File Handles & Case – #5 Dividers, End & Center Cap

This photo shows a majority of the blanks roughed out.  Briefly the top left piece is for the two ends and internal spacer.  The top right pieces are for the top and bottom of the case.  The lower left group of eight pieces are for the dividers and base sides.  The two middle right pieces are for the lid’s sides and the lower right is a leftover piece to be used if something goes wrong and I need to make a replacement piece.  Not shown is a single piece big enough to make the top or bottom in case of a problem.

The first pieces to be machined are the base sides and the interior dividers.  The top rendering shows the original layout and the bottom rendering shows the revised layout.  I changed the cutout part to allow more finger space under the files to make them easier to get out of the case.

After printing out the dividers profile at full scale the pattern it taped to the blanks.  Below are the two base sides taped together along with the pattern.  The left photo has the relief cuts already made.  They are needed because the curve is too sharp for the ½” wide blade in the bandsaw.  I could have switched out to a ¼” bandsaw blade but for a couple of cuts it’s not worth the time to change the blade.  The cut starts at the top of the left photo and stops at the bottom of the arc.  To cut the other half the piece is reversed to cut from the other end as shown in the right photo.  The same process is used to cut the shorter internal dividers.

Below the top photo shows the vertical oscillating drum sander and the outer base sides before sanding them down to the final size.  The upper left inset is a closer view of what the bandsawn cut edge looks like.  The bottom photo shows the outer base sides and the shorter interior dividers cut and sanded.

After sanding the curved edges and the internal dividers get cut to length with the chop saw using a stop to set their length.  These dividers are set aside for a bit while the two pieces they fit into are worked on.

Here the top drawing has these two pieces highlighted.  They get cut on the table saw from a block milled down to the final thickness.  The bottom photo shows the block ready to have the blanks cut.  Normally parts are cut with the grain running the length of the piece.  However, in this case the block is set to cut so the grain (red arrow) runs 90 degrees to the long dimension.  That’s because the grain of the dividers and bottom run in their long direction and the grain direction of the highlighted parts need to match.  This means they need to have the grain run 90 degrees to the long dimension.  To understand why I need touch on how wood moves with humidity changes.   As the humidity increases and decreases wood changes size.  However, it does not change equally in all directions.  There is very little if any change in the length or along the grain of the piece.  The vast majority of the change is across the grain.  The practical effect of this is that if pieces are glued up with their grain running at 90 degrees to each other the wider piece tries to expand and contract but the other piece won’t let it.  Something has to give and that’s usually when the wider piece cracks to relieve the stress.

Routing slots in the two required blanks plus one extra in case I make a mistake while routing is next.  The top photo shows the setup for the center slot.  Because the piece is fairly small and I like to keep my fingers intact a clamp is used to hold the part tight to my jig.  It also keeps the piece square with the fence.  The bottom photo is a closer view after the cut has been made.  The same cuts are made on the other two blanks.

After the center slot is cut I moved the fence closer toward the router bit to cut the next pair.  Since the remaining holes are offset about the center slot only one setup is needed per pair of slots.  The top photo shows the first one cut and the bottom photo shows the second one cut.

The process of moving the fence closer to the router bit is repeated once more which completes the routing of the center end cap for the dividers.  The red arrow points toward this piece in the rendering.  As before the other two blanks get the same routed slots and are set aside.  The last routing pass is to cut a rabbit at each end of one blank as shown in the bottom photo.  In the rendering it’s the far-right highlighted end cap.

Next is to rip the slotted caps to their final thickness.  The top photo shows the ½” thick finished piece which is way too small to cut without some help to keep my fingers away from the saw blade.  I learned this the hard way as once when I was in high school, I tried to make a cut on too small a piece and nearly cut my thumb off.  Not going to do that again.  The solution is to use something like what’s shown in the bottom photo so it gets chewed up and not your fingers.

When trimming these pieces this narrow it’s not uncommon to get some burn marks on the end grain shown in the top photo.  It’s a pretty easy thing to fix by using the large disk sander to just lightly sand that end which cleans everything up shown in the bottom photo.

The narrow center slotted cap gets a small radius indicated by the red arrow in the top photo to get rid of the sharp edge in the tray where the handle will be stored.  The bottom photo shows the router setup to make the cut and the inset on the right is a closer view.

Last step for the narrow center slotted cap (red arrow) is to trim ¼” off of each edge so it will fit inside the two outer sides.  In the middle photo that piece is in the chop saw with the unchanged stop block from when the two slotted blanks were cut.  To take off exactly ¼” off a ¼” drill bit is used as a spacer.  In the bottom photo a ½” router bit is used to take another ¼” off the opposite side.

Here is what the slotted end cap and the slotted center cap look like with a ¼” thick spacer set in the right slot.  The spacer allowed me to check and make sure the slots are all aligned.

Next Up – End Cap Shaping - Dividers, Crosspieces & Base Assembly - Fitting Bottom

File Handles & Case – #4 Wood Selection & Roughing out Blanks

Selecting the wood for the project is next.  I narrowed it down to three different woods.  Walnut, quarter sawn white oak and cherry all shown below.  Each of the planks have their own problems which is why they have been set aside from other larger projects and not yet used.  The walnut has a bit of sapwood along the top edge, is cupped and there is a split that runs about a third the way down the center of the board from the left edge.  It also has an S curve that wiggles back and forth like a snake along its length.  The white oak also has a split, is cupped, bowed along its length and also has a nice twist.  The cherry has a little cup, is twisted, has some sapwood, an S curve along its length and some bark inclusions/knots that will have to be worked around when laying out the pieces.  What they do have going is their figured grain or color.

In the end I decided to use the quarter sawn white oak.  Any of the three would have worked but the middle width oak piece shown in the top photo is just a bit wider than the widest piece needed for the project.  Also, it's been a while since I have done casework in white oak.  The widest needed piece is shown outlined with chalk.  It does have a split along part of its length (red arrows) but it's usable since the split is outside the main area needed for the ¼” thick pieces.  After cutting the piece to length on the chop saw flattening out the board is next.  The twist gets removed by using a hand plane to knock off the high corners of the board until it lays flat when set on a reference surface.  From there it's run though the thickness sander to flatten the opposite face then flipped and the previously hand planed face is sanded parallel to the just flattened first face.  The bottom photo shows the plane used and what the finished surface looks like.

Next is to rip the flattened and straightened piece into 5/16” thick blanks on the bandsaw.  Setup is a tall fence on the left held in place by the two orange clamps.  It holds the piece square to the blade and the yellow magnetic pressure assembly on the right holds the piece’s bottom tight to the fence.  In the left photo the first 5/16” thick piece has been cut off then set aside the and second one has been cut leaving just a thin bit remaining.  The right photo is a closer view of those two cut pieces.

The photo below has the two 5/16” thick pieces at the top and bottom with the thin leftover piece from the center of the blank in the center of the photo. 

Next, the two 5/16” pieces get run through the thickness sander to get rid of the bandsaw blade marks and bring the opposite faces parallel ending up a bit thicker than the needed ¼” thickness.  Because this is quarter sawn white oak and has a nice grain the thin piece will be saved to be used as veneer for a future project. 

With that done the two pieces to be used in this project get set aside with spacers between them for a couple days.  This is to see if any cupping or warping happens due to any internal stresses released when being ripped.   Since they are still thicker than the desired ¼” there is some room for flattening.

With the almost ¼” thick pieces set aside for now the 5/16” finished thick pieces for the lid’s sides shown in the top drawing can get cut.  The original plank has a split indicated by the chalk arrows on the bottom photo that runs part way down the piece.  Good news is the narrow-split part is wide enough to get both sides out of it when cut along the pencil line (red arrow). 

The bandsaw is used to cut the split piece free.  A close inspection found no other flaws in the removed piece so I could go ahead and continue using it.  Now it’s possible that as this piece gets additional work done it may warp, twist or otherwise behave badly.  It’s also equally possible that when the original piece split the stress was removed and there won’t be any problems.

To rip this piece to thickness a pass through the table saw is needed to remove enough of the split surface edge so I have a flat surface to mark a cut line.  That cut has been done below along with adding a pencil cut line drawn on the edge using a marking gauge.  The line is pretty faint but the red arrow points toward it.

Here is the setup for ripping the board using the bandsaw.  Since the pencil line is right down the center of the board it’s lined up with the center of the bandsaw blade.  This is a different setup because most of the time I am cutting for a specific width so will leave the line.

After ripping the piece there is good and bad news.  The good news is the cut pieces did not distort when cut.  The bad news is one of the two pieces had a couple of hidden cracks show up making only one of the two needed pieces usable.  The top photo is of the two halves with the bad areas circled in chalk and the bottom photo is a close look at the right crack.

Because there are some ¼” thick pieces needed rather than putting the split piece in the burn pile I thought I would try and rip this blank down to see if enough of the flaws could be cut away to get usable material out of it.  The top photo is before the cut and the bottom is after ripping it thinner.  Part of the flaws got cut away but not all of them.  Good news is the piece that’s needed for testing is pretty narrow so I can use it as a test piece for machine setups although it still may end up in the burn pile.

Next Up – Dividers, End & Center Cap

File Handles & Case – #3 Final Turning, Finishing & Start of Case

For mounting in the 4-jaw lathe chuck a 1 ¾” x 1 1/8” dowel is turned from leftover oak.  It gets a pilot hole slightly larger than the diameter of the smooth part of the screw followed by a 3/8” countersunk hole deep enough so the threaded part of the mounting screw extends beyond the end of the dowel.  The drawing below shows what a section of that looks like.  Mounting the blank on the dowel by running the screw into the previously drilled hole locks the blank tightly in place so it can then be mounted in the 4-jaw headstock.

To make sure the initial screw installation is in line with the lathe’s center axis the blank and the screw along with a square screw driver are put in the lathe per the top photo below.  The bottom photo is a closer view of the blank, screw and square bit driver.

With the initial wood threads cut in the blank the screw is put in the dowel’s countersunk hole (top photo) and the same process as above is used to run the screw in until it is holding the dowel tight.  In the bottom photo the assembly has been reversed and clamped in the 4-jaw along with having the tailstock run up tight to the blank.

Turning the top or heel of the blank to match the first cut pattern is followed by rough sanding with 120 grit sandpaper which gets rid of any minor variations and smooths out the piece as shown in the top photo.  Cutting and burning the decorative grooves at the heel is next.  Shown in the bottom photo both of the grooves are laid out and the right groove has been cut in using a parting tool.

The top photo has the left groove cut and the right groove burned in.  Burning the groove is done by holding a thin wire in the groove while the lathe is running.  Friction between the wire and the wood heats the wire enough that the wood in the groove gets charred.

With the grooves completed the waste end of the handle gets cut off using a fine-toothed Japanese pull saw that leaves a little stub on the handle’s end identified by the red arrow.  Some delicate work with the lathe tools followed up by fine sanding the whole handle gives the smooth surface shown in the bottom photo.

The last bit of woodwork before applying the finish is to drill out the mounting hole that was used by the mounting screw so it matches the shafts on the files.  In the setup below the drill gets mounted to the lathe’s headstock and a cup shaped adapter is attached to the live center in the tailstock.  This arrangement helps make sure the enlarged hole is aligned and square with the center axis of the handle.  To also help in keeping the hole in line rather than jumping to the final bit diameter intermediate sized bits are used to gradually increase the hole’s size.

With those holes sized to fit the file shafts the three handles are ready for the Danish Oil Finish (DOF).

Three coats of the DOF are applied by wiping on a wet coat with a cloth then adding more as the finish is absorbed for about 15 minutes.  At the end of that time any excess DOF is removed with a clean cloth and the handle is left to cure overnight.  This photo shows what one handle looks like when the first coat is applied.

After the DOF has cured for a few days, the files get epoxied in place.  A 24-hour long cure epoxy is used so I have plenty of time to make adjustments as needed.  A little epoxy is used to coat the inside of the handle using a toothpick.  It doesn’t take much as there is almost no play between the file and the hole in the handle.  I put the epoxy in the hole because if I coated the file any excess would get scraped off and left in a gob on the end of the handle which is a mess to clean up.  The completed handle and file assemblies are shown below while the other photo shows how the handle fits in my hand.  For reference the total length of the handle and file assembly is about 6 inches.

The second project in this series is building a case to hold six small metal files along with the interchangeable handle I had from another set of files.  Right now, the handle is stored loose in my file drawer while the files are stored in the soft plastic case they came in.   Making a case for both the files and handle seems like a good idea so I don’t lose the handle and because it’s only a matter of time before that plastic case begins to fall apart.

As I normally do the design starts with making several 3D drawings exploring different configurations to hold the six files along with the interchangeable handle.  Below are four different versions that didn’t make the cut.  Mostly because they made the case was too big or it didn’t provide easy access to remove the files from the case.  The bottom right option has a slot to hold a brass brush for cleaning the files.  In the end it got deleted since I keep the brushes together so they are easy to get to and can be used on any file.

Here are the two finalists with the bottom one being the selected option for a few reasons.  I felt it would give better access to the files and there would be less chance of them sliding out of the box when it was opened standing upright plus it addressed some construction issues

In these two renderings the left one has the lid open and upright but the lid can be opened more so the top lays out flat.  This setup will be used when just one or two files are used on a project then put away.  The right rendering is how the case will be set when it will be out for a while and several different files are used.

Next Up – Wood Selection & Roughing out Blanks

File Handles & Case – #2 Ferrules & Rough Turning

Setting the turned oak blanks aside for the moment the next step is to work on the ferrules.  These are a ring I will make from copper that will reinforce the end of the file handle to help prevent the oak from splitting.  The top photo shows a 4 ¾” long file handle whose copper ferrule is about ¾” long.  Because the handles for these files will be much smaller the ferrule is scaled down.  The copper piece I start with is a 3/8” slip fitting for use in soldered water lines and the like.  It’s about 7/8” long with an outside diameter of about 9/16”.  It will get cut into two pieces each about 7/16” long.  The copper gets cut using a tube cutter and to make the cut I need to make a mandrel to lightly hold the copper fitting.  The turned mandrel is shown in the bottom photo.

The copper fitting needs to easily come off the mandrel but needs to be tightly held while being cut.  That’s done by cutting a slot in the end of the mandrel then driving in a wedge to expand the end.  That cut is made on the bandsaw so I can easily center it.

After the slot is cut the copper fitting gets pushed back on and a stubby screwdriver acts as a wedge to hold the fitting tightly in place.  The hardened steel cutting wheel in silver tube cutter (red arrow) does the actual cutting.  It works by tightening the knob at the bottom of the cutter a little at a time while spinning the cutter around and around.  In no time the cutting wheel parts the fitting into the two pieces shown in the lower right inset.

In the top photo are the two cut in half fittings, of the four pieces three will get used.  All the edges need to be cleaned up before they can be used.  The four cut edges have a sharp burr (red arrows) that has to be removed.  The bottom photo shows the setup for removing the burrs and filing the ends flat.  Filing the ends flat does leave a sharp wire edge on the inside of the fitting which gets removed with the small round file shown.

Removing the NIBCO manufacturing stamp is next.  The top two photos show the stamp before it’s removed and after it has been filed and polished to an almost mirror finish.  The bottom photo shows the setup in the lathe for the work.  The screw acts as a wedge to expand the wood so the copper is held tightly in place.

Taking the filed surface of the copper pieces to a polished finish uses all the different abrasives shown in the photo below.  The process starts out with 120 grit sandpaper then works up through finer and finer grits ending up using 1800 grit wet/dry silicon carbide paper.  Polishing is next and that’s done with the items on the far right.  It starts by using a buffing wheel with Tripoli buffing compound and finishes up with a buffing wheel loaded with Red Rouge mounted on the drill.

Turning the oak handles and fitting the just finished copper ferrules to them are next.  This starts by drawing a circle just over 9/16” diameter on the oak blank tenon end.  The actual tenon will be just a shade under ½” diameter but this gets me close without having to stop turning and measure frequently. The photo shows the handle blank ready to turn the tenon.

The lathe work itself starts by turning the handle down to an oversize cone from handles high point down to the tenon making sure to leave a lip for ferrule.  With that done fitting the tenon so copper ferrule will just fit is next.  To get close I use a ½” open end wrench acting as a gauge.  As I turn when it slips over the tenon it’s right at ½” in diameter.  That’s done by me holding the wrench in my right hand letting it lightly ride on the oversize tenon while using a parting tool with my left hand to carefully cut away the tenon.  From here the diameter of the tenon is very carefully cut down until the copper ferrule just slides over the tenon.  It needs to just slide on without being forced but doesn’t wiggle.  The difference between those two can be measured in a few thousands of an inch.

Once the three ferrules are fitted, they then are epoxied in place and left to cure overnight.

Because I want all of the handles to be identical the easiest way to make that happen is to cut a couple of templates on scroll saw to be used while turning the profile.  Here is the first one cut with the waste piece set back into the blank.  The pencil line marks the centerline of the handle.  A second template is cut the same as the first one but has the curved part of the butt end removed (highlighted in red) which is used in the next step. 

This second template is used after the handle blank is mounted back into the lathe, the wood tenon brought almost flush with end of the ferrule and copper edge rounded over to remove its sharp edge.  The photo shows all that done along with the template set in place which will be used as a guide to check during turning.  The two red arrows show a couple of ¼” drill bits being used as spacers so the template is held the same distance away from the handle blank at both ends which are my reference points.  This works because the turned end of the handle and the ferrule is already at the finished diameter. 

Refining the handle profile to match the template from its high point and blending the oak to copper connection seamlessly is next.  I can get the shape pretty close but one of the ¼” bits is used to help me find any high spots.  Some sanding helps clean up any minor problems. 

To finish turning the handles need to be reverse mounted so the copper ferrule end is towards the headstock rather than its current position facing the tailstock.  This starts by drilling holes in the ferrule end so the blank can be screwed into an adapter mounted in the lathe allowing the butt end to be turned.  A two-step process starts by using a short bit to drill a shallow hole.  The short bit prevents the bit from wandering while starting the hole.  Second, a longer bit drill used to get the required depth.

Once that’s done, I have three blanks ready for the final turning setup.

Next Up – Final Turning, Finishing & Start of Case