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So I’ve finally gotten the walls of the box flat. Well, mostly flat. They still wobble just a bit when I put them together, but I don’t want to plane these things down to wooden cards trying to get it just right. Plus, it’s not like I’m face-gluing them together. When they’re joined together as a box, I think the variance will be negligible. Two of the walls were 1/32″ thinner (on average) than the other two, so those were the ones I cut down for the short sides. The picture above simply shows the walls propped up on the base (or maybe it will be the top, I haven’t looked at them yet to decide).
So now before I cut the tails, I have two questions:
- What looks better on a box – tails on the front walls or pins on the front walls?
- Should I clamp the opposite boards together and cut the tails on both at the same time?
I’ll likely begin this tomorrow. Pictures, as always, will follow!
I’m glad that I had a sharpening session directly on my temporary workbench, before I finished (or even started, ahem) my “real” bench. After a while, the water and slurry started to fly, and the amount that sloshed over my simple little sharpening stone base would have given me a fit over my nice workbench surface. Time for a dedicated sharpening station.
But with a 6×8 shop, I’m hesitant to “dedicate” space for anything outside of my bench. Fortunately, the shop has a big huge windowed area that is covered by a big huge grate (this used to be the external wall when the house was first built). I’ve learned to put that grate to good use, and will likely use a lot more of it as I go along. Here you can see what I’ve got set up there so far: a C-clamp rack, a torpedo level mount and two shelves made from scrap. I screwed little blocks onto the back of the shelf brackets, and that’s what’s holding them on. I can just lift up and pull them right off or move them higher or lower.
And here is a closer look at my new sharpening station. Soon, I’ll mount some short dowels underneath the base that will slide into matching holes on the shelf. That way I can use the shelf for other things until it’s sharpening time again. But the shelf is plenty sturdy during sharpening – no movement whatsoever!
Before I get to making the dovetails for my wife’s dovetail box, I thought I’d make this little template. The design came from the fine folks over at Homestead Heritage, where I was privileged to receive a day of hands-on joinery instruction.
I did modify the design somewhat. The original design has a square on one side and a 1:7 dovetail angle on the other, and is identical on the flipside. Since many woodworkers advocate using a 1:6 ratio for softwoods and a 1:8 ratio for hardwoods, why not have them all represented? So I have a square and a 1:7 on one side, and on the other side I have both 1:6 and 1:8. I think I’m going to follow up with my woodburner and burn those ratios on the appropriate face, just so I don’t have to guess.
I think I will get a lot of use out of this jig, and not just for dovetails. Having a tiny square can be pretty handy sometimes. I know that I have on occasion cursed my huge 12″ Starrett square, nice as it may be.
EDIT 2/14: This template, as I designed it, is useless. Read more on my newer entry.
So I’ve got the pieces for my box cut mostly to size. The walls are all currently about 5 1/2″ – I’m going to trim just a bit off of two of them (to get them to 5 1/3″) and I’ll trim the other two down to 4″. But first, I have a planing issue.
I suppose it’s just part of my journey, but I can’t seem to be able to get my pieces (any of them) really flat. First, I was dealing with tearout. Apparently, even when you’re going with the grain, there is a direction the wood likes to be planed and a direction the wood doesn’t like to be planed. Or is it simply time to resharpen? I think a good sharpening is in order regardless.
Having a good flat face kind of affects everything, though. If the face isn’t flat, then you can’t square the edges, even with a shooting board, because you’re not resting the board flat against it.
When I put all four walls up against each other, they are all over the place as far as evenness. So what can I do? Do I try to clamp them all together, edge to edge, and plane them all at once? And then flip them all over and do it again?
Argh.
On a brighter note, I did feel some sense of accomplishment with my planing at certain points. It was cool to see end grain shavings – a first for me.
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