grout floats and shop made push blocks.  Those don't have a lot of the tricked out functionality and their pads also eventually fail but, they are a third of the cost or made from scrap.

[gee-dub]

P.s. I keep a couple of these around.  A reliable substrate with 50, 80, 150, and 220 sheets stuck on with spray adhesive. 

Easily changed when they wear out. Great for all sorts of flat surface touch up work AND push blocks

[gee-dub]

Thanks for tagging along on this one guys.  There have been a few days with lots of effort and nothing to show as happens during these things .  It helps to have your fellows following along despite the boring parts .

[gee-dub]

I usually try to do glue-ups in sub-assemblies in order to keep the old heart-rate down. A couple of dry runs helped.

But there are just a lot of parts in these frame and panel assemblies. This is the back.

[gee-dub]

Now that I made it through that once I can take a little more time and show the process. I stage all my parts, adhesives, spreaders, rags, etc.

I use a couple of large hand-screws to act like ballast and keep the parts a little more stable while I am assembling things. In place of space balls I use pea-size squirts of silicone glue in the grooves. The silicone has a long open time so I can add all the squirts before I start using PVA. Once fully assembled I can still move the floating panels around to center them just how I want them. When the silicone sets I have custom "space balls" to keep things centered throughout the seasonal changes.

I add an end stile, a panel, a divider, another panel . . .

. . . etc. until I get to the other end stile.

I add the top rail and check for square.

Once I am happy I clamp across each stile or divider position. I can still nudge the panels a little for final adjustment if required.

Now I go out for dinner, enjoy the evening, and come back in the morning.

You can see that the panels on this front section have a little more interesting figure than the rear panel shown in the prior post. This material is cut from the same blank as the side assembly panels shown earlier in the thread.

[gee-dub]

This dry fit is starting to look like something. I have not arched the bottom of the lower rails so you see a bit peeking past the arc on the feet. I'll have to pick that up tomorrow.

Front:

Rear:

[Coop]

Glenn, could you show a full frontal (never asked a guy this) to show the leg profile against the frame? 

[gee-dub]

On 6/29/2023 at 7:28 PM, Coop said:

Glenn, could you show a full frontal (never asked a guy this) to show the leg profile against the frame? 

Sure.  It currently looks like so:

Once I cut the arc in the lower rail it will look more like this:

I told LOML I had to run out to the shop to take a picture of something on the blanket chest for somebody.  As I was heading out the door she yelled after me "You're not selling that!". 

[Coop]

Thanks

Sounds like a bargaining tool!