Courtyard Gate – #8 Finishing the Latillas & Starting the Infill Panels

With the latillas turned it’s time to add the hand-hewn look to them.  Since everybody was happy with the prototype piece that look will be replicated.   It had the faceted 6 face layout drawn on one end and that worked fine.  However, so I don’t have to go through the layout process on both ends of each of the latillas a template gets made that can be traced onto the blank’s end.  As a refresher the layout starts using a compass to draw a circle the same diameter as the blank.  Next, with the point positioned on the edge an arc is drawn starting at the edge, passing through the center and intersecting the circle.  The point where that arc intersects is my center point for the next arc and the process is repeated six times.  After that the intersecting points along the edge are connected with a straight line.  That’s shown in the upper left-hand photo.  The upper right photo is after the pattern has been roughly cut out on the scroll saw.  Second the sawn edges are smoothed using the big disk sander per the lower-left photo.  Last in the bottom right the pattern has a ¼” hole drilled in it and one of the aluminum pins used to locate the pattern where its perimeter is transferred to the end of the blank.

Next the blank is loaded into the lathe with the left end mounted at the head stock (top photo) on the aluminum pin in the just made jig while the right end is mounted on a pin held in place using a drill chuck and another aluminum rod.  The chuck can be used in the tailstock since the lathe won’t be running for the shaping.

Last step before shaping the blank is to draw horizontal lines along the face of the blank at the points of the hexagon drawn on the blank’s end to act as a general guide when doing the shaping.

The shaping is done the same way as the test piece in Post 4, Making Latilla Sample.  The top photo is a finished example.  In close examination of the finish surface there were more of the circular scratches left in the flat areas than I wanted.  You can see them in the close-up middle photo.  A little hand sanding with some 120-grit paper cleaned them up (bottom photo).

Here is a dry fit of the frame and the installed latillas held in place with the aluminum pins. 

While the latilla’s fit great I want to do something more to lock them in place to prevent loosening over time besides end grain gluing them in.   Here is the test assembly where I used the prototype latilla and a scrap section of rail adding an aluminum nail (red arrow).  It will act as a reference pin mechanically locking things in place and the aluminum won’t rust.  Once the latilla was driven onto the nail it was pretty solid.  With success in the test, I added pins to the top end of all six latillas.

The last major part of the gate to add is the lower infill panels shown highlighted in the drawing below.  The panels will go into grooves cut in the middle and bottom rails.  Process to cut the grooves is to roughly center the saw blade in the rail set to the proper depth then make a pass through the saw.  That’s shown in the center photo.  The piece is then flipped end to end and run though the saw again making a perfectly centered wider groove in the piece. 

To widen the cut the saw’s fence gets moved a little to the right and the pieces are run thru the saw twice, once from each direction.  This process is repeated until the groove reaches the desired width.  The photo shows the completed grooves with the left rail’s finished groove up.  The process is the same for both the middle and bottom rails but their width differs because of the way the infill panels are installed.  More on that below.

In the drawing on the left the white part is the center rail and the dark part is the infill panel.  In it the panel is the same width as the groove.  The drawing on the right the dark part is the infill panel and the white part is the bottom rail.  Here the panel is stepped down so there is a small shoulder (red arrow) that rests on the bottom rail.  That has to do with keeping the moisture out of the bottom groove.  With the top rail when it’s raining water will shed off the top rail and infill panel and won’t collect where the rail and panel meet.  The bottom rail is different because without the step the rain will run down the face of the panel and collect in the groove encouraging the rot just like the existing gate.  The obvious solution of gluing the panel in place sealing out the rain won’t work.  That’s because the wood grain in the panels runs 90 degrees to the grain in the rails and the panels have to be free to expand and contract due to moisture changes.

The step part of the tenon is roughed out on the table saw then fitted using the router.  It is almost identical to the method used to make the tenons for the ¾” wide mortises.  The fence on the table saw defines the length of the tenon while the blade height is set to cut the tenon a couple hundredths thick so the router can be used for fine tuning.  Below is the table saw setup along with a close view.

Because there is a slight variance of 2-3 hundredths of an inch between all the panels in thickness the tenons need to be fine-tuned to just fit.  Remember when cutting the tenons I am not directly cutting their thickness but am cutting the depth of the step so as the piece varies in thickness so does the tenon.   The router is used to shave off a few thousands of an inch per pass to get that perfect fit.  Here is the setup.

This is what one set of panels look like in-place.  The panels are not cut to length or width and still need tongue and groove edges to lock together which is next but it gives you an idea of how they go together.

Next Up – Grooving Infill Panel, Rounding Inside Edges & Zia Blanks

Courtyard Gate – #7 Making the Latillas & a Jig – Part 1

The upper part of each gate has three latillas installed in the opening.  The left drawing shows them highlighted.  The right drawing is an exploded X-Ray view that shows the pins that will hold the latillas in place.  In the original gate these were wooden dowls and they rotted off enough so that one completely fell out.  To prevent this from happening with these gates a ¼” aluminum dowel (red arrow) will be used. 

I started by laying out the pin hole locations (top photo) and marked them all at once to make sure they all lined up.  That’s followed up by going to the drill press and setting its fence so the pins would all be centered (bottom photos) and drilling them.

To cut the pins I made a quick clamping bracket and mounted it in the bench vice (top photo).  After pushing the rod through the hole and measuring it a clamp holds it tight in place.  Next a jigsaw with a metal cutting blade is used to cut the dowel free.   Once cut the ends are somewhat ragged so they get mounted in the lathe (bottom photo) where a file is used to cleanup the end and add a small bevel to ease the entry into the drilled hole.

The latillas are next.  The blanks have been set aside and when checked there were no problems, everything is still straight, flat and true.   The blanks are made from four layers and because the layers are different thickness the glued-up blanks vary in total thickness but the width is the same albeit oversize and wider than they are thick.  Passing each of them through the table saw got them down to the same required width and square.  

Because I want the center glue joint centered on the blank getting them to the same thickness would be time consuming since all the amounts cut off would be different because of the layers different thicknesses so a roundabout method is used.  It starts by locating the center along the width which in the photo is left-to-right dimension.  Rather than try and measure the exact center I get close, mark from both sides then split the difference.  The jeweler’s magnifying headset helps me hit the side-to-side center.  A closer view is shown in the inset.  Top to bottom dimension across the layers is what varies.  I get around that by using the glue line as my center line then drawing a circle a bit larger than the size of the latilla’s blank with a compass. 

To make the initial turning a bit easier the four corners of all the latilla blanks get cut off so I end up with an octagon.  The corners are cut off using the bandsaw set at 45 degrees.  To set the amount to cut off the blank is placed on the bandsaw table and the fence is adjusted so the blade is close to the circle on the blank’s end.  The left photo shows what I mean and the right photo shows the last corner cut off.  Since I don’t need to hit the line exactly if its close that’s good enough for this operation which means the fence does not have to be moved very often.  The bottom photo is of all six latilla blanks ready to be turned.

The top photo shows the octagonal blank set between centers ready to be turned round and the bottom photo shows the finished cylinder turned to a constant required diameter of 1 ½”.

Thinking through the process needed to make the latillas from the cylinder I saw a problem with the machining process.  When I did the test piece there was no need to drill the holes for the aluminum mounting pins.  However, the actual pieces will need to have those holes drilled while the blank is still a cylinder so they are centered in the blank.  That has to be done before the freehand shaping since I can’t hold an irregular shape in the lathe to drill the hole and with the holes I can’t mount it between centers to do the freehand shaping.  The end result is a detour to make a specialty jig to hold the blank after the holes are drilled while the freehand shaping is done.  The jig starts out with a wood block that gets bandsawn into a rough cylinder.

Next a cylindrical blank gets turned smooth and to size between centers.

It’s then removed from the lathe and the spur drive swapped out to a 4-jaw chuck so the blank can be clamped in place.  In the top photo a small inset is drilled for clearance when the jig is installed on a live center.  In the bottom photo a hole has been drilled that gets threaded so the jig can be screwed onto the live center. 

Here’s the tap used to cut the threads and the finished threaded hole.

The center finder is put into the drill chuck and the center of the jig gets marked for drilling the ¼” hole the aluminum dowel will go in.

This is the completed jig screwed on to the live center (red arrow) with the aluminum dowel inserted ready to be used.

To drill the holes in the latillas the drive center is removed and the 4-jaw chuck is installed.  The cylindrical latilla blank is clamped in the 4-jaw chuck with a second live center in the tail stock to make sure the cylinder is aligned correctly.  This is all done in the top photo.  Next the live center in the tail stock gets removed and the ¼” drill bit in a drill chuck gets mounted in the tail stock (bottom photo) so the hole can get drilled.

 Next Up – Finishing the Latillas & Starting the Infill Panels

Courtyard Gate – #6 Cutting Tenons, More Mortises & Making Plugs for Screws

Here is what the stiles look like with all the mortises cut.  The six stacked pieces in the background are the rails that will get tenons cut on them next.

Before starting to make the tenons I checked to make sure the miter fence was square with the blade.  Checking with a square can get close but when making these large tenons close isn’t good enough.  There is a simple method that requires just two scrap pieces of wood 2” to 3” wide and about 15” long with one long edge marked “Fence” (red arrow).  This edge is butted up against the fence and both pieces are cut.

Next, the cut edge is set on the table saw with the “Fence” note pointed to the right and the pieces are slid until they touch as in the left photo.  There should be no gap between the long edges since both pieces were cut with the same fence/saw blade orientation.  If there is a gap it’s probably due to the long edges being warped.  Here there is no gap so the right board gets rotated 180 degrees so now the “Fence” marks are pointed toward each other (the “Fence" text is on the back of the right board) as in the right photo.  If there is no gap along the long vertical edges then the fence is square with the blade.  If there is a gap at the top or bottom it will be twice the out-of-square amount and the fence needs to be adjusted.  The process is repeated until there is no gap.

Cutting the tenons is next.  The cheeks or outside faces are cut first using a shop made tenoning jig shown in the left photo.  The right photo is a closer view after the first cut has been made.  To cut the opposing cheek the piece is rotated 180 degrees and cut.  Since the tenons and rails are all the same thickness all six rails get cut with the same setup.

Next is to cut away the thin waste piece on both sides of the tenon.  In the photo below the top waste piece has been cut away and the bottom is ready to cut.  Once set all the rails get cut the same.

The last bit of work on the table saw it to make the first cut for the removal of the tenon’s offset.  The left photo shows the back side of the rail before the cut and the right photo is after the cut has been made.

Using the fence on the bandsaw (left photo) a consistent width cut is made to remove the offset waste which completes the majority of the work on the tenon.  All the tenons are cut a couple hundredths thick to leave a buffer for final fitting in case there was any variance in the rail thickness.  The right photo has them stacked up ready for final fitting.

There is one other bit of work before the final fitting and that was to take my small hand plane and chamfer the leading edge of the tenon (red arrow).  This will make the initial insertion of the tenon into the mortise easier.

The final fitting is done on the router table using a ½” straight router bit.  Using the router table’s fence the tenon is pushed up against a miter fence running in the gold track to keep the piece square with the router table fence.  However, before doing cutting I measured the tenon thickness and wrote the size on the tenon then worked fitting from the thickest tenon to the thinnest.  Process is to raise the router bit until it just touches the face of the tenon.  Multiple passes are made across the router bit until the entire face has had a skim cut made.  The board is flipped and the other side of the tenon gets the same treatment.  A test fit is made and if the fit is too tight the router bit is raised a few thousands of an inch and the process is repeated until the tenon just slides in place.  I then move on to the next thickest tenon.

Here are the two frames dry fitted.  In checking them for squareness the diagonals were within 1/32” of matching which is pretty good but I think I can probably improve that some when gluing them up.

After disassembling the dry-fit doors some more mortises need to be made.  They are for the structural screws that will reinforce the joints between the stiles and rails.  The drawing below shows an X-Ray view of the corner joint where the 4” screw goes from the bottom of the mortise through the stile into the tenon and on into the body of the rail.

In the photos below the highlighted areas show where these mortises will be cut.  The top photo shows the layout done on one of the stiles with the other three stiles set so the mortises for the tenons are shown.  The bottom two photos are a closer view.

With the mortises laid out stops are set in the mortising machine and they get cut just like before.

To not leave an exposed hole where the screws will be installed a plug gets glued in.  I could have glued up a ¾” square block a couple feet long and cut 1” long pieces off.  The problem with that is the exposed face would be end grain and I want the plug’s surface that’s exposed to be face grain to match the grain on the stile.  There are a couple of ways to get that but I chose gluing up layers so the face grain was at the end of the square block.  This method also let me use up a bunch of leftover pieces that either had knots, splits or were not going to be a lot of use.  Below is my starting group of rejects.  To get the needed size block requires a few steps.  

First is to rip the rejects to a common width then face glue and clamp them together in layers shown in the top photo.  The bottom photo shows the glued-up blanks.  Only the bottom two blanks will get used for now.

These two blanks are roughly the same width and get their edges trimmed so they are flush.  Once that’s done, they get cut into pieces the same length as their width on the chop saw using a stop block to get consistent results. The results are the six pieces in the top photo.  Those get face glued into one long stack that when clamped up looks like this.

The glued-up block is then cut in half using the bandsaw because it’s too thick to cut in a single pass on the table saw. 

 The resulting blocks are thin enough to trim their edges flush on the table saw which are then ripped into four square oversize blanks.  They will be set aside for a while to see if there will be any movement before trimming to final size.

Next Up – Making the Latillas & a Jig – Part 1

Courtyard Gate – #5 Cutting Pieces to Length, Sanding to Thickness & Making Mortises

With the thickness sander calibrated I loaded it with 120 grit sandpaper and started the process of bringing like pieces down to a uniform thickness.  The top photo shows one of the door stiles (vertical part of door frame) ready to be run through the sander.  The sanding process took several hours because there are a lot of glued up pieces to be machined, both faces need to be worked on and less than 1/64” was removed per pass because I wanted to take the minimum required off to end up with the maximum thickness.  Also, because cedar is a soft wood and has a tendency to build up on the sandpaper I frequently stopped and to clean the drum’s sandpaper.  The bottom photo shows all the different glued up pieces for both doors.

1. Stile blanks
2. Rail blanks
3. Latilla blanks
4. Lower inset door panel blanks
5. Center circle blanks for Zia applique on doors
6. Blanks for testing of door frame mortise and tenon joints

Cutting the stiles and rails to their final width and length is next.  Cutting to width is done on the table saw and cutting to length is done on the chop saw.  The stiles have any defects cut from one end then using a stop block on the chop saw they get cut to their final length.  The rails are a little different in that they use two stop blocks, one to cut each end.  While the blanks are a little long, due to material size limitations, the screw holes used during the gluing process won’t get cut completely away.  In the top photo the red arrow points to where the left end cut will be made with the insert giving a closer view.  The bottom photo shows the setup for making the right cut and the red arrow points to the resulting left side cut from above that bisects the screw hole.  These holes will not be a problem as they won’t show after the tenons get cut.

Next, I needed to patch a couple of small defects that did not get cut away when the pieces got cut to length.  The left two photos show a small knot getting drilled out and the right photo shows the plug cut to go in the hole.

Below the left photo is of the glued in plug before it gets trimmed flush with a chisel.  The center is after trimming and a light sanding.  The far right is the other much smaller plugged hole.

Cutting the mortises in the stiles is done with the mortising machine that utilizes a hollow chisel along with an interior drill.  For this project a ¾” wide mortise gets cut.  I had never used the ¾” mortising chisel set so it was still in factory condition meaning it had a rough grind.  That’s shown in the top two photos which while they were flat, they were in no way smooth.  To effortlessly make a clean cut the rough ground surface needs to be brought to almost a mirror smooth finish.  The process starts with a piece of 120 grit silicon carbide sandpaper stuck on a flat granite plate.  Water is used for lubrication and hand sanding on each of the four sides is done working through finer and finer grits ending with 1500 grit paper.  Red rouge on a wheel mounted in the lathe gives the final polish shown in the bottom photo.  It takes about two hours and is not a lot of fun but it’s necessary and only needs to be done once.

Installing the bit and hollow chisel is a four-step process. 

1. The chisel gets installed with a penny spacer between it and the mortiser head using the large screw to lock it in place (top left).
2. The drill gets run up inside the chisel flush with the bottom of the chisel then tightened in the drill’s chuck (right photo).
3. The chisel in the mortiser head is loosened then the penny spacer between the chisel and mortiser head is removed.
4. The chisel is pushed tight up to the mortiser head and squared with the base clamping assembly, then tightened. (bottom left). 

Here is the mortising machine with the freshly polished and sharpened bit/chisel set installed.  Because the top and bottom mortises are the same size and located the same distance from the end, I can utilize the machine’s built-in stops.  They are set while making the test piece show here.  Once set they allow me to clamp the stile in the same location, have the mortise centered side to side in the stile, establish the starting and ending mortise location along with the mortise’s depth.

With everything set up the actual top and bottom mortises in stiles can be cut with me only doing some spot testing as they are made just to make sure none of the stops had moved.  Only addition was adding a stand on the left to support the length of the stile.

The sequence for making the mortise starts with drilling/cutting a hole at one end then the other end and finally in the center.  That’s followed by centering two more full width holes then finishing by cleaning up the small remaining bits ending with a nearly clean mortise shown in the bottom right photo below.  I like to cut full width holes or centering the chisel on thinner leftovers when possible because if overlapping holes are cut, I am concerned that it may put an excentric load on the drill/chisel assembly.

With the end mortises cut in the stiles there remains just the center one.  The red arrow in the drawing shows where it is located and the photo shows their layout on the four stiles.  The dotted line is the edge of the rail and the solid line is the edge of the mortise.  The red highlighted area shows the area to be removed for the mortise.

Because the stiles are too long for the end stop to work here each of the center mortises have to be located by hand shown below.  When clamped tight the end stops can be set and the mortises cut like the others except the initial clamping location has to be set manually using the square.

Next Up – Cutting Tenons, More Mortises & Making Plugs for Screws