# Step-back Cupboard Build



## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Lumber prep*

I decided I need a nice place to keep some china what-not that has started to accumulate around here. My parents keep dropping off stuff that they have stored at their house, now it is getting stored in mine…

After much looking around and cogitation on the matter, I decided the first thing to make would be a cupboard, specifically a step-back cupboard. These are open on the top, and a closed cupboard on the bottom. Sometimes two pieces, other times one. Later I'll look into making a side board/hunt board.

I found a neat looking design that is tall and narrow in the September 2003 issue of Fine Woodworking. The design and article is by Mike Dunbar and he based it on an original Shaker piece. His reproduction is pine, mine will end up being painted poplar because I can't source decent pine locally. The only stuff is either 3" wide strips meant for moulding or BORG banana-boards. I suppose I could make it from carefully selected 2×4s, 2×6s and 2×8s but that would be way more work than it is worth and a killer amount of planing and re-sawing. Poplar it is.

Step one, draw plans on graph paper to help figure board feet to buy. OK, done. Need about 70BF, with at least 18 BF a full 4/4 or S2S'd 5/4 so I can make the sides a nice, flat, accurate 3/4" thick as that will set the tone for the rest. Having the sides flat and true will make the rest of the build much easier.

Step two, go get the lumber. Done. Got a good price on the 5/4 stuff of about $2/BF and around $1.40 for the 4/4 material. The 4/4 however was S2S'd to 13/16" which is a little thin for my taste. But it can be managed. More on that later.









Step three, start milling for the tall sides. The sides are 78" tall and in an "L" shape, the lower part is 36" tall and just over 17" wide with the upper 2/3 of the lenth at about 11" wide. Since I'm painting this I can make these parts in narrower strips, re-glue to make a larger blank and then plane as needed to get 3/4". I have at my disposal a 6" jointer and a 12" planer. This means a little bit of creative panel making. Especially the 6" jointer as it has pretty short beds, being a bench top model. The trick is to make stacks of material to clamp to the bench as infeed and outfeed supports. Helps a lot! I happen to use a biscuit joiner to help me when making up panels. Remember, a biscuit doesn't offer much strength here, just helps with alignment. I've found that if I do a careful job of cutting the slots I can have a flatter panel after the glueup. In this case, since I was working with 7/8" material at this point, I set up the fence on the biscuit joiner to center the biscuit in 7/8". Later, after the glueup, when I mill to final thickness, I need to take off equal amounts from both sides to keep the biscuit centered in the board. Not a big deal but makes me feel better. Furthermore, I keep track of where the biscuits are by marking an unmilled edge of the panel so that later when it is time to trim for length, I can avoid hitting a biscuit. Again, in a painted piece this isn't a big deal but just makes me feel better.









Step four, realize after gluing up about 2/3 of the material you somehow can't do basic math and didn't purchase enough pieces with 8 ft length. Doh! Get one more 5/4 board and finish the glue ups!

Step five, with the blanks complete, cut them to the proper length. The trick here is to clamp them edge to edge and make only a single cut at each end of the large blank. Cut close to the line with a cirular saw and then use a simple jig to clean the edges with a router and flush trim bit. 

























Important tool skills are:
1) measuring and marking
2) sharpening of blades (or honing as the case may be)
3) getting a good burr on the scraper
4) glue-ups without panic

I'm having fun!


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Cutting and more gluing!*

Now that the sides are sized and cut to length, it is time for cutting feet and marking up to get ready for dados, rabbits and dovetails (dados, rabbits and dovetails, oh my! Sorry Dorthy.).

The feet of the cupboard are cut into the sides and two lower front stiles. Notice that the "front" foot is slightly narrower than the "rear" foot. This 3/4" difference will be made up by the stile after it is attached. I drew the shape I wanted on some scrap 1/8" plywood and cut it on the jig saw. Then fared the curve with a small sanding drum, wood file and sandpaper.

The bulk of the waste is first removed with a jigsaw. Both sides are clamped together so they can be cut and routed at the same time. This means you need a long straight cutter with bottom bearing. I happen to have a 3" long, 1/2" diameter cutter for just such a situation. Without this, you would just route each half separately, moving the pattern as needed. The pattern is double-stick taped to the bottom of the blanks.

Here is the finished cut, pattern and bit shown for reference.








The little ding in the left inside corner is of no consequence as this is the inside face of the blank and most of the ding will be removed later when I cut a dado for the bottom board. The routed edge will be cleaned up with a bit more filing and sanding. Wrapping sandpaper around a large dowel works great for these sort of inside curve corners. Again, remember, this will be painted (and frankly, it is the BOTTOM side after all, only to be seen by dust bunnies and spiders).

Now I mark up one of the side blanks for the bottom dado, shelf and shelf cleat locations, the dado for the center work surface, top dovetail depth (pins technically) and the rabbet down the back to catch the sides of the back boards. I make these marks now to help me figure out the correct order of operations later. The marks indicating thicknesses are really only temporary as I'll be letting the finish sanded thickness of the bottom and center work surface dictate the dado width. The back will be 1/2" since I can mill the boards to fit. And the top pin depth will be a function of the top board thickness.









Speaking of bottom, center and top boards… Time for more glue ups! I mentioned that the 4/4 material I purchased was S2S'd to about 13/16". This means that if there is more than 1/16" of cup or twist in a board, I can't mill it away without seriously affecting the finish thickness. The simple trick is cut the necessary lengths from my narrow (say 8") boards, then rip each of those 8" widths again to about 4". Then these narrower pieces should have much less twist, cup, etc and may not need more than a 32nd taken off to make them reasonably flat. Joint the edge perpendicular to a face and glue them back. More glue, biscuits (for alignment only, remember that the glue will be stronger than the wood anyway) and clamping.









A slick trick for popping the glue beads is to use a plane iron in bevel down orientation. I replaced the thin iron in a plane with a nice thick Hock blade, so now I use the old thin iron as my glue popper. After popping glue off both sides, a quick hit with the card scraper and I'm ready to move on to the next jointing and gluing operation. If you don't use a cardscraper already, go get one (or a set). They are relatively inexpensive and the tools necessary for sharpening them are pretty cheap. A good video tutorial over at the Wood Magazine web site as well as other methods can be found all over the 'net. 
















Proper scraper technique needs both hands to make the scraper bow (or use a holder but I've gone back to hand holding the card). But I didn't drag out a tripod so one hand to hold the scraper in the photo, the other hand to take the photo.

Tool skills:
1) Jointer
2) Glue-up without panic
3) scraper sharpening and application


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## Ampeater (Feb 21, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Cutting and more gluing!*
> 
> Now that the sides are sized and cut to length, it is time for cutting feet and marking up to get ready for dados, rabbits and dovetails (dados, rabbits and dovetails, oh my! Sorry Dorthy.).
> 
> ...


Can't see your pictures.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Cutting and more gluing!*
> 
> Now that the sides are sized and cut to length, it is time for cutting feet and marking up to get ready for dados, rabbits and dovetails (dados, rabbits and dovetails, oh my! Sorry Dorthy.).
> 
> ...


Works fine with firefox, Safari and Chrome. Just doesn't seem to work with IE… I'll see about modifying the image hosting.


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## rtb (Mar 26, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Cutting and more gluing!*
> 
> Now that the sides are sized and cut to length, it is time for cutting feet and marking up to get ready for dados, rabbits and dovetails (dados, rabbits and dovetails, oh my! Sorry Dorthy.).
> 
> ...


I really like your step by step blog. As some one about to graduate into cabinet size pieces this gets favorited for future 'learn-from' reference


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*More gluing and starting on some dovetails*

More panel gluing! Got a blank made for one of two upper shelves. Also completed the blank for the bottom shelf and the top of the cabinet. These are important as they set the width. The top will be dovetailed (half blind) to the two sides. The bottom rides in two dados. I'll cut the bottom to final size after the dovetails are done and fitted.

I'm by no means an expert at hand cutting dovetails. Or machine cutting them for that matter. I can do both and I have on occasion done nice looking ones. But in this case, the dove tails are going to be hidden joinery so they can be "carcass grade" work. This is good because I'm not terribly good with hand cut 1/2 blind so we'll just call this more practice.

Go find Tommy MacDonald's videos here or over at http://www.mlwwoodworking.com/index.html to see some good examples and instruction.

Oh, and why am I hand cutting them when I could use a router? Well, the sides are 78" long so that makes it very hard to do at a router table or in a bench jig. And using a block mounted jig is just a tough since I'd be up on a step ladder to do the cutting. Hand cut it is then.

Normally I cut pins first but that is with through dove tails. Here I'm going to cut tails first in the top board then then cut the half blind pins in the sides. Again, I'm not worried if this looks a little crude. It will be completely hidden in the finished cupboard. Ever see some of the hack job looking carcass dovetails in 18th century furniture? Wow, I've seen a few that look like they used trained beavers with one busted tooth to do the job.

1) Mark all the boards. Mark the tail depth at 1/2". Also mark this on the ends of the sides.

























2) I'm cutting these pretty coarse so I think 4 tails per side is enough. Easy way to split things is to pivot a ruler until a number evenly divisible by 4 lines up with the opposite edge, 12" in this case. Now make tic marks every 3". Ta-da, 4 evenly spaced tails.









3) Transfer these marks up to the end of the board. I'm going to make the pins 1/2" wide at their narrowest. Mark what looks like a good angle for the pins. I like this angle, just picked it from thin air! Probably around 1:10. I transfer the marks around to both sides of the tail board. Just because I need all the help I can get.

























4) Start cutting away the waste material. Not critical at this stage if I work inside, outside or on the line. Later when cutting on the pin boards, it will be important to work on the waste side only.








(Ignore the blue tape on my index finger. It is holding on a bandage. I was cleaning dried glue from my recycled plane blade glue-popper and slipped!!!)

5) Cut in from the side to waste out the 1/2 pin space.









6) Cut out most of the pin waste with a coping saw. If I had a band saw, I'd probably use that instead.









Next is to chisel and clean all the tails. After that I can transfer the marks to the sides and cut the pins. Yes, I realize if I had done this pins first I could have taken a few shortcuts like using a router and dovetail bit to waste out some of the material and the transfer of marks might be a little easier going from pin to tail instead of tail to pin. But this shouldn't be too bad for transferring the marks and I can still use a straight bit on the router to waste out part of the material on the pin boards.

I went with the tails first option in this case as an experiment, because as I said before, I'm used to cutting pins first. This will be fun I tell ya! Fun!


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## kiwi1969 (Dec 22, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *More gluing and starting on some dovetails*
> 
> More panel gluing! Got a blank made for one of two upper shelves. Also completed the blank for the bottom shelf and the top of the cabinet. These are important as they set the width. The top will be dovetailed (half blind) to the two sides. The bottom rides in two dados. I'll cut the bottom to final size after the dovetails are done and fitted.
> 
> ...


always good seeing how others do dovetails. I used machines for years in factories and this year was the first time I ever hand cut them. Can,t say I bothered with a copeing saw though, you,re going to chop out the waste anyway right? Does it make it easier?


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## SwedishIron (Jun 6, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *More gluing and starting on some dovetails*
> 
> More panel gluing! Got a blank made for one of two upper shelves. Also completed the blank for the bottom shelf and the top of the cabinet. These are important as they set the width. The top will be dovetailed (half blind) to the two sides. The bottom rides in two dados. I'll cut the bottom to final size after the dovetails are done and fitted.
> 
> ...


Great tutorial on dovetails… I read the article years ago by Mike Dunbar and always thought that would be an excellent project to introduce myself to practicing numerous hand tools.. I think you will love using popular, amazing wood to plane and cut dovetails in…. stay away from that harder stuff like white oak.. hard maple..  Keep us posted w/ your progress..


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *More gluing and starting on some dovetails*
> 
> More panel gluing! Got a blank made for one of two upper shelves. Also completed the blank for the bottom shelf and the top of the cabinet. These are important as they set the width. The top will be dovetailed (half blind) to the two sides. The bottom rides in two dados. I'll cut the bottom to final size after the dovetails are done and fitted.
> 
> ...


kiwi1969 - cutting out some of the waste first makes the chopping easier later. At least for me.

SwedishIron - yep, poplar is easy stuff to work. The white oak for the blanket chest was some tough stuff to be sure!


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Chop-chop time*

Time to chop the pins for the dovetails. The key for me is making lots of marks on my pieces so I don't screw up (much). The top is 1/2" narrower than the sides to allow for the back boards to be nailed to the edge of the top. And since the top's tails are hand cut, they have all the variations that go along with hand cut dovetails (especially mine). So important to mark the front edge and left and right edges.










Now get creative with the clamping so the top board will stay balanced while I mark between the tails for the pins.


























Next I will make more pencil marks on my workpiece to show the areas to be cut away. I just don't want any accidents later!!!










To move things along I'm going to waste out most of the material with a router and a spiral bit. I could use a dove tail bit and get some of the stuff down in the "V" removed too but it really doesn't take that much work to chisel it out.

I've double stick taped a board across my workpiece to act as a stop for the router base so I can't cut too far along the board. And I'm using the depth stop turret on the router to help me make two passes in the cutting. There is a 1/2" of material to remove and I don't want to snap the bit. 


























After routing out most of the waste I can begin the cleanup with chisels. I think the photo's only show a 1/4" chisel but I was using a 1/2", 3/8" and 1/4" to do the work. After each area was cleaned out I re-honed the chisel on some 1500 paper. Someday I'll invest in stones or a Worksharp or Tormek but for now I'm on the cheap and using sandpaper.


















And now for a test fit (this photo shows the test fit of the left side, all the other photos were of the right side during chopping, etc.).


















Just a tad more tuning up to do and this joint will close up tight and glue clean. Tomorrow I'll dry-fit both sides to the top and take a measurement so I know how long to make the bottom board and the middle work surface boards. These get dados in the sides.

The dado cutting will have to wait until I pick up a shorter pattern bit, I don't have a short 1/2" bit to cut the dados. I don't want to use a 3/4" bit. By using a 1/2" and setting up parallel edges for it to ride against I can make a just-right-fitting dado for the shelf board.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Chop-chop time*
> 
> Time to chop the pins for the dovetails. The key for me is making lots of marks on my pieces so I don't screw up (much). The top is 1/2" narrower than the sides to allow for the back boards to be nailed to the edge of the top. And since the top's tails are hand cut, they have all the variations that go along with hand cut dovetails (especially mine). So important to mark the front edge and left and right edges.
> 
> ...


Thanks Tommy!


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## a1Jim (Aug 9, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Chop-chop time*
> 
> Time to chop the pins for the dovetails. The key for me is making lots of marks on my pieces so I don't screw up (much). The top is 1/2" narrower than the sides to allow for the back boards to be nailed to the edge of the top. And since the top's tails are hand cut, they have all the variations that go along with hand cut dovetails (especially mine). So important to mark the front edge and left and right edges.
> 
> ...


good progress


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Chop-chop time*
> 
> Time to chop the pins for the dovetails. The key for me is making lots of marks on my pieces so I don't screw up (much). The top is 1/2" narrower than the sides to allow for the back boards to be nailed to the edge of the top. And since the top's tails are hand cut, they have all the variations that go along with hand cut dovetails (especially mine). So important to mark the front edge and left and right edges.
> 
> ...


Slight re-think on the dados. It occurred to me I should allow for a little bit of radial expansion in the two fixed shelves so cutting the dados with a 3/4" bit and having the shelves maybe a few hundredths thinner than 3/4" would be OK. Since the grain orientation will be the same in the joint, the depth of the side and shelf will move together for the most part. The only thing that could cause a problem is a too-tight dado. If the shelf expanded radially, it could blow out the edge of the dado in the side pieces.

If on the other hand one was to use plywood for the shelves, then cutting an exact fit would be OK.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Plane, joint, glue, clamp and repeat.*

Tonight was panel making time for the 6 shelves in this cupboard. The bottom and middle shelves are wider because they will dado into the sides. Furthermore, the center shelf gets even more treatment because it forms the top of the closed portion of the cupboard and extends out a little on three sides.

Here is what the finish sized blank for the center shelf looks like:








The lip will be have a thumbnail edge added for a little bit of detail.

There are two lower "floating" shelves and two upper "floating" shelves. They will rest on cleats, not shelf pins. I'm going for a more traditional Shaker look so the adjustment is limited to leave a shelf out or add another set of cleats. Not a big deal but something to remember as I move through the steps.

After this it is on to carcass assembly, then work on the face frames (upper and lower) along with the door for the lower enclosed portion. After that it is time to make the molding. This weekend is also a good time to sift through some hardware catalogs to look for hinges and catches. I may go old-school on the catch and knob, making them from wood but for the hinges I like the look of the ones on Mike Dunbar's replica (it is his article from Fine Woodworking I'm using for my cupboard). Maybe not go quite as fancy but definitely not plane old brass butt hinges either.


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## a1Jim (Aug 9, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Plane, joint, glue, clamp and repeat.*
> 
> Tonight was panel making time for the 6 shelves in this cupboard. The bottom and middle shelves are wider because they will dado into the sides. Furthermore, the center shelf gets even more treatment because it forms the top of the closed portion of the cupboard and extends out a little on three sides.
> 
> ...


sounds like a plan


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## Beginningwoodworker (May 5, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Plane, joint, glue, clamp and repeat.*
> 
> Tonight was panel making time for the 6 shelves in this cupboard. The bottom and middle shelves are wider because they will dado into the sides. Furthermore, the center shelf gets even more treatment because it forms the top of the closed portion of the cupboard and extends out a little on three sides.
> 
> ...


going to be nice.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Dados, dryfit and glue-up!*

Good progress today. Got the case assembled. Before I assembled the case I had a little more work to do on the middle shelf. I wanted a table top edge on it. I've got a 7/8" table thumbnail edge bit that I like. Not an expensive bit, less than $20 I think from Super Carbide Tools










This bit is about 2-1/2" tip to tip so the router needs to be slowed down. Consult the manual for your router if it is a variable speed. Or the manual for the external speed controller you should otherwise be using. Don't spin this thing at 20,000 RPM

The resulting edge looks like this:










The hardcore Neanderthal would or course be using handplanes and molding planes for this. I don't have any such tools but a router and router table does a good job too. 

To make the edge a little bit more refined, I'll chamfer the bottom just a little bit. Here I could use a block plane but there is a little bit of interference from the inset sides of the table so it is just easier to use a small 45deg chamfering bit in the router.










And here is the finished result of the bottom edge chamfer as seen on my test piece.










Now it is time to start making the dados and grooves in the sides of the case. I picked up a 1/2" diameter pattern bit with a 1" cutting length. Before using any router bit that has a bearing, check the set screw. Especially new bits. I've found several that had loose set screws. On ones with the screw into the end of the shaft, it would self tighten when spun up. But ones with the set screw into the side of the shaft, the bearing could drift. This is bad. My dado jig is pretty simple, two 3/4" thick lengths of MDF with a cleat at one 
end. The cleat catches the work piece and the straight edges of the MDF will define the dado width. Pinch the shelf piece between the two jig sides and you get a nice snug dado. I made the MDF pieces long enough to span both halves of the case clamped edge-to-edge.









First I install the bit, then I zero the bit depth in my plunge base.

















And finally, I use a 1/4" bit to set the plunge depth on the stop and turret. Some people will tell you twist drills aren't accurate enough for this but I checked the shanks on the drills in this set and they were within 0.005". Close enough…









Run down one edge, then back on the other. Pay attention to the bit rotation and work left to right pushing the router into the jig edge. Done! Move the jigs down and do the dado for the center shelf. Align one jig edge with the tops of the extensions on the sides. The shelf rests on them as it exits the dado.









Next I use my long straight cutting edge jig and line it up on the router side to cut the rabbets down the side pieces for the back boards. The rabbet does NOT go below the bottom board so the dado acts as a stop for the rabbet.

















I can now sand the sides and get ready for a dry fit. The shelves were already finish sanded before using them to size their dados. A side note on the dados, I didn't make them so tight the shelves were a press-fit. Since this is lumber and not plywood, it will move a bit. The dados are 2 playing card widths extra wide. This seems to be around 0.02" extra. If the shelves were plywood, I'd make the dados a press-fit.

Dry fit time!

















Now get a few more clamps ready and do the glue up. The joints will get re-enforced with some cut nails (yes nails). This is a Shaker piece and nails are OK, especially since I'm using cut nails. Just make sure to orient them correctly so they work like the wedge they are designed to be. And make the pilot hole (scant hole in the 'lingo) about the same size as the midsection of the nail.








Break time.


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## stefang (Apr 9, 2009)

rwyoung said:


> *Dados, dryfit and glue-up!*
> 
> Good progress today. Got the case assembled. Before I assembled the case I had a little more work to do on the middle shelf. I wanted a table top edge on it. I've got a 7/8" table thumbnail edge bit that I like. Not an expensive bit, less than $20 I think from Super Carbide Tools
> 
> ...


Thanks for all the routing details. I don't use my router enough because I'm not as proficient with it as I would like to be, so these little tricks you are showing make it seem less complicated. I also liked that profile you made with the first bit. It has kind of a dynamic look to it that makes it a little special. Hope you post the final cupboard when finished. I'm sure it's going to be beautiful.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Shelves and cleats*

The blanks for the upper and lower "floating" shelves will have a simple bull-nose profile routed on them. This is the same profile shown in Mike Dunbar's article and I like the look. But I had to go pick up a bull-nose bit (Freud, purchased at local Woodcraft). I got a 3/16" radius version. Should work out just fine.










This is not a bearing guided bit so the router table fence must be set up correctly. My first try, I had forgotten to tighten the bolts that hold the sliding portion of my fence and so as the test stock was almost all the way across, the fence slipped a little and made the bit dig in a little farther. This is why you run a test piece first…

The real pieces ran just fine after I dealt with the fence issue. Also, I clamped a sacrificial piece to the outfeed end of the shelf so that as the real end of the work piece passed the bit, there was still wood supporting it against the infeed fence. I've learned the hard way to either make the workpiece an inch or two longer or clamp on a sacrificial piece (a push sled would work too but my top wasn't wide enough given that the shelves are about 23-1/2" wide.

Here is the finished profile. I think I may ease the corners just a touch with a block plane but I can do that any time.









The cleats are glued to the sides of the case but only at the middle 1/3 of their length. I'll toenail in three places on the cleats tomorrow. The cleat will be well supported and still it can give a little as the sides of the case move.

Here is the case with the floating shelves resting on the cleats. Note that the face frame has not been installed so you can see much more of the cleats and shelf ends than normal.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Cut nails and scant holes*

Cut nails and scant holes.

Everybody has a set of gimlets just gathering dust in the junk drawer, right? I know I could have used a twist bit and the cordless drill and zipped right through these but this seemed like so much more fun. A set of gimlets isn't very expensive and I can see where they would come in handy in confined spaces and tight corners.









I also got my cut nails last week. Ordered them from Tremont Nail Company . Played around a little bit with a few before starting in on the carcass. They do seem to work as advertised and make nifty little wedges.

To clarify as to why I'm using nails. Three reasons, first, these are cut nails and they are "accurate" to a Shaker piece. Second, nails do work well when combined with glue because they will give a little as the wood moves so glue the center of the cleat but space nails along its length to even out the strengh. And third, I think cut nails are pretty neat little buggers and it's my project anyway. :sarcastic:

In a previous post I think I said I would "toenail" the cleats. That isn't quite accurate, the nails are going in at a slight angle similar to how you would angle a nail in the wall for hanging a picture. By angling the nails the cleats are getting pushed into the cabinet side and any weight down on the cleat simply pushes it harder into the side.

Here I'm drilling a pilot hole (scant hole) for a nail. 








Notice the slight angle, also not shown is this hole has a slight tilt away from the camera. I could say this was intentional but it isn't. The good news is that such a tilt might actually work in my favor if I alternate them so that some of the nails slightly oppose each other.

And now you can see a nail setting in one of the scan holes.









Next a picture of a nail that has been counter sunk. 








Something I've discovered, a standard round counter sink sucks for cut nails. I used my largest size one and it worked OK but it did have a tendency to skitter around on the head of the nail. If I was going to do a lot of this I'd grind the head or get a counter sink made for cut nails.

I'll go back and hit all the nailed areas with a sanding sponge to knock off the fuzzies. I'm still thinking about filling the nail holes. I might just leave them alone in the cleats for just a little bit of character. Plus they really aren't that visible on the inside of the cabinet.

Another fun discovery about the cut nails, at least these. There is a pretty wide variation in the size and shape of the nail and head even though they are all coming from the same box and are all supposed to be 6d. I believe they are 6d based on their length but I pulled some that were definitely fatter and had a much more pronounced head.


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## DaleM (Feb 18, 2009)

rwyoung said:


> *Cut nails and scant holes*
> 
> Cut nails and scant holes.
> 
> ...


It looks like you're putting a square peg in a round hole. I've pulled a ton of those nails out of my house trim and some old shelves that I took down in my basement. I guess that's what you get when your house is 139 years old. They really are hard to remove once they've been in awhile so they should hold really well for you.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Cut nails and scant holes*
> 
> Cut nails and scant holes.
> 
> ...


Yep. They work like little wedges if you put them in the right way round.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Milk paint test*

I got my small pint samples of milk paint today. There are a couple of different sources for the powdered mix, I happened to pick these guys Old Fashioned Milk Paint because should I realize in the middle of painting that I need more, I can zip over to Woodcraft and get a small package to finish up.

Another alternative is to simply make the paint. I did experiment a little bit with this using powdered milk, a lemon and some food coloring. I wasn't expecting any kind of deep colors because the cheap liquid food coloring isn't a strong dye. It did work but only if you want the wood to look like something from the Easter Bunny's house… I should have taken a picture but I just chucked that test board. 

Anyway, step one, read the directions:









Easy enough, mix 1+1 with water (adding the water slowly to get the right mix). I just mixed up a small batch, about 1/4 cup total volume. The rest of the powder I left in its foil pouch and zipped up in a plastic bag. This all goes in the fridge. The lime in the mixture is pretty hygroscopic (that means water loving) and so will pull water from the air. This eventually ruins the mix. Keeping it in the fridge will keep it dryer.

Anyway, the purposes of my test are many. I want to see a larger swatch of the color, I want to see how it covers the poplar, I want to see how it bonds to some dings in the wood filled with sawdust and CA glue. And I just want to get a feel for the application process.

Using an inexpensive "chip brush", the $2 job with the light brown bristles from the bottom shelf at the hardware store, you apply the paint to a sanded surface.

I read in Mike Dunbar's article that dampening the wood to raise the grain, followed by a quick sand down works well. I decided to skip this and just go with the basic instructions that came with the paint. They say just paint onto the wood.

First coat goes on pretty rough and streaky looking. No amount of feathering or attempting to keep a wet edge is going to work. It will just look nasty. Period. Don't sweat it. Let the paint dry, it was 95 here today and my garage was plenty warm so after one hour it was quite dry. The basic instructions say to knock it back with 0000 steel wool. Knocked it back. Smoothed right out.

The sawdust and CA patch didn't loose its paint but I can easily see the wood grain of the poplar through the paint. Not offensive by itself but because I have pretty much every color in the poplar wood spectrum in my boards it will need a second coat.

The second coat goes on much more like "real" paint. You can keep a wet edge and feather. It still looks a little bit streaky and I can see some grit in the paint. That would be undissolved powder. If I had mixed up a larger batch I would strain it.

Again, from Mike Dunbar's article, these little bits of powder aren't much of a concern because they won't bond and will come away with the next steel wool rub-down.

So again, an hour wait and rub down with 0000 steel wool. Very nice coverage. I have two colors, a barn red and a mustard yellow. It might need a 3rd coat on the mustard yellow but the barn red is solid.

Milk paint is quite flat. The way to make it pop is to oil it (linseed oil, tung oil, etc) and then seal it with wax or poly. I'm going to test with linseed oil and regular Johnson's Paste Wax.

The oil goes right on and soaks in. I rubbed it down with a rag until the surface would no longer finger print. Normally one would let the oil sink in deeper for better protection but I'm just looking for a test swatch here.

Next is the wax. Apply as you wood for any finish. Once it hazes up, buff it out. Multiple coats would be fine.

Here you see the result (direct flash on the camera so you get a little bit of glare which gives some idea of the sheen).

















As I said above, I used an inexpensive chip brush. You can see some brush marks near the end of the board. Another option would be a foam roller. Given the surface area I need to cover, I think I will go the foam roller route when the time comes, keeping some chip brushes or basic foam brushes on hand to work into corners.

The direct flash is a bit misleading because the wall color is NOT the same as the barn red. The barn red is deeper than what is already on the wall. And the red on the wall only goes up to a chair rail. After that it switches to a sponged on finish with light brown. The wall color and finishing was from the previous owners of the house. I may leave it or I may re-do it a more neutral color. But I think the barn red color for the cupboard is going to be fine.

Again, referring to the Mike Dunbar article, he suggested the barn red for the outside and the mustard for the inside walls and back boards to keep it a little bit lighter. After making my swatches I think I'll just keep it that way. However another option would be an ivory white outside with perhaps a darker color underneath and then some distressing to expose it a little bit.

In the end I'm going with the barn red & mustard combination.

Coverage of the paint is reasonably good, I calculate that I'll need about 1 gallon total of paint to get two coats of barn red and two to three of the mustard. This works out to buying two more quart packages of each color plus the pint packages I already have.


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## stefang (Apr 9, 2009)

rwyoung said:


> *Milk paint test*
> 
> I got my small pint samples of milk paint today. There are a couple of different sources for the powdered mix, I happened to pick these guys Old Fashioned Milk Paint because should I realize in the middle of painting that I need more, I can zip over to Woodcraft and get a small package to finish up.
> 
> ...


Very interesting. I've thought about trying it myself. What do you see as the main advantages of milk paint?


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Milk paint test*
> 
> I got my small pint samples of milk paint today. There are a couple of different sources for the powdered mix, I happened to pick these guys Old Fashioned Milk Paint because should I realize in the middle of painting that I need more, I can zip over to Woodcraft and get a small package to finish up.
> 
> ...


Well, I'm not sure "advantage" is quite the right word to describe it.

Since it comes as a powder and has several extra steps to mixing, prep, application, and post-application use and cost per square foot covered over say, a latex, there isn't much advantage.

However it is tough stuff when properly applied and treated with an overcoat. The colors available seem quite right for the Shaker style. It has a very low toxicity so you can work indoors, no objectionable odor (some smell but it fades quickly and I didn't find it offensive), water clean-up and inexpensive application tools.

Just another choice to make. It looks right to me so I'm going with it.


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## FlWoodRat (Sep 12, 2007)

rwyoung said:


> *Milk paint test*
> 
> I got my small pint samples of milk paint today. There are a couple of different sources for the powdered mix, I happened to pick these guys Old Fashioned Milk Paint because should I realize in the middle of painting that I need more, I can zip over to Woodcraft and get a small package to finish up.
> 
> ...


RW,

Just don't let your four legged sweaty petted friends rub up against it till it dries. Looking forward to seeing the final version in full color.

Bruce


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Milk paint test*
> 
> I got my small pint samples of milk paint today. There are a couple of different sources for the powdered mix, I happened to pick these guys Old Fashioned Milk Paint because should I realize in the middle of painting that I need more, I can zip over to Woodcraft and get a small package to finish up.
> 
> ...


Great going Bruce! Now I have this vision of a herd of naked mole rats stampeding through the kitchen.

Ewww, icky.


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## firecaster (Jan 15, 2009)

rwyoung said:


> *Milk paint test*
> 
> I got my small pint samples of milk paint today. There are a couple of different sources for the powdered mix, I happened to pick these guys Old Fashioned Milk Paint because should I realize in the middle of painting that I need more, I can zip over to Woodcraft and get a small package to finish up.
> 
> ...


Great info. Thanks.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Lower case stiles*

Just didn't have a lot of time on my hands like I expected this weekend. Isn't that always the way?

Anyway, to the cupboard! The plan had been to get the lower case stiles attached as well as the upper face frame. Then I could attack the door and top molding (that will be interesting). As it was, all I got done was to mill the boards for the lower case stiles and the stiles and rails for the door so they are all the same thickness.

Here you can see the two lower case stiles attached (glued). I'll run about three of the cut nails through each to give some mechanical fastening too as the door will hang from these.








As you can see by comparing to earlier photos, having the lower case stiles in place hides the cleats.

And the curve at the bottom of the stiles completes the front leg shape.








The shape on the outside face corner is a simple roundover but with the smaller bearing as used for jazzing up the cleats (in case you do see them) so you get a little shoulder on both edges of the roundover.









I'm not sure what those two spots are on the foot detail photo. In the picture they look like glue smudges but when I look at the piece itself, I can't see them. I've seen this sort of thing before where the spectral response of the camera is wider than our eyes. It may very well be a glue smudge. Not a big deal in a painted piece but I will need to do a little scraping and sanding.

So now some evening this week I'll attack the upper frame. It will have the same edge detail as the lower frame. Notice that the lower face frame is only two stiles, no rails. The door when closed will provide the horizontal members.


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## a1Jim (Aug 9, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Lower case stiles*
> 
> Just didn't have a lot of time on my hands like I expected this weekend. Isn't that always the way?
> 
> ...


great start keep up the good work


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Simple router mortise jig gets some shop time*

I cut and milled the stock for the upper face frame this evening. This frame has only three sides, two stiles and a top rail. Just for giggles, the top rail is going to be joined with a mortise and tenon joint. Could just have been a butt joint, biscuits or heaven-forbid, pocket screws! But a M&T joint seems most appropriate. With 3/4" stock, this isn't exactly going to be a super strong joint. Just want something reasonably sturdy, not like this is a load-bearing member, just decorative.

The tenons will be nominally 1/4" thick, 1" long and 3-1/2" wide (the top rail is 5-1/2" wide). Nothing special about those numbers, just nice easy numbers to work with while laying out the parts and I have a 1/4" spiral bit.

Lots of different ways to cut mortises, all chisel work, brace and bit + chisel, drill press + chisel, fancy loose tenon tools, power mortiser and of course router. I made a simple mortising base for my router some time back. This one is not the self-centering type because when I made it, I did not need a centered mortise.

Here you can see from the underside the two sliding fences that will ride against my work piece. Red oak for the fences and 1/4" hardboard for the base plate.









The stock is only 3/4" wide so I'm going to clamp the two stiles together to get 1-1/2" surface to ride. Layout the start and stop lines and set up a couple of blocks as stops to keep the router bit inside the lines. I'll square up and clean up with a couple quick taps of the chisel.
























Set the two sliding fences so the bit is centered over one workpiece. To route the second piece, you just flip the jig around.

The mortise is going to be 1" deep so don't take all that in one pass. I'm using a plunge base so the maximum depth is set to 1-1/16" (leaves a little room for glue later) and I use the turret stop to make the mortise in a few passes.









Done with one, now flip around and cut the second. 









It took longer to write this than it did to cut them. The longest part of the set up was unscrewing the plastic sub-base from the plunge base and then screwing on the mortising jig base.

I don't have a power mortiser, or true mortising chisels (only bench chisels) and my drill press is pretty darn small. So to make a mortise near the end of a relatively long piece, I need to pile up blocks to support the far end. With this rig, I could clamp everything to the workbench so it was very well supported over its full length. And poplar cuts so nicely with a spiral bit.

Tomorrow I'll clean up the corners of the mortise (notice I did slip a little over the end line on the first one, no big deal). Then I'll get the tenons roughed at the table saw and pare them down to fit. After that, there is a detail to route on the outside edge of the stiles and the whole thing can be attached to the carcass. After that, all that is left is to make the door and molding.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*In the immortal words of MC Hammer: Stop! Router Time! *

(I'll translate for those of you on the east coast, Rhouta' Time ;-) )

I glued up the two stiles and rail for the upper face frame. Something to keep in mind when doing any sort of work is the order of operations. Round over before glue up? After? The reason I mention this is because I made a strategic choice about when to chamfer the inside edge of the frame. I could have done the chamfer on the pieces before glue-up and also cope the shoulders of the rail to fit or miter the inside corners. If this cupboard was to have a clear finish, the coped joint or mitering the inside corner of the chamfer is the way to go. But as I've said, this is going to be a painted piece. So I opted to do the chamfer AFTER the glue up. This means the "funny" of the chamfer into the corner will be camouflaged. The "funny" will be quite clear in some pictures below.

What are the implications of doing things this way? Well here you see the rough routed chamfer. The burning is because I had to slow my movement of the router (working handheld this time) as I turned the corner. Slow feed == burning. 








No big deal, just a fact of life. But what is more important, you see that a router cannot make a square inside corner. Just can't, the geometry of the bit rules.









This is an easy situation to rectify, I just strike a pencil line to extend the two chamfers into the corner. 








Next I push my chisel in on that line, using a block cut to 45 so I'll match the router cut chamfer. Not going in far, just enough to create a little bit of a guide for the paring cuts to follow.








FYI, a handy jig to have for the table saw in addition to a miter sled and a panel sled is a 45 miter sled.








Makes things like 45 corners or in this case a small paring block a snap.

Just pare out the rest of the waste, which also gets rid of most of the burn mark.








Just a touch with a sanding block and it is done.
And now you can see the "funny" quite clearly. If this was not going to be a painted piece, it would look very strange in the corner. This is why you cope a joint when putting a profile on an inside corner of a piece that will receive a clear finish. The milk paint will cover this and it won't be visible later. And it only took about 5 minutes to pare the two corners versus the cussing and fussing of coping the shoulder of the tenon.

The last router operation on the face frame is to add a round over and lip to the two outside edges of the rails. Again, handheld routing. But here is another common problem. Lots of routers use what is sometimes called a PC or PorterCable base. Mine does. The good news is that lots of accessories and bushings fit the PC bases. The bad news is that you can't pass a bit larger than about 1" diameter through the stock sub-base of the router. Since I have two bases for my router, plunge for most hand-held work and fixed that lives in the router table there is a very easy solution to this problem. Take the fixed base and attached router plate from the router table and use it as a handheld base. No where is is written in stone that you must have a round base on a handheld router. My router plate has one of those snap-apart rings that lets you pass larger bits by removing inner rings. Problem solved.
















One other benefit, this plate is quite wide and so I can have plate in contact with the entire 3" width of the stiles. This makes for a more stable handheld router pass and thus safer.

I've mentioned before about changing the bearing size to expose different parts of the roundover bit. This closeup really helps to illustrate that point.








The small bearing is inside the straight cutting portion of the carbide. If I put back the 1/2" bearing then I would be back to the smooth transition roundover.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Face frame attached*

All I had on the docket for tonight was to get the upper face frame glued on and the necessary cleanup. Done. Nothing more complicated than doing a dry fit to prep the clamps and glue that puppy down. The clamps I'm using have heads sized so that a 2×4 can be used to lift workpieces and clear the head of the clamp.









Notice the glue run near the center of the side. Not a big deal, I caught as much as possible. The rest gets scraped and sanded when the clamps are off. Easy peasy.










And here it is standing up again plus a small closeup.


















So, three parts left before painting begins. I need to make the trim for the top, make the door and cut boards for the back. I won't install the back other than to lay in on for size. The back will be tongue-and-groove 1/2" boards. I'll leave it off until the painting is done to make things easier.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Molding*

I don't own any giant molding bits. So if I'm going to make a reasonably large molding for the top of the cupboard, then I'm going to have to make it in smaller pieces and glue it together. Not as hard as it sounds.

What was hard though is I decided it had to look nice AND could only be made with bits I already had. The original article I'm taking my inspiration from has some sample moldings and while I don't have all the same profiles, I can get pretty close. But his big case molding was another story.

Step one was to get out the graph paper and sketch the basic profiles I have at hand then start putzing around until I got something with enough weight to look right.








So roughly, the profile I've drawn in the lower right is where I want to go. But this still isn't quite large enough. Mike Dunbar's article has a piece behind this with a smaller ogee. I have a 5/32 ogee bit so I'll start with that piece. Here is one end of a test piece - excuse the bobble at the end, it will get cut off.








Next I need to make the lower roundover. The block will be 1" thick so I milled down some of my remaining 5/4 and then chucked up a 7/8" roundover bit. This is a bit of a monster as roundovers go, good for a table edge.








So two things I need to do in preparation for this, one is set up some feather boards on the fence. The second is to set up some stop blocks behind the fence so that once adjusted to just ride the bearing, I can swing the fence forward and make my cut in two passes.
















One of these days I'll make a fence to match the size of this table, this fence I made for the previous table and it is about 2" too short to span side to side. But this one still works OK.

So, two passes to get the full profile, then rip it off the test board (SNIPE! Doh!).








Here's a better piece.









Next up is the cove portion. I'm going to use a 1/2" cove. But after cutting a small test piece I realized it will be a nightmare to get a smooth transition from roundover to cove. The solution, make a small step-back shoulder and accentuate the size difference instead of trying to hide it. The small shoulder is made by first cutting a groove with a 1/4" spiral bit about 5/8" in from the edge of the board, then running the roundover leaving the little stepped shoulder. Forgot to take a picture of the groove cutting. Sorry.








This has also been ripped to width for the final stackup. And here it is, just a little double sided tape holding things so I could see it. 









So all that is left is to glue together the roundover and cove pieces and do a little detail sanding. A few boogers to clean up but I have more than enough length that I should be able to cut around the snipe from my planer. And the 5/32 ogee board will be ripped to the correct width too. It gets applied to the cupboard first, mitering the corners. Then the larger glued-up ogee (I think technically, this is more of a reverse ogee but I'm not 100% on that) goes on. Once painted, the glue line should disapear all together! 

Next I want to get the molding applied then work on the door.


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## a1Jim (Aug 9, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Molding*
> 
> I don't own any giant molding bits. So if I'm going to make a reasonably large molding for the top of the cupboard, then I'm going to have to make it in smaller pieces and glue it together. Not as hard as it sounds.
> 
> ...


good job good looking molding


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## sbryan55 (Dec 8, 2007)

rwyoung said:


> *Molding*
> 
> I don't own any giant molding bits. So if I'm going to make a reasonably large molding for the top of the cupboard, then I'm going to have to make it in smaller pieces and glue it together. Not as hard as it sounds.
> 
> ...


I have to agree that this is some nice looking molding. It can be intimidating trying to come up with a large piece of molding like this but, by breaking it down into manageable steps like you have done, it seems to be relatively straight-forward.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Attaching the molding...*

Been a pretty long day of fiddling with test cuts and what not. I don't have a fancy miter saw (I do have a crappy plastic miter box but it is pretty far out of whack). So to cut the miters for the molding I'm using my table saw.

With a few test cuts and a little tweaking you can get a very good fit. 

First step is to attach the 1/2" thick piece with the single ogee:









Next we add the larger built-up molding:









And here we can see another interesting point. I went ahead and routed the roundover on the upper face frame before installing it and routed it all the way to the end of the board. What this means is there will be a small gap between the corner of the face frame and the corner of the molding. Not a big deal and I knew this would happen. What I could have done is stop the roundover on the face frame short of where the molding would be, then I could chisel in a roundover after the molding was in place, or some other simple transition. I opted for the "easy way" because the gap is small and from a distance of about two or three feet you have to know its there to really see it.

There is a little bit more fine trimming to do on the back side but I can get to that later. I thought I trimmed the last side piece short enough but it is hanging over about 3/32". At least it wasn't too short! This is pretty easy to deal with even with it attached to the case. I have a pull-saw that will track just fine and zip the overhang right off next time I have the case down on its back on the bench.

This took me a while to get the molding attached for two reasons. First, I left the case standing, didn't feel like dragging it back out to the garage and laying it the bench. Second, it takes several test cuts to set up the saw and then I'm probably over cautious and take too many "sneak-up" cuts.

By the way, blue tape works great to keep the saw from tearing out the profiled edge.

The next step is to work on the door's rails and stiles. I measured the opening and to my surprise it is no longer quite square. It has racked about 1/16". I'm not sure why, could be the addition of the upper face frame and clamping operation caused the racking. Could also just be the change in humidity. Standing back and eyeballing things, you can't see the difference. But it is important for setting in the door. I'll take it into account and trim the door a little bit when the time comes. I can also trim the case stiles a tad by aggressively sanding with a block. Doing both the door and the frame will split the difference in the un-squareness and might be the best way to camouflage things.








(The sides are straight, the photo shows them bowed because I didn't bother taking the camera out of its wide angle view and it has barrel distortion as you move off the center axis. This is common on most point-and-shoot cameras, the solution is to zoom just a tiny bit. But I didn't, just lazy today.)

It is interesting to me about the top molding. From some angles, it looks great and it good proportion. From others it looks a bit heavy. If I were to make another piece, there are two changes. First I'd extend the overhang of the center shelf about 1/2" more to add a little more balance and I might use a 1/2" or 5/8" round over (which I don't have) instead of the 7/8" to shrink the molding size a bit.

But I must reserve the final judgment until the case is painted and some dishes are setting inside. With the paint, dishes and door fitted, I can imagine the molding might be brought a little more into proportion. Just closing in the bottom of the case will add some visual weight.

Back to the rails and stiles. The Mike Dunbar article goes into making the door using through mortises and pinning it along with wedging the mortise. I'm going with a cope and stick router bit set instead.

To set up for the coped portion, I use a simple coping sled at the router table. Just a piece of 3/4" MDF and some 1/8" hardboard. Good ole' Harbor Freight supplied the toggle clamps.









A few passes and the coping is done in the ends of the rails. Next I switch to the stile bit and run the rails and stiles both. 
The bits:








Here is the stile cut on the test piece:








And a finished rail piece:









I suppose one could argue that the Shakers wouldn't have used such a joint. But I wonder about that. They (1810, Sarah Babbet) invented the circular saw blade, they invented machines for cutting tongue-and-groove joints and wainscoting beads. They seem to have been quite "modern" in their construction methods, I see no reason that some of them would not have embraced shaper/router tables and bits.

So, next up is to glue up a panel for the door and cut a bevel profile. I'm going to make the door only about 5/8" to 1/2".


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## woodworm (Jul 27, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Attaching the molding...*
> 
> Been a pretty long day of fiddling with test cuts and what not. I don't have a fancy miter saw (I do have a crappy plastic miter box but it is pretty far out of whack). So to cut the miters for the molding I'm using my table saw.
> 
> ...


Looks it is taking its final shape. Very nicely done. 
I like the crown molding's shape.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Making the door*

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the process of assembling the door. It is really just the repetition of the same sort of panel glue-up steps and router work illustrated before. A good video podcast of frame and panel door making can be found at www.woodworkingonline.com

1) Compute final panel size based on door. I know that my rail and stile set creates a 3/8" deep panel groove. 
Width:
2 x StileWidth + [email protected] + 3/4" = 13-7/8" 
Height:
StileLength - 2 x RailWidth + 3/4" = 26-3/4"

2) Allow for panel expansion because it is a solid wood panel. Most of the movement will be in the width so allow 1/8" to have a finished panel width of 13-3/4". In length, only about 1/16" is necessary so the length will be 26-11/16"

3) Cut stock, mill to 1/2" thick and glue up for the panel, over sized in length and width of course. Note this is 1/2" thick while the door frame is 3/4". So the panel will be more or less flush on the front but recessed about 1/8" on the back side. I'm using 1/2" because I wanted to minimize the door's weight. Using 5/8" I could have the front and back flush but I'm too big to fit inside the cupboard and see the back of the door so…

4) Cut out panel blank.

5) Setup up router with panel raising bit. This is a bevel profile.

















6) Cut a test piece. Also seen in this test piece is an experiment at cutting a back rabbet so that the panel will can seat all the way into the groove. In this test piece, the rabbet is about 2/3 too deep. The finished panel has just a whisper of a rabbet cut in the back.








If you use a cutter like the one I show above that does not have a second part to make the back rabbet, it is a simple matter to use a dado bit or even the stack-dado cutter on a table saw or a rabbeting plane. I opted for a 3/4" bit in the router table with a little more than 3/8" cutting width exposed and maybe a shy 1/16" cutting depth.

So here is the finished door front and back.

















Some other notes about the door. Yes, I realize the grain is going two different directions on the boards. Ideally, it all goes the same way but at the last minute during glue-up I decided to flip boards to make sure the end grain is alternating. I should have also turned them end-for-end. Painted panel, so no big deal. A giant no-no for a clear finish!

The last step is to fit the door. I mentioned before that my case had racked. I checked it again today and it seems better. I think it is a humidity issue as my AC was down for a few days last week so the house got pretty funky (96F + 40% humidity inside!). I still need to do a little trimming on the door and maybe a little in the face frame. There is maybe 1/16" of material that needs to disappear for the door to slip in. So if do the dime-trick to space it I need to loose maybe 1/8" of material. I'll split that up between the two sides of the door and the two face frame stiles. That should hide any unmatched dimensions pretty well.


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## Beginningwoodworker (May 5, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Making the door*
> 
> I didn't take a lot of pictures of the process of assembling the door. It is really just the repetition of the same sort of panel glue-up steps and router work illustrated before. A good video podcast of frame and panel door making can be found at www.woodworkingonline.com
> 
> ...


Nice raise panel door.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Been busy with other things but finally have some time to work on the cupboard!*

Once more into the breach!

OK, so the door is hanging temporarily. Since I don't have back boards on the cupboard yet, this is a pretty easy scribe. Zip, zip, mark, mark.

I don't have a terribly fancy bench so a little bit of creative clamping is in order. People make fun of Harbor Freight for a lot of stuff but their wooden handscrew clamps are a darn good deal. Can't have enough of them! Use one at each end of the workpiece and then clamp them to the overhang on the bench. Works pretty well, if a bit fussy sometimes.










So here you see the scribed line at the "fat" end of the board. The white block in the foreground is paraffin wax for the plane sole. The scribe line tapers away to nothing at the other end.










Here are the weapons of massless destruction… The #6 is set for a pretty decent shaving, maybe about 0.005" to 0.008" thick. Runs stuff down reasonably quick. The #4 is set for the wispy thin 0.001" shaving so I can fine tune things and deal with any tearout. FYI, a good idea to pre-set the irons on some scrap before starting. Otherwise consider having the blade pulled in and slowly drop it back down on some test strokes on the workpiece. Better to take a few thin shavings at the beginning than gouge things terribly!










Chicken wing activate!


















Most of the work is done with the #6. A few shorter strokes at the heavy end of the scribe and slowly work backward to the other end of the door. In these two pictures, besides seeing my scrawny arms, you can see that I have the plane a little bit skewed as some insurance against tear out. In the second picture my left hand is not grasping the tote. Instead it is wrapped around the sole of the plane just in front of the mouth and riding against the far side of the door. This helps keep the plane level on a narrow board. It doesn't hurt to check with a square once in a while too.

The other planing tidbit I want to point out is on my right hand I have 3 fingers on the tote with my index finger pointing along the blade/breaker. This does a few things for me. First I can't fit all four fingers on the tote and second it balances my hand strength a little bit. Sort of like when you grip a golf club you typically have the little finger of your dominant hand off the grip. Same idea here.

For the #4 plane, I have two fingers off the tote and pointing down the blade. Mostly because on the Millers Falls smoother, the tote is a bit on the short side (for me anyway).

And here we see the scribe line is just gone.










When I scribed, I ran the pencil to the inside edge of the stile so I wanted to plane just to the "far" side of the line. Now I can re-hang and double check and if necessary take a few more swipes to even up the gap.

And that is exactly what was needed. The door fit but scraped in a bit. Back off and a couple of heavy cuts down the length followed by a few smoothing passes and here we are! (Excuse the grubby sneaker, I haven't made a catch for the door yet so I'm holding it shut for the photo…)










A pretty decent fit. I may take one or two more thin passes next time the door is off but for now I'm leaving it alone.

Time to enjoy a beverage from my favorite mug.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Cupboard backboards*

After a burger and fries for lunch I decided to keep working on the cupboard. The knob and latch needs a turning billet so I can go to the lathe and make chips. And the back boards need milling and rabbets. So while the glue up for the billet dries, its time to make shavings.

The back of the cupboard will be 1/2" boards of slightly varying widths. The boards will be ship-lapped and rest in a rabbet on the back of the case. Cut nails along the top, bottom and the fixed shelf will hold them in place.

Step one, mill down the board to 1/2". Decided to just use the power planer for this. Noisy but pretty quick work. Didn't bother with pictures here.

Next the boards are ripped to width. The widths are all between 4" and 5-1/2" and side by each it is about 28-1/2". In the end I'll need 24" to fill the back. Good to go.

Time to get out the rabbeting plane. I could have done this with the table saw and a dado head, or with my router handheld or in the table and a straight bit. But I recently picked up a Chinese copy of a Stanley 78 ($0.99 on eBay but about $12 in shipping, argh!). I've honed the blade and done some preliminary fettling of the plane. It needs a little more work but its OK for now.

Here's the plane showing the depth stop, nicker (retracted) and fence:










And here we see the other side with the fence support rod and depth adjuster (such as it is).










And from the top you can see the cap iron and screw and both the "regular" frog and the bull-nose frog at the front of the plane.










For $13 its a pretty decent worker. I decided to take a risk on what might be a bad casting (it isn't terrible but does need work) because all the other 78's on eBay seem to be missing the fence, depthstop or both!


















Once again, a three finger grip on the right hand, index finger pointing along the plane for balance. My left hand is riding with my thumb and index finger riding on the nose of the plane and the rest of my fingers are wrapped around the fence post. The depth is set kinda deep but since this is a long grain cut it works fine.

Here are the ends of finished boards.










You can see a little bit about what I mean when I say the plane needs a little more fettling. The fence is not 100% perpendicular to the body. This combined with running along the narrow edge and my limited experience with the plane produces some out of square rabbets. However since this is for ship lap and the joints will be left a little slack anyway, no big deal.

And the coolest part of using a rabbeting plane, the shavings! (Size US11 for scale…)










Once the boards are assembled side by side, the final width is about 26". Since I needed 24" this is great. I'll just rip about 1" off each of the two outside boards and I'm good to go. But that will wait until after a quick dry-fit to confirm.

Playing with the rabbet plane took most of the afternoon and now its dinner time. Perhaps some hossenfeffer…


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## a1Jim (Aug 9, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Cupboard backboards*
> 
> After a burger and fries for lunch I decided to keep working on the cupboard. The knob and latch needs a turning billet so I can go to the lathe and make chips. And the back boards need milling and rabbets. So while the glue up for the billet dries, its time to make shavings.
> 
> ...


good show


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## toddc (Mar 6, 2007)

rwyoung said:


> *Cupboard backboards*
> 
> After a burger and fries for lunch I decided to keep working on the cupboard. The knob and latch needs a turning billet so I can go to the lathe and make chips. And the back boards need milling and rabbets. So while the glue up for the billet dries, its time to make shavings.
> 
> ...


Great post. Lovely shavings that show you had a great time in the shop today.

My dogs were chasing some hossenfeffer tonight but it got away Guess I'll have cereal.


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## Beginningwoodworker (May 5, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Cupboard backboards*
> 
> After a burger and fries for lunch I decided to keep working on the cupboard. The knob and latch needs a turning billet so I can go to the lathe and make chips. And the back boards need milling and rabbets. So while the glue up for the billet dries, its time to make shavings.
> 
> ...


Great work.


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## WayneC (Mar 8, 2007)

rwyoung said:


> *Cupboard backboards*
> 
> After a burger and fries for lunch I decided to keep working on the cupboard. The knob and latch needs a turning billet so I can go to the lathe and make chips. And the back boards need milling and rabbets. So while the glue up for the billet dries, its time to make shavings.
> 
> ...


Well done. You can get replacement parts for a #78 directly from Stanley on their parts pages. You can also get parts for bench planes such as screws, blades, etc.


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

*Time to watch the paint dry!*

The cupboard will be painted with milk paint ( http://www.milkpaint.com ). I'm using two colors, mustard and barn-red. The paint comes powdered, mix it with water to get a nice paint like consistency. Keep stirring until the powder is well dispersed. Let the mix stand for about 10 or 15 minutes then strain it to remove the lumps.










Milk paint doesn't have a lot of body especially the light colors. It acts more like a wash coat. So for the mustard I'm going to need to apply three coats. Being water based it will raise the grain so I did a quick wet sanding to the pieces before painting. To apply the paint use a foam brush or a chip brush. Expensive brushes aren't needed for milk paint, it won't make it go on any better. After each coat has dried it should be sanded back to level the paint, remove any hairs that came out of the brush and remove the funny bubble marks. I used a fine grit sanding sponge. This makes a lot of "dust" so have some rags handy or maybe the vacuum cleaner and brush attachment.

And don't panic about the color yet…

















To get the final color and protect the paint from water (milk paint is durable but will spot easily) it is necessary to apply linseed oil (BLO). This brings the paint to its final color and helps seal it against water stains. After the oil soaks in you can apply a top coat of wax, shellac or varnish. I chose to apply wax.


















Once I got the door re-installed it is back to not fitting the opening. However this time it is just a hair too wide. Since the milk paint is water based, it swelled the wood just a little more than the thickness of a dime! Dang it! But I'm not going to do anything about the fit for at least a week. My bet is that the wood will go back and the door will fit again. If after a week it won't fit then I'll take it off and re-plane the door.

All that is left is to make the knob and latch.


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## Beginningwoodworker (May 5, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Time to watch the paint dry!*
> 
> The cupboard will be painted with milk paint ( http://www.milkpaint.com ). I'm using two colors, mustard and barn-red. The paint comes powdered, mix it with water to get a nice paint like consistency. Keep stirring until the powder is well dispersed. Let the mix stand for about 10 or 15 minutes then strain it to remove the lumps.
> 
> ...


Nice work!


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## Bureaucrat (May 26, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Time to watch the paint dry!*
> 
> The cupboard will be painted with milk paint ( http://www.milkpaint.com ). I'm using two colors, mustard and barn-red. The paint comes powdered, mix it with water to get a nice paint like consistency. Keep stirring until the powder is well dispersed. Let the mix stand for about 10 or 15 minutes then strain it to remove the lumps.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the short primer on milk paint. When I saw that first picture of the mustard on the boards I didn't think very highly of your color choice but the finished product is beautiful. Very cool!


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## woodworm (Jul 27, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Time to watch the paint dry!*
> 
> The cupboard will be painted with milk paint ( http://www.milkpaint.com ). I'm using two colors, mustard and barn-red. The paint comes powdered, mix it with water to get a nice paint like consistency. Keep stirring until the powder is well dispersed. Let the mix stand for about 10 or 15 minutes then strain it to remove the lumps.
> 
> ...


Very nice cupboard - great job!


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## dustyal (Nov 19, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Time to watch the paint dry!*
> 
> The cupboard will be painted with milk paint ( http://www.milkpaint.com ). I'm using two colors, mustard and barn-red. The paint comes powdered, mix it with water to get a nice paint like consistency. Keep stirring until the powder is well dispersed. Let the mix stand for about 10 or 15 minutes then strain it to remove the lumps.
> 
> ...


Really nice.

Two things I want to try: Aniline Dyes and Milk paint. You've given me encouragement.


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## a1Jim (Aug 9, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Time to watch the paint dry!*
> 
> The cupboard will be painted with milk paint ( http://www.milkpaint.com ). I'm using two colors, mustard and barn-red. The paint comes powdered, mix it with water to get a nice paint like consistency. Keep stirring until the powder is well dispersed. Let the mix stand for about 10 or 15 minutes then strain it to remove the lumps.
> 
> ...


looks super


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## rwyoung (Nov 22, 2008)

rwyoung said:


> *Time to watch the paint dry!*
> 
> The cupboard will be painted with milk paint ( http://www.milkpaint.com ). I'm using two colors, mustard and barn-red. The paint comes powdered, mix it with water to get a nice paint like consistency. Keep stirring until the powder is well dispersed. Let the mix stand for about 10 or 15 minutes then strain it to remove the lumps.
> 
> ...


Everything I read about milk paint and a short discussion with the people at www.milkpaint.com all comes down to those immortal words: "Don't Panic".  My apologies to Douglas Adams.

The final color is not the funky, chalky, overbright color you see when the paint is dry on the wood. Rub in a little BLO and like magic, the paint will transform. The transformation of the brick-red was quite dramatic too. It went from a shade with a touch too much pink good ole' brick red!

I didn't mention it above, but as an experiment, on the shelves, I slathered on a coat of "Maloof" finish (1/3 BLO, 1/3 turpentine, 1/3 beeswax) and that worked too. But it took a couple of days for the beeswax to harden. In the end I went back over those with my paste wax (wax cleans wax) to make everything have the same sheen.

And my suspicions about the swell seem to be correct. Already after just 4 hours the door is only a hair too wide. I bet it closes by tomorrow and I have the gap back to even in a week.


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## woodchic (Mar 17, 2009)

rwyoung said:


> *Time to watch the paint dry!*
> 
> The cupboard will be painted with milk paint ( http://www.milkpaint.com ). I'm using two colors, mustard and barn-red. The paint comes powdered, mix it with water to get a nice paint like consistency. Keep stirring until the powder is well dispersed. Let the mix stand for about 10 or 15 minutes then strain it to remove the lumps.
> 
> ...


Nice work…................I like red!

AKA…..............Woodchic


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