Kiln-Dried Wood for Windsor-Style Chairs

One thing frustrating about living in California is the lack of access to the types of woods used by chairmakers like Curtis Buchanan.  Curtis and others regularly buy whole logs and split them to get the straightest grain possible for chair components.  Last year I saw a Pete Galbert video where he shows how to get straight-grained parts from kiln-dried lumber.

I'll leave the details and finer points of the method to Pete - the video is great.  After splitting the wood and cutting judiciously to ensure straight grain, he soaks the parts in water for a few days to soften them so they'll be easier to shape with a drawknife.  Today I practiced with a small scrap piece of white oak.  All I got from it was a pile of drawknife shavings, but at least I got some practice at shaving a piece to get some straight grain.

Using a section of PVC pipe to soak the piece of wood

About 3" inner diameter

This 14-15" long stick soaked for about 2 days

If you zoom in on that picture, you'll see that the grain does not run straight.  Galbert would normally split that stick to see which way the grain runs, then the edge grain on the split area will tell whether the face grain dives or rises.

But today, I just wanted to practice shaving with a drawknife to get a feel for how to get a surface to follow the grain.

Pencil sitting on a face, pointing in the grain direction.
The bottom edge is unaltered: I've shaved the upper edge to follow the face grain

This is looking at the upper edge that I shaved.  Note how the grain runs toward the lower face.
I then shaved the upper face (near the pencil) to follow that grain.

Here's what I got from this experiment: a pile of drawknife shavings

It was interesting to get a feel for how a drawknife cuts when it gets into a "seam" - a line of straight grain.  I'm going to try more of this very soon - a couple months ago I bought a big chunk of 1 3/4" thick red oak that looked fairly straight-grained.  I'll know more when I split it and try to get some chair parts out of it.

Nice Save!

Here's what happened when I was tapering the mortises in the top of a step stool.  The old recycled pine was soft enough that my tapered reamer really chewed up one of the holes.  Three of them were OK, but one was so horribly disfigured that I thought I might have to scrap the top altogether and start anew.  The hole was no longer even close to the proper angle and the edges were chewed up.

This first stool came out fine; it's the other one that is the subject of this post

The platform of the stool in question - underside shown

These mortises started out round.  While tapering them, the lower left mortise went for a drive to la la land (sounds like I've been reading Ralph's blog too long).  I thought about it for a while and decided I'd try to save it.  The holes were bored at 3/4" diameter and when tapered, the bottom side was closer to 15/16".  I decided to make square mortises and tenons, about 1" on a side.  The lower left mortise I had to make about 1/ 1/8" square because the edges were so gnarly.  You can see some nasty edges in the above pic even after chopping the large, square mortise.  While chopping the mortises, the first three mortises were at approximately the proper angle, but to make the fourth at the proper angle, I'd have had to make it much larger.  So I didn't even try to make the fourth at the proper angle; it was still way off the mark.

Some of the tenons being formed.  These legs started out way
oversized, which allowed me to save this project.
(note: leg #4 at right has its tenon in a corner to allow shaping the leg at an angle)

After fitting the tenons to the mortises.  I turned the stool upside down and put the first stool right-side-up on the upturned feet of the second stool.  This allowed me to find out where the feet of the second stool should be.

Setting a stool with properly spaced feet on upturned second stool

Marking the feet locations on bottom of stool #2 feet

Here's the bad leg - note how far off-center the foot will be once material is removed

Marking the leg shape on the fourth leg
(most of the turned areas you can see from its former life were removed in shaping)

My leg blanks were far beefier than I needed and that saved this project.  I could shape the fourth leg in such a way as to make it end up at the proper angle.  I made the legs octagonal, tapering from 1 3/8" where they meet the top to about 1" at the feet.

Saved!  Glued up and cooking with wedged tenons

The moral of the story is: you can usually save a project - especially if it's not "fine woodworking".  You just have to think about it a while, weigh the options and perhaps try something new.  Not sure if I've made angled square mortises before, but these came out great.

Tips for Planing Very Hard Wood

Some years ago, as a gift my wife gave me a nice piece of purple heart (peltogyne spp.), approximately 36" x 8 3/4" x 7/8", and it's been waiting for the right project to come along.  That time is finally here.  I knew this stuff was going to be hard to plane, but I really didn't know just how hard.

Three pieces of purple heart on top of some cherry

This purple heart is incredibly dense - the board was very heavy.  My project needs pieces about 12" long - one 8" wide and two pieces 5" wide.  I crosscut the board into shorter lengths before doing any flattening.

Tip #1: It's key to have a VERY sharp plane.  I started by sharpening the planes I planned to use, and I probably got them as sharp as I've ever gotten them.  I've come a long way in that regard.

The Stanley #4 next to the diamond plates and strop

Tip #2: It's also important to make sure the plane is set up properly.  When the iron engages the dense wood, there is a lot of resistance and you don't want your iron to shift on you.  For metal planes, the iron should bed nicely on the frog and the lever-cap screw should be tightened properly so that the iron and breaker don't move when in use.  For wooden planes with cambered irons, make sure the iron projection is centered and is as coarse or light as you want it.

Tip #3:  Remove as much material as possible with coarser tools before trying to smooth the surface with a finely set smoothing plane.  Because I had a lot of twist to deal with, I was able to use the wooden jack plane to remove some.  And I had the iron set for a MUCH lighter shaving than I usually take with the jack.

Using the jack across the grain, but I also used it with the grain

To remove some coarseness left by the jack and to get closer to my layout lines, I used the wooden try plane that has a more gently cambered iron that was freshly sharpened.

Using the try plane to get close to the lines.  I think the heft of the try
plane helped a lot in getting through the dense wood.

Tip #4: When you're ready for the smoother, set the plane to take VERY light shavings.  Even then it was tough to plane consistently from one end to the other.  Skewing the plane also helps get the plane through the dense wood.

I had to press down fairly hard on the front knob to keep the iron engaged

See-through shavings

Pretty darned thin, but it takes a long time to plane

Here's the thing: planing a thousandth of an inch at a time will take a very long time.  This is why it is so important to remove as much material as possible with coarser tools.

I also did a little scraping with the #80 cabinet scraper - freshly sharpened - to level any remaining unevenness.

Scraping for final flatness

Tip #5: Don't remove more material than you have to.  When I drew up the plan in Sketchup, the PH boards were 3/4" thick.  But it won't hurt anything if they are a little thicker.  (It also wouldn't have hurt if the back side that won't be seen was left with a big twist, but I flattened it anyway.)  These pieces will finish out at approximately 13/16" thick.  It wasn't worth the effort to bring them down to 3/4" and I'll never notice the difference.

I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts on this.  Please comment if you have something to share.

This PH was definitely the hardest wood I've ever planed.  Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), my current project won't require any mortising of the PH.  I'll need to saw some short tenons and pare shoulders, so I'll see how the chisels do. But the planing was a great learning experience and will give me more confidence in the future when working with harder woods like this.

Small Chest With Drawers

My wife has had this tiny little jewelry chest.  It's nothing special, but something about it always appealed to me.  It's a small, four-drawer, painted box.

The inspiration

Side view

You can see that it has tiny little bun feet and the drawers have curved fronts that are quite proud of the front of the case.

I didn't bother taking too close a look at how this piece was made, as I'm pretty sure it's some made-in-China crap.  So I decided on some rough dimensions (8" x 6" x 4") and put tools to wood.

The carcase is made from 3/8" thick pine.  The top and bottom are dovetailed into the sides and there's a groove along the back to receive a 1/8" plywood back.  The 1/8" groove is a good excuse to use my old wooden plough plane.  It's the only plane I have that has an iron that thin.

Underside of top

The sides have the 1/8" groove, as well as three stopped dadoes that receive the 1/4" thick drawer dividers.  There rear dovetail pin is wider than the others to leave room for the groove.

Inside face of left side

The three drawer dividers get a little step to conceal the dadoes and bring their fronts flush with the case front.  The stock on hand was not quite wide enough to allow the dividers to extend all the way to the back of the case.  No problem though - they do their job fine.

Drawer dividers

The case came together nicely.  It was a really good exercise in careful marking out.

A first dry-fit

After gluing up the case, I plugged the groove holes on the top of the case and trimmed the plugs smooth.  For the drawers, the fronts and sides are poplar, the backs are pine and the bottoms are 1/8" plywood.  The sides are connected to the front by a single half-blind dovetail and to the back by a through dovetail.  Thin, soft wood is so forgiving when cutting dovetails.  The drawer front has a 1/8" deep x 5/16" wide rabbet on its underside to accept the plywood bottom and the other drawer parts were made to be flush with that rabbet so that the drawer bottom could be glued to the undersides of the front rabbet, the sides and the back.

Drawer parts

At first I was just going to copy the shape of the drawer fronts of the existing chest, but then I thought maybe I'd try something different.  I recalled seeing some "serpentine" fronts on full sized chests of drawers and I thought that might be interesting.  I had no idea if it would look good, but what the hell - this is just a fun project.  So I made a template and a prototype.

Template being used to scribe the shape of the drawer front

This looks nicer than I thought it might

I remember on some serpentine chest I saw somewhere that the drawer dividers had the same shape as the drawer fronts.  After thinking about it, I nixed the idea and it still looks OK.

A couple more details to take care of - drawer pulls and feet.  I couldn't find any drawer pulls tiny enough to fit this chest.  So I experimented with some large nails and found one that seems to be sized right.

Using a cut off nail as a drawer pull

For the feet I thought I'd make some kind of "bracket" feet - two mitered pieces at each corner of the case bottom.

Mitered both ends of a 1/2" x 1/2" pine blank

Made a little template and transferred the shape to the blank.
This half-foot is about 1 1/8" long.

Chiseled and fine-rasped to the lines

Then glued the miters of each pair of bracket feet

Then glued them to the bottom of the case (glue not yet added in this photo)

Here's the feet glued to the bottom (they're not all cleaned up yet)

These look great from the front.  But they look a little funny from the side, where the dovetail joints are seen.

I guess that's why large case pieces have bracket feet that are proud of the case
and mouldings to cover the dovetails

I gave the drawers and the case a coat of shellac, more as a sealer than as a finish.  My wife is going to paint this piece (as practice for another future project), so hopefully the paint will hide the dovetails above the bracket feet.

And here she is, minus final painting.  I'll add the pulls after that.

Glamour shot

All for now.  Catch you on the flip-flop.

Multi-Drawer Shop Cabinet, Part 2

The carcase having been completed, I got to the drawers.  I made a test drawer first, to see how the runner system would work and to work out some other details.  The drawer sides and back are 13/32" thick pine, the fronts are 1/2" mahogany from a salvaged table undercarriage and the bottoms are some 3/16" maple-veneered plywood.

The test drawer with oak front

As you can see in the picture, the sides are half-blind dovetailed into the front.  There is also a rabbet on the bottom inside edge of the drawer front that will conceal the plywood bottom.

Showing how the drawer front will hide the plywood bottom.
Also note the groove in the side that will slide on runners in the carcase.

The drawer pulls will be 1/8" thick pieces of maple, mortised into the top edge of the drawer front

Another view of the pull

Ten of the drawers will also have a divider housed in dadoes in the front and back of the drawer

One thing I love is being able to use some of my older and favorite tools.  I cut the drawer side grooves with the Ohio Tool Co. plough plane that I rehabbed a couple years ago.

Ploughing the groove with the old screw-arm plough plane

After the bottoms were glued on, I was able to use an old vom Cleff & Co. German-style plane to clean them up.  With a wide open mouth, this plane worked much better than my Stanley metal planes with tight mouths that clogged on the plywood.

Cleaning up the glued-on bottom

Speaking of gluing on the bottoms, here was my method of clamping.

An MDF shelf and a toolbox to add weight for clamping pressure

The drawer construction took a long time at first, but moved along better when I did similar operations on all drawers before moving to the next operation on all drawers (a "batch" operation).

First test-fit of all drawers in their spaces -
Note the gap between the bottom drawers and the next drawer up

Apparently I miscalculated something and had a large gap between drawers 5 and 6 on each side.  I fixed that by gluing a small piece to the top edges of the bottom drawer fronts.

The fix was almost invisible

Gluing up the carcase was OK - a little nerve-wracking, but it went well and the joints were very tight.

Carcase glue-up - note the special cauls that add pressure directly to every other tail

For a finish, I coated the case with a couple coats of shellac.  Any wear surfaces also got shellac and then wax.

Shellac drying - oh, man look at those nice dovetails

Drawer fronts with shellac and drying.
The bottom drawers also got shellac on their undersides because they slide on the case bottom

And here she is ...

The back is a piece of 1/8" plywood fitted into rabbets and screwed in place.

And here's the obligatory shot of the drawers progressively opened showing the half-blind dovetails
Some of you might have noticed that I grooved the bottom drawer sides when I didn't need to ...

And here it is in its new home

This area of the shop went from this ... to this.

As it was ...

To as it is now.

One thing I didn't mention - I made the drawer fronts overwidth by about 1/16" so that I could plane the top edges down to get an even space between all drawers.  This turned out to be a great idea, as the spacing was anything but consistent.

This project was a LOT of work.  Hopefully the benefits will outweigh the work required.  But even if it doesn't, I have one more project under my belt that will lead me in the direction of more complicated pieces.