# Making a Penn spice cabinet using mostly hand tools.



## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*And so it begins.*

A few months ago I bought two nice pieces of highly figured maple. 8/4, 9" wide and about 4' long. And the best part… I got it cheap. So it has been in my shop while I sat around trying to decide what to do with it. I made up my mind. About 16 months ago I made a spice cabinet out of pine and dyed it to look like walnut. I love it, loved everything about it. But I want to make another one, a better one, one from awesome wood. So, thats what I am going to do. This is a blog of the process.

So to start it all off, I had to have it resawn, and because I only have a few power tools (tabel saw, routers, drill press and power planer *more on that thing later*) I had to take it down to my local hardwood dealer to have it cut for me. Below is the second board cut in half, I decided to do this blog after I had already cut up the one that will become the main case.









So, a small note on my power tools. Yes, I have a 12" craftsman planer, and my relationship with that tool is on the rocks. I dont like it, and it does not like me. And it only gets used when I have tons and tons of planing to do and its all soft wood, like pine. I think the last time I used it was about a year ago when I had to plane 3/4 pine to 1/2 for all the drawer material for my daughters dresser that I made. Something like 50 boards. Now a note on my routers. I have a router table with dedicated router, and a hand held router with set and plunge base, and I also have a bosch colt. None of these will be used in this project. Drill press, not likely to be used, and then there is the table saw. I love my table saw. There is not a chance that it is going anywhere any time soon. The table saw is the only power tool that I will be using in this project, and that is only for rough milling of some of the material. Eg, I need the maple 9" wide. I will cut it about 9.125 and then use hand planes to get it to final width. Ok, now that is out of the way.









Once I got the boards home and let them sit for a few days, I then took my veritas LA jack plane with a fresh edge and went to work. Got all the band saw marks out and everything nice and even and smooth and flat. The to the TS to cut the top, bottom and two sides to rough dimension. Then they were stickered and left to sit for another few days.









Then today, back at it. Used winding sticks to reflatten the 4 boards (as they did move a little bit). Once I was good on the flattness, I scribed the desired thickness on all the boards and went to town. Once close, I put a toothed blade in my LA smoothing plane and took a few passes making the cross hatch. Then put in the 25° blade and took the cross hatch off leaving a perfectly smooth surface.

















Thats it for today, thats a lot of planing. Next time: half blind and through dovetails.


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## therookie (Aug 29, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And so it begins.*
> 
> A few months ago I bought two nice pieces of highly figured maple. 8/4, 9" wide and about 4' long. And the best part… I got it cheap. So it has been in my shop while I sat around trying to decide what to do with it. I made up my mind. About 16 months ago I made a spice cabinet out of pine and dyed it to look like walnut. I love it, loved everything about it. But I want to make another one, a better one, one from awesome wood. So, thats what I am going to do. This is a blog of the process.
> 
> ...


Cant wait for the next entry, and btw nice wood


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## mpmitche (Apr 2, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And so it begins.*
> 
> A few months ago I bought two nice pieces of highly figured maple. 8/4, 9" wide and about 4' long. And the best part… I got it cheap. So it has been in my shop while I sat around trying to decide what to do with it. I made up my mind. About 16 months ago I made a spice cabinet out of pine and dyed it to look like walnut. I love it, loved everything about it. But I want to make another one, a better one, one from awesome wood. So, thats what I am going to do. This is a blog of the process.
> 
> ...


Looks like you have a great start. Can't wait to see it come together.


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## kenn (Mar 19, 2008)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And so it begins.*
> 
> A few months ago I bought two nice pieces of highly figured maple. 8/4, 9" wide and about 4' long. And the best part… I got it cheap. So it has been in my shop while I sat around trying to decide what to do with it. I made up my mind. About 16 months ago I made a spice cabinet out of pine and dyed it to look like walnut. I love it, loved everything about it. But I want to make another one, a better one, one from awesome wood. So, thats what I am going to do. This is a blog of the process.
> 
> ...


This is a blog I am looking forward to following, keep us posted on your progress.


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## Limerick (Mar 16, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And so it begins.*
> 
> A few months ago I bought two nice pieces of highly figured maple. 8/4, 9" wide and about 4' long. And the best part… I got it cheap. So it has been in my shop while I sat around trying to decide what to do with it. I made up my mind. About 16 months ago I made a spice cabinet out of pine and dyed it to look like walnut. I love it, loved everything about it. But I want to make another one, a better one, one from awesome wood. So, thats what I am going to do. This is a blog of the process.
> 
> ...


Love the Penn spice cabinets also. Have one (or two) on my list. Will be following along with your build.
Wondering if you are using a set of plans or just designing it as you go? Nice find on the wood.


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## Howie (May 25, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And so it begins.*
> 
> A few months ago I bought two nice pieces of highly figured maple. 8/4, 9" wide and about 4' long. And the best part… I got it cheap.  So it has been in my shop while I sat around trying to decide what to do with it. I made up my mind. About 16 months ago I made a spice cabinet out of pine and dyed it to look like walnut. I love it, loved everything about it. But I want to make another one, a better one, one from awesome wood. So, thats what I am going to do. This is a blog of the process.
> 
> ...


If this turns out anything like your previous projects you are on your way to another winner.!. Keep us posted.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And so it begins.*
> 
> A few months ago I bought two nice pieces of highly figured maple. 8/4, 9" wide and about 4' long. And the best part… I got it cheap. So it has been in my shop while I sat around trying to decide what to do with it. I made up my mind. About 16 months ago I made a spice cabinet out of pine and dyed it to look like walnut. I love it, loved everything about it. But I want to make another one, a better one, one from awesome wood. So, thats what I am going to do. This is a blog of the process.
> 
> ...


Thanks everyone. I am currently cutting the DT's and should have the next part posted in the next day or so.

Nikki. No, I am not following plans. For the most part I am flying by the seat of my pants. But there are certain things that I am still undecided on. For example, I still dont know if I should have the back of the case in grooves in the case sides, or if I am just going to rabbet the case sides and set the back in after I have the case done. OR…. if I am going to have the back on hidden hinges to reveal secret compartments… which is likely. Basically, I am going to make the main case, then figure out the drawer configuration and then make final decisions on the other things. So it is going to be interesting.


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## SPHinTampa (Apr 23, 2008)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And so it begins.*
> 
> A few months ago I bought two nice pieces of highly figured maple. 8/4, 9" wide and about 4' long. And the best part… I got it cheap. So it has been in my shop while I sat around trying to decide what to do with it. I made up my mind. About 16 months ago I made a spice cabinet out of pine and dyed it to look like walnut. I love it, loved everything about it. But I want to make another one, a better one, one from awesome wood. So, thats what I am going to do. This is a blog of the process.
> 
> ...


Amazing wood. Interesting blog.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Half blinds for the top.*

Since I want to dovetail the case. but I dont want any of them to show, because I dont want to distract from the wood and the shape of the finsihed product, I am going to use half blind DT's to join the side to the top. I am going to use moulding to cover the DT's so they do not show.

Step one. Marking everything. I use two marking gauges with wheel cutters. I set them both and I leave them alone until I am done cutting the HB's. That way if I have to remark something the guage is already set to where it needs to be.









2. I am a tails first kind of guy. I am using a 1:8 ratio for this project, but in all seriousness, I just cut, the line is just a guide. The only important line is the one on the top.









3. Cut the lines. I forgot to take a picture of this step. Just a note on this one as well, I have some theories about sawing practices, and I think it is very benefitial to learn to use any saw with both your hands. When you are cutting to the right of the line, you should be looking on the left of the saw at the line and cutting in the waste, thus to hold the saw properly and have the correct mechanics, you should be using your left hand. Thusly, when cutting in the waste on the left side of the line, you should be looking on the right side of the saw and using your right hand. Got it? Great, lets move on.

4.I use two coping saws for this step. One has an aggressive blade and it is tilted to the left. I also have the blades cutting on the pull stoke. I use this saw for the initial 'swoop'. I then take the other coping saw, which has finer teeth and it is tilted to the right, this saw cuts out most of the rest of the waste.

















5. Using a crosscut saw, I cut off the shoulder for the half pin.









6. Using super sharp chisels, I chop out the rest of the waste and clean everything up.
TA-DA!









7. I skipped a bunch of steps here. So I will describe it as best as possible. I set my pin board in the vise and I have it sticking up the same a one of my planes. Then I move the plane back and that is what I have the tail board rest one. I get the tail board lined up where I want it and I use a knife to mark the inside of the tails. I remove the board and flip around the work piece. I have it sitting higher in the vice as I cut so I can cut at the angle without hurting anything. Then once they are all cut, its time to chop, chop, and chop some more waste out. Once all the waste is chopped out, I put the board back into the vice and use my fish tail and other chisels to clean out all the sockets.









So, the next step is to cut the DT's for the bottom part of the case. If these DT's were going to be in view I would have made 6 instead of 5, and I would have made the pins alot smaller. My personal preferance is to have large tails and small pins, but for this I went for structure and made the pins a little larger than I would normally.

Once the case is done (dry fit, but not glued up), I will have to finalize the drawer configuration and make some stopped dado's for the dividers.

If anyone has any questions, just post a comment.

Till next time.


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## therookie (Aug 29, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Half blinds for the top.*
> 
> Since I want to dovetail the case. but I dont want any of them to show, because I dont want to distract from the wood and the shape of the finsihed product, I am going to use half blind DT's to join the side to the top. I am going to use moulding to cover the DT's so they do not show.
> 
> ...


I am with barry we can split it  but very nice blog


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Long division... the short way.*

I spent the last few days trying to decide on my drawer layout, as it has a huge effect on the next step. Since I am done the top, bottom and both sides, its time to make and fit the inside drawer partitions. I decided on 5 levels of drawers. I also decided to graduate them.

There are a few ways that this could have been done. One of them would include measuring and math and blah, blah, blah. Too much work and too time consuming.

I prefer to use dividers to do this task. I first read about it in an article written by George Walker. (Popular Woodworking June 2099) He explains how this method was used by the Egyptians and the Greeks, Romans and all through out history and architecture. It is a method in which the level above any other level, is shorter by the thickness of the divider between them. I know, eh? Clear as mud!

To begin the process, you take one set of dividers and set them to the thickness of the drawer blades. Then you use them to step off the number of dividers in the case. In this one, there is 4. Then for each drawer after the first one, there is an added value. The second drawer is +1, the third drawer is +2 and so on. Add them all up and step off that number plus the 4 to begin with. Because I have five banks, I have a total of 4 drawer blades, PLUS the additional 10 for the added value of the 4 lower drawers. 4 (blades) + 1 (Drawer #2) + 2 (D3) + 3 (D4) + 4 (D5) = 14. So I take my first set of dividers and step off 14 from the top. Then I take my second set of divers and from that point I step off 5. You will have to do some trial and error until you get them to step off 5 perfectly. Now that the dividers are set its back to the top.

From the top, step off one from the larger dividers, make a pencil mark and step off 1 from the small dividers. You now have the top drawer and the first blade marked. From there mark off another drawer and one blade thickness for the second drawer, then another from the smaller divider for the second blade. Now the second drawer is larger then the top drawer by the thickness of one blade. Keep going and continue to add +1 blade thickness to each subsequent drawer.

After I read the original article, even re-read it several times… something was still not clicking. So I pulled out a piece of paper and my dividers and I played with it, and guess what…. It totally worked. AWESOME!!! Since discovering this method, I have found that graduated drawers made with this method… well, they just look… right. Kind of like using Phi, or the golden ratio in your woodworking. It just looks right. I strongly encourage you to not only try this out, but to use it in your woodworking. You would be surprised on how fun and easy it is. Plus the added bonus that there is no real math and you don't have to use a tape measure. So again, if you want to read the article yourself and maybe it will make more sense that way, June 2009 Popular Woodworking.









Now that I had that taken care of, and the lines marked, I needed to make the rabbet on inside back edge's of the sides for the back, and the front insides of the sides for the door. The one side to make room for the hinges, and the other to create a stop for the door. Ok, full transparency here is needed. The title of the series says Penn Spice cabinet with hand tools, and in my first entry I explained I would only be using hand tools. When I was making these rabbet's I found that I was having a lot of tear out. Due to the nature of figured maple, nothing was working. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to do it without destroying the wood. Rabbet planes? Nope, because these are stopped rabbets (can't rabbet the dovetails). Shoulder plane? Nope, same problem as the rabbet plane. Router plane? Yes. In fact, that is the route I went and I had nothing but problems. In hindsight, I could have adjusted the DT's so they were not close to the very front and back, thus I could have used the rabbet or shoulder planes. But again… hindsight. So… here it is… full admission of guilt. I used my router table. I know… I'm sorry. I'm a fraud. All because of poor planning. But hey… look on the bright side. Mistake made, lesson learned. That's the great thing about being self taught, you learn what not to do in a real hurry.

Thanks again for following along. Next time I will be cutting the dado's for the drawer blades. I will be using my cross cut saw to make the stopped dado cuts and a chisel and router plane to clean them up. I promise… no power tools.


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## Limerick (Mar 16, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Long division... the short way.*
> 
> I spent the last few days trying to decide on my drawer layout, as it has a huge effect on the next step. Since I am done the top, bottom and both sides, its time to make and fit the inside drawer partitions. I decided on 5 levels of drawers. I also decided to graduate them.
> 
> ...


Hi Jeremy,
I'm trying to understand how you stepped off the drawers. At the risk of embarassing myself; what is a drawer blade and bank?


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Long division... the short way.*
> 
> I spent the last few days trying to decide on my drawer layout, as it has a huge effect on the next step. Since I am done the top, bottom and both sides, its time to make and fit the inside drawer partitions. I decided on 5 levels of drawers. I also decided to graduate them.
> 
> ...


A drawer blade is the piece of wood that seperates one drawer from another. A bank of drawers is refering to groups. Eg, I said I am going to have 5 banks of drawers. I am going to have 5 groups/levels of drawers. Because each level is going to have between 1-3 drawers, I refered to each level as a bank. Make sense?

I took a bunch of pictures to explain the process, and hopfully that will help a lot, see post #4.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Pictoral of making the graduated drawers*

I was re-reading my last blog entry, and boy.. was that dry. So I decided to take a bunch of pictures that will better explain the process. I found my wifes tripod and stole her camera. So… here we go.








I make my start and stop point with a pencil.








Set one set of dividers to the thickness of the drawer blades.








Step off 4 with the dividers for the 4 drawer blades.








Step off 10 more. The 10 comes from the other drawers. As each drawer is larger than the one above it by the thickness of one divider, with 5 levels, thats an additional 10 thicknesses.








Take second set of dividers, starting where the small dividers left off….








Trial and error, step them off and adjust until they are set so there are 5 equal parts.








Starting back at the top. Step off one with the larger dividers. Mark with pencil.








Step off one with the small dividers. Mark with pencil.








Use a square and mark the lines. There, the top drawer and the drawer blade is done.








With large dividers, step off one.








With small dividers step off one. Thats the second drawer. Please also note… the patch on my left arm is what I call the "Wow, thats sharp" patch.








Now the blade. Mark lines with pencil.
Continue this process for each drawer. For the third drawer, add the thickness of two blades to the drawer, and three for the 4th and four for the 5th drawer.








All done. Now just to extend the lines a little bit, and then to cut stopped dados. And then size the drawer blades.

I was lucky enough to score some sweet 3×3 maple chunks this weekend. They are about 20" long and I bought 4 of them. The price was right, and if this works… I will buy more. Anyways, I am thinking that they are going to be perfect for the drawer sides and backs. So, because they are 3×3, and I need them to be about 1/4, I need to resaw them. Unfortunatly I don't a good enough friend that is willing to go in the bottom of my pit saw, I am going to have to use a band saw to do this. And I dont have one. Fortunatly though, I have access to one. But I cant just jump in there and start cutting. I need to joint an edge and face, or face and edge… ggrrrr, stupid square stock, which is the face and which is the edge? Guess it does not matter. I started by jointing the edge that is going to be the face. I am going to cut them all so they are all QS.








Have to adjust the camera.








Plane, plane and plane some more.








Oooohhhh, thats smooth. Once I had that face flat and smooth. Flip it 90°.








Check to see how off square the edge is from the face, I mean face to the edge… I think.

__
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Plane and plane and plane.








Check progess.








All done. Now I can take that to the band saw and cut them to rough thickness. I will be planing everything to the final thickness. Now, one down, three to go.


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## Limerick (Mar 16, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Pictoral of making the graduated drawers*
> 
> I was re-reading my last blog entry, and boy.. was that dry. So I decided to take a bunch of pictures that will better explain the process. I found my wifes tripod and stole her camera. So… here we go.
> 
> ...


Ok, I get it now! Thank you for answering my questions in #3. Very nice pictorial! Can't wait to see it come along.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Making the stopped dados for the drawer blades.*

Now that all the marking on the drawer sides is done, its time to cut the stopped dado's for the drawer blades.

As seen in the picture, these are the tools that I will be using. I am going to be using my plane stop to hold the work instead of a vice, this gives me some mobility while I am working and I can move the wood as I need. Then there is a 1/4 chisel, crosscut carcass saw, router plane with a 3/16 blade and an x-acto knife.









I use a drafting square and the knife to scribe my lines, just a few really, really light passes.









Then I use the router plane to make a very, very thin pass, just to get the shoulders defined.









I actually repeat that process one or two more times, just scribing the inside of the line and taking a really light pass with the router plane, just to get the shoulder better defined. Then once there is a shoulder, I use that shoulder as a guide for the saw.








The chisel and the knife come in handy to help get where the saw cant at the end of the dado. Once the saw cuts are deep enough, I again use the router plane to clean up all the waste. I used the depth stop to define my max depth the same on all the dado's.









Once all the dado's are cut, it was time for a test fit. I had top use the chisel in a few places to clean up the sides of the dado's so the blades fit perfectly. Overall, this process only took about an an hour and a half to do all eight.









The extra space is for the figured maple. Since I only have a limited amount of figured maple, there was no way I was going to use a bunch of it for the inside of the drawer blades. So I did use a secondary wood there.

Now I will repeat the same basic process to get the vertical partitions done as well.


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## Smitty_Cabinetshop (Mar 26, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Making the stopped dados for the drawer blades.*
> 
> Now that all the marking on the drawer sides is done, its time to cut the stopped dado's for the drawer blades.
> 
> ...


A pic of the workspace and tools to be used is a great idea.

I like the 'first light passes with the router' approach and will try that next time.

Thanks for posting, nice work!


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## PurpLev (May 30, 2008)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Making the stopped dados for the drawer blades.*
> 
> Now that all the marking on the drawer sides is done, its time to cut the stopped dado's for the drawer blades.
> 
> ...


nicely going. gorgeous curls there


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Making the stopped dados for the drawer blades.*
> 
> Now that all the marking on the drawer sides is done, its time to cut the stopped dado's for the drawer blades.
> 
> ...


Smitty- you can also use a chisel. After scribing the line, use the chisel and cut on the waste side and make a v-groove. That way actually gives more of a guide/rack for the saw, as it will follow the v-groove. By using the router plane, I had to use my opposite hand on the saw plate to keep the saw flush with the shoulder. It was probably more work to do it the way that I did, but the router plane is more fun.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Turkey for you?*

Since everyone knows that this weekend is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada… which basically means two things. Hockey season has started, and its going to snow soon. So while the family was busy making turkey and stuffing and all the fixin's, I was able to sneak away and get a few pictures taken and rest of the drawer blades and dividers done and installed. Since the last entry, I cut dado's in the horizontal blades for the vertical blades using the same method that I used in the previous entry. I did not picture this, as the process is the same, and its quite repetitious.

First thing of course, measure what was going where and all that. I again used dividers to do most of the measuring. I used my old Stanley mitre box and saw to cut all the material to length. (I had to sharpen the saw first, and I forgot to take pictures of the process. Sorry, next time I sharpen a saw I will take some pictures.)









Then I used my jack plane and my shooting board to square everything up so it would fit into the dado's.









Now, since I am going to have some interesting drawer variations here, in the 2nd and 3rd lower drawers, I have them split, so I have a vertical blade running the height of two drawers. Here I am using my dividers to find where I need to make another dado for a smaller horizontal blade.









But before I can transfer that measurment, I need to know where to measure from, so I had to reinstall the vertical blade and mark a referance point.









Once I have the referance point, I can use the dividers to measure, and the other set to mark the thickness of the drawer blade. 









Scribe the lines and cut out the dado using the router plane.









For the smaller horizontal blades, I cut all the dado's in the vertical blades first. I just took my material and put one end into the dado and marked the other end, cut, squared it and fit it. Once I had everything cut and fit, this is what it looks like. I have settled on 14 drawers. Well, ones that you can see anyways, more on that later.









There are a few little features that I have not mentioned before until now. The three smaller drawers in the middle are graduated. Using the same method as before. I think it adds a nice touch. Also, the spacing of the top drawers, and the mixed bank of drawers. I used the golden ratio for the spacing. I used the same method as the graduated drawers. But this time on the horizontal instead of the vertical. The idea is the same, but there are a few differences. Because there are two blades, I stepped off 2 with the smaller dividers. Then with the larger dividers, I set them so there are 7 equal steps. The drawers on the sides will be 2 steps wide, and the middle ones are 3 steps wide. I made a scale to show what I mean.









The next process is to make the figured maple blades that will be the front inch and half or so of all the drawer blades. I guess I could have planed it all first and edge gluded it to the secondary wood before going about this process. But I decided that I would want them joined in different ways. I wanted the secondary wood to be dado'd, but I want the vertical maple to be v-grooved into the horizontal blades, so I will be doing them seperatly.

Thanks again for reading, and I will leave you all with one last picture. Veritas (Lee Valley) released a mini router plane late this past week. How could I pass that up? I am generally not one to buy tools for the sake of buying tools. But this is just too cool not to. But don't think that it is just going to sit there and look pretty, oh no. Every tool of mine has to earn its keep, and this little guys is going to get some serious work and is going to come in really handy when I do inlay.


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## SPHinTampa (Apr 23, 2008)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Turkey for you?*
> 
> Since everyone knows that this weekend is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada… which basically means two things. Hockey season has started, and its going to snow soon. So while the family was busy making turkey and stuffing and all the fixin's, I was able to sneak away and get a few pictures taken and rest of the drawer blades and dividers done and installed. Since the last entry, I cut dado's in the horizontal blades for the vertical blades using the same method that I used in the previous entry. I did not picture this, as the process is the same, and its quite repetitious.
> 
> ...


This is a very interesting blog … thanks for the great level of detail.


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## kevinw (Feb 29, 2008)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Turkey for you?*
> 
> Since everyone knows that this weekend is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada… which basically means two things. Hockey season has started, and its going to snow soon. So while the family was busy making turkey and stuffing and all the fixin's, I was able to sneak away and get a few pictures taken and rest of the drawer blades and dividers done and installed. Since the last entry, I cut dado's in the horizontal blades for the vertical blades using the same method that I used in the previous entry. I did not picture this, as the process is the same, and its quite repetitious.
> 
> ...


I notice you have an identical mitre box to mine. I have had trouble with square vertical cuts in recent years. Ever have that problem? If so any suggestions?


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Turkey for you?*
> 
> Since everyone knows that this weekend is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada… which basically means two things. Hockey season has started, and its going to snow soon. So while the family was busy making turkey and stuffing and all the fixin's, I was able to sneak away and get a few pictures taken and rest of the drawer blades and dividers done and installed. Since the last entry, I cut dado's in the horizontal blades for the vertical blades using the same method that I used in the previous entry. I did not picture this, as the process is the same, and its quite repetitious.
> 
> ...


Hi Kevin. I have only been using my mitre box for a short time now, but now that I think about it, I have never checked how square the cuts are. I always leave myself about 1/16 and then it goes to the shooting board where it gets squared up and I sneak up on the line.

Have you checked the posts that the saw guides run on? Could it be how you are holding the saw? I will use some scrap tonight and make some test cuts and see what I get and let you know.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*A series of unfortunate events.*

Well, unfortunately I have not been able to get any more work done on the spice cabinet since last post. But that does not mean I have not been busy. Quite the opposite in fact. I have been very, very busy working on some commission projects.

My shop looks like it has become a box factory. I spent 4 days making 6 apple crates for a local flower boutique. I burned in the name of the shop and a bee on every crate and nailed it all together. I tried to make them look as 'rustic' as I could. Not being into the rustic thing myself, I think I did and ok job.









Also on the agenda was a small dovetailed box with an inlaid shell on the lid. A few months ago I was asked to see an antique about possibly repairing some damaged veneer. Unfortunately it was damaged way past my skills to repair, but I was allowed to take some pictures. I know it was made in England using QSO, but I cannot guess at the date. Mid 18th century? If you know, let me know, because I would love to know more. 

























I really like how the fans are jagged and not straight lines. I don't know if I have even seen that before. I took a close up of the shell and had it imported into autocad and had a simple line drawing made of it. And I have been using that as my pattern. Here is the box that I made. I used one really thin coat of amber shellac to help warm the walnut, and then 3 coats of clear shellac, and then 4 or 5 coats of the LV French polish. Oh, and yes. I used hand tools to do just about everything for this box.
















There has been quite a leanring curve on these shells, as I could not find any instruction on how to make these, I basically started out by using a really old magazine artical, and I made a little birds mouth jig tilted at 13°. Using my fret saw and really small blades… away I went. Some serious thinking and some scrap veneer, and I think I have it figured out. But you never know. Once of these days I will take some step by step pictures and post them, and see if someone else has a better way of doing things. Which I am sure is likely.









I am also trying like crazy to get some displays made for a friend, who has a show this coming weekend, so I need to be done before tomorrow afternoon. And once I have those done, then I have a ton of small turned projects and small boxes to make for a show in December. But, after this weekend I will have small breaks in between to be able to get some work done on the spice cabinet.

Again, sorry I have not gotten anything else done on the spice cabinet, but once I do I will keep you all posted.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*#8 Return of the Jedi......*

It has been close to 5 months since my last post, and thats not because I have been lazy. Its been 5 months because I have not touched this project in almost 5 months. But I am so happy to finally be back working on it. The last 5 months have brought about job changes, family crisis', multiple commissions and a ton of everything else to take away my time to work on my personal project.

I had left off with the carcass dry assembled, and I had finished making the drawer blades out of the secondary wood and finalizing my drawer configuration. I am now at the point where I need to make the front part of the drawer blades out of maple. Way back when I started the project, I used a bandsaw to rough out some thinner stock that I knew I was going to use for this purpose. But like I said, rough. It was about 3/8 to just under 1/2. So it all needed to be planed down so it fit into the grooves in the carcass.

I started with my smoothing plane with a toothed blade (I dont have a toothed blade for the jack plane)









After a few passes with that I switched to the jack plane with a regular blade and took away the tooth marks.









I repeated this process until I had a snug fit.









I have only done these three, because they are the only three that span from one side of the carcass to the other, now it is time to make v-grooves and fit the rest of the vertical and horizontal blades.

I want to thank everyone for following along and for your patience. I hope to have the next few steps done in the following days.

Jeremy


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## chrisstef (Mar 3, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *#8 Return of the Jedi......*
> 
> It has been close to 5 months since my last post, and thats not because I have been lazy. Its been 5 months because I have not touched this project in almost 5 months. But I am so happy to finally be back working on it. The last 5 months have brought about job changes, family crisis', multiple commissions and a ton of everything else to take away my time to work on my personal project.
> 
> ...


thats some serious looking lumber you got there, and to work with hand tools on it … impressive. Glad to see youre back at it.


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## doordude (Mar 26, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *#8 Return of the Jedi......*
> 
> It has been close to 5 months since my last post, and thats not because I have been lazy. Its been 5 months because I have not touched this project in almost 5 months. But I am so happy to finally be back working on it. The last 5 months have brought about job changes, family crisis', multiple commissions and a ton of everything else to take away my time to work on my personal project.
> 
> ...


how do you like the low angle jack? is it better to have than a regular jack? ( bevel up )


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *#8 Return of the Jedi......*
> 
> It has been close to 5 months since my last post, and thats not because I have been lazy. Its been 5 months because I have not touched this project in almost 5 months. But I am so happy to finally be back working on it. The last 5 months have brought about job changes, family crisis', multiple commissions and a ton of everything else to take away my time to work on my personal project.
> 
> ...


I love my low angle planes. I like that there is no frog, no chip breaker, adjustments are super easy, multiple blades for every occasion, machined sides so the low angle works awesome on shooting boards/end grain, taking the blade in and out is a snap,

As far as it being 'better' than a standard angle jack plane…. thats a very loaded question and with it can come some seriously heated debating. There are too many factors involved to give a real answer. If you are thinking of buying a jack, and cant decide between the two then you need to ask yourself some questions first. What are you using for? What kind of material are you primarily going to be using? Are you going to using it on a shooting board? Ect, ect. But overall… in my opinion, if you are going to buy one plane… this would be the one that I would strongly suggest.


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## bobasaurus (Sep 6, 2009)

JeremyPringle said:


> *#8 Return of the Jedi......*
> 
> It has been close to 5 months since my last post, and thats not because I have been lazy. Its been 5 months because I have not touched this project in almost 5 months. But I am so happy to finally be back working on it. The last 5 months have brought about job changes, family crisis', multiple commissions and a ton of everything else to take away my time to work on my personal project.
> 
> ...


This is quite the project. What is the purpose of the toothed blade in the smoothing plane? Does it make working the curly maple grain easier without tearing out? You're making me want a full set of Veritas planes  .


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *#8 Return of the Jedi......*
> 
> It has been close to 5 months since my last post, and thats not because I have been lazy. Its been 5 months because I have not touched this project in almost 5 months. But I am so happy to finally be back working on it. The last 5 months have brought about job changes, family crisis', multiple commissions and a ton of everything else to take away my time to work on my personal project.
> 
> ...


The toothed blades take small strips of shavings. The process is to go with the grain and then across the gain creating a cross hatch pattern. Then switching back to a standard plane blade to remove the cross hatch. Yes, the toothed blades are specifially for crazy grained stuff such as this kind of maple to eliminate tear out. Since this post, I bought the small BU smoothing plane, and I also bought the 50° blade with it as well. That blade is really nice with crazy grain as well, plus you dont have to switch planes or blades. I also think that I am going to replace my jack plane blade with a PMV-11 blade.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*The blade master, and I'm not talking lightsabers!*

Hello again. It has been quite a week. I have been able to get work done every night so far this week and I have made some good progress. I left off #8 getting the three horizontal drawer blades sized and fitted. So I'll pick up there. To fit the rest of the blades, I had to cut them to size. I used my crosscut carcass saw and a bench hook to get them close.

















Then I used my plane stop and planed them really close to thickness. I had to use the toothed blade for most of them and clean them up with the regular blade. (I forgot to take pictures)

Then once I had them to thickness, I took them to the shooting board to get them just right…









Once I had them all to size, I had to make a notch in all the horizontal blades so they would extend past where I made the stopped dado. For this I set them into position and used a knife to mark the lines and then I used a razor saw to cut out the notches.









After that I again refined the fit of all the drawer blades. Woo hoo, done that part. Now glue up time!









While I was gluing up, I noticed that the top had a slight cup in it, nothing that the glue would not take care of, but just in case… So I drilled some 1/4" holes about 1 1/4" into the top and glued in some little pieces of dowel. Now here is a small confession… I don't have a usable egg beater drill, and I don't have small enough bits for my brace… and even though I have a corded drill… I got my little mitts on a Festool C12. Goodness gracious me, I could go on about Festool until my eyes are deep blue and green! What an awesome tool. But… this is not a tool review so back to business… this is what I looked like when I was done.









After letting the glue cure over night and all day while I was at work, I used a flush cut saw to take off the protruding dowels, and then I planed the top and both sides so everything was nice and flush. I once again dry fit all the drawer blades. And this is where I am sitting right now.









This is really starting to come together and I am getting more and more excited about seeing this thing done. My next step is to start working on the drawers. I still have the other half of the slab, and that is where I am going to be getting the frawer fronts from. So I have quite a bit of work to do to get them usable. As well as a fair amount of planning so I can get the grain and figure to match as best as possible before I start cutting into the slab. I already have the drawer sides cut and they have been stickered for several months. This is the part that I am most excited about, I really like making drawers.

So… in the mean time and in between time!!!
(Extra points if you can tell me who used to say that)

Jeremy


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## SPHinTampa (Apr 23, 2008)

JeremyPringle said:


> *The blade master, and I'm not talking lightsabers!*
> 
> Hello again. It has been quite a week. I have been able to get work done every night so far this week and I have made some good progress. I left off #8 getting the three horizontal drawer blades sized and fitted. So I'll pick up there. To fit the rest of the blades, I had to cut them to size. I used my crosscut carcass saw and a bench hook to get them close.
> 
> ...


Looks fantastic.


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## DaddyZ (Jan 28, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *The blade master, and I'm not talking lightsabers!*
> 
> Hello again. It has been quite a week. I have been able to get work done every night so far this week and I have made some good progress. I left off #8 getting the three horizontal drawer blades sized and fitted. So I'll pick up there. To fit the rest of the blades, I had to cut them to size. I used my crosscut carcass saw and a bench hook to get them close.
> 
> ...


Looks Great so Far !!!


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Half-blind DT pictorial.*

Hello again, welcome back. In the last week I have been making the drawers for the spice cabinet. There are 14 in total. That meant there was A LOT of sawing and planning to get all my drawer sides and back to thickness and width. Since I have gone through that process already, I did not feel taking pictures would be very important. Even though I have covered dovetails already, since I am going to be doing it for the next week, I decided to do a more detailed pictorial of the process.

These are the tools that I use. The obvious saw and chisels, mallet but I also use two dividers, two marking gauges, a small adjustable square, DT angle saddle, dull chip carving knife and missing from the picture is a small coping saw.








First I use the two marking gauges to mark all my lines. I have one set for the longer tails and the other is set to the thickness of the material. Because I am doing 14 in total, I am not going to be touching or adjusting the gauges until I am done all of the drawers, so after marking, I put them in a safe place.








Once marked, I set the tail boards into my vice and then I can start the lay out of the tails. I have one set of dividers set to the size of the half pin at the top and bottom, and the other set it going to be adjusted for every size of drawer. 








First step is to mark off the half pin on each side.








I drew the tail lines for clarity.








Then with the other set of dividers, one point goes on the first line and you step off the number of tails you want, in this case I will have two.

Before making any other marks, its trial and error to get the spacing right. 








The amount of space PAST the opposite side line, is going to be the thickness of the pin. 








Once its set you can mark off points from one side to the other. Remember to start ON the half pin line and not at the edge of the work piece. The go to the other side and make point going the other way. 








Then mark your angles.








Cut.








Cope.








I turn and clamp, so I can cut two shoulders at one, repeat at necessary.








Time to chop out waste, start from the back, chop to the line and only go about half way. 








Then flip over and meet up in the middle. 








I do not chop out the very edge of the shoulders, I pare then by hand very carefully so I don't get any blow out. After cleaning everything up, its time to mark the pins. I generally do the back before the front, so again this is the other part of a through DT. I use my block plane in this case (because the pieces are so small) and I set the pin board in the vice to the same height as the plane, I move it back and I use it to hold the tail board up balanced so I can mark the pins. 








I use the dull chip carving knife to scribe my lines. I use a dull knife because it leaves a more visible line than a sharp knife will. Then with the small square I mark the vertical lines, I make sure to place them so I can see them and use them a guide instead of the actual cut line. 








Then same as before, cut, cope, chop. 








Test fit… that's pretty good.








Now the half blind for the front. Basically its almost the same. I set it to the same height as the block plane, then lay the tail board down, mark the lines, but this time I turn it over to I can cut it. 








The trick here is to know your saw, start your kerf and be really careful sawing only to the layout lines, anything past and it is going to be visible when someone pulls the drawer out and looks at the side so they can inspect your work.








Historically half blinds for drawers would have been cut by an apprentice and they would almost certainly have cut past the lines on the inside, as it was the inside face of a drawer front, it would never have been seen, and doing it this way would also significantly cut down on the amount of chopping that needs to be done in the next step. But since I am not pinched for time this is not what I will be doing.

Since there is no way to cope out most of the waste, it all needs to be chopped. Start at the front and make your way back to your line. Be careful to only go about halfway down and progressively go further down with each move backwards. If you go down all the way right away, you have a very high risk of blowing out the end grain past your lines. To keep track of my depth, I use a sharpie and mark the depth on the back of the chisel I use. 








Once I have chopped to the line and correct depth, I set the work piece back into the vice.








Now its time to clean everything up using chisels, if you have one, a fish tail chisel really helps with the tight corners, but if I did not have one, I would not let it stop me from doing half blinds.








Test fit.








Assemble.









Not bad. 6 down 8 to go.

You will notice that the side and backs are not full width. I am going to be using the old school method of nailing the bottoms to the sides and back. As the material is around ¼", it would impractical to use the plough plane and have an inset bottom.

Well, I hope you learned something from the pictorial process, and once I am done all the drawers, I will have another post on the next step.

Jeremy


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## GrandpaLen (Mar 6, 2012)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Half-blind DT pictorial.*
> 
> Hello again, welcome back. In the last week I have been making the drawers for the spice cabinet. There are 14 in total. That meant there was A LOT of sawing and planning to get all my drawer sides and back to thickness and width. Since I have gone through that process already, I did not feel taking pictures would be very important. Even though I have covered dovetails already, since I am going to be doing it for the next week, I decided to do a more detailed pictorial of the process.
> 
> ...


Jeremy,

That's a good looking joint and that makes for a great looking drawer.

Thanks for sharing your tutorial, very nicely done. - Len


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## doordude (Mar 26, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Half-blind DT pictorial.*
> 
> Hello again, welcome back. In the last week I have been making the drawers for the spice cabinet. There are 14 in total. That meant there was A LOT of sawing and planning to get all my drawer sides and back to thickness and width. Since I have gone through that process already, I did not feel taking pictures would be very important. Even though I have covered dovetails already, since I am going to be doing it for the next week, I decided to do a more detailed pictorial of the process.
> 
> ...


Very nice tutorial. i've got my saw coming from lie-nielson,and i have the other items,except the chisels.
do you use just bench chisels or dovetail chisels?
then i could get down to business.


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## waho6o9 (May 6, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Half-blind DT pictorial.*
> 
> Hello again, welcome back. In the last week I have been making the drawers for the spice cabinet. There are 14 in total. That meant there was A LOT of sawing and planning to get all my drawer sides and back to thickness and width. Since I have gone through that process already, I did not feel taking pictures would be very important. Even though I have covered dovetails already, since I am going to be doing it for the next week, I decided to do a more detailed pictorial of the process.
> 
> ...


Beautiful joinery Jeremy, thanks for posting.


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## JR45 (Jan 26, 2012)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Half-blind DT pictorial.*
> 
> Hello again, welcome back. In the last week I have been making the drawers for the spice cabinet. There are 14 in total. That meant there was A LOT of sawing and planning to get all my drawer sides and back to thickness and width. Since I have gone through that process already, I did not feel taking pictures would be very important. Even though I have covered dovetails already, since I am going to be doing it for the next week, I decided to do a more detailed pictorial of the process.
> 
> ...


An excellent description of the process. Many thanks for taking so much time to share with everyone.
Jim


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Half-blind DT pictorial.*
> 
> Hello again, welcome back. In the last week I have been making the drawers for the spice cabinet. There are 14 in total. That meant there was A LOT of sawing and planning to get all my drawer sides and back to thickness and width. Since I have gone through that process already, I did not feel taking pictures would be very important. Even though I have covered dovetails already, since I am going to be doing it for the next week, I decided to do a more detailed pictorial of the process.
> 
> ...


Thanks everyone for reading.

Doordude: Which saw did you order from LN? I have the progressive pitch DT saw. But my friend has the LV 14tpi DT saw, and I have been using this project to do a side by side test between the two. Stay tuned for that entry.

Chisels… they have a soft spot in my heart. I have the LN bevel edge set. The LN have very little bevel which make them good for DT's, but I also use them for basically everything. If I had to start over, I would buy them again and again and again. BUT…. I am a strong advocate for using what you have and figuring out a way to make it work.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Mantra adjustment, moulding & ogee feet*

Well, it only took 3 weeks, but I finally finished cutting all the drawers.









Time to make some moulding and the ogee feet. But I have run into somewhat of an expected/unexpected issue. When I started this project I was determined to do everything with hand tools. So far I have been mostly successful. Until now. I think a lot of this is also due to my blissful ignorance. I knew that I was going to run into some issues, but I decided to ignore them and try to deal with them when they came about. So, here is where the mantra change comes into play. I am going to use hand tools so do as much of this project as I can. With the exception where I do not have or cannot borrow the required hand tools.

For example, I do not have moulding planes that do complex profiles, neither do any of my friends. Thus, the only way to do the moulding would be my router table. This is what I ended up doing. I used a basic roman ogee bit for the top part of the profile, and then switched it out for a smaller bit to do the bottom part of the profile.








A little scraping and planning will true everything up nicely.

Next the ogee feet. Because I have only played with the table saw/ogee cove a few times a few weeks ago, I was still unsure of the correct sequence. I had to email someone for advice. Here is what I did. I cut three long pieces, and drew out the profile, one left and one right on each piece. Cut the mitre on each side, cut the cove, drilled the hole for the point, cut out the profile and then used rasps and files to clean up the saw marks. Once I had them glued up I used my black plane to do the final shaping of the profile, the used a little …gasp *sand paper* to clean up any left over mill marks from the table saw. I think they turned out ok. Note, the moulding is only loosely taped into place, thus the gap in the picture.









The two back feet are a little different. Cut the cove, then drilled the holes. The backs are also supported with half blind DT's. I decided to cut these first, before cutting out the profile. So I cut the half blinds. You can see the piece in the back ground, as I have yet to cut out the profile, and this is where I am left off at this point.









My next step is to finish the drawers. I am going to be nailing the bottoms on, so I have to plane all the drawers to final thickness (I left them a little thick) and glue them up, then nail on the bottoms. Then I can get started on the door.

I did a few test pieces, and I have finally settled on a colour and finish.








My formula is Russet Amber aniline dye, boiled linseed oil, 2-3 coats amber shellac, and then the final few coats of blond shellac, and then I will rub out the finish.

Thanks again for reading.
Jeremy


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## BTimmons (Aug 6, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Mantra adjustment, moulding & ogee feet*
> 
> Well, it only took 3 weeks, but I finally finished cutting all the drawers.
> 
> ...


That's going to look really cool.


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## tirebob (Aug 2, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Mantra adjustment, moulding & ogee feet*
> 
> Well, it only took 3 weeks, but I finally finished cutting all the drawers.
> 
> ...


I love the dye colour man… I need to look at trying the dyes. I tested a piece of ash with just amber shellac and it looks too much like the typical 1980's honey oak colour on all the old floors and cabinets!


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## DaddyZ (Jan 28, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Mantra adjustment, moulding & ogee feet*
> 
> Well, it only took 3 weeks, but I finally finished cutting all the drawers.
> 
> ...


Very Nice So Far !!!


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## roman (Sep 28, 2007)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Mantra adjustment, moulding & ogee feet*
> 
> Well, it only took 3 weeks, but I finally finished cutting all the drawers.
> 
> ...


always wanted to make one and happy you are. I still have a set of plans somewhere in FFW, "Small Woodworking Plans"

Nice work

Cheers


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## molan (Apr 25, 2012)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Mantra adjustment, moulding & ogee feet*
> 
> Well, it only took 3 weeks, but I finally finished cutting all the drawers.
> 
> ...


Crazy how good that looks! I love the curly maple you are using! You should tell us how you go about selecting the wood for a project like this so you show off its features like that!


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## kenn (Mar 19, 2008)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Mantra adjustment, moulding & ogee feet*
> 
> Well, it only took 3 weeks, but I finally finished cutting all the drawers.
> 
> ...


It is looking great, I'm happy to see your drawer progress, don't sweat "cheating" on the handtool only goal. Thanks for the update.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Drawers and double door*

I have been slacking quite a bit on this project. I was at the point where I needed to plane all the drawer fronts to final thickness and glue them up and nail the bottoms on. Well I have my next project picked out and that means I have to finsh this one. And I find that when I am working on a project I am really excited about it, and this is no exception. Once I finally got to planing the fronts and assemblying the drawers, I started to see that this project is getting close to done!

I also failed to take pictures of me doing any of the planing, gluing and nailing. Lots of planing, lots of gluing and lots of nailing. I nailed the bottoms on the drawers with an air nailed gun using 5/8 nails.








I do have some tweeking to do, but I will do that after I fully assemble the inside blades.

Now I am onto the door. I had planned on doing a single tombstone planel, but I made a miscut and cut my rails longer than my stiles. Maybe I should start writing things down instead of just measuring and cutting. So plan B, I will make a double tombstone door.

First step was to mark my half circles on the top rail. Front and back.









Then using my crosscut saw I cut almost to the line a bunch of times.









Then I broke then off with a chisel.









Then using rasps I cleaned them up.









Just a little cleaning up to get them a little more even…









I plan on using quilted maple for the panels. I am going to use veneered planels instead of solid wood. So now I need to find some good veneer, and make the planels.

Till next time, thanks for reading.


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## molan (Apr 25, 2012)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Drawers and double door*
> 
> I have been slacking quite a bit on this project. I was at the point where I needed to plane all the drawer fronts to final thickness and glue them up and nail the bottoms on. Well I have my next project picked out and that means I have to finsh this one. And I find that when I am working on a project I am really excited about it, and this is no exception. Once I finally got to planing the fronts and assemblying the drawers, I started to see that this project is getting close to done!
> 
> ...


Looking amazing as always! I love how you cut the half circles for the arch's on tops of you door panel. Its so quick and simple yet so effective! I can't wait to see the finished project!


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Computer issues.*

it has been about a month since my last post, and I just wanted to keep you all posted with my progress. Unfortunately my PC has decided to have some issues, and since I am not very computer sauvy it is taking quite a while to fix it. I am using my wife's tablet right now. I am still working, and i am taking pictures, so once the computer is fixed I will post some more.

Thanks,
Jeremy


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Completing the double arch door*

Once again I find myself apologizing to all who are following this build. Three months ago we ended up having to get a new computer. And right at the same time, I ended up getting a few smaller commissions. Once those were done, there was little time left to get everything made for an art show that was this past weekend. Now.. I can finally get onto the rest of this project. I am going to try my best to get this done before my next commission which is in the design process right now, and is quite substantial. So I spent the morinig cleaning up the shop, and getting the spice cabinet back into the working area.

Most of these pictures were taken a few months ago when the work was done, but I have not had time to get them loaded up and blogged about.

After getting the double arches cut and made, I used my router table with a groove cutting bit and bearing to make the groove where the panels will fit. I had planned on using mortise and tenons to fit the parts of the door together, but at the same time I had the opportunity to play with a festool domino, and how could I pass that up? So I ended up using dominos. I really like that machine. I dry fit the door frame, clamped it tight, and used a colt with a profile bit to make the inside profile. Of course the round but does not fit into the aquare corners very well.









Using chisels and scrapers I cleaned everything up.









For the panels, I choose quilted maple, I also choose to bookmatch the panel doors.









After gluing up the panels and cutting them to the right shape, I decided to dye the panels before assembling the door with glue, as I did not want to fuss with the dye in tight corners.

















Once I had the door assembled and glued up, I needed to cut the mortises for the hinges. Chisels and router plane make this quick and easy work

















And then the lock, again chisels and the router plane make this a cake walk.

















I spent quite a bit of time fitting the drawers to they all slide in and out really nice and have an even reveal all around them. I used my small LA smoothing plane with a 50° blade to clean up the drawer faces and sides. No tear out at all, super smooth surface.









And with the door sitting in place









Getting to the point where things are going to start wrapping up, and I am getting really excited to see this finally finished.

Thanks again for reading.


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## BTimmons (Aug 6, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Completing the double arch door*
> 
> Once again I find myself apologizing to all who are following this build. Three months ago we ended up having to get a new computer. And right at the same time, I ended up getting a few smaller commissions. Once those were done, there was little time left to get everything made for an art show that was this past weekend. Now.. I can finally get onto the rest of this project. I am going to try my best to get this done before my next commission which is in the design process right now, and is quite substantial. So I spent the morinig cleaning up the shop, and getting the spice cabinet back into the working area.
> 
> ...


Looking great!


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## JulianLech (Jan 13, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Completing the double arch door*
> 
> Once again I find myself apologizing to all who are following this build. Three months ago we ended up having to get a new computer. And right at the same time, I ended up getting a few smaller commissions. Once those were done, there was little time left to get everything made for an art show that was this past weekend. Now.. I can finally get onto the rest of this project. I am going to try my best to get this done before my next commission which is in the design process right now, and is quite substantial. So I spent the morinig cleaning up the shop, and getting the spice cabinet back into the working area.
> 
> ...


Looks awesome. I'm sure it looks even better than the photos can show.


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## tirebob (Aug 2, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Completing the double arch door*
> 
> Once again I find myself apologizing to all who are following this build. Three months ago we ended up having to get a new computer. And right at the same time, I ended up getting a few smaller commissions. Once those were done, there was little time left to get everything made for an art show that was this past weekend. Now.. I can finally get onto the rest of this project. I am going to try my best to get this done before my next commission which is in the design process right now, and is quite substantial. So I spent the morinig cleaning up the shop, and getting the spice cabinet back into the working area.
> 
> ...


Wicked bro!


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Dying and Boiled linseed oil*

I am happy to report that I activly working on this project until I get it done. I am so close to being done that I cant see myself setting it aside again. Also, I have a couple of large jobs coming up and I need the space.

Since last time, when everything was planed to fit and everything tightened up. I just made sure everything was flat and smooth and sliding/fitting nicly.

Ready for the finish. I may have mentioned it already, but I am using aniline dye for the colour, and the colour is called Russet Amber. As per the instructions that came with with dye, I heated up some water and then mixed in the powder and stired it up. Actually, I did not follow the instructions at all. I did not measure my water or the powder. I just mixed in the powder until I liked the colour my stir stick turned (I was using a cut off from the same piece of wood). While the water was cooling off, I used a cloth and some water and wiped down all the surfaces that I planned on putting colour into. This pre-raises the grain. When it dried I used some 220 to really gently knock down the fuzzies. By then the dye was cool. So I used another rag and soaked everything in the dye and kept it wet for a good 15-20 min. Then using another rag that I had dampened in the dye, I wiped off the excess. Here is what the drawers look like after I wiped off the excess, but before it was dry. 









Once the dye is dry, it have a very matte look to it, and it will not look like the right colour either, not to worry, one some oil and finish are on it… POP!

After letting everything dry for a day, I then got out my trusty bottle of boiled linseed oil. Only to remember that it was almost empty. So I had to go and get another one. Using a foam brush, I saturarted everything with the oil and kept it wet for a good 20 min. Those flames soak up a lot of oil, so it was slow going, as I constantly had to go back and reapply oil. Here are the drawers and the carcass after wiping off the excess, but again, before it has dried and cured.








I did not set up my lights so the picture is qute dark, and its hard to see the figure in the wood, nonetheless, here is the carcass. 









I am going to give the oil 2-3 days to cure before moving on.

Note, I have removed all the inner drawer blades, as they will not be coloured. I also took some care not to put any dye or oil into the dado`s where they go, as I do not want to swell them and change their size. After the final finish is applied, I will put them back in and install the back.

Speaking of final finish, I am going to be using amber shellac. I cut my own because I prefer it to be as fresh as possible, and I like a specific cut. I have most of the supplies, but am missing one thing which I will be picking up tonight. This is something that I think a lot of people would enjoy seeing how it is done, I will be taking lots of picture of the process.

Thanks again for reading,
Jeremy


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## tirebob (Aug 2, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Dying and Boiled linseed oil*
> 
> I am happy to report that I activly working on this project until I get it done. I am so close to being done that I cant see myself setting it aside again. Also, I have a couple of large jobs coming up and I need the space.
> 
> ...


So sick!


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## molan (Apr 25, 2012)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Dying and Boiled linseed oil*
> 
> I am happy to report that I activly working on this project until I get it done. I am so close to being done that I cant see myself setting it aside again. Also, I have a couple of large jobs coming up and I need the space.
> 
> ...


Sick is exactly the work I was thinking too!


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## BTimmons (Aug 6, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Dying and Boiled linseed oil*
> 
> I am happy to report that I activly working on this project until I get it done. I am so close to being done that I cant see myself setting it aside again. Also, I have a couple of large jobs coming up and I need the space.
> 
> ...


Really enjoying this series, it just keeps getting better!


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## bobasaurus (Sep 6, 2009)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Dying and Boiled linseed oil*
> 
> I am happy to report that I activly working on this project until I get it done. I am so close to being done that I cant see myself setting it aside again. Also, I have a couple of large jobs coming up and I need the space.
> 
> ...


This thing is looking amazing. The dying sure produces an interesting effect with the curly grain.


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*Cutting shellac*

I am on the final stages of this project.
For a final finish I chose amber shellac, for a few different reasons.
1. I love the orange tinge and warmth is gives the fnished product.
2. It is a traditional finish, it has been around and has been used for thousands of years.
3. I enjoy the process.

I buy my shellac in flake form (right) on the left is seedlac, the same product but you can buy it in different forms depending on what you are using it for. The seedlac is some I borrowed from a Luthier friend of mine to show the difference.









So my process starts with my thinner, flakes and a jar. 









I am using grain alcohol for this, because I live in Canada and cannot get denatured alcohol. The grain alcohol is more expensive than other shellac thinners, but it is the best stuff, so I do not mind paying more. I am going to cut my shellac to be about 1.5-2lbs. If you do not fully understand what that means, I will explain. Shellac in liquid form is measured in pound cut. Weight of shellac dissolved in volume of liquid. The standard cut is 3lbs into 1 imperial gallon of liquid. This is called a 3 pound cut.

Here is my process. I wanted 500ml (metric, remember? Im Canadian) of finished shellac that I could use. So, 1 imperial gallon is about 4 metric litres. 500 ml is 1/8th of that. So to get the ratio right, I will need 1/8 of 1 1/2 lbs. So I take 1/4lb of flakes, which is already 1/6th, but I need an 1/8 of 1 1/2, that's too much flakes. So I put 3/4 of the 1/4 into a mason jar, and them filled it about 7/8 full with solvent. I leave room to add more solvent of flakes as needed. This will give me something between 1.5 and 2 lb/cut. This is also a great thing about shellac… you can mix it to whatever you want. The store bought stuff is 3 lb/cut. But I prefer to have it thinner.
In goes the flakes….








Now the alcohol…..









I use a stick and stir it around, here is what the flakes look like after about 2 min









10 min…









20 min…. almost fully dissolved.









Even though there are very few solids left, I still let it sit about 24hrs. Then I get a second jar and put a few layers of cheese cloth over the mouth a pour the mixture from the one jar to the other. The cheese cloth will filter out all the bug bums and dirt and crud that was in the flakes…








You can even see the nasty stuff that is on the side of the jar…. nasty.

Ok, now it is ready to be brushed onto the drawer fronts…. but, we still need to talk about brushes. $3 brush…. $3 finish. Also, the solvents we are dealing with will dissolve synthetic brushes, so a natural bristle brush is a must, not a should. I am using a 2" pure badger hair brush. Why? Because they are the best. I also clean out the nasty jar as best as possible and put a small amount of alcohol in it to clean the brush when I am done.









One coat on all the drawer fronts,









I will put another coat on and then sand them all smooth with 600, and then another, and another…. until it looks like glass. This is a very time consuming process, but the end results are going to be awesome.

Thanks again for reading.


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## FirehouseWoodworking (Jun 9, 2009)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Cutting shellac*
> 
> I am on the final stages of this project.
> For a final finish I chose amber shellac, for a few different reasons.
> ...


Very good tutorial. And I can see that the spice cabinet is going to be gorgeous. Well done!

Cheers!


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## bonobo (Oct 8, 2012)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Cutting shellac*
> 
> I am on the final stages of this project.
> For a final finish I chose amber shellac, for a few different reasons.
> ...


I've been following this and can't wait to see it all polished and assembled.

Canadians living in Ontario, where the LCBO won't sell you grain alcohol, can find denatured alcohol at Canadian Tire. It's sold as fireplace fuel under the name Bio-Flame. Call for an inventory check first.


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## BTimmons (Aug 6, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Cutting shellac*
> 
> I am on the final stages of this project.
> For a final finish I chose amber shellac, for a few different reasons.
> ...


Man, that curly maple grain is dynamite. Can't wait to see this finished.


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## tirebob (Aug 2, 2010)

JeremyPringle said:


> *Cutting shellac*
> 
> I am on the final stages of this project.
> For a final finish I chose amber shellac, for a few different reasons.
> ...


Awesome as usual man… Looking forward to seeing this done as well!


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## JeremyPringle (Aug 17, 2011)

*And now we return for the exciting conclusion!!!*

DONE!!! D-O-N-E, DONE!!!

A note before I continue. I will explain what I have done in the last week, but because the process is quite time consuming and messy, I did not have my camera set up, so I have very few picture of the process.

Basically what I did, I brushed on 4 more coats of the amber shellac that I mixed up. Sanding gently between coats. Then I wiped on 4 more coats of a clear 'french polish' finish that you can buy. I let it cure for 2 days until I was sure that I was not going to destroy everything that I had done. Then on to something new that I had never done before. Rubbing out the finish. I used mineral oil as a lube and a small scrap of wood as a block, using 400 wet/dry I lightly sanded until I had a consistent sheen surface, free (almost) of pitting. Then the same thing with 600. Then using a small pad of 0000 steel wool soaked in oil, I dabbed the bottom in pumice. Really gently going only with the grain just overlapping strokes. Then the same thing with rottonstone. After wiping all the oil off, I let it sit overnight.

On to the last step…. wax. I use some cheese cloth and put a clump of wax in the middle, rubbing it on the surface in rows of small circles, they are hard to see, I could not get the camera to pick up the swirls that are evident when you are doing it in raking light.









Once I have gone over the surface a few times, I let it sit for a few min, then I used a wool pad (supposed to be used for polishing bowls?) 









I polished the wax until it looked like this….









I then installed the secondary drawer blades, knobs on the drawers, hinges and the lock. DONE!

















Now, some final notes about this project. When I build something for myself, (which this is) one of my personal goals is to make something more difficult than the last project, something where I will learn a lot, and challenge myself. Some things that I learned from this project: 
1. I should have put more time into planning. I would have loved to put some secret compartments in this, I love secret compartments, and I try to put them in most things if I can. 
2. LA planes with a 50° blades are awesome for this kind of grain patterns. I wish I had gotten it before I started, It would have saved me a ton of time during the surface prep phase. And speaking of surface prep.. 
3. I would have spent more time in prep'ing the surface before applying the dye and shellac. After applying the shellac, and reading up to get ready for the next steps, I learned that I had not done as much as I needed to get better results. I was able to get ok results, but next time I do this type of finish, it will be much better.
4. I need to get me some sweet rasps.

Some really great things about this project:
1. I did not use a tape measure. I used dividers for all my lay out.
2. I gave most of my hand tools the time that they deserve.
3. There are 134 dovetails, none of which have been used 'decorativly'. From the very start, it was one of my goals to not have any DT's visable, and only use them for what they would have been used in the 18th century. For example, I used half blinds for the top…..








I feel that had I used through DT's, the top would have been wrecked. I also used moulding to cover them all up.
4. All the primary wood is from the same chunk that I started with.

Well, thats about all I can think of. Thank you all for following this project from start to finish. Now Chippendale lowboy here I come!!!!

Jeremy


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## oldworld124 (Mar 2, 2008)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And now we return for the exciting conclusion!!!*
> 
> DONE!!! D-O-N-E, DONE!!!
> 
> ...


You did a great job on the build and the blog Jeremy. Looks beautiful.

Thanks for sharing.


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## jap (Oct 10, 2012)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And now we return for the exciting conclusion!!!*
> 
> DONE!!! D-O-N-E, DONE!!!
> 
> ...


amazing job


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## camps764 (Dec 9, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And now we return for the exciting conclusion!!!*
> 
> DONE!!! D-O-N-E, DONE!!!
> 
> ...


Gorgeous build, a spice cabinet is on my list of to do's someday as well. When I build for our home I try to challenge myself to do something new on every project as well. Since I usually screw stuff up, I also try to challenge myself to creatively fix mistakes instead of cutting new pieces


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## Limerick (Mar 16, 2011)

JeremyPringle said:


> *And now we return for the exciting conclusion!!!*
> 
> DONE!!! D-O-N-E, DONE!!!
> 
> ...


Hi Jeremy, I found your blog again! I was following along at first but when you stopped writing, I thought you abandoned it. Very nice blog with lots of pics, good info, and a nice read. Your spice box turned out beautifully. I made one last year for my daughter and found out that they are way more challenging than it seems a first glance. The tiger and quilted maple make yours just stunning. The work of a true craftsman. Thank you for the blog. I love seeing how others work.


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