Fabricus

The craft and art of making things

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Yet Another Chisel Case

Since I got another Japanese mortising chisel, I now need a somewhat larger case

This is based on an idea from Facebook, although it turns out my choice of hinges interferes with the intended use as a stand

Ideally, the front cover should also create a stand...

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Small scale collapsing shelves

Christopher Schwartz's book Campaign Furniture (Fort Mitchell KY: Lost Arts Press,  2014) has a number of interesting projects, and this is one of them.

They're designed so that you can remove the center shelf and the shelves fold down tip a compact stack -- or at least that's the idea.

This one's a small scale example, made out of offcuts and an interesting walnut board that was beautiful, but not very usable. I also wanted to make a small example to make sure I understood how it's made.

In fact, despite modeling it in SketchUp and attempting to follow instructions, there are some subtle points about the ratios between the position of the hinges and the length of the shelves, and the mortises for the shelf hinges that weren't quite clear to me until the project was essentially complete.

It's now living on the upper tier of my desk, where it gives me a bit of extra storage.

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I've gradually been collecting Japanese-style woodworking tools, and my latest acquisition is an inexpensive set of small chisels. So of course they need a home ...

Scrap plywood, wooden nails, and glue. The interior dividers are dadoed into the ends with a nice snug fit. All hand tool work and came together pretty cleanly.

And the whole thing fits nicely cross-ways in the Odate toolbox.

The chisels themselves are straight out of the box, and still need to be set up. But that's a later task

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Atedai 当て台 - Japanese planing bench

Since I've been doing more hand planing, I got interested in work holding for the purpose. The solution I came up with was an atedai (当て台), which is a Japanese planing board.

Dominic Campbell has a pretty good description, and this picture

which gives some idea of scale.

I made mine by gluing together some planks of the thickest maple I could find, and using the same wood for the legs

The legs still need to be flush trimmed, and I'm not completely happy with the stops. But I'm overall reasonably happy with it.

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First attempt at spoon carving, using the blank that came with the Narex kit.

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Tool Chest Rasp Storage

So one of the tools I want to store and have easy access to is a set of cabinetmaker's rasps. I originally stored them on the ground floor. That worked but I wanted both a way to keep from banging into each other and a way to bring them to the work.

My first effort was a tote that sat on the ground floor and was low enough to fit under the bottom till. That worked, but it left me with nowhere tall enough to store chisels..

My first thought was a tote sitting on the bottom till's shelf. That had possibilities, but was too short for most useful things.

So the next attempt is a smaller tote sized to fit above the saw till.

This allows the chisels to sit fully in the well, although they have to come out to move the tills.

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Tool Chest,Ground Floor: Planes, Saws....

Traditionally, the bottom of the chest contains planes and a saw till. While I can't put the big panel saws in the chest at all, as they're to long, I left space for the dovetail saw and another (probably a tenon saw, if I ever get one).

There's also space for another row of something ... maybe cabinet rasps and a small box for the router planes?

And the drawers still move...

The next steps will be finishing the drawers (probably just a coat of wax) and then the lid. My current plan is to put measuring and marking gear there. Nothing heavy, but stuff I grab regularly

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Traveling Tool Chest

Several years ago, I had the chance to pick up a rather battered chest, probably originally a traveling tool chest. While it's a pretty good-sized box, it's not big enough to be a cabinet maker's tool chest. It was clearly set up for some interior fittings that are no longer there, although they don't really make sense to me.

After cleaning it out, I have a box.

I've been reading about tool chests, and am finally starting to make sense of The Anarchist's Tool Chest. So I decided to try filling the interior along those lines.

The first discovery is that my inherited panel saws are not going in this chest, as they're too long. That was a disappointment. But planes will still go nicely in the bottom and a couple of tills look feasible.

In using the Christopher Schwartz method of building runners, which is simple (if not light), and added a deep till and a shallow till on top. Despite making some silly mistakes, a day of work has the beginnings of a usable system.

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Since only ten pictures can go in a post, starting to the metal work seems like a good a place to transition as any.

While I think in this case it probably would have been faster to just cut the edge hardware with a Beverly shear, I took advantage of the opportunity to have the hardware cut with a water jet cutter.

I initially tried to drill the nail holes, but discovered that the "copper" nails (which are actually copper over steel) can be driven right through the plate.

Dimpling

And finally

Now for the drawer pulls

These were formed in a lathe and then forged to shape. Copper cotter pins (which are surprisingly hard to find) and washers attach then to the drawers.

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Tansu

Based on a project in Fine Woodworking.

Initial dry assembly, in part to allow the back to be fitted.

Once the back is sized and grooved to support the long horizontal shelves, it's time to start the actual glue up.

Following the author's instructions, this starts with gluing the interior components to the right hand side. I've shown it with the left side in place, but that's just a fit check to ensure that nothing has gotten out of whack.

Fitting the drawer fronts

And starting to peg the joints.

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Shelves for an Armoire

As part of an ongoing renovation, my lady wife procured an old armoire which was basically a shell. So she asked me to make shelves for it.

While this was a farily simple design, I was pleased with how well it went together.

The concept is very simple. The shelves sit on pieces of plywood at the ends of the shelves with rebates in the shelves to hold them against the walls of the armoire.

The challenge was that since the armoire already existed, getting accurate measurements was not simple. The trick was to take the measurements, and then make story sticks to check and adjust the dimensions.

The result was a very nice solid, snug fit.

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Campaign Desk

My first project from Schwartz's Campaign Furniture, a book I've spent a fair amount of time reading. It's a relatively simple design, although I managed to complicate it a bit to take advantage of some teak that was not really the right size for the project.

The fun thing about this table is that it looks like, and is, a design that wouldn't be too out of place at home, but collapses into a relatively small, flat package for transport.

Not really shown in these pictures is that the top folds in on itself, protecting the show surface.

The original design uses butt hinges to fold the top, which works fine but allows the barrel of the hinge to stick up above the working surface. Schwartz suggests considering some alternatives, and I did, using sewing machine hinges. They allow the top to fold flat, but don't stick up.

The legs and aprons are from cypress, which was a pleasure to work with, but is probably softer that it should be for this use.

#furniture #woodworking #Campaign style

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My wife has been using a plastic rolling cabinet as a supplement to the pantry, any it has reached the end of it's life.

So she asked if I could make a wooden one ...

The basic idea is a rectangular carcass with removable shelves and a drawer at the base. The material is 12" pine, although the shelves are edge joined.

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Box for a Router

For Christmas I got a Bosch Colt router, which is a handy addition to the tool kit. But it comes in a cardboard box, which isn't my preference.

So while I was waiting for glue to dry, I took some leftover plywood to make a storage box.

In this case I just use used Gorilla Glue in butt joints and leftover hardware from another projects. Padding from a sheet of tool drawer padding.

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A jig for cutting reinforcing slots in corners.

I've been making a lot of boxes recently, and one of the common techniques for reinforcing mitered corners is to cut a slot perpendicular to the miter line and fill it with a narrow piece of wood, as in the example below.

The challenge in cutting those slots on a table saw is to hold the box in position for clean, repeatable cuts at a an odd angle for a table saw, being 45° from the surface of the table.

The obvious solution is a jig to hold the box, and there are several ways to approach that. This is one solution

This is built to be a sled on a table saw, which is the first time I've built one.

Since the sled is fixed relative to the saw blade, there needs to be a way to create a movable holding fixture. A tee track seems like a simple solution. Here's a detail of the tee track holding fixture, using Rockler tee track and fixtures.

Here's how a box mounts to the jig:

And a view of the cutting blade, which cuts its own slot through the sled.

The other detail is that since the saw blade cuts the sled itself, there need to be bridges that will hold it together. Similarly the flats holding the box need to be high enough that the blade is in no danger of contacting the track, as in a Saw Stop, hitting the track will trigger the safety features of the saw.

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Presentation Box

Or at least the prototype of the shell of one; I still need to work on the innards

Made from 3/4" mahogany, from a shipment the local Home Depot got in. The finish is Tried And True varnish, and probably will improve with a couple more coats and burnishing.

The joinery is dovetailed in the sides and "F" joints for the top and bottom (since the point of this style of box, aside from being pretty, is to protect the valuable contents, both top and bottom are the same thickness as the sides).

I was a bit surprised by the variation of color between and within the boards. I was expecting some of it, as the sides and top and bottom are from different boards. But they took up the finish very differently; the lighter side walls were actually darker than the top and bottom before being finished.

I really like the dramatic variation of the top and bottom boards

In part because of that, I minimized the complexity of the box shape. I didn't want to detract from the wood.

I think the next one gets a morticed lock, though.

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A router bit cabinet, made from miscellaneous walnut shorts, scrap birch plywood, and a little bit of maple for the shelves.

The basic plans are from "Router Bit Cabinet" in The Complete Small Shop (Woodsmith, 2021)., although I'm not quite done - the bottom will be a small drawer, which is the next piece:

This was an interesting build, as I did several things that are new or somewhat new:

Small dovetails using the Porter-Cable dovetail jig. I've done large dovetails and box joints, but not small doveralls or box joints

Rail- and-stile panel (for the door). While it seems simple enough in theory, cutting 1/4" slots into the edges of 1/2" stock was a little intimidating. I did it on the SawStop, and found it pretty straightforward. Some care needed in setup, of course, but the heavy saw and T-Glide rip fence made it simpler than I expected. That's kind of rare for me and woodworking techniques.

Dados on the new saw. Not really a new technique, but it was interesting to see how the new saw performed. Cut by repositioning the standard blade, in this case. Here again, the new table saw proved its value.

I will comment that cutting joinery into 1/4" stock, with or without using the router jig, is challenging. Quarter inch stock is bendy.

Like most builds it took longer that I planned, both because of mistakes and because making something this small is fiddly - things really need to fit.

But overall, I'm fairly pleased.