I was able to get the drawer lock joints cut on the four little drawers. Fortunately, I set this up the other day. Without instructions, it took me a little longer than it probably should have. Once you dial in the height for a good fit, it’s all in the fence adjustment. Pretty decent little machine joint, that’ll be a lot faster to perform the next time:

Next up, I cut the grooves for the bottoms (on the table saw, but was wishing for one of those little LV plow planes), marked out for fielding the bottom panels, and fielded them with a block plane:

Here are a couple of dry fit drawers:

Glued ‘em, clamped ‘em, squared ‘em, and there you have it – the drawers will be ready to fit to the carcase next…

I’m pretty pleased with the process so far. I haven’t invested too much time and it seems to be coming along at a relatively smooth pace…

I keyed the miters with walnut:

Glued up the dividers:

and, cut out the all the drawer parts:

I’ve got drawer bottom stock prepared from the first day (in the background of the photo above), so my next step will be to cut the joinery for the drawers. And, since this is supposed to be a quick and dirty project, I’m going to rout the drawers with a drawer lock bit. Like this:

Also, something that wouldn’t take forever to build and would give some (relatively) instant gratification.

I had some scrap cedar, fir, poplar, and walnut that’ll be used in this little box/case. Milled the assorted woods to 5/8” for the main carcase and drawer fronts, 1/2” for dividers and drawer sides, and 1/4” for the drawer bottoms and back.

Here are the carcase sides made up. After cutting to length, I rabbeted the back edge 1/4”x1/4”, plowed stopped dadoes for the drawer dividers, and mitered the ends.

This next photo is simply the dry fit to see how the miters came together. I’ll tell you, they’re not perfect, I don’t have a jig to perfect miters on stock this wide. I suppose I could’ve built one, but didn’t want to spend my time doing that at this point. I used the tip that Karson picked up from Franz Klausz – that is: to use the inside of the board as the outside (show) surface. I like the idea in this case especially because, if the boards were to cup, they’d want to push on the outside corners, rather than split the corners open. With the keys that’ll come, I have no fear that this case will want to come apart down the line.

All the corners/sides were nice and square at glue up time:

A couple shots from the front, after cutting and fitting divider stock to the case:

- and in color too!:

Here’s a shot from the back – the dividers are sticking out in the back because they are not assembled yet. Still need to run tongue and grooves for those, as well as put in a guide block for the upper divider in the center. It will have a central muntin.

The use of the blocks really did help to maintain the rake angle and give you something to hold on to when filing. I continued to file all the teeth from one side until they all had a uniform shape.

After the teeth were shaped, I set them using a standard set with a range of 4-12 TPI settings. I used a set similar to this one:

I jointed lightly once again and filed the teeth lightly from both sides this time (alternating every tooth). It’s important to file the teeth that are set away from you. I ended up using two passes on each side to remove the flats and file the teeth to sharp points that do not reflect light on the cutting edge. Here’s what I ended up with:

I’m pretty pleased. Remember what the teeth looked like originally? Here you go:

I was able to take a saw that literally could not cut, and sharpen it to a real decent cutting saw that cuts straight (or as straight as I can cut) and fits snug in the kerf without binding:

A little more technical info:

The saw blade is .020” thick and it now has an overall set of .006” or .003” per side, achieved by systematically honing the sides of the teeth to reduce the set. I think it took 3-4 passes per side with a coarse diamond hone. After setting the teeth, the saw had an overall set of .012” (with the saw set on it’s finest setting). Even that would be a lot better than the original .022” of set the saw came with, which would make the kerf .042” or twice as thick as the blade!

This saw with 13 TPI filed RIP with an 8 degree rake angle cuts fast and clean.

Next, I’ll tune the crosscut saw…

The only functional western style backsaw I own (aside from a flush cut saw) is a Garlick and Sons 8” dovetail saw with a turned handle and 19 teeth per inch (TPI). It’s comfortable and cuts well. I discovered it has a little bit more set than it should (.010” overall set; should be .004-008” overall), so will adjust that after I gain skill with the following saws, though it just takes honing the sides of the teeth to lessen the set and it’s not over by much. I cut these with the G&S saw sharpened from the factory:

Here’s what its teeth look like up close:

There are just so many of them! I’ve been doing A LOT of reading about saws and saw sharpening lately and I believe the consensus of authors on the topic is that there is no need for a 20 TPI (or thereabouts). Most authors state that 10-15 is about right. One advocated filing away every other tooth on a saw in the 20-26 TPI range. By the way, the Lie Nielsen dovetail saw has 15 TPI…sounds about right.

This Two Cherries saw is in dire shape. It was given to me by an acquaintance and it has never been able to cut. Literally. It roughs up wood pretty good though. I had it stored away waiting for the day that I would learn to sharpen my saws. That day has come.

Its got 13 TPI and the shape is just dead wrong for a RIP saw. See the G&S teeth above to get the idea for what a rip saw shape should be like. This shape is closer to a crosscut (CC) shape, but filed incorrectly (if filed at all). This saw had overall set of .022”. The teeth might as well have been sideways! My hunch is that this saw’s teeth were stamped at the factory and machine set (or all was done in one procedure?). I plan to correct the shape and file this as a RIP saw, that can be used for dovetails or as a small carcase/tenon saw. This saw, although tagged with the Two Cherries label, is the same saw that Chris Gochnour sharpened in his article and video at FWW. However, the saw he reviewed and sharpened was a Deer brand. Bottom line: just a $10-15 saw. Perfect for learning on. Here’s what the teeth look like up close:

This other saw, I’m calling a Stanley, as it came out of a little miter jig that I bought for a buck or so at a tool swap. It actually cuts second best to the G&S. It has 15 TPI and will probably stay that way. It is filed RIP at this point and has about .012” of overall set. I plan to file this as a CC saw and reduce its set.

Here’s what its teeth look like:

To start on the Two Cherries saw, I first took the set out by hammering it out gently on the anvil of a small vise:

It’s important to use a hammer with a convex face, and the Warrington pattern hammer fits the bill. A ball peen would have worked well too, but this one is always on the bench.

I made a saw jointer out of a scrap piece of fir and jointed the teeth to a small consistent flat on the top of every tooth with an 8” mill bastard:

If you look close you can see the jointed teeth toward the right side in the photo of the saw. You can only see the area that is reflective, but all teeth are equally flat:

Next up, I used a 5” double extra slim taper saw file to just barely start to shape the teeth. I’ve been stealing away time and have literally only had a minute here and a minute there to work on this, so bear with me!

The file (it’s a little guy):

The few (8-9) teeth that I started to roughly reshape, can be seen on the left hand side:

After these teeth are reshaped, I’ll set them, do another light jointing, and do the final sharpening from both sides.

Along with the saw jointer block I was able to muster up a Tage Frid style saw vise. It’s hinged at the bottom and the hard maple jaws are tapered so that it’s tight up high – where it counts. It seems to work well. This is really where all my spare minutes went. But, I had to have it before moving on!

I finally got great results out of my scrapers – for fine work…

Even though I was honing up to 6000 (waterstones) on the sides and edges of my scrapers, I was burnishing with a HSS round stock turning gouge that seemed pretty hard and smooth to me…(I’ve been too cheap to buy a “real” burnisher).

Well, it had been tearing the softer steel that I had honed fine, and resulted in a scrappy burnished hook. It worked great, but was about as rough as if I had burnished following the file.

I’ve since corrected this by buying and using a burnishing rod, which is polished and should be maintained polished. A little camelia oil and the polished burnisher on my newly honed scrapers and wowzers…gossamer shavings, around .001”

...I set up a level ‘foundation’ for the lumber stack. Made sure it was up off the ground and spaced the beams just under 2ft apart:
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
Here’s a couple shots of the progress. My wife helped me haul the lumber to it’s resting place and helped to stack and sticker the pile. We used 3/4” stickers spaced in line with the beams underneath:
.
.
.
.


.
.
.
. Here we have the complete stack:
.
.
.
.


.
.
.
. All topped off with progressively narrower 2x stock to provide some pitch for good run off, corrugated roofing material, and some solid concrete blocks to weight the whole thing down and provide a bit of restraint to limit movement:
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
. All in all, we have a few hundred board feet of lumber here…we’ll see how it dries! We’ll give it through next summer.

That’s all folks!

.
.
.
. At some point after the next few cuts we hit our 3rd and 4th nails within the same board:
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
. But, look what we have here!
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
. Here’s a shot of the “scene” at this point (there’s a few board feet of sawdust):
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
. We’ll finish up the sawing in the next installment…We uncovered a real gem just a bit deeper in this half of the log! – MORE TO COME!...

.
.
.
. After a few cuts we hit a nail…pulled the saw out and cut from the other end…chipped a tooth but nothing really terrible; the chain was still relatively sharp, so we continued to cut!
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
. Here’s the spalting a bit closer up…it gets even better in the 2nd half!...
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
. A bookmatch shot for fun…
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
. MORE TO COME!
.
.
.
. Sorry to string it out, but it takes a while to upload everything and put the blog together, with only so much time on my hands…Thanks for checking this out!*