Hunt Board Project

[Hank Knight]

I've posted bits and pieces of the hunt board I’m building over the last few months, but nothing coherent about the overall project. Frankly, it's taken me so long, as do all of my projects, I figured you guys would write it off as lost between posts. But I'm far enough along now that I can put something together for those of you who like that sort of thing, so here goes.

The hunt board is Garrett Hack's design that he published in Fine Woodworking a while back. It's a Shaker styled piece and I liked the simple lean lines.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/011220_lg.jpg

That's Hack's beautiful piece, not mine. The construction is not as straightforward as it looks. The sides and back, for example, have the grain running horizontally rather than vertically as is the ususl case, so Hack made them from three pieces and splined them together. The middle piece floats in the mortise to allow for wood movement:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0522Small.jpg

The case is made of soft maple and the legs were cut from 8/8 stock. I cut the long mortises for the sides and the back with a [ router ] :o.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSC_0134Small.jpg

I cut the rough taper on the [ bandsaw ] :o but I refined the taper and the "toe" with handplanes - primarily my LN low angle jack :biggrin:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0520Small.jpg

and cut the legs to length with a dozuki:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0532Small.jpg

To my great delight and amazement, the case stood on it's own when I assembled the sides, back and legs:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0524Small.jpg

More Later

Hank

[Robert Rozaieski]

Looks good Hank! Very Federal in appearance with a contemporary twist. Very nice :)!

[Jim Koepke]

Looking good. Keep us posted.

I know about taking a long time to get things done. Some projects turn into careers.

jim

[Hank Knight]

I glued up the bottom from some white pine and cut a rabbit around three sides to fit in the grooves in the sides and back. It's splined and glued to the front apron.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0535.jpg

In keeping with the Galoot Credo, I rabbeted the bottom with a moving fillister plane. I love this tool. It does such a great job and it makes such nice curly shavings called "spills":

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0580Medium.jpg

The bottom front rail has a nice curve with a bead on the bottom edge. I cut the rough curve on the bandsaw and finished it with my trusty LA Jack plane. I didn't photograph this step, but the assembled piece shows the bottom rail with the bottom in place:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0584Medium.jpg

The bead on the curved rail was a challenge. I have a couple of side bead molding planes, but they won't work on curved edges. I was fortunate enough to take a course called "Precision With Handtools" from Garrett Hack, the Man Himself, at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine, a year or so ago and he showed me how to make a simple scratch stock to accomplish this task. I may have posted the process here earlier, but it was easy and it worked great:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/ScratchStock005.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/ScratchStock010.jpg

I cut and dimensioned the top rail and joined it to the legs and sides with an interesting double dovetail joint:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0594-1.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0599.jpg

Next I cut the section dividers and mortised them into the front bottom and top rail. The assembly turned out remarkably square:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0602.jpg

Then I glued up some more white pine for the interior dividers and joined them to the case bottom with tapered sliding dovetails. Here (with apoliogies for the purists among us) I resorted to a router to cut the tapered dovetails with the help of a home made jig. It worked flawlessly:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSCN0609.jpg

More to come.

Hank

[Hank Knight]

Note in the preceding photograph, you can see the channel I cut in the bottom for the spline that joins the bottom to the front rail - done on my router table :uhoh:. I'm sure the true neanders have several effective methods of doing this with hand tools.

After fitting the interior dividers, I cut the maple drawer dividers and mortised them into the uprights. Then I cut and fitted the kickers and the drawer spacers. In a departure from Hack's plans, I dadoed the kickers into the interior dividers. Hack just has his butted against the interior divider and secured with a screw:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/DSCN0618.jpg

At this point I decided to pre-finish the case before I glued it up. My plan is to finish the case with an old milk paint finish, rubbed down to reveal a dark reddish mahogany under surface. I thought this would contrast nicely with the natural cherry top and drawer fronts I planned for the piece. I stained the soft maple case components with a dark reddish brown Transtint dye in a denatured alcohol base. Then I painted over the whole case with stove black milk paint. When the paint was dry, I carefully sanded the milk paint to reveal subtle red tone from the underlying dyed maple. At first I was VERY conservative, but LOML liked the red tones and requested that I be a little more aggressive with the sanding. We reached a compromise:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/HuntBoard004.jpg

While I was doing this, I put several coats of shellac on the interior dividers. The sample piece of natural cherry in the photograph is the cherry I originally planned to use for the piece, but it is very tan colored and I would have had to stain or dye it to achieve the color I wanted. As will be seen later, I had a very nice piece of curly red cherry left over from an earlier project I decided to use. I think it will be better. The black legs in the background are the milk painted pieces before I rubbed them down to reveal the red base color. I will finish up with a coat or two of BLO over the milk paint, topped off with buffed wax, and it will look a lot better than it does now.

Now comes the angst-ridden part - the glue up. I hate glue-ups. This piece is a complicated assembly so the glue up had to proceed in stages. First, I glued the front assembly together, leaving off the top rail so I can fit the doors with the Brusso knife hinges later. Then I glued the back panels to the back legs:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/HuntBoard008.jpg

Then I glued the bottom to the front assembly, using the back assembly and the side panels to register the mortise and tenons for the sides:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/HuntBoard010.jpg

Then I removed the back and assembled the interior dividers in their sliding tapered dovetails and added the drawer kickers:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/HuntBoard012.jpg

Then I glued the back assembly and the side panels to the rest of the case. This was not without its "moments." I managed to get one of the side panels in backwards during the glue up and I couldn't figure out why the case wouldn't come together like it as was supposed to. I noticed my error just before I was about to put the mojo on my Bessy clamps to pull that sucker into alignment :uhoh: . I picked up my biggest persuader and pounded the case apart, reversed my error and clamped the thing home - WHEW! Did I mention I hate glue ups?

In any event, here is the completed case;

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/Hunt%20Board/DSC_0218Medium.jpg

This post started with my post about preparing the top. I had ordered a piece of 5/4 curly cherry from Hearne's for this piece, but when it arrived it was not the color I was hoping for. It was tan and not the real red cherry I had envisioned. I decided to color it with Transtint to add some red, but the plan kept nagging at me. I had a really beautiful piece of 5/4 curly cherry I'd ordered from Hearne's for another project that looked like it would be perfect. I dragged it out and decided it was, indeed, perfect for the job. I measured and I can get the top and the three drawer fronts from the piece. The door panels are iffy, but I have another piece of cherry that is the same color, but with less figure. If worse comes to worse, I'll use that for the doors. I cut up the figured cherry, glued up the top and planed it smooth:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f343/hankknight/HuntBoard018.jpg

All that remains is the drawers and the doors -and , of course finishing the piece. I'll update as I go along - but I'm really slow. LOML has been very good about being patient. I'll get there when I get there.

Hank

[John Timberlake]

Thanks for the post. Great looking piece. Nice to see all the intermediate steps. Looking forward to your next piece.