Sideboard for the Dining Room

[glenn bradley]

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.
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And glued up some not-quite-thick-enough sepele to meet the dimensional requirements.
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This veneer will be machined down quite a bit.
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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.
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cont'd . . .

 

[glenn bradley]

. . . cont'd

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.
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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.
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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

 

[Robert Horky]

off to a great start. We will be watching

 

[Rennie Heuer]

 

[glenn bradley]

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
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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.
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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.

 

[glenn bradley]

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.

 

[glenn bradley]

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.

 

[glenn bradley]

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 since the rails and stile all set back about 1/2" from the outer face of the legs.

 

[glenn bradley]

At this point in a build I start to measure off the piece rather than off the plans.



As promised I am moving 'all ahead slow' with the gimpy wrist. I thought I would get one side panel done today . . . at least right off the machines with all the joinery completed anyway . . . nope. Got this far though

I'm going to knock off for today.

 

[Toni Ciuraneta]

It may be a weirdness of mine but I really enjoy selecting the locations in my material where I will take certain parts from.
View attachment 124464

You can it a weirdness but that attention to detail is what differences a master work from a mediocre or lousy one, and what makes a piece really speak by itself about the crafstman who made it.

A piece of advice if I may... do give your wrist some rest or you'll make it worse, (been there, done the same thing) and still regretting it as the recovery is taking longer than I wanted.

 

[glenn bradley]

I had really hoped to be farther along by the time I ran out of steam today . . . oh well. Good thing I'm retired and this is for my own home.

So I have to do this again for the other side panels.



Whenever I free hand route . . . or power sand for that matter, I turn on the ambient cleaner and PPE-up.



Someone asked for a littel clarification on this process so here we go. Once the free hand template routing yields the cloud-lift rabbet you use that edge as a guide.



Sorry about the great photographic skills . . . The template collar is sized along with the bit to provide the offset you want. In my case it is 1/4".



The bit must be set high enough to cut through the waste material.



The template-rabbeted edge mentioned earlier rides the bushing, the bit cuts the spoil at the 1/4" offset I have chosen.



Once that is done I cut the panels to final length.



I use an FTG grind 50 T blade that I have to rabbet the straight sides of the panels. You could do this at the router table, with a dado head, or a hand plane for that matter.



BTW, I boogered an edge on one of the panels and had to do a repair. I glued a thin piece of scrap to the edge and re-machined it off.



I wet the area to try to better show the repair.


cont'd . . .

 

[glenn bradley]

I had hoped to have the side panels full-on complete and finish ready today but it was not in the cards. Once all the panels were machined, planed, scraped and sanded I dry fit them into the frames to help me feel like I accomplished . . . something.



Curse you oh gimpy wrist!



Could be worse. Could be my right.

 

[larry merlau]

lookun good glenn

 

[glenn bradley]

I clamp dry fit assemblies for profiling.

This is easier than doing a lot of setup for stopped profiles on internal corners.

I use a similar technique to slot for small box bottoms.
I gang parts for machining when I can. This includes power sanding.

Side note. Those of you who have dowel plates know how handy they can be. I have saved way more than the cost of this Domino plate by making my own Domino stock over the years.

I make the stock with the closest imperial round over bit and then pound that stock through the plate to make Domino stock that fits perfectly.
I am happy with how the 1/8" round over has hidden the veneer joint on the legs.

I made this doo-hicky for the disc sander long ago. I use it for all sorts of things.

Here I add a clamp as a stop.

This let's me quickly and reliably chamfer the bottoms of the legs.

It is painful doing this glue up in so many small sub-assemblies but, the gimpy wrist is the rule of the day right now ;-)

 

[glenn bradley]

I am going to take advantage of the natural arc in the figure on this board for the front upper and lower stretchers.

I joint the face and edge and then rip the lower stretcher off.

Now the upper which gives me a nice continuous grain match.

Ah, spring clamps. How did we live without them ;-)

There is only one long cloud lift on this piece so I will just cut it free hand on the bandsaw as opposed to making a template.

I use the spindle sander to dress the S-curve and the 2" or so leading into and out of it. The rest I will fair by hand.

A piece of scrap and the Jaw Stand (or whatever version you have) makes a good support for this long thin piece. This allows me to focus on the 4" or so I really care about right now.

I shave from the ends toward the middle.

Here's a half that has been shaved . . .

. . . versus the half I have yet to do.

Hope to get through this before I knock off for the day.

 

[Rennie Heuer]

I am going to take advantage of the natural arc in the figure on this board for the front upper and lower stretchers.

I joint the face and edge and then rip the lower stretcher off.

Now the upper which gives me a nice continuous grain match.

Ah, spring clamps. How did we live without them ;-)

There is only one long cloud lift on this piece so I will just cut it free hand on the bandsaw as opposed to making a template.

I use the spindle sander to dress the S-curve and the 2" or so leading into and out of it. The rest I will fair by hand.

A piece of scrap and the Jaw Stand (or whatever version you have) makes a good support for this long thin piece. This allows me to focus on the 4" or so I really care about right now.

I shave from the ends toward the middle.

Here's a half that has been shaved . . .

. . . versus the half I have yet to do.

Hope to get through this before I knock off for the day.

You are the king of technique. My own methods seem haphazard in comparison.

 

[glenn bradley]

Thanks Rennie. High praise coming from someone who turns out the beautiful work you do. I know I am feeding the thread in drips and drabs but I'm going as fast as I can

I realized I was going to need some 70-odd inch clamping capacity. Normally face frame clamps can handle long parts
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but the offset in this case makes that a no-go. I grabbed some scrap and made some K-Body connectors.
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Doing layout for large parts is easy enough using very accurate measurements. I've gotten lazy in my old age and tend to just lay things out on the bench.

The tenon position is not critical but it is critical that they align between the mating parts. One larger tenon would do in most cases. There are no stiles on the front "frame" of this design so I went with a pair of smaller tenons. No science here; it just makes me feel better .

As I often do I use setup blocks for the marking. I use a brass block for the 1/2" set back and a 1-2-3 block for the tenon spacing on the upper stretcher.
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I use the brass blocks again for the lower but just mark off a double square.

The cool thing is that this initial layout on one piece becomes my story stick for the other parts.

I have to run get some pig feed. More later.

 

[glenn bradley]

The rear frame will be maple as will the T&G slats that fill it. I dry fit the parts to do my layout.

I will rabbet the back of each frame section to accept the slats. These will be pinned into the rabbets from behind as opposed to set in grooves. Just something I've been wanting to try The L fence helps with the rabbets of the stiles at the tablesaw.


The stretcher rabbets are stopped at each stile so I do those at the router table. I then have to square the rounded corners that the router bit leaves. I must confess that since these do not show I was pretty rough about it.

Here again I gang the parts to cut the mortises.

My tablesaw outfeed is normally my assembly table. I have some more tablesaw work to do so the workbench does duty as an assembly table.

Yet another use for a handscrew . . . vertical support .

And your typical clamp porcupine.

There is a lot of internal structure to build out. At this stage I will confirm my drawing dimensions off the actual piece. To do this I dry fit the sub-assemblies.


Time to start on the dividers for the drawer compartments.

 

[glenn bradley]

As you can see above I have long, unsupported stretchers between the ends right now. I want to confirm measurements and fit off of the piece so I need to stabilize this very open frame. I am probably not the only woodworker who scrounges usable material. I got a few particleboard panels somewhere along the line that were being thrown out. This sort of material is great for stuff like what follows.

The Match Fit sled really saves the day while I am gimpy-wristed. I cut slots in the ends of some properly sized pieces of the free PB and insert splines.


The splines keep the spacers from falling through since I am sort of one handed right now and can't hang on to them. This setup keeps things properly spaced and square.

I managed to get the panels cut out.

I cut spline grooves in the drawer spacers.

Same for two of the panels with the help of a tall fence.

I cut spline slots in the back frame with an 1/8" spiral and a Colt plunge.

Unexpectedly accurate rip cut on the spline material


This give you an idea of the spline-alignment-assistant.


Ever onward . . .

 

[glenn bradley]

The vertical drawer dividers are only 1" wide. I want to use the Mortise Pal to float a 1/2" tenon in these at the connecting points top and bottom. Lo and behold I don't have a template for that . . . easy enough to make.



Test the fit on a piece of scrap.

This gives me a joint like so . . .

But wait! I became enamored with the figure in this piece of material and tried to make vertical dividers out of it.

Love the figure but there is no way I am going to get a color match and I do not want to start a color matching project in the middle of this build. I go back to the blank I cut the upper and lower stretcher from and take new vertical dividers from that stock.

This boo-boo has derailed my project plan so I look around for things that I can do while the glue dries betwixt spline and divider. I am using plywood panels for end pieces and drawer area dividers. To seat the end panels I need to square off the routed rabbets in the end panel/leg sub assemblies so I may as well do that while glue is drying.

The panel sets flush.

I will do the other end and by then I should be able to continue on as planned.