Monday, January 31, 2011

Oak Display Doweling

Boof! Carcass all doweled up. I think we can all guess how that happened. What is a bit more interesting is doweling the little corner drawer pocket.

Here are the pieces to finial dimension and about where I want them. I made the same old doweling jig I always do but there is a little trickery in setting exactly where the doweling jig should be.

First I bored the dowel holes in the end grain joints. Order of operations doesn't especially matter what holes are drilled first as long as the jig is used accurately.
I used my drawer pocket vertical piece as a "template" to locate the dowel jig on the carcass vertical, nailed it and went to the drill press.

This is the bottom of the drawer pocket top. I cut a piece of Poplar to use as a template for horizontal distance from the side of the carcass.

Similarly, I set the same template up for the carcass side of the joint.

And there we have the dry-run after fitting dowels!
KEEN!

Decided to go on to the hanging brackets. I only plan to use two on this piece but as long as I'm changing blades and setting up jigs for one pair, I might as well make two. I probably would have made a third pair  but only had enough brass left for two plus a fifth bracket in case a mistake is made heh.
These brackets are a little different than the one I normally use. They need to be skinny to stay hidden behind the carcass sides without a back-panel to cover them up.
I figure even if this piece isn't a sales "hit" I really do like the form and may someday want one of my own ;).
Welp, I'll have an extra pair of hangers for a customer or myself heh.

4 comments:

Jeff Branch said...

I like the form too. Interesting dowel joinery. Never did it that way :)

Scott and Allyson's Blog said...

Hi Nick,
Love your blog and the work you do, It truly is amazing and beautiful. I'm thinking of building a similar case for books and have been thinking about the best way to join the side to the top and bottom. With your method of dowels how much weight do you think the bottom shelf could hold?
Cheers!

Nicholas Nelson said...

Thanks guys!
I've never felt the need to test the strength of a doweled carcass because most of my cabinet are not meant to hold large weights. With this piece I would be worried about it being full of large books ha, but it's only about 6" deep. Not a good shelf for books ;).

What I would be inclined to do is build a mock of Poplar, or Ash might be a better match for wood being used and simply stack weight in it. Perhaps making a smaller scale out of the project wood would give you the kind of info you need too.

Back in MCTC I wondered about the strength of a keyed-miter. I basically made a picture frame of keyed-miters and it didn't break with 50 lbs in it!

Good luck to you!

Unknown said...

I think oak wood display box is great for displaying and there are number of display case models available if you are looking to buy and i must say that information you shared is very interesting.
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