# Work In Progress



## Byron (Nov 19, 2011)

*Canasta*

These images document some of the process of my most recent completed project which was a reliquary dedicated to my Mother.

The requirement for this project was to design and make a Reliquary utilizing a door and a drawer. Our warm up project was to fit a drawer with half blind dovetails to a previously made carcass of MDF by our professor Rich Tannen.










This was my first real go at dovetails. Some of the proportions were off as to what I wanted but I was pleased with the craftsmanship.

After many drawings and a very small model, unfortunately not included at this time, I finished a rough full scale model.



















I love working with mahogany but I had wanted a Lighter color wood to create a contrast in the ebony divide between the doors and the panel, as well as highlight the contrast in the carvings. I just felt a light toned wood was good for this piece. I played around with the idea of bleaching Mahogany since I needed thicker stock for the carving of the panel, and could not find thicker stock of Avodire. Avodire is a relative of Mahogany I believe, and is basically a blond version. I ended up finding some beautiful pieces from GW hardwoods near by my school acquiring a straight grained flat sawn board used for the panel, and a more figured board used for the outer components. I needed to do extensive carving on the front panel so I needed a good wood for carving, ideally without too much figure.

This is not the best quality image but here is the roughed out

door with the gap in it resting over the (hidden) carcass.










This image is just a cool shot I took of the dovetails for the drawers as I was chopping all four pairs of tails at once, the other side is the same. Luckily I was able to cut more then one set of tails at a time by doubling and even tripling up the pieces as I cut them.

I have a great little japanese dovetail saw I use for all my dovetails. It is extremely rigid and leaves a fine cut with a thin kerf i usually do not need to true up with a chisel, allowing very small dovetails to be cut without having to make a weird tiny chisel.

Its hard to tell in this picture but each of the four pieces are less then an inch in width (31/32"), so these dovetails are very small.










More to come in the next post!

Thanks for reading,


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## Byron (Nov 19, 2011)

*Canasta Part Two*

So unfortunately I had not taken many pictures during the process of hand planing the curved door as well as cutting the dovetails for the carcass.

I wanted the door to be thin, very thin, which ultimately led to many, many problems. I ended up with a final thickness of a bout 1/4 inch. While I was milling the door I did not have the wood move on me much at all, the Avodire I ended up getting was so incredibly stable I could do almost anything to it and it would not warp. The one thing it did do though was sag. After letting it sag back an forth from too much of a curve to too little of a curve I finally caught it at a time when it was back to where I milled it, and I ended up preventing it from sagging by using packing tape to hang it off a ledge on the wall near my bench.

Too get the surface of my door I planed the front and the back of the door in by hand with lines I drew and scribed on to all the edges. It was important to keep the bottom exactly on my line to ensure it would sit flush on the carcass when I hinged it. The problem was I left extra room to cut the door to the exact dimension, so I would lose my reference on the edge where I scribed my line before the milling process. To ensure I had a consistent curve I took a quarter inch bit in a router and made a simple router compass. I matched the curve of my door and swung the radius in a clamped piece of quarter inch MDF. Since my door was a quarter inch the material removed between the radius of the arc created concentric arcs precisely the radii needed I would then use these all over my door matching the curve of the templates to my door. I also used a sure and true straight edge along the length. To get the inside curve I purchased a 5 inch radius blade from hock and started making the components for a Krenov style plane with a curved sole until I asked a friend in the studio if I could just borrow his.










Unfortunately I was not able to get a final surface acceptable for a hand rubbed finish by solely using my plane, as I hoped I could do, so used the curve of one of my templates to make a sanding block and lined it with cork.

I used the same process for the front of the panel, making sure I kept the back perfectly flat and square. The panel is coopered where the door is not. I wanted to keep the figure and grain in the door perfectly uniform where the panel I was planning to carve extensively so it did not matter as much. I joined the back of the panel and scribed the lines of the final edge and slowly planed down the curve.










The carcass dovetailed with a mitered front, so I left an extra bit on the front, basically an extra pin not cut out on the tails and a double width pin on the other. When I cut my pins I cut the front pin half way at a 45 degree angle and miter the remaining half of the pin, doing the same to the extra pin left on the tail.










The panel itself has a groove in it cut to match the groove in the carcass. all was done on the router table with stops to make sure the tails would not blow out, and the panel done similarly with a rabbiting bit using the bottom of the panel as a reference.

it is important that the back stays true and flat at this point since I will be routing in a place in the back for the drawer carcasses to be set in, and the last thing I want is for the drawers to have to come out at a weird angle, at least for this project.

Next the part I had been putting off, routing the groove for the ebony inlay. I cut the doors to a curve I drew with a flexible piece of wood and matched the template, 1/4 inch MDF, to that and made calls that would keep the curve exactly the same height as the panel, allowing me to rout the groove with a plunge router and a rub collar. Ideally I would make all my passes with a slightly smaller bit to ensure my final pass has as little vibration as possible, taking time here to do this makes a huge difference. I went very slow with many passes but unfortunately there was some discrepancies in the groove causing a gap. Good thing I'm using ebony.

And now the fun part, carving.










There is a sacrificial piece in the groove so I do not slice up the ebony inlay. I am also going to wait to explain my reason behind the carvings until I post good pictures of my project. So heres some of my carving process.










Ill explain the piece sticking out of the center of the panel later as well.




























Here you can see the lines for the next phase of carving drawn in in the top picture and then carved in the second, only on one side though.



















And heres the final carving fit into the carcass!!










Sorry this one was so long but thanks for reading, more to come!


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## Byron (Nov 19, 2011)

*Canasta #3*

There are many parts of this project I do not want to discuss, mostly because they all involve mistakes. With this project I unfortunately made many stupid errors regarding dimensions and process of operations, but in ways that are rudimentary to woodworking. I tried to recover and hide these though thinking about the saying that being a good woodworker is not about making no mistakes, its about how well you can fix the mistakes you make.

One of these mistakes came from a lack of room in the depth of the carcass. This led to my drawer carcasses being cut down in length, and the important extra length on the drawer to be removed, preventing a stop from being placed on the drawers. While I made the drawer carcass I rushed the dovetails, rushed the glue clean up on the inside, and did not use the same wood as any of the visible components, knowing (thinking) that they would not be seen ever.

To remedy this as quickly as I could I decided to cut thin pieces of Avodire to fit in front of the carcass. I have them shown here and they are taped off in a way where I don't put finish on glue surface and I still ensure all visible areas will have finish on them.










The reason the outside is so oddly shaped on one and the glue surface is so small is because I had to rout a recess in the panel for the drawer carcass as deep as I could to ensure enough clearance for the drawers, but I had carvings in the front I was getting very close to blowing through if I went further in a given direction. I know I've probably lost you so here are some of the unfortunately few pictures I took.



















to be honest this is not at all my proudest work but we all know it happens, especially when you have only a few days to finish your project. I ended up glueing the false front of my drawer carcass ( the first picture ) to the drawer carcass itself as well as the panel. And yes I ended up cutting off the tail on the back of my drawer carcass. None of this will ever be seen though, except for in this blog….

Its impossible to tell but the panel is just under 2" thick at its center most point and I think about 1 at its edge, with an inch recess routed into the back for the drawer carcasses to fit in. In the glue up shown above I had to clap all these pieces in a way where I could get the drawer in and out to make sure the alignment is right.










This is what that detail looks like at this point. Unfortunately on the side photographed I had not thought to pre-finish the edge perpendicular to the false carcass front, causing some problems down the road in the finishing process. Also you can see in this image that only the carvings directly to the left of the drawer were sanded so far.

I am still leaving out the drawers themselves and how they were made, but I will do that in one of my next posts.

Thank you for reading, more to come!


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## 559dustdesigns (Sep 23, 2009)

Byron said:


> *Canasta #3*
> 
> There are many parts of this project I do not want to discuss, mostly because they all involve mistakes. With this project I unfortunately made many stupid errors regarding dimensions and process of operations, but in ways that are rudimentary to woodworking. I tried to recover and hide these though thinking about the saying that being a good woodworker is not about making no mistakes, its about how well you can fix the mistakes you make.
> 
> ...


Wow, you are very talented. 
Keep up the great work. 
Thanks for sharing and welcome to Lumberjocks.


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## HerbC (Jul 28, 2010)

Byron said:


> *Canasta #3*
> 
> There are many parts of this project I do not want to discuss, mostly because they all involve mistakes. With this project I unfortunately made many stupid errors regarding dimensions and process of operations, but in ways that are rudimentary to woodworking. I tried to recover and hide these though thinking about the saying that being a good woodworker is not about making no mistakes, its about how well you can fix the mistakes you make.
> 
> ...


AmyDevid,

Please take your spam somewhere else. Although some of our members may be bike builders or riders, most of us don't want to see your comments, which add no value to the conversation but merely try to promote your own business. Your profile doesn't even mention woodworking, says your a businesswoman. Go sell it somewhere else.

Herb


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## Byron (Nov 19, 2011)

*Canasta Part 4*

So here it is, the final glue up. I over clamped to be safe, not in the sense of clamping pressure but as far as where I was clamping.










This glue up entailed gluing all 4 sets of tails and pins with the mitered front (all the same piece) of the carcass as well as gluing in the center of the floating panel. By glueing the center of the panel I control the movement of expansion and contraction to both edges, ensuring the gaps always stay very close to the same, also keeping them as small as possible. The more important visual reason for doing this is to ensure the inlay is always lined up. Although the inlay is one piece through the panel and carcass I still glued the carcass in so the vertical plane the inlay lies in will not move at all. The tails were set to stick above the pins since they would be easier to plane. When I finally planed the edges, which will be my finished surface, I put a small chamfer on the side that would tear out while planing. This chamfer only goes to my final depth, and takes control to hit the uniformly across the width

Originally I intended to curve the top and bottom edges of the carcass to match the curves they already have on the outside, making them parallel. I have done this before on a much larger scale and knew it would take about a day to do, unfortunately I did not have a day, plus doing this on an edge that is already a compound curve makes it a little more time consuming and increases the likely hood of the bit to vibrate.

I already covered how I rout the groove into the panel, but here is how I continued the inlay in the top and bottom of the carcass sides.










The tools I used are in the picture. I scribed the path the inlay would sit into and matched the depth it would sit into the panel slightly undercutting the inside edge to ensure the outside sat flush. I cut just inside my line stopping slightly short, and chiseled it in. The small chisel I made from an old joiner blade and have not gotten around to making a handle

In the next post Ill talk about how I cut and fit the drawer fronts, not yet shown, and will show the finished piece with and without finish.

Thanks for reading!


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## Byron (Nov 19, 2011)

*Canasta Final Part*

So heres the finished thing. You can see it open in the pictures on the bottom. Better pictures soon to come.

The drawers are an important part of my design because of my mother. When I was younger she taught my older brother and myself how to play canasta, and always had two nice decks of cards to play, unfortunately we were not the cleanest while playing and the cards almost always got ruined. Eventually she started to hide the cards. It came to the point where she would burry the cards in her junk drawer, with a few other decks of cards thrown randomly higher up in the pile. This memory of my mother hiding the cards is one of my fondest and I tried to capture this memory in my reliquary. The line carvings through out the panel are an abstraction of the emotions I feel make up the game of canasta, with the obvious divide being the drastic two sides of the game, happiness and frustration.





































And heres the hole concept to my project


















The drawers are pulled out by the fluctuating height in the carving, luckily they are pretty hard to find if you do not know they are there. They come all the way out and hold a deck of cards each. The drawers are fit to the cards in a way where you can flip the drawer upside down and they do not fall out, but they are still easily pushed out with your finger.

I do not have pictures of my process but I cut out the holes for the drawer fronts in the panel with a scroll saw and made all the shoulders smooth and slightly undercut using straight chisels and gouges, then a light sanding to even things out.

Next I cut out the false fronts on the bandsaw. I scribed a line straight from the panel onto these pieces. I used my spoke shave and some more chisel work followed by slightly heavier sanding to bring these closer to fitting, The still were VERY tight by the time I was done. They could fit all the way in, but would be very hard to get out. I dialed them completely in later when I had the false fronts glued to the drawers and everything except the false fronts finished.

The last step was more coats of shellac and setting the hinges.

I used keyholes to fasten it to the wall which I mortised into the liner before I glued them in to the carcass.

I also pre finished the visible parts of the ebony inlay so the pigments in the ebony would not bleed out into the Avodire when I put on the initial coats.

I think that about sums it up, I will put up the final photos on my project page as soon as I get them taken, hopefully next week.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions feel free to contact me through here or email me at [email protected]

Check out my profile for more information as well, thanks again for reading.


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## JL7 (Apr 13, 2010)

Byron said:


> *Canasta Final Part*
> 
> So heres the finished thing. You can see it open in the pictures on the bottom. Better pictures soon to come.
> 
> ...


Very cool to say the least - and quite a story behind it. Your carving and detail is off the charts. Thanks for sharing…..

Jeff


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## SanctusAngelicus (Dec 3, 2012)

Byron said:


> *Canasta Final Part*
> 
> So heres the finished thing. You can see it open in the pictures on the bottom. Better pictures soon to come.
> 
> ...


Beautiful as a reliquary. Even a saint's tiny remains would be comfortably hidden here. Very special!


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