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Finishing / Shed / Sidecar Cot / Woodworking — No Comments
26
Feb 17

Drawering to a close…

The idea was to get the last bits done today. Didn’t quite make it, but came close.

Got the cot out of the shed first so I could do some work. Looks nice in the sunshine…

Then made up the glue blocks I was thinking about yesterday to support the top panel.

And then gathered all the tools up…

The #778 is there to cut a small alignment rebate on the inside of the tails for the dovetails, in what Rob Cosman refers to as the “140 trick”. I don’t have a Stanley #140 (it’s a rather expensive skew-blade block plane) and the #778 is a little finicky for this, but it works if you’re careful. The idea is that you cut a tiny little ledge in the tailboard and after the tails are cut you sit the pinboard up against the tails and on that ledge to align it and let you mark the pins more easily (and it works quite well).

That’s the four boards laid out to check for any obvious weird whoopsies. The coloured dots are a David Barron trick to keep track of the pin and tail boards for each corners so I don’t accidentally cut the tails for one corner and mark off for the pins of a different corner and bugger everything up.

Laid out using dividers (I use one dividers for the shoulder pins and then the other dividers to lay out the tails) and the David Barron dovetail guide.

Cut out the groove for the plywood base with a #043 plough, which is pretty much what happens when you take the unix philosophy of making tools that do just one thing but do it very well and then apply it to woodworking tools. It’s not much use for anything other than cutting this one groove, for drawer bottoms, but it’s probably the best tool out there to do the job.

Haven’t cut the tails yet here (but did lay them out) in order to put the groove in the middle of the bottom tail.

See what I mean? For any other groove, it’s not a great tool (which is why you have plough planes like the #044), but for this one, it’s just fantastic.

Sawed out the tails with the ryoba and the David Barron guide, then chopped out the waste with a ¼” chisel.

Not horrific. Cutting out the pins though, did convince me that I really need to get one of those Knew Concepts fretsaws. Chopping out the waste between the tails is one thing; chopping out the waste between pins is a whole other ball game and the fretsaw would be a lot faster (plus, cutting curves with a saw, what’s not to love? My coping saw, that’s what not to love. That thing is terrible…)

On to the half-blind dovetails for the drawer front. Marked it off against the tailboard, reinforced the knife marks, highlighted with pencil, marked the waste and sawed down the diagonal with the Barron guide and the ryoba.

Then took another trick I heard from Cosman’s youtube channel and smashed down the fibres on the remainder of the diagonal using a piece of metal with the same width as the saw kerf (in this case, a spare card scraper). This means I now have both sides of the cavity cut out fully and that makes it easier to chop out the waste.

For the last few mm I put the board upright in the vice and pare, rather than chopping.

By the way, Walnut. Wow, is this so much easier in this wood than in pine. If you want to learn to do this, don’t try it in pine. I mean, don’t learn in walnut either, it’s way too expensive for that, but try it in a hardwood like poplar. It’s so much easier than in softwoods.

I’ve left out the amusing bit where I fit the plywood base, trim it to size by carefully measuring it and double checking the measurements and then somehow managing to cut it a full inch too short anyway and having to bodge up a fix. And the fun part where during the glue-up I found that the plywood base was still too wide by a few mm and I had to disassemble it, plane down the base to width, and complete the glue-up. Thank goodness for hide glue’s long open time, that’s all I’m saying…

Also, I NEED A BIGGER SHED. Holy carp…

To-Do List:

  • Make a drawer
    • Cut dovetails for drawer.
    • Groove drawer with #43 for plywood base.
    • Maybe add runners underneath the drawer?
    • Finish drawer with shellac.
    • Assemble drawer.
  • Glue the drawer supports into the frame.
  • Even more last minute fettling and foostering (panel support blocks, drawer stop blocks)
  • Close door of shed, lock it, walk away and never do another project with a deadline ever again.
Finishing / Sidecar Cot / Woodworking — No Comments
19
Feb 17

Drying day.

My original plan was to make the drawer today, but that plan didn’t take into account things like drying time on glues given the current low temperatures. Titebond PVA glue would be grand, but hide glue is something I’m still figuring out, so I’m giving it lots of margin for error. Especially as I found today that I almost had a major error during the glue-up; the use of a mallet to drive the top crossbar and back support into the mortice put torsion stress on the two end joints, as I knew it would (stupid mis-steam-bent upright) but I thought it’d be safe enough.

Nope. Small (1.5cm long) crack right there. Not critical; the wood is now stabilised by the glue and it’s holding well; but enough to give me a moment of thinking “wow, that nearly destroyed a week or so of work without the raw material available to do it over…”

I might just try to get a little glue in there and clamp it closed tomorrow, just to be safe.

Meanwhile, the rest of today went on getting the frame out of the shed onto the assembly table in the late afternoon, getting all the clamps off and holding my breath to see if the glue had cured (it had), and doing the last bits of trimming on drawbore pegs and the like. And then the last coat of shellac got touched on in a few places to cover some scratches and once that had dried (it dries fast outdoors), I moved it back into the shed as it was dark outside by now, and got the first coat of osmo going.

Just ragging on a thickish first coat here, in two parts (you can see the contrast here between the untreated side panel and the just-treated top panel). The plan was, on with the first ragging, leave for 30 minutes, rag off the excess and immediately on with another ragging, wait 30 more minutes, then rag off the excess again and leave to cure until tomorrow evening. Then tomorrow, I’ll take 400grit paper or wire wool to it, and rag on a thinner coat, leave for 30 minutes, then rag off the excess, then leave to dry until the next day, and we’ll do at least four coats of that.

In the meantime, I’ve a drawer to make up as well.

Also, this is WAY TOO BIG to be doing in this shed…

To-Do List (stuff in progress in blue:

  • Make a drawer
    • Thickness the boards for the drawer.
    • Cut the drawer front to size.
    • Cut the drawer back and sides to size.
    • Cut dovetails for drawer.
    • Groove drawer with #43 for plywood base.
    • Maybe add runners underneath the drawer?
    • Finish plane drawer front
    • Finish drawer front with shellac.
    • Paint drawer sides with milk paint.
    • Assemble drawer.
  • Last minute fettling and foostering.
  • Finish entire assembly with several coats of Osmo wood wax.
  • Close door of shed, lock it, walk away and never do another project with a deadline ever again.
Finishing / Sidecar Cot / Woodworking — No Comments
19
Feb 17

Not done yet…

…but it’s getting closer.

I’m kindof cheating a little there – that’s a dry-fit before gluing in all the slats. But it all fits and the mattress top is at the right height so that’s a good start.

Got the day rolling by checking on the last coat of shellac for the rear support and especially the endgrain carving, which turned out well.

Then I put a tarp down on the assembly table, laid out the parts and rails, and dry-fit everything together. Then I stood the crib on the back panel, got out the hide glue and glued up the tenons going into the front panel, and then glued up the wedges and started driving them home to secure everything.

It went pretty well, even if one wedge did fail after I’d driven it home (it’s the one listing off to the left in the top photo). But enough went in to do the job, so it’s fine.

Then I took the flushcut saw and trimmed down the wedges, leaving a few mm proud only, flipped over the crib onto the front panel and inserted the end panel and dry-fit with the top panel and found – horror – a gap of nearly 2cm. The frame wouldn’t close. How I missed that I don’t know, but I spent the next hour fettling the top panel with jack and smoother and shoulder planes to get it to fit properly.

(Got to sign the work)

Then once I had it fitting properly…

I painted the tenons going into the back panel with hide glue, seated them, painted the wedges with glue and drove them home as well.

Then I got some (now in bloody awful shape, I need to fix these again) of the heavy-duty clamps I used for the bench and clamped front to back panel to get good pressure on the joints.

And then there was some tea. Then I dry-fitted the back support and top crossrail and the slats.

There had to be some more fettling of the back of the mattress support platform (and will have to be some more still, I’ll do that tomorrow), but it all seemed to fit fairly well, so I stuck on the mattress to make sure that it was 510mm from ground to mattress top.

Yup, all good. And the grain pattern on the rails matched better than I’d hoped it would. I did have to remake one slat from a spare I had, but by the time the light was fading, I had the curved uprights glued and drawbored into the top crossrail and that glued into the main body and all the slats glued in place and clamped.

The question now is whether the hide glue can hold the slats on the left into the frame, as that curved upright wants to spring up and away from them. If it doesn’t hold, I’ll swap out the hide glue for titebond; but it should be okay.

And that was all there was for the main frame. I still have to fettle the mattress platform a little, that’s a five to ten minute job, but we’re just about done and onto finishing with the frame.

And all that leaves….

…is the drawer.

 

To-Do List (stuff in progress in blue:

  • Make a drawer
    • Thickness the boards for the drawer.
    • Cut the drawer front to size.
    • Cut the drawer back and sides to size.
    • Cut dovetails for drawer.
    • Groove drawer with #43 for plywood base.
    • Maybe add runners underneath the drawer?
    • Finish plane drawer front
    • Finish drawer front with shellac.
    • Paint drawer sides with milk paint.
    • Assemble drawer.
  • Assemble and glue-up and drawboring of everything.
  • Last minute fettling and foostering.
  • Finish entire assembly with several coats of Osmo wood wax.
  • Close door of shed, lock it, walk away and never do another project with a deadline ever again.
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