fitting floor boards in the chest
with what might be my shortest video ever
Some perfect fall weather settling in here now. A walk this morning to the rocks at the mouth of the river. It was a nearly perfect moment, except for some knucklehead using a leaf-blower somewhere. One of the three or four worst inventions of man.
Then back to the shop, picking up a couple of projects in limbo. I went to a hardwood supplier recently and bought a board. That’s not something I’ve done very much of - most of my hardwood is oak, which I split from a log. When I teach carving classes, I use sawn oak boards, but I get those from a friend with a bandsaw-mill. In this case I only needed one board, but a pretty particular one. Wide clear black walnut. I chose a 12” wide, 12-foot long board. There were probably 15 or more to choose from, but I only looked at 3 - once there was one good enough, I didn’t need to see the rest.
[The place was Reader’s Hardwood Supply http://readershardwoodsupply.com/ I have no reference point to gauge the place, but I was happy with it. Lots of species in stock, many thicknesses. helpful people. Buying hardwood boards isn’t my usual bag, so I’m a lousy judge perhaps…but I’ll be back when I need specific hardwood I can’t get out of a log.]
This board is slated to make seats for the joined stools I made earlier this year. Those only happened because one day I went to buy an oak log and there was a clear, straight walnut log in the pile at the same time. It had a lot of sapwood, so I could only get the narrow stuff that joined stool frames use -
I went back & looked it up, we split that log in February.
It took me a long time to come around to walnut. My first walnut project was a joined chair - for which the customer supplied the (awful) wood…never again will I agree to something like that. I still struggle some with it, mostly in trying to see what I’m doing with it. Chopping mortises, I can’t see into them with the dark wood. My eyes are used to oak. Same for carving it - no shadow, so I have a hard time seeing depth on it. BUT - when it’s nice & straight, it’s amazingly agreeable. This apron was a breeze to carve once my eyes adjusted.
Like any wood, straight riven stock gave me a better appreciation for it. There’s another stool right behind this one, then more framing stock planed up and ready to go. So we’ll see more of this sort of thing.
…………………….
Another lingering project is the oak joined chest I’ve been building. It’s now at the stage where I’ll have to just plow through and finish it - because it will take up too much room in the shop otherwise. Plus the customer would like it have it, I imagine. The floor was cut & fitted, but not trimmed. Before I can make and install the rear panel, I had to trim it to length. Here’s how that worked. In this first photo, the floor’s been fitted, but is random lengths - I need to mark the actual length - the inside edge of the grooves in the two rear stiles is the mark.
To get an accurate mark, I removed the middle board - they’re not attached to the rear bottom rail yet.
Then I can sight from that groove along the inside face of the lower rear rail. It’s hard to see in the photo below - but that straightedge is lined up at the end near the camera right at the inner edge of the groove. And just below it in the opening is the floor rail these boards rest on. So I made sure the straightedge was lined up properly and then just scribed across the boards.
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