With the bandsaw now in better shape than it ever was I
was ready to re-saw the 16 side spacers.
First step is to use my marking gauge set at 9/16” or 1/16” over my final
finished dimension of ½”. Here you can
just see the pencil mark on the board edge.
The knot is not a problem as it will be cut out before I am finished.
This is my standard re-sawing setup; a pivot point so I
can correct the blade path when it starts to drift one way or another and my
magnetic featherboard set to apply a little pressure against the piece to hold
it tight to the pivot point.
Here is the cut piece right off the saw and I am really
happy with the result. Too bad it only
took me 18 years to correct the original problem.
Once all 16 pieces were re-sawn I ran them through the
thickness sander to clean up what little roughness the bandsaw left then set
them aside. These pieces are all
flatsawn so I think that they will cup at least a little as they adjust to
their new thickness. The flat stack on
the right are the ripped cutoffs I will save for another project.
Next the ¾” thick parts for the doors were cut to rough
width and set aside to rest. While doing
this it occurred to me that I had a problem with my original door corner
joint. Because the glass panel in the
door is large and fairly heavy, I wanted as much strength at the corner as
possible. To get the maximum glue
surface I will use a bridal joint as shown on the left. The problem with that is to cut the center
out I need to use a jig on the table saw which requires the piece to stand on
end. Not a problem with a normal cabinet
door but this one is almost 78” tall which is 1” more than the distance between
the top of my table saw and the ceiling.
My next version was to go to a regular mortise and tenon joint shown in
the middle. However, with that cut the
available glue area is reduced by almost 50% so it’s not a good option. Last and what I plan on doing is reversing
the bridal joint so the piece I need to sand on end to cut the tenon is not the
upright but the cross piece. That piece
is only about 31” well within what’s possible to cut.
The only real difference is the how the stiles and rails
intersect. The left image shows the
original plan and the right shows the revised plan.
While making those changes, I also made some minor detail
changes to the case construction and now hope the design is pretty much set
although from past experience I know that’s not the case as things will
change. Below is a revised cut list
based on the updated plans.
Because the existing leaded glass window is the key
component and has a fixed size that means the actual construction of the piece
starts with fitting the door to the glass then working my way out. It’s like building a room to fit a piece of
furniture instead of finding a piece of furniture to fit in the room. The drawing of the horizontal rails is
below. The left side show the back with
the recess at the bottom for the window while the one on the right is the front
side. The small squares are where wood pegs will go. More on that
later.
This is the drawing for the back of the vertical
stiles. The recess shown on the bottom
is where the sides of the window will go.
The tenon on the end gets cut and fitted after the mortise in the rail
since its easier to fit the tenon to the mortise than the other way
around. More on that later too.
As the door stiles and rails have been sitting for a few
days it’s time to check them out to see if they are still true or if they have
moved. As I left the rough-cut pieces
their thickness was roughly 13/16” thick.
Fortunately, they are stable so the work could progress without any
gymnastics to get them back into shape.
What was needed was to get rid of the planer scallops and get all the
pieces to a constant thickness. As they
sit now the thickness varies a little and to make the corner bridal joints
being off a little will make the difference between a great fit and a sloppy
one. The photo on the top shows the
before view and you can see the board is far from being smooth. After running it through the thickness sander
loaded with 220 grit sandpaper the bottom photo is the result, nice and
smooth. Checking with a dial caliper the
thickness of all the pieces varied by only .0025” or 25 ten-thousandths of an
inch, about like a sheet of typing paper.
They are a little over ¾” but in this case that’s not a problem. Getting them the same exact width is the
primary goal.
Spending some time deciding which face to present to the
outside and which to go inside the cabinet is next. As the boards were rough-cut about ¼” wide
flaws within that range can be cut off.
About half of the boards made for an easy decision with better looking
grain on one face or a flaw that needed to be dealt with. Here is an example of a crack that I want to
get rid of. It will go inside the
cabinet and up next to the glass window.
That edge has a ¼” by 5/16” recess cut for the glass to sit in so
between trimming the width and cutting the recess the crack will get
removed.
A trip through the table saw gets all the rails and
stiles to their appropriate width plus 1/32”.
Just a little insurance in case I get some chip out while making
cuts. Here are the pieces ready to have
a trim cut on the #1 end to square them up followed but a cut to length on the
“X” end.
Next up – Door Joints Part 1
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