Done. With the desk.

The last couple things for this project went relatively quickly.
Carve pulls.
Make drawer bottoms.

Oil drawer fronts.
Make drawer stops.

Done. Hopefully I will get photos taken and up in the coming weeks!

For now I cleaned up my bench room a bit to make room for the next project. As some will know, a pair of nightstands/side tables made of Euro Beech and Kwila. Just set these planks of Euro Beech up to ponder my component selections. I have yet to make any cuts as I need to go to work to make pretty coffee drinks at the bakery soon. Perhaps I will start tomorrow unless I can get my hands on a backdrop stand for desk photography.

Chao! - NN

So Close!

So close! The suspension is killing me! Or maybe I'm still over caffeinated from being a closing barista with discerning customers...
Anyway, sorry to fast forward the progress but I was on a role. The drawers have all been dovetailed, assembled, and fit!

The other day I also FINALLY got drawer bottom material. I would much rather have had it earlier in the process but funds were dry due to a couple unforeseen occurrences. Well I actually found a decent plank from the commercial lumber supplier without too much for waste, except for a nice crack going through the middle of half the plank much like I've seen before in 8/4 Oak from this supplier. Does one call that a "shake"?
I decided to rip the sections down the crack which was in the flat of the grain. I'd rather not cut through the flat because it is tougher to get a nice looking edge joint gluing them back together and particularly for something like Oak where the quarter-sawn edge will not want to work very well. What can one do but think, reason, adapt, be careful, and keep moving? heh

Giving the Oak a little time I turned to some pull mock ups. I first compared a post and bail to a carved pull. I feel the carved pull will look more organic and would be less obtrusive to my sight when sitting at the desk. I liked the idea of doing some post and bail and trying to through joinery but I also like carved pulls. In the end the piece should get what it wants!
I haven't quite nailed down the shape of the pull. I don't think I'll be going with the "smiley" towards the right. I also think I could use a new carving gouge or two. I'd rather not by more tools but like I say, the right tool for the right job.

Just got to milling/resawing the drawer bottom stock. I will give it the weekend to sort itself out a bit, then back to work. Hopefully I will have this project wrapped up in the coming week or so (oil still takes time)!

Don't know when I'll get to photograph it. Probably going to need a wider back drop for this one :/. Looking forward to completing the project and moving on though!

Half Blind Dovetails

Alright. Half blind dovetails, lets do this.
First I start by marking where the joints are going to go and there dimensions. I scribed a line where I want the reveal, or the portion covering the dovetails to the front. Also marked with a marking gauge how deep the joint should go which is referenced by how thick your drawer sides are.
Mark out the patter of dovetails and get sawing... carefully! Accurate sawing really makes the work go more smoothly and therefore more quickly. Saw at an angle meeting your scribe line both on the side and back of the drawer front.

Then go to the chop block. Here it is not in position yet. You can see the scribe line marking the depth of the joint. I use this line to line up the work piece in the chop block.

Here's a "trick". Use a nice wide blade of sorts and let the leading edge fit into the scribe line. Apply a little pressure to keep it steady and pull the chop block against your blade. Tada! Very accurate placement with no fuss!

Well now, get to chopping... but wait! Here's another handy maneuver I picked up at IP. I use a little brass shim against the chop block to start my "rough chopping". Just make the initial cuts with this shim then put it aside and keep chopping putting the cutting edge of the chisel where it just was and bracing the chisel back against the block.
The purpose of this is to leave a little to shave off at after the joint has been mainly chopped out giving you a nice clean cut/joint.

Chopping progress.
Now, the inside corner of these joints is where your saw couldn't reach so it will look a bit rough/stringy as you chop out the waste. It will be cleaned up later.

More shims! Get close to your reveal scribe line, I used a wooden shim scribe said line. This is that same wood shim with the brass shim from earlier on top. Same idea, use the brass shim to guide your cut then the bare wood shim for your final cut.

Final cuts with wood shim.

Final end grain cuts using the chop block.
Look over your work. Make sure there isn't anything left to do while in the chop block.

Take the work piece out of the block. It's still going to need some work.
Here are a couple tools I've learned how to make and use. At the top is a small pairing chisel. I mainly use this for dovetail work. It has short, wide-ish blade to be able to comfortable choke up on it and get a lot of control. The blade is also pretty thin in thickness and has a pretty long taper to be able to get between tight dovetails when fitting.
The middle I can only think to call a "detail chisel". I don't use it terribly often but when I need it, nothing else will quite do as well.
At the bottom is a violin knife. Quite handy to clean out corners.

Use the pairing chisel to clean up the rough parts where the saw couldn't cut.

Then the violin knife to cut the shaving out and clean the corners. (This isn't how I use the tool, need two hands, one to hold the work piece and one the knife. Just showing how the tool fits in to cut.)

Check for cleanliness and squareness and address accordingly. Remember, your pins here is what's going to define your tails therefore how the joint looks. Well made pins will make fitting your tails much easier!

The tails side is chopped out much the same except through of course. Fast forwarding that whole procedure here is an almost finished set.
Fyi... Oak is not the easiest wood for dovetails! I feel for the students at IP who picked Oak for their first box project! heh.
Well I am physically and mentally drained from dovetail week as always. Looking forward to wrapping this project up!!! I still don't know what I'm going to do for pulls yet hmmmmm....

Let the Drawers Begin

Before I put the top down, while pre-finishing, I went ahead and did some beginning work on drawers.
Here I cut bits of Poplar to exactly fit the drawer openings. Which are slightly smaller than the rest of the drawer pocket(s).

Took one "story stick" at a time back to the table saw and set up a stop to cut the corresponding drawer front to size. I thought the thickness of my ruler was a good extra bit for fitting the drawer. Unless you want a sloppy fitting drawer you do not want it to fit the pocket off the bat.
Cross-cuts were made to the drawer fronts with carriages to get the correct angles I needed.

Here are four chop-blocks, all of which I need to make these drawers. Each one is a different angle corresponding to the different points on the curved drawer fronts that the joinery will go. It can get a little complicated, be sure to mark what goes where!

Here is what one of the chop-block set-ups looks like. I use a thickish block to prop up the drawer front to accommodate it's curve. I find this a lot easier and faster than making a curved cradle, which I find unnecessary.

Well, this post is a bit short. I thought I would separate this one from the next as it will probably get a little lengthy... at least a bunch of pics of making half-blind dovetail pins!
So, till then...

Back On

Alright. It feels it has been a while. I've been busy with a number of Best-man duties for a good friend's wedding. The wedding just took place this weekend, lovely. Now life may continue as "normal" though I hardly know what that is.
I did get some time in the shop. Enough to put the desk top down and start on drawer work.
Before getting the top down I wanted to snap a shot of this joint, more-so the leg, that kept me up at night for a while ha.

Here it the top to base assembly. Using pretty much all the F-clamps I have... maybe I should get more.

Next post, hopefully soon, let the drawers begin.

Almost there...

With the little bits of pre-finishing complete I could get to some more assembly.
Here I'm gluing up/down the vertical drawer partitions to the web-frame. I figured it would be easier to do it at this point than work around the rest of the desk.

After that was another scarey part of this build. The web-frame glue-up. This is just one big joint splined on three sides. Part of what mad this tricky is that I couldn't really get a good caul on the relatively thin parts to help the whole join home. I managed though.

The next day I got to another part of this project that I have been weary of. Chopping out the desk top corners to fit in the proud leg tops. I have done this before but it is still a nervous time. I think of all the hours I've invested and how tricky it would be to "come back" from a mistake at this point.
Overall it went pretty smoothly. Much more so than I had anticipated. I had set the top up on the legs where I wanted it. scored lines marking the legs protrusions. Made an accurate 90 degree chop block. Rough cut the corners with a hand saw and got to chopping. I allowed some extra room for tweaking but hardly needed it.
I was glad when it fit and the "ordeal" was over ha.

Here is the front, right corner after chopping was done and before the leg top got edge treatment. I was aiming for a 3/32 proud leg top and it looks damn close.

After final surface and edge prep it's now back to pre-finishing again yayyyyyyy.

In the mean time I received a replacement blade for my LN 60-1/2 block plane. I maxed out the original blade and couldn't used it anymore! Good thing I was in a place in the project where I didn't need it.
I'm glad to see that LN is making O1 steel blades for a number of tools now. I hope that this A2 fad may be dwindling heh. A2 I think sounds like a nice option on paper but not so much in practice unless under certain circumstances.
A2 is harder and keeps an edge longer if using friendly woods however it's more difficult/a pain to get a really keen edge with. It also is more brittle due to its hardness. When I get little chips coming off my tool edge when, say working Oak end grain, it's more time-consuming to get back to a clean edge with A2.
Well, time will tell of this O1 blade's performance. I still find it a bit irritating that people producing O1 "western style" tools are hardening the steel to the levels closer to a Japanese style tool. Which I think may be another "trend" of sorts. The reason Japanese tools are so hard is that traditionally they were used with soft woods which need very sharp edges and are of course less tough than hardwoods. A slightly softer steel will be more resilient  to the relative toughness of hardwoods... at least in theory.

Whatever, that's my hand tool steel rant for the day ha.
Take care all!

Stop, Go, Stop

Hello again, and back to the desk after leg/apron assembly.
After all those joints were good and stuck I fit the web-frame into the drawer pocket. Mark the points that I wanted to cut the front curve at, mark by using the top itself as a template and cut on the band saw. Here I'm cleaning up the curve with a trusty spoke shave.

Next was to "laminate" the Walnut front edge to the web-frame. Just used a couple strips from the same piece of Walnut I used for the back apron rail.
During this time I also cut the vertical drawer partitions to size and added Walnut front edges of their own.

Aaaaaand I'm back to pre-finishing again.
I'm getting a bit bored with this down time ha.
I would like to put together a couple organizers some odds and ends on my shop shelves but I don't have money for the material at the moment. I've done machine maintenance already. Made a mock-up for the next project...
Well I took some time to make a pair of "cutting/butcher boards" of some scrap Maple I had ha.

After that, got bored again. I decided to just dig into some material for the next project.

I'm going to call the next projects "nightstands" for now to simplify as that is the indented purpose.
The Euro Beech for the box part of these nightstands though simple in overall structure is going to be tricky with grain selection. I'm going to need a good amount of open brain space for that so I wont tackle that for now.
So I got going on some leg stock. Mmmmm Kwila. The relatively narrow plank I had left over is mainly quarter-sawn so I used the band saw to cut angles out to try to "twist" some more rift-sawn leg stock out.

Ooo parallelograms... Fun word. Say it out loud. Do it!

Further milled the leg stock square. With the legs so short on these stands I decided to double up on the length to make work go more smoothly. Each square piece will be cut in half to make two legs. The other bits are the off-cuts in width of the plank. They will be used either for aprons or stretchers.
Though the leg stock isn't the exact 45 degree grain orientation I would have liked, it's the best I could comfortably do given the plank and will still work out quite nicely. Kwila is a fairly course structured wood sort of like Oak which helps in making it fairly forgiving in terms of these grain compromises.
Mmmmm I love Kwila! I wish I had the funds to store some up! But thanks again to Cormark International for sending me those couple nice planks!