Kumiko Sampler - #2 Lattice Blanks & More Jig Work

In the Fine Homebuilding article, the author suggests using basswood or pine as both are fairly soft and easy to work.  I believe the author is on the east coast and as such think he is referencing white pine.  In thinking about what to use that’s on hand I considered cedar, alder and radiata pine.  Both the cedar and the pine were eliminated leaving the alder because I am not fond of doing fine work with coniferous woods.  I don’t like the pitch they leave on tools or how they gum up sandpaper and the plans are to use the thickness sander to get all the lattice work pieces to final width and thickness.

The alder plank is a little over 6” wide and about 6’ long.  One end has a lot of imperfections like knots, cracks and bark inclusions.  Normally that’s a problem when trying to get clear material but the lattice pieces are only ½” wide x 1/8” thick.  Length varies from 1 to 8 inches so I think it will be pretty easy to work around the flaws.  Here I have cut 18” off the plank and ripped it in half giving me two pieces a little over an inch thick 18” long and 3” wide.

To get my ½” wide pieces I will rip the 18” long pieces down the 1”+ width.  Using a marking gauge gives me my cut line or should I say cut lines.  I could spend time measuring and testing to make sure the line is exactly in the center of the piece but I find it easier to get close and mark from both sides.  The result is a pair of lines with the center between them.  If you look closely you can see them in the photo below.  Now all I have to do is keep the bandsaw blade between them.

Now it’s off to the bandsaw to rip them in half and in doing so find out how bad the corrugated steel fasteners damaged the blade. 

After ripping both pieces, the blade is not completely ruined but I would say that its lost probably 70% of it useful life.  Alder is pretty soft so when I go to rip something like oak or cherry the useful life may go down even more.  Looks like I am going to be ordering a replacement blade.  Here’s the ripped faces of the two pieces.

While the ripped lattice pieces rest to see if they are stable it’s back to doing some work on the jigs.  This is my dimensioned drawing of them.

Since lattice pieces are ½” wide the first step is to cut a dado that wide and ¼” deep.  It can be cut with either a router or the table saw.  I decided to use a stacked dado blade on the table saw and get it done in a single pass.

To make the lattice piece drop in the dado a little easier a block plane is use to put a small bevel on the dado’s edges.  Also, the top and bottom edges are rounded.   That could have been done with the router but it’s a lot faster to use a hand plane.  Long before the bit could have been changed and adjusted, I was done using the radius cutting hand plane.

Cutting the jig’s end angles are next.  Three of the four are easily done by setting the 45 or 67.5 degree angle on the saw and making the cut.  The last cut is 22.5 degrees which requires the jig’s narrow end set up next to the saw’s fence.  Making that type of cut is not safe so it requires a little bit of help to securely hold the jig in place while the cut is being made.  The photo below shows the mix of clamps, spacers and blocks needed.

Here are the bodies of the two jigs almost done.  There are still some parts to be made but that will come later.  Tomorrow I can move back to working on the lattice blanks.

Next is to check the lattice blanks to see if they are still flat and true.  Fortunately, they were so I could move on to cutting them to the same width using the table saw.  After that the blanks are run through the thickness sander until they just drop into the ½” wide dado in the jigs.  That means they are about 1/100” shy of ½”.  Here it’s more important for all the blanks to be the same thickness rather than an exact thickness.  Below are the four blanks at their finish thickness and since the sandpaper in the sander is 220 grit they are also finish sanded.

Ripping the ½” blanks down into individual pieces just over 1/8” thick is next.  That’s done on the table saw and which blade to use is the first decision.  A specialized rip blade is used but I have two different thickness.  One cuts a 1/8” thick kerf and the other is a thin kerf blade that cuts a 3/32” kerf.  That may not sound like much but the 1/8” blade is about a third thicker and that adds up.  Most of the time I use the 1/8” blade.  However, in this case that would turn right at 50% of the blank into sawdust.  Using a thinner blade will give me one extra lattice strip per blank.  Here is what the two blades look like side by side.

There are at least two ways to rip the blank down to the required width using the table saw.  First is to set the fence to the desired width and rip away.  That works great if the needed piece is wide enough to do safely but with roughly 1/8” wide pieces that’s too narrow for me even using a push block.  The alternate is to keep what you cut off the blank and reset the fence for each cut.  That can be a problem in trying to get identical pieces.  However, there is a work around for that.  A simple jig allows the fence to be quickly and accurately reset.  Here is what the jig looks like setup and ready to go.  In use all four blanks have a piece cut off giving four lattice pieces per setup.  After all four blanks have had a piece ripped off the blank is set against the jig, the fence pulled up snug to the blank, locked in place and that’s it.  Cut four more lattice pieces and repeat and repeat and repeat.

Backtracking just a little to show how the jig is set here you can see the dial caliper set at 5/32”.  That will give me a 1/32” thicker lattice piece than I need.  Running them through the thickness sander will let me remove the saw marks and any slight variations in thickness ending up at my 1/8” thickness.

Next Up – Making Slats & Rails