Another Dovetailed Box

I decided to make use of my newly acquired antique oak mainly to see what it will look like when planed and finished. I also decided some more dovetails wouldnt do me any harm.
So, in the same style as my last dovetailed box I got started.
I wont go into great detail as the build process has obviously been covered before. Usual drill - cut the four pieces to make the box sides and shoot them to exact length. Exact length being - two pairs, each pair being exactly the same size - I didnt bother to measure actual length. I also made the effort to avoid all knots and only used clear straight grained pieces of Pine.

The next stage, mark out the dovetails, Im still a tails first guy... and ... I got to try the new Poor Mans Moxon vice out properly.

My brain obviously hadnt woken up yet ... Look at my waste marks ... phew! Luckily, I realised what I had done, before grabbing the saw!

I got the tails cut and chiselled out without any further mishap. Wow! ..What a difference it was using my lovely new LN chisels, I can get them ultra sharp compared to my old Stanley Fat Max beaters.

Before I knew it, I had a box. Im not sure if I am getting faster or just had more fun chopping out the pins, but it didnt seem to take long at all.

Time for some grooves, for the plywood bottom...

Then it was time for my least favourite part of the process - Glue Up!

With some clamping pressure all the dovetails closed up nicely and I managed to mop up most of the squeeze out before it caused me a lot of clean up work.

I let the box cure over night before using my block plane and number four Stanley to plane down the Pins and Tails.

Time for a lid ... Using one of the newly aquired Oak pieces I first cut off the end that was cracked and marked with nail holes and then cut again to my required length.

I used my no#6 Fore Plane to remove the old finish and get the board flat as it was quite cupped. Once squared and trimmed to size, I used my no#4 to add a nice chamfer / bevel around the front and sides of the board to form the lid.

Lastly, I whittled and spit down some off cuts of Pine to fill the groove that showed through the bottom dovetail. Once, glued and cut off with my flush cut saw, the box was basically finished.

I added some small brass hinges and finished the box with a coating of Boiled Linseed Oil and some wax paste.

Lessons learnt from this project...

• Marking the edges of the Pin boards isnt required, so dont do it any more.
• I think (untested) in future, I can make my groove easily stopped on one side (which would be the front of the box), then I only need to plug two holes at the back for a cleaner finish ... or just learn to do proper stopped grooves!

Read More..

My 2 year old son has learned the joys of opening the front door as wide as he can when he gets home.  In the course of this learning experience he has demolished the cheap coat rack that I bought at Wal Mart about 10 years ago.  It has been on a steady decline for the last year and he finally just finished it off. 

As a consequence of this my wife challenged me to make a coat rack in 2 weeks to replace it.  She invisioned a board with some dowels sticking out of it screwed to the wall.  Where is the challenge in that?  I did some looking around at some other projects on www.Lumberjocks.com and decided to make a Hall Tree.  It is going to be 5 high by 2 wide and 9" deep.  It will have a shelf on top with a 2"back and a 5" stretcher underneath for hooks to attach to.  The seat will be about 13" high with 2 shelves divided into 5 cubbys for shoe storage.  I also plan on putting hooks on the sides.  1 at the top of each side and 1 down lower for backpack storage.

I went to Home Depot and bought 3 - 1x10x6 and 3 - 1x6x10 common boards.  I think they are knotty pine.  I also bought a $5 bottle of wood glue and a $.61 dowel for my son and the total came out to $44.40.  Initially I was thinking that I would make it out of all 1x6s but with the 2 week deadline I opted for the more expensive 1x10s. 

The 1x10s were 9.25" wide which messed me up a little because I was expecting them to be 9.5".  I ripped them to 9" wide and 5 long.  I ripped the 1x6s down to 5" and then used the miter saw to cut them down to 22.5" wide.  I also cut one of the 1x10s into 3 - 9x22.5 boards for the seat and cubbys. 

I opted to just cut an angle for the sides to slope up.  My jigsaw is not working very well right now and I am not that good with it when it is working correctly so the 2 equal really crappy cuts.

I will be attaching everything using pocket holes, glue, and my nail gun.

 The seat and cubbys will also have some extra supports glued and tacked underneath just to play it safe.

Cubby dividers same length as supports and 5" tall.  These will be glued and tacked into place.

The next step is assembly.

Read More..

New ASDOO videos

Laney is showing us how to make a 2 sided game / message board.  It is refreshing to see that he is still moving forward with his videos even after Google screwed him and closed his adsense account.

Read More..