Greene & Greene End Table - #10 Veneer Panels Part 1

The original table (top photo) is made of cherry and has curly maple panels for the drawer front, flanking inserts plus side and back panels.  That’s a possibility here too but I have also been looking at other woods including zebrawood and leopardwood.  I am leaning toward using leopardwood cutoffs which are strips from a snare drum I made (bottom photo).

As the pieces of leopardwood are not wide enough to make the panel a couple of them will need to be edge glued together to get the required width.  Also, as the strips vary from 1/8” to 3/8” thick they are all short of the ¼” thickness needed.  The solution is to take the thin edge glued pieces and glue them to a base of something like alder so the total thickness is ¼” thick.  Because the panels will only be seen from one side, I need just one good face.  All this starts by marking the center of the 3/8” pieces so they can be cut in half.  Below the top photo shows two of those pieces and my marking gauge.  The bottom photo is a closeup of the marked-up edge.  The reason why there is a set of parallel lines is that it’s easier to get close to half the distance and mark from both sides versus taking the time to get an exact center line.  With two lines all I have to do is cut between them to get equal pieces.

Next, it’s over to the bandsaw to rip the them in half.  That’s followed by running them through the thickness sander to clean up the bandsawn surface and bring all the pieces to the same thickness of just under 1/8”.  Here is the bandsaw setup.

One advantage of splitting a piece of wood this way is these pieces can be bookmatched when glued together so they form a mirror image of each other.  In this case since leopardwood is not a linear grain most of the effect is lost but the color and figure of the wood is virtually identical so the joints will all but disappear.  Here the pairs have been pulled together to roughly show what I mean.  Once glued up it’s going to take a very close look to identify the joint between the two pieces.

Because the pieces are so thin edge gluing them together requires a little more work than just adding glue and clamping them together.  The glue-up starts with a flat base in this case a scrap of shelving that has plastic laminate on it.  On top of that a 6-mil piece of polyethene is laid down.  Since the glue does not adhere to the polyethene this prevents the wood from being glued down to the base.  A thin bead of glue is applied to the edge of one of the pieces and it is set down on the polyethene.  The other piece is set next to it so they are side by side then they are rubbed together spreading the glue along the joint.  The rubbing also causes the glue to grab holding them together.  A damp cloth is used to wipe the squeezed-out glue at the ends then a small piece of the polyethene is laid across the joints and two vertical clamps are added to hold the pieces flat on the base.  Three more horizontal clamps get added to squeeze the two pieces together.  These don’t require a lot of pressure.  Last a damp cloth wipes up any additional glue that gets squeezed out.  In my experience it takes overnight for the glue to cure as the polyethene acts like a barrier slowing the curing process down.

After curing overnight, the clamps get removed and the glue line checked.  The top is fine but the side that was down on the poly had a little glue squeezed out during the clamping which spread out across the joint that needs to be removed.  I could run it through the thickness sander but would rather not.  When using the sander to remove glue some if it gets transferred to the sandpaper which creates a gummy residue degrading the ability of the paper to cleanly sand off the wood.  That in turn causes the residue on the paper to heat up and put a burn line on the wood.  To minimize that problem a card scraper shown at the top of the left photo is used.  It’s a thin piece of hardened steel with a little burr that removes whisper thin wood shavings.  The right photo is me using it along with the lower part of the joint showing what I end up with.  When done there is just a tiny bit of glue exposed to the sander.  One other thing, just above the scraper are the wood shavings it removes.  The pile is a mix of shavings and dust.  The dust tells me the edge is dull and I need to redo the burr.

While the glue-up of the veneer is in progress it’s time to select and prepare the base it will be applied to.  Early on I had thought about using alder as a base but while going through the available stock I came across some 5/8” by 5½“ wide cedar dog-eared fencing planks.  I keep a few of these on hand for jigs and other miscellaneous uses.  They are inexpensive and if one carefully sorts through the stack (1 in 30+ is good) you can find quarter sawn clear ones.  The one thing to keep in mind is that they are not dried.  Most of the time the moisture content is well over 30%.  That is way too wet to use so they need to sit and dry for a while.  Now that time will vary depending on where you are.  Here in the desert where the humidity is often in the single digits things dry out in a hurry.  These are well over a year old and test out at around 5% moisture content which is great.  First step is to run them through the planer just like I did with the oak at the beginning of this project.  The photo on the left is before surfacing and the photo on the right is after.

Next Up – Veneer Panels Part 2 & Trimming Legs to Length

Greene & Greene End Table - #9 Spindles

The next to last of the main parts in the table’s structure are four spindles.  The left drawing below shows where they go and the right drawing shows their dimensions.  Lots of different operations on these pieces.

When I ran them through the thickness sander along with the rest of the pieces, I left them 1/64” too thick.  Now they get run through the sander taking a tiny bit off at a time until they just fit.  With that done the tenon on the bottom can be cut.  This is not as easy as the side rails where all the cuts to make the tenon are the same depth on all four sides.  Here there are three different cut depths.  The drawing below is from the bottom of the spindle where the front is at the top and the inner square represents the finished tenon.  In it you can see the different cut depths.  The right photo is the first to be cut and is the shallowest at 1/8” deep

Next are the side cuts both of which are 3/16” deep and will center the tenon.  Last is the front cut at 3/8” deep.  Later when the front is cut back by ¼” there will be 1/8” remaining matching the depth at the back.  Here is what the finished tenon looks like.  The left most piece has a pencil line that shows where the front will get cut back to.

Cutting the spindles to their final length is next and that’s done using the chop saw and a stop block.  The drawings call for the spindles to be 15 ¾” long.  However, when I get this far into a project, I always compare what the drawings call for versus what the actual dimension is.  That’s because as careful as I am measuring it’s easy for tiny differences to add up.  In this case the actual length needed is 1/64” longer than what’s on the drawings.  Anyway, here is the chop saw with the stop in place and one spindle cut to length.

Laying out all the cuts on the spindles is next.  There is quite a bit to do.  The image below shows the areas highlighted in red that require work.

Things start with cutting a couple of stopped mortises in each one.  They need to be done while the piece is still square before any of the shaping so the piece can be held flat and secure in the mortising carriage.  The photo below shows one of the mortises already cut and the mortising machine set up for the other one.

Since these mortises don’t go all the way through and are fairly shallow, I need to clean up the transition area between the drill and the chisel so the square part goes all the way to the bottom of the mortise.  That’s so when the plug is installed it can go far enough into the mortise to get a good glue joint.  The top left photo is before the mortise is cleaned up while the one on the right is when it’s done.  The bottom photo has a spindle in the bench vice along with the chisel used to clean the mortise up.

Next using the bandsaw the front notch is rough cut.

To clean up the bandsawn cut I put together a small jig to use with the router table and a flush cutting bit.  The top photo shows the jig along with the three pieces of cloth double faced adhesive tape that will hold the jig and the spindle together while the notch face gets routed to final size.  In the bottom photo the jig is adhered to the spindle ready to be routed.

Over at the router table I put in a pattern or flush trim bit.  This bit has a ball bearing guide the same diameter as the bit.  In use the ball bearing rides the edge of the pattern while the bit cuts the spindle flush.  The top photo shows the bit adjusted to ride the pattern edge and the small bit that gets routed away currently sticking out beyond the jig.  The bottom photo is of the overall setup.

After routing I have a nice straight fairly smooth face of the notch.  That’s the top photo which still has the jig attached.  Once it’s removed the only thing left to do is to round the radius and make a smooth transition to the straight part of the notch.  The oscillating drum sander in the middle photo quickly takes care of that.  The bottom photo shows the completed notch.

Last is to cut a wide dado at the top back.  This allows the spindle to be recessed into the top set of rails while allowing space behind it for the veneered panels. The drawing below is an exploded view of how it all fits together.

There are a couple of ways to make this dado.  I could set the depth of cut and with the fence its width then make several passes over the dado blade set.  The other method is to rough cut the dado with the bandsaw and use a light pass with the dado set to cut it to final size.  The first way turns a lot of oak into sawdust and in doing so does put a bit of a load on the saw.  I can get around that by making the depth of the cut in a couple of passes.  The second way of making a roughing cut on the bandsaw allows a quicker method to remove most all the material followed by a single setup on the tablesaw.  The two photos below show the bandsaw cuts.

The bandsawn cut left me with about 1/8” of material to remove on both the depth and width of the finished dado.  The dado stack is ¾” wide so it takes about 7 passes to cut the full length.  Here is what the final pass looks like.  One note I did use a backer to prevent blowout when the dado stack exits the cut but removed it here for clarity.  I could not use a router to do the final sizing like I did with the front notch because I needed a hard 90-degree corner at the end of the dado instead of a curve.

Here is what the almost finished spindles look like.  Some of the edges need a radius put on them and of course there is the ever-present sanding.

After the spindles have been sanded, I put them in to check the fit and alignment.  Everything looks good although I did have to take almost all the table apart to install them.

Next Up – Veneer Panels Part 1

Greene & Greene End Table - #8 Finishing Rail Milling

Now that the dados in the rails is the right depth, I can set up the router to cut the grooves in the front rails.  In the photo below the back fence on the router table is in place and a stop on the left set to control the length of the cut.  The highlighted area shows what will be cut away.  Because the depth of the groove is deeper than I want to cut in one pass and there is no good way for the chips to escape two passes will be needed.  When the cut is made the dado will go up against the fence and the highlighted face will be down.

Once both passes are made a little trimming at the right end of the cut using a hand chisel is done squaring that corner up.  This is what the finished cut looks like.  One end on the other front rail gets cut to match then because the left and right ends are mirror images of each other the stop has to get moved to the right side of the router bit.

Offhand one would think once the stop is set the cut would be made same except the instead of moving the piece from right to left you would go from left to right.  That can be done but there is potential problem in cutting left to right or making a climb cut.  When looking down on the router bit installed in a router table it rotates counterclockwise so when the wood is fed from the right the bit’s rotation is pushing the piece up against the fence holding it nice and tight in place.  If fed from the left the bit is trying to push the piece away from the fence which is not what you want.  Routing this way can be done but keeping pressure on the piece holding it tight to the fence is crucial.  A lapse in concentration, letting up on the pressure holding the piece in place, shifting your hands while making the cut, hitting a knot or any number of things can cause the bit to grab the piece and long before you can react things have gone bad.  Depending on the situation it can result in a ruined part or an injury or both.  I learned the hard way when a long time ago I was routing a decorative profile on a picture frame when that happened.  The frame was ruined, the router bit was bent and my fingers were numb from the piece being violently yanked out of my hands.  Fortunately, no blood or real injuries.  It did leave me standing there wondering what the heck had just happened.  Now when using the router table, I just don’t do it.  I do on occasion use a climb cut with a hand-held router when the wood is clamped down but that’s another story.

To get around this problem I use a plunge cut then route from right to left.  That’s done by holding the piece tight to the fence with left end of the piece down on the router table and the right side up above the router bit against the stop.  The piece is then slowly lowered onto the spinning router bit and once it bottoms out against the router table, I can proceed making the cut from right to left.  The photo below shows the piece ready to be lowered.

When done with the routing I did a test fit and as you can see the grooves in the rail and leg match up just like they are supposed to. 

Next is to route the full-length grooves in the back rails.  The top drawing shows what they look like.  The bottom photo shows what the piece looks like stopped midway through a routing pass.  It’s to show the two push blocks used to keep my fingers a safe distance away from the router bit.  When I was in my teens I nearly cut my thumb off on the table saw and as I have gotten older/wiser I error a lot more on the side of caution.  In use I will have one hand on each block and be pushing the piece making the cut.

Cutting tenons and routing a groove in the side rails comes next.  Like the front/back rails there is a top and bottom but unlike the rails both the left and right sides are the same.  The drawing below shows where they go.

These tenons are the simplest to do so far.  The depth of cut is the same on all four side and can be cut in one pass per side.  Once the setup is done it goes really fast.  The photo below shows the setup using a sacrificial fence.  The width of the cut is 7/16” and the stack dado is also 7/16” so if everything is perfect, I wouldn’t need the sacrificial fence to protect the table saw’s rip fence but I would rather be safe than sorry so the sacrificial fence is used.  Setting on top of the table saw fence is a finished tenon.

Once the tenons are cut and the groove laid out I did a test fit to make sure the measurements are correct.  This time they were right on, the red highlighted area shows where the groove goes.  The leg is still long and before assembly I will cut it off even with the top of the top rail.

Routing the groove in these pieces follows the same process as the other routing so I won’t go into that other than to say the grooves in them lined up with the grooves in the leg.  A dry-fit of all the completed pieces is next and this is what that looks like.  All the pieces fit together nicely and when I checked the diagonals for squareness, they were right on.

Next Up – Spindles

Greene & Greene End Table - #7 Sizing Upper Rails & Spindles – Rail Milling, Part 1

My next step is ripping to rough thickness the upper front/back and side rails along with the front and back spindle pieces to their rough width and crosscut a little long.  Those pieces are shown in the left drawing below.  Because a couple of the boards are pretty close in total width to what’s needed, I decided to use a thin kerf rip saw blade.  The right photo below shows the difference between a regular and thin kerf blade.  It may not look like a lot but over several cuts it adds up.

This is a typical setup where the cut width is set about 1/32” wide.  That little extra allows me to run the pieces though the thickness sander to bring them down to the exact thickness and sanded smooth with 220 grit paper.

Here are the roughly sized blanks ready for their tenons, grooves, offsets, dados and the like to be cut.  They will sit overnight to see if there is any wood movement before I start that work tomorrow.

After an overnight rest the blanks showed no movement so I could move on to using the thickness sander to bring them down to their final dimension sanded to a pretty smooth surface with 220 grit paper.  This photo shows the sander with its top open and a strip of 120 grit paper mostly loaded.  To finish loading the end still has to be set in a spring clamp which applies a constant tension to the sandpaper keeping it flat and in place.

Last step is to group all the same thickness pieces together and mark their faces with a pencil.  The crosshatching is used to give me visual confirmation of flattening since when the pencil marks are all gone the pieces faces are flat.  These pieces all need to be brought down to 1” thick.

After bringing the pieces down to a less than 1/32” too thick the 120-grit paper is changed out to 220-grit and the final passes are made to smooth out the surface and get them down to final thickness.  Here is one set of pieces after the final pass.  They just happen to be 1” square.  The others vary in thickness at either 7/8” or 1 5/16”. 

The 1” square front/back rails above and below the drawer are shown in the top drawing are the first parts I will start on as they start out as the same size blank.  The top and bottom of the front set is identical as is the back set but the front/back sets while similar are not quite identical with the front having a stopped groove while the back set groove runs full length.

Process starts by cutting a ½” tenon to fit into the legs as that’s the same for all four rails.  The same stack dado is used as with the other tenons so I won’t go into much detail.  Here is the table saw setup.  Once the tenon had been fitted to the mortise the cutting was easy with no change in setup as the rails are all square and the same amount is taken off each side.

I did have one small problem when cutting the second rail.  One corner chipped out (circled in red) when the tenon was cut as shown below in the top photo.  That wasn’t really a big problem as the rails had not been cut to length yet so all I had to do was trim 3/8” off the end of the tenon and recut it as shown in the bottom photo.

After all the tenons on one end had been cut, the rails are cut to final length and the other end’s tenons cut.  Next is to cut some dados in the rails where the finished spindles will fit into.  This drawing shows how the spindles will fit into the to be cut rail’s dados.

Laying out those dados is next.  Like I did with the legs one of the rails gets carefully marked which is used as a template for the others layout.  These dados are the last bit of work that’s the same on all four rails.  Once these are done the work diverges into front and back rails.

Cutting the dados requires two passes with the dado stack.  This photo shows the completed dado after the second pass.  The drawing calls for a 7/8” wide dado which is just what the finished cut ended up being.  However, I did leave myself a little room for error when I ran the spindles through the thickness sander.  They were left 1/64” too thick just in case I overshot the dado.  Now it’s a simple task of running those pieces through the sander for an exact fit before I start work on them once I get these rails done.

There is just one more set of cuts to make on the rails.  It is a groove where the decorative panels will go in.  The drawing below shows front and back views.  Curly maple is shown but I still haven’t made up my mind on what I will really use.

All the grooves will be cut on the router table.  The difference is the front rails have just a short groove at each end while the back groove runs the full length.  I started by laying out the short one then doing a test assembly to make sure things lined up before making the cut.  Well, it’s a good thing that I checked before cutting as the new groove did not line up where it was supposed to be.  What I wanted is shown on the left drawing where the groove in the rail lines up with the groove in the leg.  However, what I would have gotten had I routed the groove is shown in the right drawing and that won’t work.  Doing some checking I found that I had pulled the wrong dado depth dimension off the drawing.  Very fortunately for me is that the dado is too shallow rather than too deep so it just needed to be recut 1/8” deeper.  Somewhat easier said than done since the deeper dado has to line up exactly with the existing one.  It did take some time, multiple test cuts with very small incremental adjustments to reset the table saw fence but it did work out.  Got to say I am really glad I did the test assembly after layout and before routing or it could have been a lot worse.

 

Next Up – Finishing Rail Milling