This photo shows a majority of the blanks roughed
out. Briefly the top left piece is for
the two ends and internal spacer. The
top right pieces are for the top and bottom of the case. The lower left group of eight pieces are for
the dividers and base sides. The two
middle right pieces are for the lid’s sides and the lower right is a leftover
piece to be used if something goes wrong and I need to make a replacement
piece. Not shown is a single piece big
enough to make the top or bottom in case of a problem.
The first pieces to be machined are the base sides and
the interior dividers. The top rendering
shows the original layout and the bottom rendering shows the revised
layout. I changed the cutout part to
allow more finger space under the files to make them easier to get out of the
case.
After printing out the dividers profile at full scale the
pattern it taped to the blanks. Below
are the two base sides taped together along with the pattern. The left photo has the relief cuts already
made. They are needed because the curve
is too sharp for the ½” wide blade in the bandsaw. I could have switched out to a ¼” bandsaw
blade but for a couple of cuts it’s not worth the time to change the
blade. The cut starts at the top of the
left photo and stops at the bottom of the arc.
To cut the other half the piece is reversed to cut from the other end as
shown in the right photo. The same
process is used to cut the shorter internal dividers.
Below the top photo shows the vertical oscillating drum
sander and the outer base sides before sanding them down to the final
size. The upper left inset is a closer
view of what the bandsawn cut edge looks like.
The bottom photo shows the outer base sides and the shorter interior
dividers cut and sanded.
After sanding the curved edges and the internal dividers
get cut to length with the chop saw using a stop to set their length. These dividers are set aside for a bit while
the two pieces they fit into are worked on.
Here the top drawing has these two pieces
highlighted. They get cut on the table
saw from a block milled down to the final thickness. The bottom photo shows the block ready to have
the blanks cut. Normally parts are cut
with the grain running the length of the piece.
However, in this case the block is set to cut so the grain (red arrow)
runs 90 degrees to the long dimension.
That’s because the grain of the dividers and bottom run in their long
direction and the grain direction of the highlighted parts need to match. This means they need to have the grain run 90
degrees to the long dimension. To
understand why I need touch on how wood moves with humidity changes. As the humidity increases and decreases wood
changes size. However, it does not
change equally in all directions. There
is very little if any change in the length or along the grain of the
piece. The vast majority of the change
is across the grain. The practical
effect of this is that if pieces are glued up with their grain running at 90 degrees
to each other the wider piece tries to expand and contract but the other piece
won’t let it. Something has to give and
that’s usually when the wider piece cracks to relieve the stress.
Routing slots in the two required blanks plus one extra
in case I make a mistake while routing is next.
The top photo shows the setup for the center slot. Because the piece is fairly small and I like
to keep my fingers intact a clamp is used to hold the part tight to my
jig. It also keeps the piece square with
the fence. The bottom photo is a closer view
after the cut has been made. The same
cuts are made on the other two blanks.
After the center slot is cut I moved the fence closer
toward the router bit to cut the next pair.
Since the remaining holes are offset about the center slot only one
setup is needed per pair of slots. The
top photo shows the first one cut and the bottom photo shows the second one
cut.
The process of moving the fence closer to the router bit
is repeated once more which completes the routing of the center end cap for the
dividers. The red arrow points toward
this piece in the rendering. As before
the other two blanks get the same routed slots and are set aside. The last routing pass is to cut a rabbit at
each end of one blank as shown in the bottom photo. In the rendering it’s the far-right
highlighted end cap.
Next is to rip the slotted caps to their final
thickness. The top photo shows the ½”
thick finished piece which is way too small to cut without some help to keep my
fingers away from the saw blade. I
learned this the hard way as once when I was in high school, I tried to make a
cut on too small a piece and nearly cut my thumb off. Not going to do that again. The solution is to use something like what’s
shown in the bottom photo so it gets chewed up and not your fingers.
When trimming these pieces this narrow it’s not uncommon
to get some burn marks on the end grain shown in the top photo. It’s a pretty easy thing to fix by using the
large disk sander to just lightly sand that end which cleans everything up
shown in the bottom photo.
The narrow center slotted cap gets a small radius
indicated by the red arrow in the top photo to get rid of the sharp edge in the
tray where the handle will be stored.
The bottom photo shows the router setup to make the cut and the inset on
the right is a closer view.
Last step for the narrow center slotted cap (red arrow)
is to trim ¼” off of each edge so it will fit inside the two outer sides. In the middle photo that piece is in the chop
saw with the unchanged stop block from when the two slotted blanks were
cut. To take off exactly ¼” off a ¼”
drill bit is used as a spacer. In the
bottom photo a ½” router bit is used to take another ¼” off the opposite side.
Here is what the slotted end cap and the slotted center
cap look like with a ¼” thick spacer set in the right slot. The spacer allowed me to check and make sure
the slots are all aligned.
Next Up – End Cap Shaping - Dividers, Crosspieces &
Base Assembly - Fitting Bottom
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