Posts Tagged With: Saw Chest

I ran to the store and picked up more white pine.  This stuff is awful.  I picked through all the stock to find the straightest boards – which isn’t to say these were straight.  But they were straight enough, I planed them up square and cut the ogee into the top edge.  I have that molding plane working pretty well now.

My biggest job today was to re-grind and sharpen the blade in my #8.  I nicked it yesterday and took a small chip out of it. It’s a Hock blade, and it took a lot of work to get it back in shape.  It’s sharper now.  I flattened the back, which was pretty far out of flat.  What’s up with that?

I cut the miters with my new Langdon miter box.  The saw needs to be resharpened, but it’s usable.  I glued the face of each, and glued the end grain at the miter too.  I nailed the skirting on, including sinking a couple of brads into each miter.

It’s not a thing of beauty, but it’s going to be functional.  I’m looking forward to working with some nicer wood in the future.

The lid is going to be a frame-and-panel piece with a skirt.  I think I’ll do bridal joints on the ends of the rails and stiles, it will be good practice as I haven’t done that before.  After that I just need to make some dividers to hold the saws and paint the chest.

I just installed the bottom on my saw chest.  I skipped the bead and just fit the boards together with tongue and groove joints.  I wasn’t happy with the tiny bead, and the larger one wasn’t cutting well.

I nailed the bottom on with some 3D headless brads – cut nails – from Tools for Working Wood.  4D might have been better, but I didn’t order any in that size.  Honestly, I thought I showed considerable restraint in only ordering the 4 sizes of nails I got.  Their Cabinet Maker’s Hammers were calling my name.  Loudly.

When I was a kid I was forever getting into my Dad’s tools.  As it turn out I don’t seem to have a nail hammer, so I borrowed my son’s.  I knew I should have ordered those hammers from TFWW.

I left the bottom boards long the way Chris Schwarz shows on his toolbox.  I started using a crosscut saw to cut off the excess, but it was unwieldily and I bailed.  It would either break off the excess while I was sawing, gouge the side of the case, or undercut the bottom.  I used a scrub plane to take off the excess, which was more work than sawing, but I was more comfortable with it.  I bit of work with my block plane to even things out and that was that.

Next up I started on the skirt for the bottom. I’m using 1″ x 3″ white pine from the Home Despot.  I swear, they must “dimension” this stuff while it’s still growing, every piece is twisted, bowed or cupped.  Sometimes all three.  Out of a 10′ section I got two 13″ pieces for the ends, the others were twisted beyond saving.  Back to the store…

But I took some time to tune up a molding plane I picked up from Josh at Hyperkitten.  It does a nice job, and will dress up the skirting nicely.

So what’s left?  Buy more wood, finish the skirting and make a lid.  I have no idea what I’m going to do for the lid.  The easy way out would be to just have a single board, but I may try to do something a little nicer.

I snuck a few minutes in the shop to experiment with what I want to do for the bottom of my saw chest.

I cut a bunch of 12″ long 1″ x 4″ white pine boards, and shot one end square.  I’m not going to bother squaring up all 6 faces as I don’t think it’s necessary, but I wanted to make sure one end of each piece was square so I could line them up.

Then I planed one face – just to remove the dirt, and assorted dings and dents from the big box store.

Then I did a quick sharpen job on the blades for my Stanley 48 T&G plane, and made some test cuts.  it seemed to work OK, but the result is a little rougher than I’d like.  I’ve read that this is typical, but I’m going to spend a little more time honing the blades to see if I can get better results.

Also, the tongue doesn’t fit into the groove without persuasion – but it’s easily corrected with a few swipes of the shoulder plane.  I suspect that I can tweak things slightly to get the fit correct right off the plane.  Used hand tools always always seem take a bit of fiddling to get the working properly.  Not surprising if you figure that these have been in a box or sitting on a shelf somewhere  for 50 years.

The tongue cut seems to do a better job than the groove.

There is some tearout in the groove.  Sharper blades, more care to keep the plane vertical, and perhaps a slightly lighter cut will probably help a lot.

The last step is to cut a small 1/16″ bead.  Again, this tool probably needs to be a bit sharper.  I can only use it in one direction, so the odds are I’m going against the grain sometimes – which leaves a fuzzy surface in places.

Aesthetically I’m trying to decide between one bead or two.  One seems too small and dainty.  The only other beading plane I have is a 1/4″, but it’s too big to use next to the T&G joint (no clearance).  Maybe I’ll try a ship lap with a larger bead?