Once the saw was ready, I wanted to guarantee that I made
the cut on the correct side as I sure didn’t want to get this far into making
the door and trash out a piece. The
method for preventing that is simple.
Set all the stiles together and using chalk mark which face is up when
making the cut.
With that done it’s a simple matter of running the pieces
through the saw then clamping the stiles and rails together to see if the
joints were tight and door frame square.
It was all good, the joints are tight on the front and back plus it was
almost perfectly square just clamping it together. The top photo shows the clamping
arrangement. The bottom left is the
backside of the frame while the bottom right is the front. Also, in the bottom photos note that the tenon
sticks out just a little in the front and some of the edges are chipped. The chipping is a result of the dado blade
cutting across the grain even with a sacrificial backup piece. In this case that won’t be a problem as when
I trim the piece to its final width the chips will be cut away.
There is only one problem that needs to be addressed and
that is a small defect on the inside near the bottom of the door. Here is a close view of the problem
area. The fix is to cut in a small
patch using a router.
Here everything is setup and ready to go. The router has a small straight bit in it and
a guide to assure the cut is parallel to the edge plus a stop block to make the
end of the cut square with the edge.
A couple of passes and here is the result. A flat bottom recess with straight and square
edges except for the back corner. That
little radius is what the round router bit leaves when changing direction.
Using a sharp chisel to square up the corner makes it
ready to fit a patch in place.
When cutting the door pieces to their final length I kept
the cutoffs with a chalk mark as to which piece they came off of – just in
case. This let me pull out a piece to
make the patch that almost perfectly matches the color and grain where it was
needed. The cut-off the patch will come
from is about 3” long and the patch itself is just under 1/8” thick. To cut that thin a piece off that short a
blank could be done with a hand saw or the bandsaw. Since I am a lot better with a bandsaw it’s
my choice. That said I for sure don’t
want to get my fingers that close to the blade.
Using a hand screw clamp let me securely hold the piece in place at 90
degrees to the blade with my fingers well away from it.
Once the patch blank was sliced off, I carefully fitted
it to the recess working to get tight joints and matching the grain. Here is the finished patch ready to be glued
in. If you look closely the rough
sanding scratches from the disk sander are visible.
A little glue plus clamps hold it down, tight to the
right side and tight to the top.
After letting it cure overnight, I removed the clamps and
did the final fitting. Here the patch
has been brought down flush with the face of the stile. The right side has also been trimmed flush
with the tenon shoulder. Last is to trim
the edge flush. So, you can see what’s
going on the stile has been rotated 180 degrees with the patch not at the
top. The hand plane shown is a shoulder
plane whose blade is a little different in that it runs the full width of the
body. As shown here the plane is on its
side resting on the rabbit and trimming the patch. A few passes and the patch is flush. The end of the patch is even with the left end of
the plane.
Here the patch is all done and I am happy with the way it
turned out. I believe after the finish
is applied it will be barely visible besides it’s at the bottom of the door
frame on the inside. For scale reference a
1/16” drill bit is set at the inside corner of the patch.
Next up is the 3/8” square holes for the door pegs. There are two faux pegs in each corner. They are not functional pegs but plugs to
cover the screws that will be used to reinforce the corner joint.
How does one go about making square holes? There are a couple of ways, one is to drill a
round hole and square it up with a wood chisel and the other is to use a
mortiser. Since I have a mortising
machine guess which will be used? A
mortiser combines the cutting of a four-sided chisel and a drill bit in the
center to remove most of the material while the chisel assures the edges are
straight and clean. This is what my
mortiser looks like all set up ready to go.
The wheels move the bed left/right and in/out while the clamp holds the
piece securely in position. There are
stops to locate the piece and control depth so once all are set you can quickly
make matching repeat cuts.
To regress a moment before the cutting actually starts,
I’m going to take a short side trip. Not
all equipment is fully functional when you get it and the mortiser chisels fall
in this category. Below are a couple of
chisels, the one on the top is the way it comes from the factory while the one
on the bottom has had some tender loving care and plenty of elbow grease
applied. There are two places where work
was done and they make a huge difference.
First, is the finish on the chisel while they were all nicely ground
flat and square all the little ridges left over from the factory grind act like
little teeth and really hold the chisel in the wood. The bottom one has been hand-polished to a
mirror finish starting with 220 grit silicone-carbide paper working all the way
up to 2,000 grit. An 8,000 grit water
stones takes over from there with the final touch being on a buffing wheel
charged with polishing rouge. The second
bit of work is the inside of the chisel where the cutting edge is honed with a conical circular 600 diamond grit
hone. NOW, they are ready to use.
Next up – Cutting Peg Holes, Gluing up Doors & Fixing
Cracks
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