Walnut table hutch - in progress

[Ken Werner]

John, I'm sure alot of us are watching you, and enjoying the process. I know I am.

[Ed Sallee]

Coming right along, John! First, I went through and got caught up with the pictures.... Great job on capturing the process. There's a lot going on in there and this thread has been marked for me as a reference thread. Your detailed - answers to direct questions are outstanding. Thank you for taking your time to document the process in this way. I'm sure there's a lot of folks learning as you go.

[Jim Kountz]

John, I havent had a chance to catch up with this project until right now and let me say you're doing an outstanding job with this!! The walnut is looking great and the overall design is just really cool looking. I like the fact that this all started as a way to recycle some parts from a previous piece of furniture and that makes this even better.
Really really nice!!

[Jim Flynn]

John, BTDT on large cases before. A technique that I have used successfully before is to remove the back, use a large clamp, well padded diagonally across the front of the case to rack it back to square plus a small amount more then lay the back of the case over the opening and see where you need to add or subtract to "unsquare" the back but retain the square on the front of the case. This is essence is using an out of square back to force/help the front of the case square up. The only challenges are:

Whether the back adjustment can "hold" the front. Usually I have had to over correct so that springback still gets me in the neighborhood.

Adjusting shelf widths if the degree of out of squareness so to speak is dramatic enough. If the shelves are adjustable can sometimes be a hassle.

Good luck!

[John Keeton]

Jim, fortunately, this was an easy fix once I realized what had happened. The case was actually square, but as I mentioned, I had installed the back in a "racked position" - kind of the opposite of your suggested fix. But, I certainly appreciate the tip!

Well, even with the lousy weather, I was able to get three coats of finish on the front of the door panels, and a couple of coats on the back. Not near finished, but good enough to build up the doors.
DOOR PARTS.jpg
I will have overlaid stiles in the center of the hutch, so the right stile of the left door is 3/8” wider than the left stile of the right door. Confused yet??!!?? Once a rabbet is cut in each, they fit nicely.
RABBETED STILES.jpg
I had not thought about the waste from the rabbets, but I ended up with about 6 feet of ¼” square peg stock!! I will find a use someday for that.
.25 STRIPS.jpg
These are the doors after glue up and clamping. Put in some space balls to keep the panels centered up. The grain match on the glued up panels turned out pretty good - they actually look better than the pic.
DOORS.jpg
Then, I dug through my curly maple stock, and found an appropriate board for the drawer fronts for the walnut inset unit in the hutch top. I had thought about using a wide board, and cutting them with continuous vertical grain pattern. But, the curl in the wider board faded in the middle. I opted for a tighter, more consistent board.
CURLY DRAWER FRONTS.jpg
I believe it will show well against the walnut. They were cut to rough size. I will resaw them to ½” and then it is to the planes to get them to final size and smooth – a real test for a neander neophyte.

Finally, I am not sure who rated this thread. I just noticed that had happened While I appreciate the kind gesture, this journey is hardly worthy of that. I am just plundering through this project, and chronicalling the screw ups and luck ups. The hutch project has grown as it has progressed - kind of like Gary Zimmel's neander corner Had I known it was going to get this involved, I may have reconsidered!

[Phil Hughey]

Beautiful piece. That walnut is going to really maximize your design. Don't the handcut DT's take forever? But it looks like they might give you greater flexibility in your design? Quite a step to get rid of your jigs, although I did notice you kept at least one of them in the family

[John Keeton]

Thanks, Phil! I really enjoy working with the walnut. It is forgiving, and I really love the color - both when first finished and as it lightens and ages. The dovetails weren't so bad, but I am somewhat apprehensive about doing them in the curly maple!!

Looks like I will be able to get away from work tomorrow at noon, so tonite I decided to try to rough fit the doors in hope of getting them fully fitted tomorrow and make progress on setting the hinges.

The BIG question - will they fit???

First, the “patient” was laid in a supine position.
SUPINE CASE.jpg
The doors were laid out and measured.
DOOR SET.jpg
They are perfectly parallel and square, and exactly 1/8” wider than the case opening. A couple of passes on each panel across the jointer and they will be perfect on width. I ran a test piece on the jointer to double check the depth of cut, and ran the doors.
They are dead flush with the sides!
FLUSH!.jpg
And, they are dead square – top and bottom.
AND SQUARE!.jpg
I need only to trim the top about ½ blade width on my crosscut sled, and trim the bottom to clear.

[John Keeton]

After the cuts, they fit great!
ROUGH FIT.jpg
This is the bottom edge – just enough to clear the drawer unit.
BOTTOM EDGE.jpg
This is the top edge – after hinging, I will take a couple of clean up passes with the plane and they will be perfect!
TOP EDGE.jpg
But………
OOOPS!.jpg
I NOW recall that I had left the stiles a tad long when they were cut – but, that was a couple of weeks ago or more. When I placed the Dominoes and glued up the doors, I should have recessed the bottom rail a bit. I did notice that the panel seemed to have more room vertically, but didn't give it any thought. Now the bottom rails are narrower than those on the side panels, and the horizontal lines are off a bit. There is no fixing this - it just is what it is.

Only you and I know this, so it will be a closely guarded secret! I am hoping once the finish is on, and the piece righted vertically, that the oooops! is not noticeable. The saving grace is that this is not the only screw up!! I am getting used to them on this piece.

Tomorrow afternoon, I will begin hinging the doors!

[Jason Tuinstra]

"Dead Flush"... "Dead Square"... what fun is that? Seriously, it's coming along great. I wouldn't worry about the lines being off for another second. Once it's up right, the eye will correct it all on it's own. Keep up the good work!

[John Keeton]

Jason, thanks for the encouraging words! My hope is that I have made enough errors that I confuse the viewer such that he/she won't be able to single out any one screwup Safety in numbers!!

Hinging doors to a case has always been a challenge for me. Just a small error here can create a huge difference in the way the door hangs and operates. Please forgive all the detail here, but I wanted to force myself to do this right!

First I lightly clamp the doors to the case to get the proper placement, and then removed each one (leaving the other clamped) and made a few light passes with a low angle block to get a really good and flush fit on the sides.

Then, with both doors clamped, I mark the mortise locations on one door and proceed to completion with the hinge placement on that door, before marking the other door.
TRANSFERRING THE MORTISE.jpg
With my two wheel gauges, I set the width of the existing hinge mortise on the case.
SETTING THE WIDTH.jpg
That width is transferred to the door.
TRANSFERRING THE WIDTH.jpg
I have used a small machinist square and a box knife to extend the placement marks made previously.
Then, the depth of the hinge is set from the case mortise, and transferred to the door.
SETTING THE DEPTH.jpg
I didn’t cover this step when I posted on cutting the mortises in the case, but since this hinge has tapered leaves, I set my digital caliper for the thickness of the thinnest outermost edge of the hinge – I will use this to check the depth as I progress on the mortise.
LEAF THICKNESS.jpg

[John Keeton]

I am sure everyone has their own method of doing this, but I go around the perimeter lines, setting them a little deeper with a chisel, and then remove the material around the edges so that they are clean and well defined.
CUTTING THE LINE.jpg
Then, I work on the back edge, the shallowest part, assuring it to be the correct depth.
CHECKING THE DEPTH.jpg
I then work from the edge of the door back to the line, slowly shaving off the bulk of the material, as I work down to the depth line on the edge of the door.
When I have most of the waste removed, I carefully remove material on the edge of the door down to the depth mark, leaving a crisp and straight outside line. Then it is just a matter of shaving a flat surface from front to back, until the mortise looks like this. I should mention again, I LOVE my Blue Spruce chisels!!
FINISHED MORTISE.jpg
The hinge is checked in the mortise.
GOOD FIT.jpg
This is what I am after.
DONE!.jpg
Only thing left to do with the doors is to make a few final passes with the plane to give a consistent reveal around the doors.

[John Keeton]

After cutting the drawer front material from the curly maple, I just couldn’t stand it until I played a bit with this wood! In times past, I had worked quite a bit with curly maple in building longrifles, but then it was a matter of rasps, scraping with glass, and sandpaper - lots of sandpaper!!


I have never tried flat work with curly maple, and had already discovered that my planer chewed up this stuff like it was hamburger. I was a little apprehensive about getting the surface clean enough to make drawer fronts. Since I had purchased a truck bed full of this stuff for future projects, I was hoping I could master the neander thing enough to work with it.


When I first got my LV BU Jack, I tried it on a curly maple scrap, but it was nowhere as tight as the figure in this wood. I was anxious to see how they did with this much tighter figure.


With the 50* blade in my smoother, this is what I got.
LABU SMOOTHER.jpg
LABU SMOOTHER 2.jpg
SMOOTH AS GLASS.jpg
The pics above are with nothing but the plane. I made a few passes with 320 sandpaper, and a swipe or two with steel wool, and you can nearly see yourself in the wood! Fantastic!!

Now, if I can just get dovetails cut in this stuff, it will make some fine drawer fronts!

The danger in all of this - I am really likin' this neander stuff!

My lovely wife will be spending the day with her sisters and Mom - I will have the whole day to play in the shop!!

Hope to make good progress today on some odds and ends, and before the weekend is out, take a shot at the dovetails.

More to come later! I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

[John Keeton]

I wanted to get several things done today. The door hinges were mortised, but no screws, and that sometimes changes the way the doors hang.

I installed #7 x ¾” steel screws in all hinges with carefully drilled pilot holes. I clipped the screws before installing in the doors so there would be no danger of coming through the front surface.

After installing screws, I did need to take a few light passes with the planes to get the doors completely fitted.

Then, I installed a stop block for the doors at the top of the hutch. The apron on the bottom will stop the doors there.
DOOR STOP.jpg
The hutch top has just been sitting on the lower drawer unit and I had not given much thought to the manner in which it needs to be secured to the drawer unit.

I want to be able to move this piece in two sections – the table and drawer unit, and the hutch top. The hutch needs to be removable without a lot of fuss.

I decided to put a French cleat on the front inside surface so that I can set the hutch top on the drawer unit, and slide it back a bit until flush with the back of the base unit.

I still had the resaw blade on the bandsaw, and the cut is pretty rought. But, I knew I was going to be resawing a bit more, and decided I could clean up the cut easily enough with the block plane. I tilted the table to 45* and ripped a piece of walnut. The pics were done after the cut, but show the setup - pretty simple.
RESAWING FRENCH CLEAT.jpg
RESAWING FRENCH CLEAT 2.jpg
The lower portion was glued and pinned to the inside surface of the lower apron of the hutch.
CLEAT INSTALL LOWER.jpg
The upper portion was glued and pinned to the drawer unit. I had marked locations before laying the hutch down to fit the doors.
CLEAT INSTALL UPPER.jpg
Hope it works!!

[John Keeton]

I also need to secure the back of the hutch top to the base in order to keep it from tilting forward. I glued and pinned a walnut scrap on the drawer unit and set it back 3/4" from the back edge. There will be a piece of walnut that will seat in the lower part of the rabbet to fill the gap. It will be screwed to the hutch in the rabbet as is the back. I will then run a couple of screws in to the block that has been installed.
REAR SCREW BLOCK.jpg
My wife came home just in time to help set the hutch case on the table base and slide it back to engage the cleat. A nice tight fit!

This is a front view with after the doors were installed.
FRONT VIEW DOORS.jpg
And, this is a side on view showing the final fit on the doors – pretty pleased with this!
SIDE VIEW DOORS.jpg
It has been a couple of months since I did the dovetails for the drawers in the table base and drawer unit – my first dovetailed drawers, and then only five of them. I knew I needed to practice some, not to mention the curly maple front and walnut sides is a far cry from the walnut/poplar drawers I did earlier.

I resawed some 3” wide practice stock, and cut the first set. For all those out there that do dovetails in curly maple and other figured woods – I now have a significant appreciation for your efforts!

This is my first curly maple dovetail – thank goodness for the glue and some sawdust!
CURLY MAPLE DT 1.jpg CURLY MAPLE DT 2.jpg
I will need to do a few more of these before I tackle the three small drawers. More practice tomorrow, but I probably won’t attempt the real thing until later in the week.

I still need to finish smoothing the curly maple drawer fronts and fit them to the small drawer unit, as well as build the letter slot units.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, and a wonderful Lord's Day!!

[Jim Kountz]

Well John I think you can see light at the end of the tunnel. This thing is looking great and I absolutely love the finish on the door panels!!
Just wondering why you made the left drawer an inch wider than the right one??............................................. ..................................

Ha ha got ya didnt I ??
Made you look, made you look!!

Fantastic job on everything John!!