Cutting the Mortises (Part 3)

The last stage is very important, but does not make any visible changes... That is the dry fitting of the all the shelf pieces... This ensures that everything can be lined up when the shelf is glued together. The time to make adjustments is now, not when glue is drying!

Working on the first side...

All side have been tested...

The mortises are done at this point....
Next step is to clamp all of this together to check for square, and to get the dimensions for the shelves.

Finishing (Part 2)

Now for the second coat...

Second (and final) coat is finished...

And the bottom shelf is finished with two coats.

What I am doing here is slightly unusual, I am finishing the plywood before I do the final milling. This is to reduce the amount of finishing I have do do within the assembled shelf. Doing anything inside a piece of assembled furnature is both time-consuming, and prone to lower quality results.

On a related note, applying the danish oil finish has both advantages and disadvantages... One advantage is that finish is a penetrating oil, so the wood can be sanded and worked, without effecting the look of the wood. However, the finish takes 1/2 of an hour minimum per coat - the wood must be kept WET for 1/2 hour for best results. To save time and labor, the undersides of the shelves will be finished with wipe-on poly!

Cutting the Mortises (Part 2)

Now that the mortises have been marked, I will use the mortise machine for the majority of the work. Some finishing up is required, but the whole process is much faster than doing it by hand... especially with a reasonably hard wood like beech!

Set up the mortise machine (this took about 15 min)

A closeup of the action...

First vertical completed....

And done with the mortise machine - some hand chisel cleanup is still needed

 At this point, the next step is a dry (no glue) assembly, to ensure all the parts fit together as desired. In my case, adjustments WILL be needed. This fitting step will help ensure that the final assembly goes smoothly, and the end product is of the desired qality.

Finishing (Part 1)

In the interest of speeding up the final sanding/finishing, I will finish the plywood for the shelves. I can sand and finish the plywood much faster when it is on the bench, as opposed to inside a piece of furniture.

Trimming the first piece to size...

All three 1/2 plywood shelves rough-cut.

A quick sanding with 220 then 320 Grit...

Select a finish for this project.....

And apply the first coat!

Danish oil is a somewhat labor-intensive finish to apply, but the results speak for themselves! I will be applying a second coat in the near future.

Cutting the Mortises (Part 1)

Now the mortises must be cut in the vertical members. Note, each member is unique, and each mortise must be in the correct position for everything to work. To achieve this, all the cuts are marked ahead of time, even though the position of the mortise will be largely defined by the mortising machine.

Tools used to mark the verticals.

The measuring scales allows the rapid, repeatable and accurate marking of the wood.

An example of the markings

Next, I need to set up the mortising machine. This involves setting the proper sideways position of the mortise, the proper mortise depth, and install the correct size mortising chisel)

Cutting the Tenons (Part 2)

Once the tenon jig has been assembled, it must be set correctly, which is done by a process of trial and error on a piece of scrap wood...

The jig has been adjusted and is ready to go!

A shelf piece, with just the tenon shoulder cut.

Cutting in progress - note the unguarded blade!

Cutting tenon on the table saw is an inherently dangerous process. The tenon jig has two handles on it for several reasons, one is performance, the other is safety. If your hands are on the jig, you are MUCH less likely to get injured!

First past completed on the first part (1/2" cut)

First pass completed on the rest of the pieces...

Tenons Complete!

Now on to the mortises...

Cutting the Tenons (Part 1)

Now that the pieces have been cut to length, cutting the tenons is the next step. The procedure is as follows:
First cut the shoulders using a sliding fence combined with precise setting of the blade height. This procedure is repeated twice... once for wide portion of the shoulders (1/2"), and a second time for the shallow shoulders (1/4")
Then the pieces are set in a tenon jig, which allows the accurate and safe cutting of the tenon proper. Again two runs are required... one for the deep shoulders and another for the shallow shoulders.

Finally any adjustments to fit etc are done when the shelf is dry-assembled....

First, cut the shoulders:

These pieces will have tenons cut into them.

The arrangement I used to cut all of the tenon shoulders.

All the tenon shoulders are now cut....

Now that the shoulders have been cut, it's time to cut the tenons proper!
In order to do this safely and accurately, I will be using a tenon jig. (some assembly required)

The tenon jig...

Some Assembly Required (TM)

Trimming the larger shelf pieces to length.

The first round of trimming is complete on the shorter pieces, now it's time to start on the longer shelf pieces...

An overall view of the setup for trimming the longer shelf pieces...

 

First, one end is trimmed flat....

The freshly trimmed end is then placed against the fence...

And the piece is trimmed to final length.

The bits of MDF clamped to the fence are to avoid having the stick drag along the fence when it is getting cut to length - a safety measure.

One thing to keep in mind when trimming a piece of wood to length is to opportunity to eliminate cracks, warping, or other flaws.

This cut off section was broken with very little force, due to a crack.

First Round of trimming completed!

 Now we are ready to select a number of pieces, and cut tenons into the ends.

Rabbiting, and Cutting the shorter shelf pieces to length.

 The next step is to rabbit a portion of the wood for the various shelves. This is done in order to hide the plywood edges, which are considered to be ugly. This took a majority of the time today, about 3 hours. The main difficulty was setting the height of the dado blade in the table-saw, so the resulting rabbit would have the desired depth.

Next step was cutting the wood to length. Used a table saw with a combination of t-squares....

Spent about an hour cutting the wood to length. Part of the task was figuring out how the length would be set. (Ended up using the fence on the table saw) Also, care was taken to cut the wood in ideal places, in order to remove defects, including blade marks, and warpage.

 The last picture shows the current status of the project.

I will endeavor to take more pictures in the future, so the process is made a little plainer.

Joint the second side, and true on the table saw.

 Now that one side had been jointed, the second side goes relatively quickly. The main trick is to ensure that the first jointed side is held against the fence, so the second side is 90 degrees to the first....
Note the two unfinished sides are not straight or square...

 Note the 90 degree angle between the two jointed sides....

Most of the wood has been run through the table saw, and are ready to be rabbited (for the plywood shelf) and cut to length. Subsequent step would be the cutting of the mortises and tenons. The wood shown is now straight and square, measuring exactly 1.5 inches on a side.

Note however, I miscalculated on how much wood was required, and will have to joint and saw some more...

First Side...

Before the wood could be jointed, the rough-cut stock needed to be cut into more easily handled lengths. The standard length was 4 ft, with a 3 ft remnant from each stick. The end result of cutting the wood to length with a Japanese pull saw is shown in the first picture...

The wood is jointed using the machine shown... The process produces enough sawdust that a dust control system is needed, connected via the flexible hose on the left. The machine has a largish spinning set of blades, so the reduce the risk of injury, the wood is moved using a set of rubber-faced handles, one of which is shown.

Aaaand one face is jointed flat to within 1/64 of an inch. The wood will be further straightened when milled on the table saw... This process of cutting the wood to length, and jointing the first side took about 2.5 hours....

Edit - grammer and spelling

In the beginning there was a Beech Plank....

Forgot to take a photo of the plank before it was ripped into 1.75 in wide strips. This was my first time working with beechwood, and the experience proved... educational.  The plank wanted to bind the saw during the rip, sometimes before more than 4-5 inches into the cut. (less than the diameter of the saw blade!) This would necessitate stopping the saw, backing the plank out, and restarting the cut. The end result is shown in the pictures.

This is rough-sawed wood, which will need to be cut into rough lengths, jointed on two sides, which establishes two straight, square sides, and  finally, ran through the table saw. This will result in straight, and true square stock, which will measure 1.5" on a side...

Setting Up Shop....

Hello All!

This blog is to help record some of the projects that I work on between bouts of job searching...

My current Project is a new shelf for a stereo system.
I will attempt to trace the progress from plannning/design stage to the completed project in use.
I will post pictures on the current project tomorrow.

I will also show some details on some of my completed projects as well.