Start by drilling some holes. These plugs are 1/4” so the drill bit is a little smaller at 3/16”. I drilled a little over the depth of the plugs at 1/4”

I bought a very cheap 1/4” hollow mortice chisel. I flipped the bit upside down and used it to center the chisel over the holes.

Then I squared the bit.

I drove it home with a wooden mallet. I take two passes at this. The idea is to keep the sides well defined. When you pull the hollow chisel out you don’t want to rock it. Pull it STRAIGHT OUT. That keeps the hole from enlarging or deforming.

Here is what I was left with. Clean up the bottom a little with a small chisel. I used a 1/8” because I don’t want to meddle wth the definition of the square hole or crush the sides.

Dab a little glue in the hole to coat the sides. No glue on the plugs. I don’t want any squeeze out.

Chamfer the plug just a little starting about 1/16” from the bottom. Don’t start the taper up too high, you only need a little bit to get it started. Press the plug in with your finger.

Tap it in with a small mallet till the edges are JUST FLUSH with the face. The effect is that the plug is proud because of the pillow, not because it is sticking out of the hole.

As you can see, these are not perfect. For my first run I put the plugs on the back of the case. I think the bottom plug should be a little further to the right to separate them a little more. Also, they are not perfectly squarely aligned. Ah well, it is a good start and I have the process worked out.

The plugs will be set into their square holes with the edges flush to the surface. The tops are pillowed ~1/64” making them sit proud. Each plug must be polished to give it a beautiful sheen.

I started with 6 1/4” X 3/4” X 3/4” ebony pen blanks that I bought off of ebay. They were pretty reasonable and high quality pieces. Ping me if you want the source.

Next I cut them down to 5/16” squares with the band saw. If you make 5 sticks you can do both ends at the same time and make 10 plugs at a whack.

I use this jig to turn them into perfectly square 1/4” stock. Actually they are ~1/64” over 1/4 so they will fit into 1/4” holes tightly.

This is done with my #4. Plane two opposite sides until the plane takes no more shavings, then the other two sides leaving smooth square stock.

I made a jig using Darrell Peart’s model from his book “Greene & Greene – Design Elements for the Workshop”. I won’t reveal the dimensions out of respect for Darrell but the general idea is to spin the stock in the hole rounding off the end. The Worksharp actually works pretty good for this because I can use finer sandpaper than a disk sander (which I don’t own). I highly recommend Darrell’s book if you want to make furniture in this style.

This is what the end looks like so far.

I used my Jointer push paddles with 220 sandpaper to further sand the ends round and smooth. The foam padding makes this pretty easy. It takes about 20 seconds to get each end ready for the next step.

I loaded up a polishing wheel with green polishing compound and buffed the end of each stick. The wheel is actually spinning in this picture. The camera froze it pretty well ;) I will not use the green stuff again. I would rather use jewlers rouge or diamond paste but I couldn’t source it where I live. I’ll be ordering some on line for next time.

I had a hard time getting a good shot of the polished end. It has a nice warm black sheen. The green stuff is hard to clean off.

Next I cut off the 1/4” plugs from each end. I tried to use the bandsaw but it was a little scary when the plug tried to get jammed in the table plate and came shooting back at me. It was just as easy to use my back saw.

A cornucopia of ebony plugs.

It wasn’t a lot of fun but not too bad. It takes about 15 minutes to do 10 plugs (five sticks x 2 ends). Now that I have it worked out I will be more productive in the future.

Next step, making square holes and setting plugs.

Here is a jpg of the model.

I started with some layout.

Then I cut the fingers with a jig I made.

I was left with this.

I ran a rabbett down the drawer side.

The drawer side fingers were left proud. I pillowed them with sandpaper.

More Pillowing

I was left with this.

A glueup.

I didn’t get a picture but I ran a dado on the sides for the backs to sit in and another all around for the drawer bottom.

Here it is with the bottom in.

I glued the beading to the top and bottom of the drawer face.

And it looks like this with some mineral spirits wiped on for effect :) They still need to be fitted some.

I am really happy with the way these turned out. I learned a lot making them too.

First I cleaned off the bench and layed the back and two sides out in sequence. The sides were already glued up in my last entry. The back has a center stile so it needed to be glued in place. That is why the back is dissasembled.

Glue on the back stile tenons, rail tenons and left side mortise. Push it together.

Glue the dust panel and bottom on. This includes the two stretchers which are attached as an assembly.

Glue for the left side, clamp it up and wait about 45 minutes.

Something to note here. I put the knife hinges in place for this glue up so the little sliver on the tenon side would have something to hold it tight against the leg.

Here is what it looked like after the clamps came off and the glue was all cleaned up.

I used pieces of laminate to shim the doors in place. I used my jointer to fit the doors taking very small amounts off (~1/64”) in a pass.

I clamped each door to the front of the bench so the router would have plenty of surface to rest on and routed out the hinge mortises. Then I fit them with a chisel.

This is what the doors look like closed.

And open.

I am extremely happy with the way this turned out. The knife hinges were a little intimidating but they turned out not to be much harder than butt hinges. I would recommend them to anyone wanting a nice clean look. I couldn’t really find any good instructions for installing them on the internet except on some premium sites. Maybe I will blog a real how to after this project is complete.

Off to the shop again. I have one more set of doors to fit.

First I glued up the doors. I sometimes have problems getting my panels and doors to glue up square so I came up with this simple jig to help with the process. It is nothing more than a couple of jointed sticks clamped square to the bench to keep the assembly square.

Once I have the jig all square and secure I put two strips underneath to keep the sqeeze out from making a mess of the panel.

Put on some glue.

and clamper up.

The jig keeps everything square and all it really is is some jointed sticks. Perfect!

So then I set the knife hinges into the top and bottom rails in the door opening. Here I am measuring the bottom rail (the one with the bottom glued on to a rabbet). the hinge sits back 1/4” from the front and 1/16” from the edge of the tenon. The tape was intended to keep the router from blowing out the front (more on that later)

Then I routed between the lines with a 1/4” straight bit.

It still blew out on the tenon side :(

Then I chiseled out the waste to the line.

Here is the hinge in place.

On the top rail I tried another idea. I thought if I cut in the front of the mortise with my little hack saw blade it might not blow out.

It still blew out on the tenon side only this time it was a little worse, because the blowout started at the back of the saw kerf. Dohhhh :(

So I’m thinking that it was really unreasonable for me to think that I could get away with leaving a little 1/16” sliver over on that side. I will just trim it out with a chisel and leave a little gap. I don’t think it really looks bad. Here is the case with the knife hinges installed. I still need to mortise hinges in the doors tomorrow after the glue up sets. I’ll post more pictures then.

UPDATE

I got four perfect ones on the second nightstand. The secret is start on the inside and come out very very (very) slowly with the router bit. I wonder whose side of the bed this one will go on. Hmmmmm.

I don’t own a belt sander so I did this all by hand. I got a lot faster after the first couple.

First I cut the indent detail using a ramped jig. (sorry, I don’t have a picture). This is outlined in Darrell Peart’s book.

I marked a line 1/8” in from the edge all the way around the bottom and another line 3/4” from the bottom on all the sides.

I sanded the edge up to the lines with 150 and a big sanding block making a nice curve.

then I did the other side. I eyeballed the curves from the top to make sure they were fair and the same. I did the other two sides the same way.

After that I rounded over all the edges.

And here is what I was left with.

But this was the boring part. I had to sand 8×4=32 of these little details to round off the inside edges. The end grain part on the bottom was th most difficult. I wanted to keep it crisp.

I don’t have any fingerprints left :(

Sure looks sweet though. All 8 legs are done.

I also made the curve on the bottom on this scrap so I could transfer it to the leg for further shaping.

Here is the first leg all shaped. I have a little more sanding to do but this shows the idea.

Here is a shot of the legs with the indent before adding the taper. I am glad I added this detail.

I have only shaped the curve on the bottom of one of the legs so this shot doesn’t show it yet. I’ll replace this shot with a new one once they are done.

I really appreciate the feedback I got on this phase. I made the jig exactly as described in Darrell Peart’s book. When I was done I was a little dissapointed that it didn’t turn out the way I expected. I lost sight of the fun of adapting techniques to work in the scope of a design (a lesson I have learned before LOL). That’s why I don’t build from plans.

Thanks. This is a great site and my work will be better for it.

UPDATE:

I finished sanding all the profiles. Here is a shot of one.

and a poorly lighted shot of the stand as it is.

I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I’m also getting antsy to finish this piece because I’m dreaming up some new projects. I’ll be working on it all weekend.

Well when I got home I went out to the shop and cut one in a piece of MDF scrap and set it up along side the leg.

Then I sat down fo a minute and looked at it and decided it just doesn’t look right. I don’t like the way the indent intrudes on the rails. They are just too low on this piece for that detail. I tried re-arranging the jig cutting the indent so it is closer to the floor. Still no go. There just isn’t enough room between the floor and the rails. So instead of trying to cram too many details into this piece, I think I’ll just round/taper the bottoms of the legs so they flow to an end and be satisfied with that.

Now I am beginning to wonder if ebony plugs will overwelm the design. If I do go ahead with them, they will definitely be very small and unobtrusive ~1/4”. I really like the lines of this piece and the mahogany grain is beautiful. I don’t want to ruin it with too much detail. There is already a lot going on with all the curves and offset panels.

Here is a shot with the doors sitting loosely in place. I only need to cut hinge mortices for the Brusso knife hinges and I will be ready for a glue up.

Off to the shop, I have some more sanding to do.

Update

I completed both dust panel frames.
Here is the frame all cut up.

And the frame in the case.

It was much easier than I thought. Enjoyable too!

Here is the exploded drawing of the dust panel from my SU model. You can click on the image to see the whole thing but this end is just like the other :)

Here is a cutaway jpeg of the dust panel in the case.

What I am unsure of is how to join the drawer runners to the legs (both front and rear). Right now I am thinking pocket joinery. I suppose I could lay them in with M&T but that seems like overkill for a piece that will not bee seen. It might also complicate my glueup. (Although I do intend to start by assembling the sides)

The other problem I am having is how to join the dust panel back and sides. After I assemble and glue up the sides of the case, I will need to assemble the case back and dust panel in the next step of the glueup. But how do I attach it?

Looking for input. (Dang, I didn’t figure it out yet)