| Blog series by coloradoclimber | updated 300 days ago | 6 parts | 2631 reads | 13 comments total |
Part 1: digital dry fit
I’m building a beside table / nightstand for my son. I found a set of plans I liked on the net, purchased from PlansNow originally published in Workbench Magazine. Even though I have the plans I’m still drawing it up in sketchup. I like to dry run in sketchup. I find it really makes my shop time go faster and I create fewer errors if I’ve walked through the entire cutting and assembly sequence in sketchup before committing. If I start with a square block in sk...
Part 2: gaps in the plans
Still working on redrawing the plans and I came across an anomaly. The back and sides are solid wood panels. The side panels fit tight edge to edge. The back panels have a 3/16 gap between the panels and the posts. I could believe the gap is for wood movement, sounds reasonable, but then why not in the sides. Both the back and the sides are similar grain orientation and both will be subject to movement. I suspect the real answer is that whoever drew up the original plans either wanted t...
Part 3: milled lumber
Making some progress, better be, xmas is coming soon. Got the raw lumber milled and cut to size.Here’s the raw lumber. Pieces milled and cut to size. Shelf glue up. Top glue up.
Part 4: Cutting the Pieces and Dry Fitting
After milling up the pieces and parts it was time to begin cutting to size and fitting up. The construction is all mortise and tenon and sliding panel. At this point the pieces are still marked with the position identifier and the orientation. I use kids sidewalk chalk to mark the pieces. Sidewalk chalk comes in different colors to mark light or dark wood, it’s dirt cheap, large sticks so it’s easy to find and handle, and it wipes off clean with a little elbow grease and a rag....
Part 5: Planing the top and shelf panels
Even though I clamped and cauled the top and shelf during the glue up there was still a slight offset between the panels, maybe around a 64th or so, maybe a little less. I machine planed the panels before the glue up so the panels were pretty flat and reasonably smooth. I like the tactile quality of a planed surface more so than a sanded surface so the offset and the desired for a planed finish combined to lead me to hand plane the finished top. Hand planing the top turned out to be a ...
By subscribing to the RSS feed you will be notified when new entries are posted on this blog.
