Closed View

Open View

Lower Right

From Below

Lower Left

This was a great learning experience today while I was away from the shop. I’ll definitely be exploring the 3D rendering more for future projects and learning more about applying textures in sketchup. Let me know in the comments if you’d like to see a tutorial on applying textures with proper grain orientation and rendering in Kerkythea.

That being said… I’ve never had problems making cuts with the dado stack in the tablesaw without the use of a throat plate, though I would not recommend this process. I’m sure there are certain cuts that would be impossible without a throat plate, but I have yet to find one.

Below is a process picture of cutting the tenons on the saw.

Here is the face frame with tenons cut on the rails and awaiting marking out mortises in the stiles.

Close up of tenon

As you can see from the close up photos above I have to hit the shoulders of the tenons with a chisel to remove the little 1/64th of an inch of material left on the short shoulders. Overall I’m pleased with the results, however I have discovered that something(table, fence, angle-stop, etc) must have shifted slightly during the move to the new house as my reference points are no longer dead on… I will have to get this sorted out before moving on to the door construction…

In the next part I’ll mark out and make the mortises in the stiles and possibly begin the glue-up of the face frame… Stay Tuned!

(P.S. I’m also sorting out issues with my digital camera, I got all set up with a tripod, flash, and remote shutter release last night only to find out that the battery won’t hold a charge {{AGAIN}} You would think Nikon would be able to produce a good battery by now… If you have a DSLR that uses the Nikon EN-4 battery you know what I’m talking about…)

So far I’ve gotten all the face frame pieces cut down to final size and have marked out the tenons on the rails. I also cut a test mortise in some scrap that went through the same milling process so I can test the fit of the tenons as I cut them. The dado stack is in the saw ready to rock. I will begin cutting the joinery tonight(I hope to get at least the face frame tenons cut) and will hopefully be able to layout the mortises on the stiles of the face frame.

As I progress I will take better care to document the process.

I began studying the article, every photo, every drawing, memorizing dimensions and going through the build in my mind. I built a true to life sketchup model (see image below) based on the dimensions in the magazine so I could better understand how the whole project would come together.

Here I am, a year later, and finally beginning the build. I finally committed to building it when thinking of what to get my father for Christmas.(He’s one of those, already has one of everything types) My father collects antique furniture and case pieces primarily in Walnut from both early American and European makers. Unfortunately, I can’t afford walnut as used in the magazine, or in the furniture he collects, but from what I’ve seen available locally at a reasonable price, birch seems to have a fairly similar grain pattern. Now while I know it’s not nearly as nice as walnut, given my resources, it’s the best I can do.

In the next part, we’ll start milling our stock and prepping for the face frame joinery… Stay tuned.

After two months of searching craigslist and ebay, I ran across a craigslist posting for a “1920’s Oak Dresser” There was no photo on the listing but it stated that one of the large drawers was missing the bottom panel, and that it would need to be refinished. They were asking $50.00.

I called the poster and asked for more information about it and to see if I could talk them down any. I ended up talking them down to $30.00 and met them the same day to pick it up. The photos below are of the beautiful piece of furniture in need of a little TLC.

The carcase is frame and panel construction with hand cut half blind dovetails on the drawers, and mortise and tenon joinery on the rails and legs. The drawer slides are rabetted to accept the drawers which just sit on top of them.

The back is also frame and panel construction as you can see from the photo below. You can also see the manufacturers label(more on that in a minute.)

It is coming apart, but you can slide all the pieces back up in to place and I suspect only the bottom rail should be glued or fastened which will allow the rest of the rails and panels to move up and down with seasonal change.

The half blind dovetails are decent with some gaps which may be due to the extreme difference in humidity between Michigan where the piece was built, and here in Vegas where humidity is… well… there is no humidity here. One of the drawers is missing half of the bottom half pin as you can see in one of the pictures below. The drawers are all rigid and do not have any diagonal play. Even the one with no bottom panel.

Now, back to the manufacturers label. :-) As you can see from the close up below, the piece was built by the ‘The Stenglein Mfg. Co.’ in Saginaw, MI.

This is where the pleasant surprise came in. Remember how the OP stated the piece was from 1920? I did a quick google search and found references to ‘The Stenglein Mfg. Co.’ in one of their book results. The book details the history of Saginaw County, MI. The result of my search can be found: here . The excerpt on ‘The Stenglein Mfg. Co.’ states that it was closed and re-incorporated as ‘The Saginaw Showcase Co.’ in 1903. Meaning this piece was made at least prior to 1903. :-) The book also showed a photo(below) of ‘The Saginaw Showcase Co.’ facility which was previously home to ‘The Stenglein Mfg. Co.’ I can look at that picture and know that at least 106 years ago, my dresser was sitting somewhere in that building :-)

So now the question is, where do I start on restoring this piece of furniture? What type of finish should be used once I have it sanded down? And, when fixing the back, should the bottom rail be the only one secured with the others left free floating? Any and all advice you guys have on restoring this beaut properly would be greatly appreciated.

In a few short days I should have all of RJ's plans back up on the site, and from there, will continue adding to the collection. In time I hope to be able to have AwlFreePlans.com serve as a repository for plan submissions from the woodworking community en masse. So please continue to check out the site and it’s progress as it begins it’s transformation.

-Mark D.

I called a local vendor here in Vegas to see if they could match the pricing… First I spoke with a customer care rep who said “Well, we don’t have the 708674PK… but we do have the 708675PK, let me see if we have any of those in stock… Oh, wow, we have plenty of those in stock!” Which to me sounds like they have a pretty big inventory… one they might want to shrink ;-) So I then called Woodcraft to have them fax me the invoice(knowing that pricing on the website has changed because the sale’s over… I knew I needed proof from Woodcraft of the pricing.) The owner of the store is out of town and the sales person I was dealing with by this point asked if I could fax the invoice over so he could e-mail it to his boss who is on vacation and out of town till tomorrow evening…(I already like this place, the boss is working even when he’s on vacation!)

So, I e-mail it to the sales rep to forward on to his boss… 15 minutes later I get a call… To make a long story slightly shorter… They can’t go as low on the pricing, BUT, their delivery charge is only $60.00 even for both the dust collector and the table saw… Woodcraft charges 125.00 excess weight fee + 80.00 for lift-gat/rsidential for the tablesaw alone, + an additional 55.00 excess weight fee for the dust collector… that’s 260.00 in fees alone!

So for 2139.55 I can get the tablesaw with the 50” instead of the 30” fence, and the dust collector delivered tomorrow… Through Woodcraft I would get the 30” rip saw and dust collector delivered sometime in June(maybe?) for 2040.00… so for 100.00 more I get an additional 20” cutting capacity and immediate delivery… Does that sound like a good deal? Please comment…

Being low on funds and “in the right place at the right time” I was given an old and very poorly maintained Delta Contractor saw from a friend who’s father recently passed away. In my excitement to get it back to the house and clean it up(the table was in sad shape) I neglected to notice the absence of a motor… Also missing but easily replaceable was the fence(the rails probably need replacing) and the miter gauge(which I’m sure was nothing special to begin with.)

So, after some research I found a guy who restored this exact same model of saw he had purchased for 50 bucks in slightly better condition than the one I now had in my possession. On starting the task of cleaning up the table and the innards, I got a close look at the motor mount and trunnions… apparently the motor mount had cracked at one point and had been welded(again, very poorly.) When this was done, they welded the huge nuts holding the trunnions in place to the mount… Things aren’t looking good at this point… by the time I start looking at what it would cost to fix this saw up the dollars just kept adding up till it seemed it would cost more to fix than to replace with the newer identical model.

Then I get a call from my CPA. As it turns out, I was able to recoup a substantial amount of money paid in taxes due to a business loss several years ago… So I started looking around and decided on the new Jet Deluxe XACTA Saw… I was doing my usual research before making a large purchase and found that Jet was offering a $100.00 rebate on the saw and $25.00 rebate on their 1100CFM dust collector… I thought “wow, that’s a pretty good deal.. they’re basically throwing in a Forest WWII” Then I notice they’re also offering a free pair of their 31” parallel clamps with the Deluxe XACTA Saw… “even better I thought” so I went to a few online retailers to check pricing and found out that WoodCraft had a 10% off sale on Jet/Powermatic for one day only on Saturday 4-14… That’s when I decided I probably wouldn’t find a better deal any where else… this is almost 20% off the going street price… So, I bit… I sprung for the 708674PK and the 708639. It’s a huge step for me and a lot of money, but I think it will be well worth the investment, and something I will have for many years to come.

Look for a full review and lots of pictures of it’s arrival, un-crating, set-up etc. when it comes, followed by many many projects :-D