File Handles & Case – #7 Fitting Riser & Stop Blocks – Cutting End Cap & Gluing On

At this point I decided to do another little redesign.  The original design had a row of riser blocks the files would set on shown in tan in the top rendering to make them easy to pick up.  In doing some testing they didn’t work as well as planned so a couple of changes were made.  The bottom photo shows the two changes made out of scrap material.  First, the original riser blocks get moved and redesigned to only have a single rounded edge rather than having both edges rounded.  The other change is the addition of a stop block at the right end of the case.

First up are the riser blocks that hold the ends of the files up.  Earlier when making the slotted ends I had made an extra just-in-case.  Since it’s no longer needed for the slotted ends, it can be repurposed to make the riser blocks.  Process starts by routing one rounded edge on the router then ripping it to thickness on the table saw.  Normally the fence is set for the size the piece needs to be with the waste to the left of the blade.  That’s not the case here because the piece is not very wide and has a rounded edge.  It’s the rounded edge that’s causing my concern.  If it’s facing up or down, I am worried my push stick could cause it to twist during the cut ruining the piece.  Solution is to set the fence so the piece to the left of the blade is what’s going to be kept.  This gives a piece with a flat top and bottom for the push stick to act on.  Cutting the height of the blank is done in normally since the finished cut piece is bigger than first one so the rounded edge is not a problem.

Next is to cut the blank into slightly wider pieces than required.  While all the spaces between the dividers “should” be the same they do vary by a tiny bit, maybe a hundredth of an inch and I don’t want any gaps when done.  Here is the setup at the chop saw used to make the cut.  The piece being cut is my test piece for making the saw setups and not the real oak blank.  Because a stop block is used to make same size pieces and the pieces are so small my plan is to cut them almost all the way through then break them apart.   This is done since there is a chance of them getting caught in the blade when cut free resulting in the piece blasting out at high-speed never to be seen again, hitting me or being damaged and useless.  One other precaution is the stop block at the right.  It’s very thin so if the piece gets cut free there is less of a chance of it getting caught in the blade.

Once cut the riser blocks are sanded to fit between the dividers using the large disk sander.

In addition to the riser blocks (left end arrow) six end stops get added (right end arrow) between the dividers to slightly shorten the storage spaces for the files.  The end blocks were not in the original plans but came about during the redesign.  They get cut and fitted similarly to the way the riser blocks were cut although to not as close tolerances since a lid cap gets glued on top of this end.  The photos below show them glued in place along with the files.

Setting up the saw for cutting the 30-degree edge on the lid cap that gets glued to the assembled base comes next.  That’s the highlighted piece in the top rendering.  The bottom left photo is a digital angle measuring gauge that shows the table saw blade tilted to the desired 30-degree angle.  The bottom right photo is of my test cut which will be used later.

After setting the angle I changed the blade from a combination to a crosscut.  That’s because the crosscut blade is specifically designed to give a smoother and more splinter free surface when cutting across the grain which is what this cut it.  I also taped the top surface to help reduce any chipping.  Last to get the smoothest finish cut I set the blank with the finished side up shown in the top photo.  A result in this setup is the piece I need to glue down again gets cut off on what normally would be the waste side.  Setting up the cut width means that I need to check from the left side of the saw rather the normal right side.  The bottom photo shows the completed cut.

While the cut is pretty good, I am going to go ahead and sand the cuts on both pieces to get the end grain really smooth.  So as to not mess up the 30-degree cut the test block is used as an angle guide.  All I have to do is to hold the piece snugly against the angled face and rub it side to side changing to finer sandpaper grits until I get to 320 grit.

The result of being careful to maintain the angle on both pieces makes them fit back together with almost no gap and the grain flow almost seamlessly between the two pieces.  The red arrows point to the joint.

In the top photo everything is ready for gluing the fixed lid cap in place at the right end of the case.  I’ve shown the area where glue will get applied highlighted in red.  Just to the left of that area is the cap itself.  In order to get a tiny bit of cap overhang along the right end I added a thin spacer indicated with the red arrow in the bottom photo.  To the right of the spacer is the stop block that will set the lid cap square with the base.  Also shown is are a set of parallel pencil marks on the dividers that mark the limit of glue application.

Here in the top photo the lid cap has been glued to the base.  The bottom photo shows how the spacer (red arrow) and stop block work together to give the cap a little overhang while keeping it square with the base.

Next Up – Fitting & Assembling the Lid – Brass Feet & Hinge Pins

File Handles & Case – #6 End Cap Shaping - Dividers, Crosspieces & Base Assembly - Fitting Bottom

Earlier on when making the divider blanks rather than bringing them down to their final thickness they were left about 1/64” oversize.  Since their final curved shape and length is done as well as the slotted end and center caps they can be brought to their final thickness.  That’s done using the thickness sander which allows me to very precisely sand off just a few thousands of an inch per pass to get that perfect fit.  Only change was to replace the 120 grit sandpaper with 220 grit paper so I would get a finish sanded surface.

Once the dividers are fitted to the slots, I could do a test fit of all the pieces completed so far as in the top drawing.  What’s missing in the other end cap (red arrow).  For whatever reason I didn’t cut that part when I did the other two and need make it now.  It’s not a big problem since the blank the others were cut from is still available.  Fortunately, the router is still set for the small radius made on the center slotted piece so that’s easy.  What will take some time is to go through the process of cutting it to exact length and resetting the router to match the two end slot cuts. 

There is no reason to go through the setup and machining processes for making the end cap since they have already been covered so here is the end result dry fitted and clamped together.

Gluing the dividers in place comes next but before that’s done the end grain of the three slotted pieces needs to be sanded because once the dividers are glued in place I won’t be able to sand them.  They are hand sanded starting with 220 grit, moving to 320 and finishing with 400 which in the photo is in the vice.  If you look at the bottom slotted piece you can see numbers 1-7 written next to the slots.  That’s so I can match up the dividers to the slots.  Even though all the slots were cut with the same router bit and the dividers were sanded at the same thickness setting in the sander there is still a very tiny bit of variation so some dividers fit better in some slots than others.

The glue-up is done in three steps to give me plenty of time to get the everything together without rushing.  The first step is to glue the center dividers into just the right end block (red arrow).  To keep the pieces from getting glued to the workbench a small piece of plastic film is laid down first.  The little spacer at the left end (red ellipse) up against the square takes the place of the outside divider which gets glued on in the third step.  The second step is to glue the dividers into the slotted center piece.  Once the glue is spread in the slot the clamping looks the same as what’s shown.

The third and last step is to glue the two outside dividers to the end caps (red arrows).  The end caps are a little different in that they don’t have a slot for these two dividers but fit in a rabbit.  A closeup view of the joint is shown in the upper right inset.

Once the glue cures, I need to flatten the bottom and the top of the assembly because no matter how careful pieces are measured, cut and assembled there will always be a little variance.  Here is what the top of the assembly looks like after all the edges have been marked with pencil lines and is ready for flattening. 

The flattening setup is a piece of 150 grit sandpaper clamped down to a known flat surface.  Here that’s the extension to my table saw.  Process is to place the assembly on the sandpaper and carefully make passes lifting after each pass and rotating end for end after every five or so passes.  Rotating helps to keep the sanding even in case I am putting uneven pressure on one of the ends.  Sanding passes are repeated until all the pencil marks are gone and all the individual pieces are in the same plane.  Here the bottom of the assembly is shown completed.

The same process is done for the top surface except once flattened the 150-grit sandpaper gets changed to 220-grit for a smoother surface since it’s exposed.  Once that’s done some hand sanding of the sharp exposed edges to soften them is done using 220-grit paper.  Also, the transitions from the curved parts of the dividers to their flat tops along with the rounded edges in the handle pocket all get touched up.  These results are shown in the top photo.  The bottom photo is a close in view of how the dividers seamlessly fit into their slots when all is completed.

Gluing the bottom on comes next.  The bottom blank has been setting aside while I have been working on other parts.  When checked it’s both are flat and true so the only thing required is to run it through the thickness sander loaded with 220 grit sandpaper giving it a near finish sanded surface.  Rather than cut the bottom to exactly fit the glued-up divider assembly the bottom gets cut about 3/16” oversize.  This gives me some flexibility when gluing it on.  If it were cut to the exact size and the glue-up didn’t go perfectly then I would have a real problem to fix.  Anyway, here is what it looks like all clamped up.

This is what things look like after the glue cures and the clamps are removed.  The bottom photo is a close view and it’s easy to see the bottom’s lip that needs to be removed.  Before doing the final trim, I will cut the overhang down to about the pencil line so there is less material to be removed with the router.

Cutting the bottom flush with the sides is done with a trim bit in the router.  Here the bit has a bearing that runs along the guide surface and the carbide cutting edge cuts the bottom flush with the divider assembly.  The red arrow points to where I stopped trimming the edge to take the photo.  Once the edges are cut a little sanding and the bottom fits perfectly.

Next Up – Fitting Riser & Stop Blocks – Cutting End Cap & Gluing On

File Handles & Case – #5 Dividers, End & Center Cap

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

File Handles & Case – #4 Wood Selection & Roughing out Blanks

Selecting the wood for the project is next.  I narrowed it down to three different woods.  Walnut, quarter sawn white oak and cherry all shown below.  Each of the planks have their own problems which is why they have been set aside from other larger projects and not yet used.  The walnut has a bit of sapwood along the top edge, is cupped and there is a split that runs about a third the way down the center of the board from the left edge.  It also has an S curve that wiggles back and forth like a snake along its length.  The white oak also has a split, is cupped, bowed along its length and also has a nice twist.  The cherry has a little cup, is twisted, has some sapwood, an S curve along its length and some bark inclusions/knots that will have to be worked around when laying out the pieces.  What they do have going is their figured grain or color.

In the end I decided to use the quarter sawn white oak.  Any of the three would have worked but the middle width oak piece shown in the top photo is just a bit wider than the widest piece needed for the project.  Also, it's been a while since I have done casework in white oak.  The widest needed piece is shown outlined with chalk.  It does have a split along part of its length (red arrows) but it's usable since the split is outside the main area needed for the ¼” thick pieces.  After cutting the piece to length on the chop saw flattening out the board is next.  The twist gets removed by using a hand plane to knock off the high corners of the board until it lays flat when set on a reference surface.  From there it's run though the thickness sander to flatten the opposite face then flipped and the previously hand planed face is sanded parallel to the just flattened first face.  The bottom photo shows the plane used and what the finished surface looks like.

Next is to rip the flattened and straightened piece into 5/16” thick blanks on the bandsaw.  Setup is a tall fence on the left held in place by the two orange clamps.  It holds the piece square to the blade and the yellow magnetic pressure assembly on the right holds the piece’s bottom tight to the fence.  In the left photo the first 5/16” thick piece has been cut off then set aside the and second one has been cut leaving just a thin bit remaining.  The right photo is a closer view of those two cut pieces.

The photo below has the two 5/16” thick pieces at the top and bottom with the thin leftover piece from the center of the blank in the center of the photo. 

Next, the two 5/16” pieces get run through the thickness sander to get rid of the bandsaw blade marks and bring the opposite faces parallel ending up a bit thicker than the needed ¼” thickness.  Because this is quarter sawn white oak and has a nice grain the thin piece will be saved to be used as veneer for a future project. 

With that done the two pieces to be used in this project get set aside with spacers between them for a couple days.  This is to see if any cupping or warping happens due to any internal stresses released when being ripped.   Since they are still thicker than the desired ¼” there is some room for flattening.

With the almost ¼” thick pieces set aside for now the 5/16” finished thick pieces for the lid’s sides shown in the top drawing can get cut.  The original plank has a split indicated by the chalk arrows on the bottom photo that runs part way down the piece.  Good news is the narrow-split part is wide enough to get both sides out of it when cut along the pencil line (red arrow). 

The bandsaw is used to cut the split piece free.  A close inspection found no other flaws in the removed piece so I could go ahead and continue using it.  Now it’s possible that as this piece gets additional work done it may warp, twist or otherwise behave badly.  It’s also equally possible that when the original piece split the stress was removed and there won’t be any problems.

To rip this piece to thickness a pass through the table saw is needed to remove enough of the split surface edge so I have a flat surface to mark a cut line.  That cut has been done below along with adding a pencil cut line drawn on the edge using a marking gauge.  The line is pretty faint but the red arrow points toward it.

Here is the setup for ripping the board using the bandsaw.  Since the pencil line is right down the center of the board it’s lined up with the center of the bandsaw blade.  This is a different setup because most of the time I am cutting for a specific width so will leave the line.

After ripping the piece there is good and bad news.  The good news is the cut pieces did not distort when cut.  The bad news is one of the two pieces had a couple of hidden cracks show up making only one of the two needed pieces usable.  The top photo is of the two halves with the bad areas circled in chalk and the bottom photo is a close look at the right crack.

Because there are some ¼” thick pieces needed rather than putting the split piece in the burn pile I thought I would try and rip this blank down to see if enough of the flaws could be cut away to get usable material out of it.  The top photo is before the cut and the bottom is after ripping it thinner.  Part of the flaws got cut away but not all of them.  Good news is the piece that’s needed for testing is pretty narrow so I can use it as a test piece for machine setups although it still may end up in the burn pile.

Next Up – Dividers, End & Center Cap

File Handles & Case – #3 Final Turning, Finishing & Start of Case

For mounting in the 4-jaw lathe chuck a 1 ¾” x 1 1/8” dowel is turned from leftover oak.  It gets a pilot hole slightly larger than the diameter of the smooth part of the screw followed by a 3/8” countersunk hole deep enough so the threaded part of the mounting screw extends beyond the end of the dowel.  The drawing below shows what a section of that looks like.  Mounting the blank on the dowel by running the screw into the previously drilled hole locks the blank tightly in place so it can then be mounted in the 4-jaw headstock.

To make sure the initial screw installation is in line with the lathe’s center axis the blank and the screw along with a square screw driver are put in the lathe per the top photo below.  The bottom photo is a closer view of the blank, screw and square bit driver.

With the initial wood threads cut in the blank the screw is put in the dowel’s countersunk hole (top photo) and the same process as above is used to run the screw in until it is holding the dowel tight.  In the bottom photo the assembly has been reversed and clamped in the 4-jaw along with having the tailstock run up tight to the blank.

Turning the top or heel of the blank to match the first cut pattern is followed by rough sanding with 120 grit sandpaper which gets rid of any minor variations and smooths out the piece as shown in the top photo.  Cutting and burning the decorative grooves at the heel is next.  Shown in the bottom photo both of the grooves are laid out and the right groove has been cut in using a parting tool.

The top photo has the left groove cut and the right groove burned in.  Burning the groove is done by holding a thin wire in the groove while the lathe is running.  Friction between the wire and the wood heats the wire enough that the wood in the groove gets charred.

With the grooves completed the waste end of the handle gets cut off using a fine-toothed Japanese pull saw that leaves a little stub on the handle’s end identified by the red arrow.  Some delicate work with the lathe tools followed up by fine sanding the whole handle gives the smooth surface shown in the bottom photo.

The last bit of woodwork before applying the finish is to drill out the mounting hole that was used by the mounting screw so it matches the shafts on the files.  In the setup below the drill gets mounted to the lathe’s headstock and a cup shaped adapter is attached to the live center in the tailstock.  This arrangement helps make sure the enlarged hole is aligned and square with the center axis of the handle.  To also help in keeping the hole in line rather than jumping to the final bit diameter intermediate sized bits are used to gradually increase the hole’s size.

With those holes sized to fit the file shafts the three handles are ready for the Danish Oil Finish (DOF).

Three coats of the DOF are applied by wiping on a wet coat with a cloth then adding more as the finish is absorbed for about 15 minutes.  At the end of that time any excess DOF is removed with a clean cloth and the handle is left to cure overnight.  This photo shows what one handle looks like when the first coat is applied.

After the DOF has cured for a few days, the files get epoxied in place.  A 24-hour long cure epoxy is used so I have plenty of time to make adjustments as needed.  A little epoxy is used to coat the inside of the handle using a toothpick.  It doesn’t take much as there is almost no play between the file and the hole in the handle.  I put the epoxy in the hole because if I coated the file any excess would get scraped off and left in a gob on the end of the handle which is a mess to clean up.  The completed handle and file assemblies are shown below while the other photo shows how the handle fits in my hand.  For reference the total length of the handle and file assembly is about 6 inches.

The second project in this series is building a case to hold six small metal files along with the interchangeable handle I had from another set of files.  Right now, the handle is stored loose in my file drawer while the files are stored in the soft plastic case they came in.   Making a case for both the files and handle seems like a good idea so I don’t lose the handle and because it’s only a matter of time before that plastic case begins to fall apart.

As I normally do the design starts with making several 3D drawings exploring different configurations to hold the six files along with the interchangeable handle.  Below are four different versions that didn’t make the cut.  Mostly because they made the case was too big or it didn’t provide easy access to remove the files from the case.  The bottom right option has a slot to hold a brass brush for cleaning the files.  In the end it got deleted since I keep the brushes together so they are easy to get to and can be used on any file.

Here are the two finalists with the bottom one being the selected option for a few reasons.  I felt it would give better access to the files and there would be less chance of them sliding out of the box when it was opened standing upright plus it addressed some construction issues

In these two renderings the left one has the lid open and upright but the lid can be opened more so the top lays out flat.  This setup will be used when just one or two files are used on a project then put away.  The right rendering is how the case will be set when it will be out for a while and several different files are used.

Next Up – Wood Selection & Roughing out Blanks