Carver's Chest Build-along

[David Carroll]

I've never done a build-along, mostly because I make small things mostly, toys, boxes etc., etc. Plus, I rarely think to stop and take pictures at key points. But I am now building a Gerstner-like carvers chest to hold my most used, tools. Now they are scattered about, a tool roll here, stones and slip there, so this will put everything into one place. The motivation for doing this is I have signed up for a carving class in March. So I can transport my tools in a handy way. Here is the collection of tools it must accommodate, the only thing missing are my sharpening stones and slips.

514518

The problem with Gerstner chests (I own several) in terms of carving tools are: The chests aren't deep enough to accommodate carving tools, typically 9-10-inches long. The tools could be put in sideways, but that limits how many can be stored and on most Gerstner chests, the drawers are too shallow for much else.

So I decided to make one that is 12-inches deep, about 10 inches tall and 18-inches long. It will be built in a similar way to Gerstner's but with some differences that I will point out as I go along.

This gave me the opportunity to use some wood that I've been carrying around for decades. The story goes that my Grandpa made a small bookshelf for my Grandma soon after they were married. The bookshelf is Chestnut and I remember it in the house where I grew up as a young child in the 1960s. It got moved when that house was sold and was stored in the basement, which repeatedly flooded and the shelves, sadly, were in very poor condition. My sister gave them to me. I determined that nothing could reasonably be done to restore it, and even if it could've been restored it was too small and shallow for anything but paperbacks. So I knocked it apart and stacked the wood, waiting for some special project to use it.

I didn't take a photo of the shelves together, but they were built like you would expect. A carcass, base with a decorative skirt, and on the sides, two rows of holes for shelf pins. there were only two shelves that came with it. The back was very thin plywood that had delaminated and crinkled.

The first thing I had to do after designing the box was to cut out and thickness the stock. I should mention that I resolved to make this entirely by hand, no power equipment at all! I assessed the wood, laid out all the parts and started cutting

514526

The shelving unit was painted black on the outside, but the inside had been varnished, but this was some type of faux woodgrain technique that I has seen on other furniture that he made or refinished. It had a thick coat of paint over which was a tinted varnish that made it sort of look like wood. No real attempt to comb grain into it was evident and like most of his painting/finishing, it was pretty sloppy. (Sorry Grandpa). The boards were all just under 3/4-inch and my chest would be 1/2-inch stock so there was a bunch of planing to do. It was complicated by the painted material, almost certainly lead paint. So I donned my respirator, and jack-planed off all the paint after cutting most boards to rough length. Then vacuumed and mopped up.

514532

I had just barely enough wood to make the chest, so I had to be careful with the layout. I Split the long sides down through the row of shelf holes and planed down to remove the holes, but maintain the maximum width.

514533

Then as is my habit to start off I flatten and surface one face, shoot one end, and joint one edge nice and square.

514534

First I flatten one side. The chestnut generally planed beautifully, I really like working it. But in some spots the grain ran contrary and caused some significant tear-out. The wood was pretty straight grained, and the boards were narrow, could he have glued up strips, not caring which way the grain went? Lets take a look.

514535

Yup, nearly every board (even after I ripped them to narrower dimensions) had one or more joins. But once I dressed the ends I could see that these boards were commercially joined with shallow match joints. I do not believe that he did this, so either the wood was purchased, already joined, to make a wider board out of narrow strips, or maybe he did not make the shelves. Maybe he reworked something else into the shelves, or maybe he just refinished it. A mystery, and there's nobody alive to ask. The shelf pin holes were not perfectly aligned, so that's a vote for him drilling them (they weren't gang-drilled). But who know?

So I had to take the flattening the one side slowly, I abandoned the scrub plane and set the jack to a shallow cut and was carful at the edges to avoid blow out.

Once I got into the rhythm, it went smoothly enough. I got all the wood flattened on one side, one edge shot and one side jointed, then the other, prepared for glue-up.

514537

Glue-up went smoothly. I did try both to match grain and run it all in the same direction, to make the next step easier. Then I thickness the board. I had to remove about 3/16-inch of material. I normally start with a scrub plane, until I am about 1/16th off the penciled-in scribe mark, then a jack down to the just above the line, then a jointer to flatten everything, finally a smooth plane to make pretty. Then trim to final size. Next, the results of this step.

Note: the pix are all sideways (click on them) I couldn't delete the final attached thumbnail so the results are in the next post.

[David Carroll]

Here is the stack of finished panels, and some other pieces, I haven't made the drawer parts yet, or the front drop-panel stock, but that will happen soon. Some of the wood, drawer sides and back, the cabinet bottom and the bottom of the till, is made with some very old pine that came out of a barn on the property where I grew up. I love using old wood and have accumulated lots of bits and pieces.

514541

I like planing to thickness by hand, I find it very soothing. I have very limited time to work on projects like this. Once the box was designed, it took me a half day last weekend, and a couple of hours in the evening most every day to get this done. Certainly no speed records here.

Doing it by hand generated a lot of shavings, and this doesn't include the painted bits that were vacuumed up and will be disposed of separately.

514542

Next up, Joinery!

DC

[Eric Brown]

Looking forward to following the build. Looks good so far.

[Tom Blank]

David,

That's a great project. I did a similar Gerstner style toolbox project to hold my selection of smaller model building tools. Five shallow drawers in a case with a drop down front. I used period Gerstner construction techniques and found most of the specialty hardware I needed on the Gerstner website.

Good Luck,

Tom

[David Carroll]

Tom,

I did find Gerstner's site and order the hinges and the spring/rod assemblies to hold the drop front closed. I also ordered the corner protectors. This will have two full-width drawers and two half-width drawers, they'll all be the same height. Carving tools in the two full width drawers and smaller tools, punches, and detail carving tools in the smaller drawers, stones, mallets, saws, and assorted tools in the till.

Thanks!

DC

[Tom Blank]

David,

Hope you are as happy with your Gerstner as I am with mine.

Tom

514626

[David Carroll]

David,

Hope you are as happy with your Gerstner as I am with mine.

Tom

514626

I hope mine looks half as good as yours when it's done!

DC

[David Carroll]

Installment No. 3!

Firstly I have to say that I have a lot of respect for Derek and Steven for the number of build-alongs they do and post. It requires a great deal of time and organizational skills, both of which i have only a short supply of. I worked on the chest most nights this past week and I am making progress!

514995

The next step was to dovetail the sides and back together. This chest is different than Gerstner's in terms of construction, they use rabbet joints and locking drawer rabbets (not sure of the terminology there) and I am dovetailing the back to the sides and the top rail will be dovetailed as well. The bottom will fit into rabbets all three sides. The bottom doesn't really have a big role in the structure of the box. The doors hang from runners in the sides. So the bottom will have no weight on it, it just has to hold everything square.

I cut tails first. I laid everything out on the CAD system, there's a lot going on with the joinery and I wanted to get it right the first try.

514998

The layout was important because there will be dadoes in parts that I didn't want to dovetail through, but beyond that, not too much that's unusual.

Derek, if you are following along, that marking knife shown above, I somehow associate with you, either you designed it, or sold it to me, or it is based on your design. Anyway, it works wonderfully.

515000

So, those are cut, I saw out the waste with a coping saw, which was how I was taught in school. Then chop down to the knife line.

I know people don't like shoulder vises, but here is where they shine. No need for a Moxon vise.

515005

Here's the back done, at least with the dovetails, I still need to run a dado for the till base and a rabbet for the bottom.

515006

I forgot to take a picture of how I transfer the tails to the pins, but it's the way lots of folks do it, each side is clamped in the shoulder vise with the top edge flush with a plane on its side and then the plane is moved back to support the tail board level and in position and the pins marked from the tails with the knife.

515010

They went together alright, not my best dovetails, but certainly not my worst either! I like the wider spacing, if they are too close together they look machine made to me.

After this I had to dado the sides and back for the till bottom (floor?) then rabbet all around for the chest bottom. I didn't take pictures of those things, but I use a Stanley 78 followed by a No. 10 for the rabbets, and for the dadoes, I knife them deep as I can, then chase the knife mark with a fine toothed saw to depth, then waste with a chisel and clean up with a router plane. I have dado planes, but I rarely use them on short little dadoes like these.

515011

Here's the carcass just clamped together, while fitting the till floor and the chest bottom (in progress). Somewhere along the way I dovetailed the top rail. The whole thing goes together without protest. There'll be lots more to do before I glue it up. The sides need dadoes for the drawer runners, the till floor needs one for the top drawer divider that will hang from it. The design is for two full-width drawers at the bottom, and two half-width drawers above, so I need to hang a divider that I can mount the drawer runners to. I was going to use a sliding dovetail for that joint, but have decided to instead run a dado cross grain and glue the divider in and secure with screws, they'll be covered by the felt.

Until the next installment...

DC

[David Carroll]

Sorry about the sideways and now upside down pictures. I thought I figured out what I was doing wrong, but mostly I just found a new way to do it wrong. How do I fix this?

I got further today than I expected! I had mentioned above that the sides had a lot more processes to run, namely drawer runner dadoes. 3 on each side. Some were stopped on one end (the front) and one, on each side, was stopped at the back because running it off the back would interfere with the dovetail pin, the other two on each side could run of the end. So as I said before, my method is to knife the edges as deep as possible and then chase the cut with a fine toothed Zona craft saw, (24 tpi) and cut to depth, then chisel and router plane it to depth.

515013

It was a lot of work and my lower back was beginning to hurt so I retooled, clamping it to my nifty LV work platform. Worked like a charm, lifting it just enough for comfort.

515014

Sigh, if I would remember to take the photo in landscape orientation, that seems to avoid the sideways thumbnails...

Anyway, I soon got all the dadoes cut. I decided not to use chestnut for the runners, it's splintery and I figured some close-grained wood would work better. I had a small piece of grey elm that I figured would be ideal, hard, close-grained, and not likely to split. So I set to ripping 3/8-inch strips.

515015

My saw bench is a painter's work platform. I have been plastering ceilings and it's handy. It just so happens to be an ideal height for use as a sawing bench. I started at it, but after a few strokes it became clear that all the ripping of chestnut had dulled my nice LN rip saw (7 tpi). So...

515016

After a quick touch up, the saw was sticky-sharp as they say!

515017

It sailed through the rest of the ripping. As my elm board got progressively thinner, I had to clamp it to another board to hold it while I sawed away. All these pieces had to be thicknessed, cut down to 1/2-inch width, (I actually didn't cut this, I used a rank set jack plane which made quick work of it) then jointed the cut straight and trimmed and fit each runner into its groove.

515018

Fitting and gluing these went quickly, I like the color contrast of the nearly white elm and the aged dark chestnut. Pity nobody will ever see it!

515019

I did also run the dado for the middle drawer divider, after running the grooves in chestnut, the white pine was so easy!!

Now, I have to leave it, I fly out in the morning for a week to the west coast (CA) for a trade show. When I get back I have to make the center drawer divider, with its drawer runners, then I should be ready to glue up!

Stay tuned...

DC

[David Carroll]

The project was put on hold because I had to travel to the Left Coast for a Trade Show. While there I ordered all the bits and bobs from Gerstner, hinges, lid locking pin kits, lid hinge plates, fancy corners (I went with brass) and a nice leather handle. Most everything was delivered before I got back.

I had to do a little research about how to install it all, which meant I couldn't really glue-up, because there are things to do, grooves and recesses to cut, which would be much harder to do if assembled. So I decided I would make the drop front lid. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the process, but it was pretty straight forward frame and panel construction, I just recently got a Stanley No. 49 tongue and groove plane, from Patrick Leach, gave it a quick sharpen, and put it to work. It make pretty quick work of running the grooves. The rest was a pleasant couple of hours with a 3/16-inch pig sticker, a tenon saw and a shoulder plane.

Here is the result:

515637

The blemish on the left edge of the panel broke my heart. It's a worm hole and there was no evidence that it was there. The way I made the panel so it would be flush on the back and then recessed on the front was to make a tongue cut all around with the No. 49 on the long grain and then a rabbet on both sides for the end grain. Then I selected the better side and thicknessed down to the tongue. It worked great except that as I got close the wood began to discolor and then the hole appeared. Oh well, character, right? I filled it with some epoxy putty filler and will try to disguise it when finishing.

I also inset the hinge plates. Here's an in-progress shot.

515638

They are circular, and it would be easy to chuck up a Forstner bit in the brace and drill a shallow (1/32-inch) hole, but the diameter is 15/16th and I don't have that size. I looked through my "drawer full of holes" (what my uncle used call the drawer where he had all of his drill bits). In mine, I found a Clarke's expansion bit. I set it for 15/16-inch and drilled a practice hole in an offcut. I found I needed to ream out a conical hole for the expansion bit's lead screw, because I didn't want to engage the screw, which would pull the spur too deeply into the wood and leave a ragged hole. It took me several practice runs before I got it right. But I got it. Now I have to plough narrow grooves for the pins to ride in when the lid is dropped and slid below the bottom drawer.

Hopefully tomorrow I can glue-up the carcass.

Special thanks to Tom Blank, who has built several similar Gerstner style boxes, and who has taken the time to shepherd me through the hardware issues, since Gerstner has few instructions. I appreciate the help!

DC

[Tom Blank]

David,

Thanks for the acknowledgement. I have received a lot of help here. Just paying it forward.

Tom

[David Carroll]

I started to glue the sides to the back. The boards had cupped ever so slightly in the past two weeks. So it was a bit of a wrastle to get them into position. I ended up knocking together a quick toothed caul to exert pressure directly to the tails so they would sit flat. I think you can see a bit of it under the pile of clamps.

I designed the box to go together one piece at a time. So one side can be glued up to the back, and then the other. Then the front rail can be glued up to to the side/back assembly. I like it this way better than gluing it all up at once.

Here's the first joint together.

515683

So, that's pretty much the plan today, glue up a joint and then wait. While waiting I decided to get to prepping the material for the drawers, starting with the sides and backs. The sides will be 1/2-inch thick, and the backs about 5/16-inch. The wood is more of the old growth pine from my stash.

515684

All of the drawers will be 1-3/4-inch tall. So I took the board and laid out all of the parts, trying to miss knots and other defects. I had just enough. Then I got out the old rip saw. After all of the chestnut, ripping this pine was a pleasure. Probably I should've gone out to the garage shop and gotten the 28-inch, 5 TPI D-8 that's out there, but it's cold out and it snowed again yesterday, so I made do with the LN 7 TPI 24-inch panel saw. It went well enough. it took just under an hour to break it all down, including laying it all out and then bucking to length. The saw was recently sharpened and it sailed along taking only about 6-8 strokes per inch. There was 15 linear feet of ripping all together.

515685

It was a nice little workout! I did take several breaks between rip cuts. I'm not as young as I once was.

As mentioned above, my process is to joint one edge straight, then dress one face, and shoot one end. Then gauge a line for width and trim to the line to get the final width, then I thickness. Finally, I mark and cut to length, shooting the remaining end. I'm not sure exactly why I do it this way, it just makes sense. I do it in a sort of production line, with all of the parts having the one operation performed, then moving on to the next.

515686

Here is a shot of my setup, I have a bench hook that acts like a shooting board. I clamp the hook in the tail vise (this is another reason I like the traditional European tail vise over the wagon type, I can just clamp the Hook in the vise and now I can use the length of the bench to run the plane). I need to make a longer one though, because any board longer than about 18-inches doesn't really fit. Not an issue on this project. So, this is how I shoot the edges straight and square.

If I have more than 1/8th-inch to trim off an edge, I will use the jack plane (No. 5). When doing this, I slip a piece of 1/4-inch drywall or plywood under the workpiece, because my jack plane blade is cambered at the edges, and if I didn't the cut would be way off square. I follow this with a jointer, and finally a smooth plane. Next I'll thickness them all.

DC

[David Carroll]

It was a productive day, yesterday, I finished up the drawer parts, sides and backs. The backs are shorter than the sides by an 1/8-inch. I wanted to maximize the useable space in the drawers, so the bottoms won't slide into grooves in the traditional way, they will drop into rabbets, sit flush with the drawer sides, and will be glued and nailed. Since they have runners in the sides, I am not worried about the nail heads marring runners at the base.

Gerstner staples sheet metal in their drawers, and while that is an option for me as well, I went instead with 1/8-inch baltic birch plywood. The rabbets will be 3/8-inch wide, leaving an 1/8-inch lip on each side, so you cant see the plies. But the back of the drawer will sit on top of the plywood.

Anyway, here's the stack of parts, ready for the dadoes for the runners, the rabbets for the drawer bottoms and for me to get the Chestnut drawer fronts made.

515706

This pine was really nice to work with, grain so straight it was hard sometimes to figure out which direction it was running. Despite it being decades, maybe a century old, it smelled great and was very well behaved in terms of grain, with no contrary grain at all, except for one piece that was close to a knot and even that took minimal fuss to smooth. Wood like that don't grow on trees, y'know!

DC

[David Carroll]

Update: All of the parts are now cut out and ready for assembly except the drawer fronts and bottoms. I had one last piece to make for the carcass proper, which was a hanging drawer divider. However, I had used up the chestnut from Grandpa's bookshelf and there were no suitable pieces for this one last component. But I do have other chestnut scraps and I dug around in the garage and found something suitable, and bonus points, it was already the right thickness! So I marked it out and started running the grooves to accept the drawer runners.

This piece of chestnut was from an old cabinet that I salvaged and used for other projects years ago, and it was very dark, compared to what I have been using and was pretty well encrusted with dirt and dust. But since it was already the right thickness, I didn't want to dress the faces at all. but I did scrape the grime off and shoot the edges, then cut it to length. from the endgrain I could tell the piece was truly quartersawn, with very tight grain. I fit it into it's dado, and screwed it into position. Then marked out the locations for the drawer runner grooves and disassembled it again to cut the grooves. But this piece was considerably harder than what I used before, heavier too. Knifing the groove edges was difficult and when I started in with the chisel and the router plane it was equally difficult. The grain seemed to change directions every few inches and the router cutter dove in and lifted out big chunks.

I struggled with the first side, making about the ugliest groove I have ever made! In examining the fresh, smooth wood on the bottom of the groove, I realised that this piece of wood, was not chestnut, but quarter-sawn white oak! Deeply fumed by the look of it and very old and hard. I took my time on the other side, and did a bit better, but I am glad that part will only be seen on the end, between the top two drawers. Once I fit the drawer runners, I will likely add some filler to fix the shredded shoulders.

Not my best night of woodworking, but still better than a good day at work!

More to come!

DC

[David Carroll]

This project has been somewhat frustrating in that there are so many components to it, 25-pieces just in the carcass and top, another 20 in the drawers. Preparing all of that, fitting and fussing has taken a lot of time, and planning. There's a lot that had to be done before it could be glued up. So it doesn't seem like a lot of progress is being made, despite the many hours I have devoted to it. (I never keep track of these things because I am doing this for enjoyment, as much as necessity). Doing it completely by hand has added to the time (and the enjoyment).

But the carcass is now together! I had to do a bunch of touch-ups to the dovetails. repeated dry assembly & disassembly of the joints has loosened the dovetails which were B- work to begin with. So I have spent a pleasant morning cutting tiny slips of wedged shaped chestnut and gluing them in place to hide my sloppy work. I've gotten quite good at this if I do say so myself.

I guess you either can get good at cutting dovetails, or you can get good at patching up mistakes. Do better on the former and you don't have to do quite as well on the latter. Leave it to say I've gotten very good at fixing boo-boos, and am still working at making my touch-up and repair skills unnecessary.

Here is a shot of the process.

516013

There were a half dozen or so repairs like this that had to be made. Also, I ran the grooves for the till-bottom all the way through the back panel, but they should've been stopped at each end. Oops! So I had to inlay little blocks to fill the holes. I tried to match end-grain as best I could. But, like some impressionist paintings, the joinery looks best the further away one stands!

I've finished the touching up, I still need to trim back the dovetails, which always makes them look better. Now I start on the top.

DC

[Jim Koepke]

I guess you either can get good at cutting dovetails, or you can get good at patching up mistakes. Do better on the former and you don't have to do quite as well on the latter. Leave it to say I've gotten very good at fixing boo-boos, and am still working at making my touch-up and repair skills unnecessary.

David, long ago I got in the habit of saving the waste from cutting out dovetails for the purpose of having matching grain when filling the gaps.

Now that my dovetail cutting has improved, the scraps are still saved and often find a use in other areas.

jtk

[David Carroll]

The dovetailing on the lid went way better than the dovetailing on the case.

I tried to figure out where I went wrong last time. Cutting the tails is of course simple and no real problem there. I think that where I often go wrong is when marking the pins from the tails, I use a very sharp pencil. It’s not so evident in pine, or poplar or any of the woods that I often use. But in coarse-grained wood, like chestnut, sometimes the point of the pencil wanders, following the grain. Also, I cannot really see well into the pocket and thus can’t be sure that I am truly marking flush with the side of each tail. Also, if the corners of the tails have chipped at all, (this chestnut is very splintery), then the pencil can dive under the tail, which I think was the case with some of the problem ones in the carcass.

So, I decided to remediate, go back to basics, and take it very slowly. I remembered Derek’s blue tape technique and decided to give that a go, at least what I recall of it. Worked like a charm. Three out of the four joints fit together just the way we like and the fourth only needed a bit of trimming. Only one unsightly gap and that was an errant chop along the scribe-line, which will be easy to patch-in.

516077

I glued up the top this morning and the fit on the case is fine. A bit of trimming of the dovetails and flushing the top with the rim all around will be tonight’s job. I may toss the hinges on temporarily to get a better idea of the fit all around.

516076

But at least now I can get a sense of the size of the thing. Bigger than I imagined, but it’s sized for the contents, so it is the size it needs to be. I am happy that chestnut is as light and strong as it is. Filled with all of the tools and stones, it will be plenty heavy. Fortunately, I will not have to transport my gear very often, only to classes, really. The rest of the time it will sit on a bench
and do what it is designed for.

DC

[David Carroll]

Now the box has a lid. The fit is pretty good! It works fine. I did install the hinges from Gerstner, I can't say I am thrilled with the quality and I think that I will wipe them down with lacquer thinner and try some Liver of Sulfur (or something) on them to kill the brassy newness a bit.

But it's coming together! Not quickly, I've seen continents drift faster, but it is!

516097

DC

[steven c newman]

Good progress, so far!

[David Carroll]

And there is a lot of hardware! This chest has 2 pivot hinge plates, with pins to allow the front panel to drop and then stow under the drawers, then it has spring-loaded plunger pins that when the top is closed it pushes the pins through the top rail and into holes in the lid, locking it when the cover is latched. It also has a handle on the top, and four latches, two on the front, one on each side. Finally there are two lid hinges, and corner protectors on all eight corners.

Lot's of hardware. For the moment I will forego the center locking latch. I haven't found one that is small enough and not pure junk.

Normally, I finish first and then install hardware, that works fine when it's a pair of hinges and a lock or something relatively simple. But with so much hardware, I decided to install everything, then remove it and finish and then put it all back. Gerstner uses rivets for their handles and screws for everything else. I'll use brass oval head machine screws and T-nuts for the handles, hinges, and latches, as these will bear the weight of the box when carried. The 3/8-inch brass wood screws don't seem to be up to the job. They'll be fine for the corner protectors though.

Anyway, I have been worried about the pivot pins and plunger pin installation. It needs to be accurate and I don't have time or materials to do it again if I mess up. I was most worried about drilling the holes accurately, without using a drill press, since I have challenged myself to do this all by hand. So I made something of a compromise, at work during lunch I went to the machine shop and made myself a drilling guide on the Bridgeport, basically a very accurate plumb and square series of holes, I needed 5/32 for the pivot pins, an N-drill for the plunger pin assembly, and a No. 3 drill for the pin bushings that get pressed into the lid and receive the locking plunger pins.

Here it is, the center of each hole is scribed onto the short side and can be aligned with a mark on the box. For placement along the width of the box, I am following an old Gerstner box that is the same width.

516311

Line up the marks, clamp the guide to the box and get busy cranking the eggbeater. It took awhile, but worked well enough.

516312

Here is the set-up, and the hole on the left I just finished (not in the photo). I did clamp a scrap to where the drill would exit, to avoid blowout. (also not pictured). It all worked out pretty well.

I have to stop for the day, but tomorrow I will cut the pins to length (my top rail is less deep than Gerstner's) and get those assembled. I wont take them apart for finishing because the bushings are press fits and it should be easy enough to finish around them.

Until tomorrow. Maybe I'll have time to get started on making drawers!

DC

[David Carroll]

Back at it this morning!

I managed to install the locking pin mechanisms, as I mentioned before the pins and the springs both had to be trimmed. But it went well and the mechanisms work beautifully! Just like on the other Gerstner boxes I have. Whew! Then it was just adding the latches, and then all of the corner protectors.

Here it is all together with all the hardware.

516391

The only thing missing is the handle on top, I am out of No. 8-32 T-nuts. So that has to wait, I might have some at work or maybe they have them at the hardware store near me.

Now onto the drawers!

516392

If you look closely you can see the T-nuts in the side of the till. The screws obviously need to be cut to length or maybe I can find some the right length at the hardware store.

The two stiles on the panel are much darker than all of the rest of the wood, I will try to blend it in a bit with the staining. Normally I don't mind minor color variations, but when I showed it all to SWMBO, she remarked that they were so different they looked like a different species!

DC

[David Carroll]

Once the hardware was sorted I turned my attention to the drawer parts. I'd already blanked out the sides and backs, so I figured I'd run the grooves for the drawer runners. Since there were twelve sides to do I committed myself to getting the Stanley 46 dialed in. Steve mentioned the nickers, I decided to have a closer look, they needed sharpening so I did that, reinstalled them and made sure they were sticking out a bit more than the blade. I payed extra attention to the runners, making sure they were aligned with the blade, which I sharpened. Then I adjusted the fence and set to work.

516405

It worked perfectly! I take back all the bad things I have ever said about the 46. It was an ID-10T user error all along! I worked through the dozen sides in less than an hour. The drawer sides were oversize in height so some pleasant trimming and they all now slide easily with no slop.

516406

So here's where I leave it for tonight, just one more picture:

516410

Spills anyone?

DC

[steven c newman]

Make enough of those on my own..thanks anyway..

Looking like good progress, too!

[Jim Koepke]

I like the clocked screws on the latches. Everything else is also looking good.

jtk

[Ben Ellenberger]

Just wanted to say I’m appreciating following along. How is the Gerstner pin hardware?

It seems pretty specialized and I don’t recall seeing anyone else selling something similar.

[David Carroll]

Thanks for the comments guys! Ben, the plunger pin assemblies are pretty nice, the milling of the pins, the specialized bushings, all of it were pretty nicely machined, the pivot hinge and the corresponding plates were less so, mine came rusty and the hole in the plate that support the pin and the thin wood in the sides of the drop lid were rusty and punched way off the centerline of the part. But they worked. I cleaned them up.

Gerstners instructions on how to install them are lacking in detail, there are some YouTube videos, but fortunately for me, Tom Blank, who has used the hardware before, helped me through the process, and it all turned out fine.

DC

[Mark Rainey]

Very good project David. I would love to work with chestnut - it seems like it would work nicely with hand tools.

[David Carroll]

Thanks Mark! THe Chestnut does work nicely. It's a pretty soft, light wood as hardwoods go, it planes well and the finish off of the plane is really nice, almost waxey. It's very open grained, and the grain patterns made up of wood that's almost lacey. I don't know the official term but it's a coarse ring porous grain pattern, kind of like red oak. But much softer and lighter in weight, at least what I am working with.

The frustrating part is that when the "lacey" bits end up on an edge, they crumble into a splintery mess. I noticed this in some of the dovetails and grooves that followed the grain, it was hard to keep a sharp corner.

But all in all I can see why it was so widely used, back before the blight wiped essentially all of it out.

DC

[David Carroll]

I've been working away at the project, now making drawers. I decided to start with the small drawers, to get my feet wet. I went round and round, trying to decide on the dovetail layout. I have the 1/2-inch wide groove down each side to accommodate and a 1/8-inch groove on the other side, for the bottom. Laying out the dovetails was a challenge. I could just have one big dovetail, wide enough to accommodate the runner-groove, and that was my plan, at first. But then I decided to put one small tail on either side of the groove. They would have to be small, 1/4-inch at the big end. Among the smallest I have ever made. I figured it would look better on these shallow drawers (1-3/4-inch tall). So I set to cutting.

But wait, I had forgotten to dimension the chestnut for the drawer fronts! So, back up and do that. Get out all the planes for thicknessing stock, I use a bunch.

516850

I had almost a quarter inch to remove, so I tend to use the scrub plane to get down to about 1/8-inch from the line (one pass), then the jack to get to about 1/32-inch above the line (2 -3 passes), then the No.7 to the line, nice and flat, finally the No. 4 to halve the line and make pretty. It almost takes longer to type the process out, than it does to actually do it. If there's much more to remove I generally rip to the line and start with the No. 7. The miter plane (LN No. 9) I use with my bench hook for trimming and squaring ends.

The scrub plane makes quick work of knocking the varnish off of this previously finished wood.

516854 516855 516858

I love the pattern the scrub plane leaves. I once lived in an old Colonial era house where some of the beams that were in the cellar showed such marks, along with beautifully scalloped adze marks, and the racing axe and broad axe marks.

I didn't take a picture of the finished fronts, but you'll see them down the road. Then back to the dovetails. I decided, in the interest of time to go with a single dovetail at the back, which would be rarely seen. The benefit of this in these shallow drawers, is no chopping between tails, cut this way and that way and you're ready for trimming! Here's my setup on my tail vise with a parallel clamp in the vise. To flip the board, a quarter turn of the clamp handle and it's out. Flip it over and another quarter turn and it's locked for the next operation.

516856

I got all wrapped up in the dovetailing and entirely forgot to take photos. I got the two top drawers done in an afternoon. I fitted them into the case and couldn't resist filling them up with stuff (space is very limited in my shop, so storage is at a premium).

516857

The half-blind, small dovetails went together with little trouble, but it turns out that I didn't really like the look of the layout, but not enough to redo them. I did however, like the look of the single big dovetail at the back (not pictured), so I resolved to make the big drawers at the bottom with single tails front and back. Which will be the subject of the next installment. (Hopefully soon!)

DC

[David Carroll]

Well, the class is less than a week away, and I will not be done with the box in time. Everything has taken me longer than anticipated.

The current stumbling block are the drawer pulls. I didn't design into the box enough space for knobs. I intended to use campaign style flush ring pulls, but the drawers are only 1-3/4-inches tall and I wasn't able to find any that were small enough. Then I tried small flush mount cup pulls, but these are meant for sliding doors. In order to use them to open a drawer, they need to have a lip so your finger has something to grab. I have an old Pilliod Machinist's box that has these, and I assumed I could find some. But I couldn't, at least not small enough.

I tried making some simple tooling out of Delrin and spinning a lip onto them on the lathe at work, but it distorted the bezel around the pull. I think if I annealed the brass and remade the tooling to support the bezel it might work, but my time to do personal stuff in the shop is limited and I have to work around the normal activities there.

My current thinking is to get some 1/2-inch brass washers, bore the hole in the washer to 11/16-inch and the OD to 1-inch, then silver solder the cup pull bezel to the washer. Then I can press them into a stepped hole. It might work. But not by next Friday, I still need to finish the box, and add felt to the till and all the drawers. So, it is time to take a deep breath and punt.

I'm disappointed it won't be done for the class, but the box is turning out so nicely that I would hate to rush through the rest of it and be unhappy with the final result, just to meet what really is an arbitrary deadline. Plus the point of the class is to carve, not to show off my fancy tool box. :-)

So, the project drops down on the priority list and I will work on it as I have time throughout the Spring and Summer. There is another class in September, which I am considering taking. So, there may be another opportunity.

Thanks for following along and I will post pictures of progress when it occurs.

DC

[Ben Ellenberger]

Have fun at the class!

My mom’s last Christmas present became her birthday present when work and life kept me from finishing it on time, so I know how that goes.

[David Carroll]

Well, the class has come and gone, I had to schlep all of my tools in rolls and bags, but it wasn't too bad. The instructor was Mary May, she was great! I'm certainly not a beginner, but most of the other students were. But it was plenty challenging. We made a "Green Man" basically a mans face with leaves sprouting all over it. It's an ancient art form, sort of related to gargoyles and that sort of thing. The one we made was pretty simple. I really enjoyed the class and the process. I signed up for a more intensive week-long class with her where we will work on our own projects with her oversight. That's early in September, so hopefully my carver's chest will be done by then.

Here's a picture of the class and of my green man. I'm the one all the way to the left and Mary May is the one all the way to the right.

517577

And here's a shot of my not quite finished green man

517578

DC

[Eric Brown]

They all look wonderful. For your next class do you have a project in mind?

[David Carroll]

Thanks Eric, Yes, I do. I have an old magazine clipping of an antique, gilded sun, with a kindly face carved into it and sun rays alternating straight and wavy. I want to reproduce that for a decoration over the fireplace. I don't have a picture of it with me but when I get home I will find the clipping (now 40 years old) and post it. This one will be about 30-inches in diameter with roughly a central carved disc of about 17-inches. I made a smaller one some years ago but never gilded it. Later this summer the same school is doing a weekend course on gilding, which I plan to take. I've done some gilding over the years, but without consistent success.

Thanks for asking!

DC

[Eric Brown]

Might be too late but found an interesting supplier of cast iron hinges, latches, handles etc.

https://jwright.com/about-us/