Well. It has been a while. Craft show have been good. Not Great but good. I have a new project I have been working on for a customer. A black walnut jewelry box with Elm dividers and keys. I will need to take some picture for you so you can see the work. I had some troubles with my miter corners. That happens with you have low grade equipment. I have, however, made things come together with the use of a good saw blade and a miter sled for the table saw. Huge difference. My corners are not perfect but the are good. The fun part of this project was that I milled the lumber myself. Cost of wood was only my time. I don’t have a thickness planer so all of the lumber was planed down my hand. Now thats a lot of work but it was fun. So needless to say that there is not a lot of “perfection” to any of my cuts and thickness but the quality suprised even me. I am very proud of this project because I had to do most everything by hand tools alone. No power sanders, jointers, bandsaw or drills. Just my table saw and me. I will post pictures soon.
-- In His Grip,
3 comments so far
Bill
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2512 posts in 613 days
posted 383 days ago
Miters are always tough. I just made a picture frame for someone, and when I dry assembled it the corners looked great. When I put in the dominos and then glued it together, they were not quite so great. The small gaps were not really noticeable once the stain was applied. Still, the fact that I did not get perfect fitting miters bothered me. Oh well, the next one will be better.
I am looking forward to seeing your pictures on this project.
-- Bill, Turlock California, http://www.brookswoodworks.com
MsDebbieP
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11657 posts in 612 days
posted 383 days ago
isn’t there some woodworking rule that glue changes the angles cut into pieces of wood? :)
-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)
Don
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2586 posts in 629 days
posted 383 days ago
Miters, miters, miters…
A beautiful joint with no end-grain showing and really simple – right? NO!
Well the first part is right – they are attractive, but making a good miter joint is not as easy as it looks. And they get more difficult that just matching two 45 degree cuts together – there’s the compound miter joint that introduces another angel, or the mitered dovetail joint, and many other variations – all difficult to make.
I can always make a three-sided picture frame with perfect miter joints – it’s adding that fourth side where everything can go pear-shaped.
The problem is one of compound errors. What looks to the eye like a perfect 45 degrees, may actually be 45.05 degrees, or 44.95 degrees. Three pieces fit together well, but when you add the fourth piece you see you are out by 1.5 degrees.
If you can’t get your saw set up perfectly, there is hope. Make a sled with a 90 degree block split by the saw blade as close to 45 degrees both sides as possible. If you are out on one side by a little, you will be out on the other side by a compensating amount. Keep track of your pieces, mark them A & B cuts and make sure that you fit an A cut to a B cut all the way around.
Result? A PERFECT MITER CUT FRAME!
-- CanuckDon "I just love small wooden boxes!" http://www.canterburybaptist.org/