Jewelry Armoire / Lingerie Chest Complete!

It's done!  She waited through 2 birthdays, 1 anniversary, 1 Christmas, and 1 Valentine's Day... but it's finally done, and she seems to feel that it was worth the wait.  /phew!

If you've followed this blog this far, I won't make you way any longer.  Here are the photos:

The Butcher's Bill

In which I attempt to catalog what went right, what went wrong, what I've learned, and what mistakes I'll try to avoid in the future.

What Went Right

I've added several firsts in this project.

• First attempt to design a piece of furniture based on the Golden Ratio
• First handcut sliding dovetails
• First Stickley Aurora finish
• First solid wood drawer bottoms
• First drawer slips
• First drawer closing stops
• First velvet-lined drawers
• First invisible hinges
• First web frames suspended in each leg where the legs have mortises at precise elevations
• First mortise & tenons that meet inside the leg at a 45 degree miter
• 52" long quadrilinear legs!
• A real shooting board plane on an accurate shooting board is a thing of beauty, speeds up accuracy chores like nobody's business, and is totally worth the cost.
• I made my first donkey-ear shooting board attachment so I could plane accurate miters on 1/8" thick material.  It's just a quick jig so I could get back to work, so I didn't make it nice, but I've already thought of ways to improve it for the long term.
• I made my first sticking board so I could plow grooves in narrow stock.
• A carbide-tipped bandsaw blade is also worth the cost.
• A power thickness planer is absolutely worth the cost. 
• Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the grain orientation and selection for key parts.  The top 6 drawer faces all came from the same board. The bottom 3 drawers were from a separate board but the dye really evens their appearance out nicely.
• Zach at Dunham Hardwoods did a fantastic job, once again, in hand-selecting defect-free, color-matched, beautifully figured hardwood for my project.  Thank you, Zach.

What Went Wrong

• I broke the brass thumb screw that locks the depth stop on my Small Plow Plane.  Lee Valley was kind enough to send a free replacement, but that knob broke too.  I kept tightening down because the depth stop was still moveable.  Marty at Lee Valley worked with me for a few weeks.  He sent a brand new plow plane, 2 brass thumb screws, and another depth stop post so that I could compare.  They asked me to mail in my plane for their inspection, ended up mailing it back and asking me to compare it to the new one and keep whichever was performing better.  This level of customer service is incredible.  They really went above and beyond in standing behind their product.  If I wasn't already a loyal lifetime customer, I would be now.  I'm happy to say that we found a combination of depth stops and associated parts that lock the depth stop in place better.
• I broke the drill bit in one of my hollow-chisels for my mortiser.  I haven't been happy with the set that came with the tool anyway.  I should have saved my money and gotten a Powermatic, but I'll settle for upgrading the chisels before the next major project.
• I never replaced those phillips-head screws for the back panels like I said I was going to.  I got too tired and didn't want to wait for an order of screws.  Note to Chris Schwarz: don't look back there.
• The aniline dye bled into the maple drawer sides.  I attempted to tape these off to keep them pristine, but it didn't work out.  Next time I'll prefinish the drawer fronts and then assemble.  Then when I'm fitting the drawers, I'll just plane their end grain off.  If I go in carefully with a paintbrush I might be able to just darken them a bit without it bleeding into the maple.  The only other method I can think of is to make my dry-fit as close to the drawer opening as possible so I don't have to remove any material.  Not sure how I feel about this approach.
• I continue to have trouble with drawbore pins blowing out the grain on the far side.  Quartersawn White Oak is brittle in parts, so that certainly doesn't make it any easier, but I need more practice.
• I kinda wish I made narrower pins in the dovetails.  These look like they could have been made by a machine router bit.  I was super nervous going into that phase of the project so I gave myself extra room to screw up, but I think I've got the hang of it now and can start leveling up my dovetails.
• The top isn't perfectly flat because my workbench wasn't perfectly flat.  It's close though.  If I were to build another bench I don't think I'd bother with the split-top.  One solid surface seems like I'd enjoy it better.  Add it to the list!
• I took a bit too much wood off a few of the drawer sides when fitting them, removing the possibility of a piston-fit.  I had to glue some thin shims to the drawer guides in the lower drawer bays and then plane them back down until the larger drawers stopped jamming.  I admit I was impatient at this point and wanted the drawers in and done, but this is the worst kind of mistake after all this work.  It's so important to slow down here and take super light passes and keep retesting the fit over and over again.  Once you go too far it's too late.
• My drawer closing stops were positioned too close to my drawer guides, thus preventing my large shoulder plane from fitting in there to tune the drawer guides like I intended.  I could have bought a smaller shoulder plane, but I chose not to.  If I had it to do over, I would have used a rabbeted guide as Mario Rodrigues does (See Popular Woodworking - February 2009 - Issue #174 - 7 Strategies for Better Drawers).  
• I should have planned the assembly better in the design phase.  I think the main carcass glue-up exceeded 70 parts.  I did a ton of dry-fit practice runs beforehand, but still... stressful isn't the word.  Also, despite them fitting perfectly during the dry-fit, the sliding dovetail webframe fronts didn't seat flush with the legs.  They're probably 1/128" - 1/64" proud of the surface.  I beat on them with a mallet really hard, but no luck.  And since they were pre-finished, I couldn't plane it flush after assembly.  Maybe I won't pre-finish this type of assembly next time for this very reason.
• I'm officially done with my Benchcrafted Classic Leg Vise.  Moving that peg manually every time I change thicknesses bugs me.  I'll be upgrading to their CrissCross version in short order.
• I still hate machine routers.  I had to use it for the 52" long lock miters in the legs.  If I can figure out a way to do this by hand, I'll probably do it.  It'll be safer, quieter, slower, and with less potential for grain explosions.

The Aftermath

I've actually been having a hard time adjusting to not having such a major project occupying a substantial part of my brain.  I get home from work or wake up on a Saturday with nothing to work on.  It only took me two days to start getting the shakes.  I had to tell Carolyn: "Whatever happens, don't let me start a new project."

These past few woodworking projects have taken so much focus and dragged out for so many months that upon completion there's a real sensation of ...emptiness? at not having them within my care and attention anymore.  Still, I'm relieved to have this dresser completed.

When I brought it upstairs, Carolyn asked me how it feels to finally be done, and I guess I was sort of in shock about it because I just felt completely numb and thoroughly wiped out.  It was as if the cumulative weight of the entire project came crashing into me.  I wasn't allowing myself to pay attention to all the steps it took me to climb the mountain and only now turned to look back to see where I've been, and the length of the journey is daunting.

I started woodworking 5 years ago.  I had to go look that up.  It seems like it's been so much longer than that.  With each new piece of furniture I can see that I'm getting better and that my skills are improving.  This dresser is a huge leap for me.  The complexity and quantity of joinery and measurement and precision required ... man.  I still get a little surge of excitement when a piece of furniture ends up exactly as I designed it in SketchUp.  "This was in my head at one point, and now it's standing here in front of me."  

As with all of my work, I continue to see tiny flaws here and there.  Mistakes no one else will notice, and I've written them here just as a reminder to myself.  They don't really matter much, as they can't outweigh the beauty of the end result, but nowadays the flaws are in areas I wouldn't have anticipated.  It's not an obvious flaw like a bad-fitting joint or bad finish.  It's more about design, where I should have paid more attention to grain direction, or realized that a board oriented in that fashion would display flatsawn grain and not quartersawn or riftsawn grain (which would have been more preferable).  I don't think this is the kind of lesson I can learn from books or blogs... I gotta make those mistakes myself and consciously decide to avoid them in the next project - the sort of wisdom that comes with the actual experience of doing the thing.

For My Wife

You put up with me when my brain latches onto a complicated puzzle and can't let go.
You wait patiently while the project invariably drags out into several months, looking forward to the time when I can return to spend time with you and our family.
When you do complain, it's out of worry for my happiness in pursuing this hobby, am I enjoying it or am I pushing myself too hard?
You do without me so that I can have this activity in my life.
You carry the weight of my absence and keep our home in one piece.
You don't add anymore pressure to me than I've already added to myself.
You make it work.
You've waited and watched for years as I built furniture for other people.
...and you've never asked for something to be built for yourself.

For all of these reasons and more, I give you this.

The depth of my knowledge.

The height of my creativity.

The intensity of my focus.

The best of my ability.

The fullest expression of my love.

How to Make Ring Holder Foam Tray Jobbies

This was one of the fussiest and most difficult procedures ever.  I tried looking around online to see how other people do it.  I found one guy who sort of used this approach and it seems to provide the most consistently shaped rows, so that's what I picked.

Buy yourself some green foam at the fabric store.  The stuff is super expensive.  Why?!  We had a 50% coupon, so that helped.

But I bought 2" thick foam when we only really needed 1" of thickness.  Turns out, a bandsaw can resaw green foam perfectly!  :)  So that's what I did.

I made a sliding till that fits into one of the medium-sized drawers.  It's 10" long by 6" wide by 2" deep.  I cut a piece of hardboard to fit perfectly inside that till.  Then I used spray adhesive to attach the foam to the hardboard.  The guy online didn't do this, but I figured it was an important step and I'll explain why later.

Now that you have green foam attached to a solid backer board, you can mark out where you're gonna cut your rows.  Use a Sharpie, you're not gonna see any of the marks anyway as they'll get covered with velvet.

A serrated bread knife cuts green foam much better than a razor knife does.  Use your straight edge and cut through the entire thickness of the foam, right down to the backer board.

I spaced my rows 1" apart, and they're 1" deep.

Now comes the fussiest, most frustrating thing you're ever going to do.  

It starts out simply enough.  Cut a piece of velvet so that it's wide enough to wrap 1" onto the backer board, 1-1/8" up the side, and 6" over the face of your foam, 1-1/8" down the other side, and 1" onto the backer board again.  Easy peasy.

Keep the fabric long.  You don't really know how much you're going to need for this.

I wish I had more photos of this process, but it really took all of our concentration and all 4 hands at all times, so there wasn't really any opportunity to grab the camera.

We initially tried using spray adhesive on the foam and then shoving the velvet into each groove, but the fabric sticks before you have it placed where you want it and you end up with lumps and crooked parts.  Glue is not the answer here.

We found the stapler to be a much better option...and it's mostly undo-able, as long as you hide those staple holes when you reposition the fabric to try again.

So here's our approach: 

I honestly couldn't do this by myself.  I had to have Carolyn hold one straight edge at a time while I wielded the stapler.

Carolyn: Take 1 straight edge, preferably 1" wide, and place it into a groove.  This will help you fold the foam down and out of the way so you can get the fabric to the bottom of the groom easily.

Steve: Fold the sheet of velvet in half, lengthwise with the velvet side in.  Put another straight edge into that fold, so that gravity is holding the fabric taught.

Carolyn: lean the foam straight edge over, compressing the previous row of foam to get it out of the way.

Steve: Shove the fabric-wrapped straight edge into the groove.

Carolyn: Slide the foam straight edge out of the way.  We don't need it anymore.

Carolyn: Take over holding the fabric-wrapped straight edge.  Hold it firmly in place.

Steve: Carefully smooth the fabric out onto the foam so that it's not applying any downward tension to the foam. You just want to wrap the foam without compressing it.  Compressing the foam will introduce irregularities between rows, or within a single row, as you might compress one part of the foam more than another.  The goal here is to just wrap the foam as it exists, but not so loosely that you have excess fabric.

Carolyn: Continue applying firm downward pressure to the fabric-wrapped straight edge, but now lean it over so that the next row of foam is compressed and out of the way so Steve can reach in with the stapler.

Steve: Gently scoot the fabric-wrapped straight edge 1/8" out of the way.  While holding the previous row of foam out of the way with your left hand, staple at the very bottom of the groove with your right hand.  4 staples across 6" was enough to hold the fabric evenly and neatly.

This photo is an exaggeration of what I'm trying to describe, where the grey layer is the velvet, the green is the foam, and the brown is the backer board.

This took us over 2 hours.  What a royal pain in the ass.  But it came out really nice.  We had to remove a few staples and cut some more fabric, but it's possible.

Carolyn came up with a nice, neat way to fold the fabric when wrapping it around the hardboard and I just stapled it in place on the opposite side to hold it there.  Since the staples punched through the hardboard, I just used a flat screwdriver to clinch them over.

Apologies for the photo quality.  It's hard to get a clear picture with the fabric so dark.

PRO TIP:  Make your hardboard about 1/8" narrower and shorter than the interior length and width of the space it's going to occupy.  The folds of fabric wrapping around the hardboard will fill up this gap.  If you cut the hardboard to fit perfectly, it won't fit once it has the fabric on it.  This is another reason for adhering the foam to the backer board. Since the foam is glued down, it can't buckle when it gets compressed due to the extra fabric causing a tight fit.  The result is a nice, flat, fabric-lined block of foam.

Precise Magnet Catch Placement

I'm using a magnet catch to hold the side doors closed.  A rare-earth magnet sits in a little metal cup, which amplifies its magnetic force, and the door gets a little metal washer.  The only tricky part is locating exactly where the washer needs to be so that it mates with the magnet when the door is closed.

Magnet-in-a-cup

Magnet looking for Washer, must be attractive and enjoy dark places.

Sure, I could get it in the ballpark, but I'm fussy.  I want it spot on.  My first idea was to put the washer onto the magnet and then paint the other side of the washer with wet red nail polish.  Close the door, thus transferring the red paint onto a specific location on the inside of the door.  

That was the plan, actually, I was just waiting for my wife to get me some of her nail polish, but by the time she came back downstairs I had stumbled onto a much simpler, and better solution, and had the entire thing assembled.  

1) Put the screw into the washer and flip it around and slide it onto the magnet.

2) Close the door and press it onto the point of the screw.

3) Drill where the dent is.   DON'T DRILL THROUGH YOUR DOOR!  OMG, I've done this too many times...
 

You're done.  Enjoy the satisfying click as the washer is perfectly seated onto the magnet.  Open and close the door several times in a row just to hear it and feel the solidity.  Mmmm, quality.

How to Fix a Snapped Screwhead or Stripped Screwhole

I am the king of fixing broken screws.  I do it on every project now.  I pre-drilled holes for all of these little brass hooks and of course, the very last hook snaps off.  %&#@!

Take a drill bit and drill out as much metal as you can.  Put some glue on the end of a toothpick and shove it in there.

Wait an hour or so for the glue to dry and then chisel it flush.  Now you can drill in the same spot.... only this time, use a bigger drill bit.  Apparently the hole was too tight the first time.  Brass is soft, as is cheap hardware.  It can't really handle too much torque.  This is why I usually pre-screw any holes which will eventually have brass screws with harder metal zinc screws.  The harder metal pushes the wood out of the way, clearing a nice path for the brass to follow.  Even so, I'll put some paraffin wax on the brass screw threads before attempting it, just as an added insurance.  Brass is fussy.

All better.  Crisis averted.

Several hours go by, it's well into the evening hours.  I have 1 last drawer to put in place and the dresser is 100% done.  I'm so excited.... So of course another screw decides to strip out of its hole.  Sigh.  I'm lucky I own a 90 degree screwdriver.

Resawing Lumber Resulting in Cupped Boards

[UPDATE: I found more information on this topic and updated this post.]

I've been reading a lot about resawing lumber on the bandsaw and how to deal with the boards cupping.  I had a huge cupping problem the other day and while I'm waiting for new wood to arrive I decided to learn as much as possible on the topic so I don't repeat the mistake.

I've found two main reasons for why cupping occurs after resawing down the middle of a board:

• it releases internal stresses that were created by improper drying at the lumber mill.  
• there is a moisture gradient (uneven moisture content) within the thickness of the board.  Resawing reveals a very moist surface and as it dries, the wood cells contract resulting in cupping.

The best way to avoid this is to wait until the board has a uniform moisture content throughout the board.  Basically, you should monitor your board's moisture content with a moisture meter from the moment it enters your shop.  Check it daily and wait for it to level off.  Once this has happened, the moisture content of the wood has reached equilibrium with your shop and it should be safe to proceed to the next step.

Perform the Prong Test to check for internal stresses caused by the drying process.  If your board passes this test, but the board still cupped, it likely happened because there was a moisture gradient.  

They say wider boards cup more often than narrower boards and if you think about it, it makes sense.  You could expose quite a bit more moisture in an 8 1/2" wide board than in a 2" wide board. Because of this, it's always best to rip to near-final width before resawing.

Quarter sawn wood is supposed to cup less than flat sawn after a resaw, but mine still cupped almost a 1/4" or more.  I did not know to do a prong test or monitor the boards moisture content.  

The board is cupped.  Can it be saved?

If the board has already been cut and has cupped, it might not be too late. If you left enough extra thickness you can plane out the high spots to get back to a uniformly flat board.  

If that isn't an option, then I found this video.  He takes a heat gun to evaporate moisture and contract the wood fibers on the crown side of the cupped board - a sort of tug-of-war plays out where one side of the board tries to pull the other side back into flat.  Comments suggest that spraying water on the cupped/concave side would help those wood fibers relax and move things along a little better.

I'm wondering if by heating the wood so quickly, he's introducing the same improper drying problems that Richard Jones described, except on a small scale. Maybe on a small scale it doesn't make much difference?

So here's my summary of best practices for resawing lumber and dealing with cupping:

Most of this comes directly from John Fry's response on Lumberjocks.

1. Monitor your board's moisture content from the moment it comes into your shop and continue to do so on a regular basis until it levels off.
2. Cut off the end of your board and do a prong test.  If it passes, then there are no internal stresses and you can continue.  If it fails, find a different board or add extra thickness to the cut so you can plane out the cupping that will occur.
3. Setup your bandsaw correctly with a sharp resaw blade set to the correct tension. Set your blade guides super close. Make sure the table is square to the blade both directions. Figure out your drift angle if you have one and set your fence accordingly. There are countless books, videos and articles all over the Internet that describe what all of this means.  
4. Joint at least 1 face and 1 edge so you can register the board against the fence.
5. If you can, rip to narrower stock before resawing.  Narrower boards are less likely to cup.
6. As soon as the board comes off the saw, lay it flat on a table and put weight on it to keep it flat.
7. Finish resawing the rest of the board. Don't take a break and come back later or the original board will likely cup and you'll have to re-joint it to get it to rest squarely against the fence again.  Once you start resawing, keep going until you're done.  Keep stacking your newly sawn boards flat on a table under weight.
8. When you're done sawing, sticker your resawn boards and clamp them just enough to keep them flat, but not so much that you prevent wood movement.
   
   
   Stickering wood to air dry.
   Source: Lumberite.com
9. Leave them like this for a week or two and they'll acclimate to the relative humidity of your shop. The moisture will evaporate from the surfaces of the boards and you'll end up with a moist core and dry outer faces again.
10. Take them out of the clamps right before you're going to turn them into furniture parts.  Mill them flat and smooth.  Keep the rest clamped and stickered until you're ready to use them.  
11. If a board is cupped, spray some water on the concave side and heat the middle 2/3s of the crown side of the board until the wood starts to move.  Stay away from the edges - they're already dry.  Don't burn the wood.  
12. As soon as you see the board start to move, STOP! If you keep heating, you'll cup the board in the opposite direction. The goal is to have an equal amount of moisture on each surface of the board. You can repeat this process until you're satisfied.  Watch the video.

Resistance is FEWTEL

"FEWTEL" is an acronym woodworkers use to remind themselves of the order in which they process wood from rough sawn lumber to finished parts.  Following this particular order will result in you handling the wood in the most efficient way, reducing tool setups, and minimizing the amount of time you spend shuffling lumber around the shop.

F: Flatten one FACE of a board.

A power jointer makes quick work of this.  If you're into the hand-tool-only approach, you're going to be using your Jack, Jointer/Try, and Smoothing planes.  I'll let Christopher Scwarz explain how to use each of those tools for this task.

E: Square one EDGE to the face you just flattened.

Again, a power jointer makes quick work of this, but a jointer/try plane doesn't take that much time or effort either.

W: Rip the Board to WIDTH.

Now that you have one square edge and one flat face, you can safely and accurately rip the board to width.  Rip cuts go with the grain, crosscuts go across the grain.  Most people use a table saw to do this.  Some people use a bandsaw, then having to clean up the edge because the bandsaw doesn't cut as smoothly as a table saw.  And some people do it by hand with a handsaw or panel saw.

T: Plane the Board to THICKNESS.

You've got 3 parallel / square surfaces so far.  Now you work on the as yet untouched / rough face of the board.  You can use a power planer which does this very quickly, or you can do it by hand, again with jack, jointer/try, and smoothing planes.

E: Square One END of the Board.

In order to cut the board to final length, you need to be able to measure from a straight edge.  If the end of your board is all crooked, you won't get a reliable measurement.  Squaring up the end before you measure is the way to go.  You can use a radial arm saw, table saw with miter fence, hand saw, or shooting board (or some combination of a few of them).

L: Cut the Board to Final LENGTH.

You've got 5 square/parallel surfaces.  One more to go.  Measure from your squarely cut end, mark the length, and cut precisely.  Make it nice with a shooting board if you want.  

Congratulations!  You just made a rectangular paralellepipedon.

"[...] the word “cuboid” is sometimes used to refer to a shape [...] in which each of the faces is a rectangle (and so each pair of adjacent faces meets in a right angle); this more restrictive type of cuboid is also known as a right cuboid, rectangular box, rectangular hexahedron, right rectangular prism, or rectangular parallelepiped." - Wikipedia

Why I Don't Follow the FEWTEL Method Exactly

I lack confidence, so I tend to leave extra wood at the cost of having to touch the boards more often.  The wood I purchased from Dunham Hardwoods was flattened on 2 faces, and jointed on 1 edge (S3S - Surfaced 3 Sides), so much of this work was already done for me.

After assigning parts to boards I find spots where I can crosscut a board without sacrificing any important parts.  I do this by hand with a crosscut panel saw.  I consider this cutting to rough length.

Then I rip those boards to rough width, leaving a little extra because I'll hand plane them down to final width and I want to leave a little extra in case I screw up.  I use the bandsaw for this and it leaves a ragged cut that needs to be jointed smooth.

I don't have to thickness these, so I just smooth them to remove the planer marks.

And finally, I square one end and cut to final length with my miter saw and shooting board. 

Not that many extra steps, and I feel more comfortable leaving some room for mistakes as I'm still in the learning stages.

Entryway Mirror Progress

I decided it was too confusing trying to build the bench and the mirror at the same time, so I'm making the mirror first, because it's simpler.  I'll have less to think about if I get it out of the way.

So...

Step 0: Stop.  Go re-sharpen all your tools.  

This took about a day or so.  Longer than normal because I was trying to grind a camber on most of the irons and I'm not very swift at it yet.

Step 1: Cut all parts to rough width and rough length.

Step 2: Cut all parts to final width, smooth both faces and edges.

Here's where the sharpening really paid off.  I spent a little extra time trying to fine tune my jack plane and the results were ridiculously amazing (to me).  This is my first real success with smoothing a board by hand tool in a short amount of time.  It's way more fun than sanding.

Step 3: Cut parts to final length.

I tried to use my jack plane and shooting board to square up the end grain, but it was bothering my shoulder.  Carolyn has said she wants to buy me the Lie-Nielsen No.51 Shooting Board Plane for Birthday/Christmas this year, but that's over a month and a half away.  Not wanting to wait on the project I looked around for an alternative method for squaring up the ends of the boards.

I pulled out my Ulmia Miter Saw and gave it a shot.

I figured that I'd only have a tiny bit of wood on each end that needed to be cleaned up on the shooting board.  I was wrong.

The freshly sawn end grain surface left by the Ulmia is almost as smooth as what you'd get from a shooting board.  And as for having to make things square...

Step 4: Indicate which way is front and which way is up.

Here are all the parts to final width and final length and final smoothness in place.  All they need now is a little joinery so they all fit together.  This is going faster than I expected.

Entryway Bench & Mirror Project (Begins)

The next project on the list is a Stickley-inspired storage bench with accompanying Stickley-inspired mirror for the entry to our home.  Currently we have a piece of junk, pre-made, dowel-assembled shelf unit painted with some sort of leather-effect spray paint my wife found and thought might be a good idea.  We hate it, but it's where the mail goes, and until we have an alternate solution in place, it will remain in place.

Gathering the Puzzle Pieces

The beginning of every project starts with identifying the problems we're trying to solve.  In this case, there are certain functions we want our entryway bench and mirror to satisfy.

• A place to hang our car keys
• A place for guests to sit to take off their shoes
• A place where we can temporarily place the newly received mail
• A place to check yourself in the mirror before going out on that hot date (riiiight)
• The mirror should be low enough that my 5'2" wife can see herself in the mirror, but also tall enough that average height individuals can do the same without having to duck. 
• A place for guests to hang their purses
• A place for guests to hang their jackets for short visits
• for longer visits we'll just hang stuff in the coat closet
• A place to store dog leashes, collars, treats, and poop bags
• A place to store winter hats, gloves, scarves, mittens
• It should match the other Arts & Crafts style furniture in the room
• We tend to prefer a little Harvey Ellis influence in our Arts & Crafts, though less pronounced on the curves.
• Built with solid enough construction that it will last 100 years

Finding Inspiration: The Bench

The next step is where my wife and I do a few web searches and critique different styles of benches.  We even visited the Stickley showroom and saw a few in person to get a sense of scale and construction technique.  This process resulted in the following images.

(source: Stickley Mission Collection)

This first image is a Stickley Blanket Chest which is what we decided to use as our guide.  The key problems with reproducing this exact chest are that it's taller than typical bench height, deeper, and not quite as long as we would prefer for the space in which we want to place it.  Simply stretching it out isn't the perfect solution because it changes the proportions.  Also, that lid doesn't look very comfortable for sitting on.

(source: uknown)

This bench is closer to the overall length/width/height we're looking for, but we're not huge fans of the Greene & Greene (cloud lifts, ebony plugs) and Asian aesthetic (flared legs, shallow arc).

(source: Stickley 21st Century Collection)

And this bench is a little too boxy, too squatty, we don't care for the inlay, and the photo was chosen mostly for the interesting options of how to structure the interior compartment. 

Finding Inspiration: The Mirror

From a design point of view we both agreed that the width of the bench should complement the width of the mirror hanging above it.  We prefer them to be physically separate pieces, but it's important to design them together, since they're going to be contributing parts of the same solution.

This mirror is too medieval, but it has hooks.  (source: Floating Stone Woodworks)

(source: www.lightinguniverse.com/)

And this mirror is juuuuust about perfect, except it doesn't have a shelf to put mail on, or hooks to hang keys from.  We'll use this mirror as our jumping off point in this design.

Build It Before You Build It

Sketchup.  Lots and lots of Sketchup.  We've been planning this project for over a year now.  The first 3D model I created for the bench mimicked the panel sides of the Stickley Blanket Chest, and my first attempt at guessing the joinery resulted in my typical over-complication.  After a visit to the showroom I came home and reworked the joinery a bit until I was satisfied.  

I then drew both the mirror and the bench to scale on pink resin paper, cut them out and taped them to the wall in the location they will eventually be placed.  This turned out to be well worth the time and effort.  We quickly realized that with the size bench we wanted, the panel sidewalls' 3/4" thick "legs" were too wimpy.  It made the whole bench look weak, cheap, and the 2" wide vertical stiles of the mirror seemed stronger by comparison.  Based on this observation we decided the bench needed solid leg construction instead of the frame and panel approach as represented by the Stickley Blanket Chest.

My first draft of the mirror was too tall.  Carolyn had the clever idea to cut the drawing in half, horizontally, so that I could slide the top half of the mirror down, thereby shrinking the height without adjusting the width, until we found the sweet spot.  A few adjustments of how high to hang it on the wall, holding a jacket up on the drawn hook to make sure there was enough elevation above the bench lid and we locked it down.

Now back to Sketchup.  Rebuild most of the bench because the proportions changed again due to the addition of 2"x2" legs, and adjust the vertical proportions of the mirror because we shortened it.

Here is the end result:

The Cut List

From this 3D model I'm able to generate a cut list of every component, organized by wood species and thickness.

A Little Warning About Cut Lists

Cut lists are helpful for calculating how much lumber you need to buy and help you organize your project (in your mind).  Whenever possible you should measure against the project itself for the simple reason that you may have slipped up at some point on one of your cuts, and a fraction of an inch can compound itself across an entire project.  If you cut all of your parts according to the dimensions on the cut list and never double-check your work against your actual results, you'll end up with parts that don't fit correctly come assembly time.  Here's a more wordy and/or better explanation by someone else.

Next post: The Search for A Better Lumber Mill

Wall Hanging Tool Cabinet

A Home for My Tools

I spent all that money on nice quality hand tools, and they're sitting on a shelf in my basement. The problem here is that dust sits on them. Dust contains salt which attracts water which rusts tools. So I need to build a cabinet to keep them cozy.

I had decided to make a wall hanging tool cabinet before I ever read The Anarchist's Tool Chest, and Schwarz's words in favor of floor chests didn't sway me. Even my wife agrees with me. Besides, it's a cramped space and I need all the floor space I can get. Wall space is in abundance.

I'm making the cabinet out of cherry and poplar (for the drawer sides, backs, and drawer webs). I milled it to width and thickness using power tools and I'm going to attempt to do the rest by hand -- wish me luck.

So far I've done a little smoothing with the hand planes (and it isn't going super great, but I'm learning).

There's a glue seam where I joined these boards together and all I wanted to do was flatten it out.  It turned into a 2 hour long aerobic workout.  This particular board ended up looking pretty good, though it's a little thinner than the original 3/4" I had planned.  The second board I tried had a few knots in it and I've since learned a few tricks to deal with grain tear out (again, credit goes to Schwarz).

Dealing with Tear Out

1. pick wood that's easier to plane
2. use a freshly sharpened plane blade
3. increase the blade angle
4. tighten the mouth opening
5. take lighter cuts
6. and don't skew the blade

I've been following She Works Wood as she builds her own hanging tool cabinet, and our cabinets are almost identical, with very few exceptions.  It's been really interesting to see how this project is going to play out by watching someone else do it first.

A Dovetail A Day

Practice Practice Practice

Schwarz wrote an article. I mulled it over. I waited until I had my workbench. I waited until I had my saw. I waited until I had some scrap wood. I waited until I had some free time. I even waited until I had a marking knife and a marking gauge.  It might seem like I waited too long, but I was busy.  I wanted to make sure I had enough room in my brain to really pay attention and learn.

Finally, I started cutting some dovetails by hand. I'm learning little bits here and there, but I think I skipped ahead too fast and I need to go back and do The Night of 100 Cuts, and polish up my sawing before I focus on the more complicated geometry of dovetails.

I'm getting better at handcut dovetails, but the thing I'm noticing is that my sawing isn't square across the board, resulting in a need for paring with a chisel - which introduces errors/gaps.

I keep repeating in my mind Ebenezer's lessons to John Gay, hoping they start to sink in.