what you can get away with
& its counterpart - what counts
[Thanks for the interest in my ladderback chairs. The two I posted recently sold early on & I’ve started a waiting list. There’s no deposit, I just take names & notify them one-by-one as the next chairs come around. Same with boxes, etc. So if you don’t want to hassle with being quick on the draw when I post stuff for sale, send me an email & let me know what you’re looking for. PeterFollansbee7@gmail.com Today’s post is available to all subscribers - a bit of this and that…]
Working on a joined chest with drawer lately and juggling a few other things in between. When I cut a chest, I work one section at a time - first I got the front done. Now I’m going around the corner(s) and cutting the parts for the ends, or sides, of the chest. Jeff Lefkowitz and I worked up detailed plans for this chest a few years back, I dug out my copy when I started making that front section.
The plans/dimensions are what I aim for - but if I fall a little short or a little over, I survive. For me, it’s important to not cut all the stock to size before I start cutting joinery. I prepare all the stock from the log - so when I plane something like that top front rail I first rive, hew & plane it oversize. Then when it’s dried enough for the next step (2 months or so) I dress it to its finished dimensions. There, I was aiming for 4 1/4” x 45 1/2” (shoulder-to-shoulder, add 3” for 2 tenons) by about 1” thick. But because the piece deflected a little in its drying, I got 4 1/8” instead. I survived. That’s an example of what you can get away with. The flip side of that phrase is “what counts.” In this case, I am mostly concerned that the top rails all around the chest hit the mark on the stiles that designates the top of the chest. And similarly, the floor rails on the front and sides - I want their bottom edges in agreement.
I go through some effort to get that. Today I was setting the side floor rails - and they didn’t have the groove for the floor in them yet. I test-fit the side rails into the stiles, then checked across the front stile to see how the two floor rails related to each other. In the photo, the front floor rail is on our right - the upright one is the side.
I set a straightedge across from the front rail’s bottom edge to the side rail’s bottom edge. Had some wiggle room to make them align - but once I saw that they could align, I took that side rail out & plowed its floor groove using the same setting I did on the front one.
There’s lots of ways to do the whole thing - I’ve used several other methods, but this is the one I settled on. You can have over-long mortises and shift things up or down to get where you need to be. I did that in this case, but it was only about 1/16” off though. You can nip edges off the tenons to move rails this way or that too. None of these things show - none of them matter. I always say “the chest will still hold linen.” The last step is to adjust the length of the vertical muntins to meet the inner edges of the top and floor rails. I don’t cut the muntins’ joinery until I’ve test-fitted the rails.
I was sawing tenon shoulders on the end rails today and slipped - on a rear shoulder.
That you can get away with - front shoulders are super-critical. Those have to be right-on. This I can live with, it’s just my pride that’s hurt. The chest will still hold linen. Plus, when it’s full, you never see the inside of the joints.
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Earlier this week I was working on my box-with-drawer, based on the Thomas Dennis example. In this photo, that’s just the drawer front in place - the drawer doesn’t exist yet. There’s a pine board nailed up to the box sides and back to serve as the bottom - then strips with turned feet - these are also nailed up to the sides’ bottom edges.
There will be a base molding that wraps around the sides of the box to meet the same molding glued and sprigged to the bottom edge of the drawer front. When the drawer is closed, the molding hides the box-bottom. Except I left the bottom too thick (just over 3/4”) so that the base molding would be heavier than I wanted. So after fumbling around making some ugly heavy molding and getting frustrated, I decided what I really needed to do was remove the bottom and re-plane it thinner. If you ever have to remove a box bottom or something similar that’s fastened with hand-wrought nails, don’t do what I did 30 years ago - excavate around the nails to pull them out and make a godawful ugly mess. Instead, here’s a good way to do it.
Make several very thin wedges from oak. Tapered all the way to nothing. Then drive them in on both sides of each nail and tap them in one-by-one. You might hear some un-nerving sounds as the nails begin to come loose. Be careful to not lift one section of the board too high before the whole thing is coming up - that can split the bottom board. Work your way around the whole box little by little. In the photo above, the next step was to move those wedges to our right to lift that corner to match what’s already been done. When it goes right, the bottom is intact and the nails are perfectly straight still. I planed this board thinner and re-nailed it right where it had been, same pilot holes, etc. Next week I’ll make some molding I’m happy with. [in the photo, I’ve already used the same method to remove the strips with the turned feet.]
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Working in a shop with only natural light catches your attention from time to time as the seasons shift and the light changes. I’m seeing a change lately, particularly in the morning when I first open up the shop. The end of the shop faces the morning sun - so this is what I see when I open the windows there. Low tide this morning.
This can often highlight some of my work, here’s that chest I bought back recently. There’s no shortage of surfaces there to play with light and shadow.
I have yet to shoot proper photos of it - I need to remove a workbench to do that. I’ll get to it later this month. But it will eventually be for sale, we’re pretty full as it is.
Two last things - speaking of seasonal shifts, my wife just posted on her blog a reminiscence of other Augusts.
https://maureenerichard.substack.com/p/carnation-lily-lily-rose
And one more - I have my last workshop/class of 2025 in late September/early October. Short notice I know. It’s at Pete Galbert’s, we’ll be making carved oak boxes. Details here https://www.petergalbert.com/schedule/2020/7/13/make-a-chair-from-a-tree-with-peter-follansbee-8brcj-7b62n-xafjp-mglkm-lrd5m-swyzh - ignore that the link says chairmaking, we’ve just never updated it from an old class of mine. It’s the carved box. Usually these classes fill quickly - so this might be your chance to get into a very small class. Who will be the first to make two boxes in one class?
That view from your workshop is glorious, and your work aint bad either :-)
I can see why you wanted to get that chest back--it's a beauty--carving great--