FLW Cabinet - #12 Details on Legs, Profiling Rails & Starting the Top

The peg holes in the legs are really for screws that will get run into the plywood sides.  To that end I need to drill countersunk pilot holes centered in them.  The drill press with a fence is used for centering the bit in the existing peg hole.  A depth stop controls the countersinks depth so all the holes are a consistent depth.

Here is what they look like finished.

The bottom rails need the bottom profile cut.  To make sure the rail’s left and right sides are a mirror image I started with taking the dimensioned plan then transferred it to a ½” thick piece of MDF.  However, once drawn the arcs beginning and ending transitions looked a little stiff to me.  A few minor adjustments made the full size MDF layout look better. 

My next step is to cut out the MDF pattern.  Not surprising once cut out the transitions still did not look right.  Making little tweaks using a disk and drum sander I beat it into submission and finally got a nice flowing profile.  With the pattern complete I traced its outline onto the rail then flipped it and did the other end. 

A trip to the bandsaw cutting about 1/16” outside the line and most of the excess material gets removed.  The curves are pretty rough since the bandsaw has a ½” blade on it and does not make very tight curves.

Using the disk sander to clean up the angled edge between the end and the arcs is pretty easy as is using the oscillating drum sander to clean up the arcs and their transitions.  What is not so easy is to get a flat and square surface between the arcs that are parallel to the top edge of the rail.  Most of the power tools are not to good working in a recess or will not give me the straight edge I want.  Neither will any of the hand tools I have access to.  What I ended up using is the oscillating drum sander with a very coarse sanding sleeve and my 4’ level as a straight edge clamped to the sander’s table.  Process is to set level so drum takes just a little off then run the rail back and forth against the drum until the bottom of the rail rides against the level.  Making slight additional adjustments to the level allows me to sneak up to the line to get a good smooth straight edge.  When it looks good a little hand sanding gets rid of the rough drum sanded surface.  This piece will act as my pattern for the other three rails that need to match.

To use the pattern the first step is to clamp it to the rail blank so the ends and edges are flush then mark the profile with a pencil.

From there it’s back to the bandsaw to cut away most of the waste. 

When that’s done the pattern is placed face down on the work bench with the bandsawn blank face down on top of it.  The ends are aligned flush and a router with a ball bearing trim bit is used to make an exact match of the pattern profile.  The top photo shows the setup where I have started routing from the left and made it about 1/3 of the way across the recessed flat.  Bottom photo shows a closer look.  You can see better here how when the ball bearing on the bottom of the router bit runs along the pattern the carbide cutting edge of the bit follows cleaning up the bandsawn edge and matches the pattern’s profile.  Once the routing is done a little light sanding cleans up any roughness and the piece is done.

Repeat the process three more times and all four of the bottom rails are done.

One last detail on the back legs needs to be taken care of.  When I cut the groove for the back panel it ran the full length of the leg.  The short section of the groove running from the leg end to the start of the tenon will be open so I need to cut a small plug about ¼”x ½” then glue it in the groove.  Here are the top and bottom ends of the leg showing what I mean.

After a blank is made to fit the thickness and just a little taller than the groove, I just need to cut it to length.  Rather than use a pencil I like a marking knife for its precision.

Once marked the plug is cut to length on the chop saw.  Below you can see how the marked line is set right at the saw cut edge in the fence. 

Next the plugs are glued and clamped in place.   I let them cure overnight and the next day all that’s required is a little work with a small hand plane and some light sanding to bring the plugs flush with the face of the leg.  Here you can see how they look when done.

With the legs and rails completed (I think) working on the top is next.  Taking out the pieces that have been setting for quite some time I checked them for any movement and surprisingly given the way this group of Oak has moved around they were all flat, square and true.  As the top is going to be roughly 17” wide I will have to glue it up out of three pieces.  Here is what the test clamping looked like once I got the boards selected and matched for grain and color flow.  I also checked the joints to make sure they matched up with no gaps.

Next is to glue up the first joint and clamp it.  The clamps along the joint are to minimize any mis-alignment that could sneak in during the clamping.  I could have glued up all three pieces at once but wanted to take my time in making sure the faces of the joint are as closely matched as possible.  The better they match the less work and time I will have to spend flattening the blank.

Next up – Finishing the Top Glue-up & Sharpening a Scraper

FLW Cabinet - #11 Finishing the Leg/Rail Tenons

With the tenons fitting snugly into the mortises I can turn my attention to the final trimming of the tenon shoulder.  Right now, the shoulder is uneven and the tenon is too short.   First thing to do is change the blade from a rip to fine tooth cutoff.  Saw setup then starts by setting the rip fence to the outside tip of the blade at 1 ½”.  Next is to set the depth of cut so the points of the teeth just score the bottom of the tenon.  Last is to add a sacrificial piece between the rail and the crosscut fence.  That’s to minimize any chipout caused by the blade when it exits the cut.  Below you can see the setup and the result.

Here is after the wide faces have been cut.  All that remains is to make the end cuts.  Of course, all four cuts are a different depth so the blade height has to be adjusted for each one.

In the last post I discovered that one of the rails was a little short.  Now is when the problem is corrected.  Since the important distance is between the tenon shoulders and not the overall length I took one good rail clamped it to the short one and transferred that length to the short one.  Here you can see the steel square ready to go.  A marking knife is used so the line is exactly in line with the edge. 

A pass with the knife along the square’s edge cuts a very fine line that for me can be a little hard to see.  My solution is to rub a little chalk into the cut making it pop out as shown below.  Note that I to re-set the rip fence so the blade cuts to the line.  The red marks reminded me when I was cutting the shoulder of all the other pieces not to cut this one.

Since the cutoff blade does not make a flat bottom cut, I am left with a little ridge right where the tenon meets the shoulder.  I could have cut it deeper but did not want to weaken the point where the tenon ends.

To allow the tenon shoulder to butt tight to the mortise that ridge needs to go.  A little work with a sharp chisel makes quick work and leaves a nice clean joint.

A test fit assembling the frame rails and legs is next to see if the pieces go together square.  Once clamped in place comparing diagonal measurements for a squareness check showed the diagonals were almost identical.  Any difference was less than I could see.   While the legs and rails were clamped, I dropped the finished door frame in to check the clearances between them.  The side to side spacing looked great however, the gap between the door and the rails at the top and bottom while being what was planned looked too small.  After some thought I decided to increase it slightly.  At this stage it’s easy to make that change.  Using the table saw and a rip blade I cut 3/64” off both the top and bottom rails.  After reassembling and setting the door in place the gap looked right.  Here is how a typical corner looks.

Unfortunately, when I turned the frame over to check the backside a couple of the joints were not as tight.  Here you can see the small gap in one.   Both instances are between the leg and the bottom rail on the inside of the case.  In post #3 Making & Using the Taper Jig two of the legs had a twist that over time had relaxed to a point where it was almost undetectable.  As it turns out the key point here is almost.  In reality the twist is very slight maybe 1/16” over 78’ but enough to cause the gap.  Now this is going to be under the bottom of the cabinet completely out of sight.  I could have left them as-is but decided to see if I could fix it. 

What worked was to chalk up the joint area and about a foot up the leg like this.  Now when I start to remove the twist, I can easily see my progress.

The actual process is to use a card scraper and start removing material from the high side bringing it down so the edge with the mortise is square with the adjacent face.  Frequent checking with a square helps me track my progress.  Here you can see how the chalked area has been mostly removed.

Reassembling the leg joint I now have a much better fit even if I am the only one who will ever see it.

Next is to do the milling to house the back.  I could have cut an open rabbit then screwed the plywood in place but that would have left me with a bunch of exposed screws and an unfinished back.  When I make furniture, I like to have it look good from all sides.  For this piece I will cut grooves in the back legs and rails to house the plywood back.  That way the back will look like a framed panel.  Here are drawings that show what the groove will look like when the legs and rails are assembled (minus the back panel) plus some detail of each piece.

One of the things I had to decide was how wide to make the groove.  My set of dado blades can cut from ¼” up to 13/16” wide in 1/8” increments.  In addition it has multiple shims from .004” to .02” that can be added between the regular blades.  Using these in various combinations gives me a lot of flexibility in the final cut width.  That said when I measured the plywood it averaged about .23” thick which means using the ¼” blade set gives me two-hundredths of an inch play, just what I need.  Below is the setup for cutting the groove.  For the top rail the blade depth is 3/8” as I don’t want to cut into the bottom of the tenon.  The grooves in the legs and bottom will all be ½” deep.

After running the pieces through the saw I used this little gauge which is a scrap with a pencil line marking the depth to make sure that all the grooves were an even depth.  Occasionally, when making a cut the piece will rise up a little resulting in a shallow cut.  In doing the checking there were a couple of instances where that happened.  While everything is setup the fix is as easy as running the piece through the saw again.  Later on, it’s a lot harder to fix.

Here is what an almost completed leg/rail set looks like.  It’s pretty much done but there are a few more bits of work to do.

Next up – Details on Legs, Profiling Rails & Starting Top

FLW Cabinet - #10 Starting the Leg/Rail Tenons

My first step in cutting the tenons is to precisely lay them out on the top and bottom rails carefully marking which parts get cut off and which needed to remain.  That sounds simple but it is not all that hard to set up a jig to cut on the wrong side of the line which is not a good thing. 

The order and criticality of the cuts is next.  In this case the back of the rail needs to be flush with the back of the leg.  That means the critical measurement is the distance the mortise is from the back of the leg and it needs to match the distance the cheek of the tenon is from the back face of the rail.  In a perfect world that would be the ½” shown on the drawing.  However, when measured it’s 1/32” larger or 17/32”.   The mortise is 3/8” so the tenon needs to match that.  Last, is the distance from the outside face of the tenon to the outside face of the rail and that’s whatever is left over.  The drawing below shows how everything is supposed to fit together at the bottom rail/leg joint.  The top rail is similar except the top of the rail and the top of the leg have to align.

Since the back cut on the rails is the most important one, I start there.  Using the tenoning jig test cuts are made until the cut is the right size.  Blade height is 1 7/16” which is 1/16” shy of the final tenon length.  That will be cut to exact size later.  Here is what the setup looks like after my first test cut.  As you can see, I need to take a bit more off to get to the line.  When set it’s a matter of cutting both ends on all eight pieces.

Next is cutting the tenon to width.  Here the top rails are being cut.  Their easy as both the top and bottom are the same dimension.  In this case rather than cut the tenon to the exact width of the mortise I am making it 1/16” smaller.  That way I have a little wiggle room to align the top of the leg and the top of the rail. 

The bottom rail uses the same method except the top and bottom are different measurements requiring two setups.  Here is what I mean.

At this point three sides of the tenon are done leaving just one to go.  Here is what the rails look like at this point.

On the last side I am not concerned what the distance the cut is from the face of the rail.  What is critical is when done the tenon needs to fit snugly in the 3/8” mortise.  Ideally it would be 3/8” but I am going for a hundredth of an inch oversize.  I can remove material but if the joint is sloppy it won’t give me a strong glue joint and fixing that can be done but it’s a lot more time consuming.  Being a few thousands of an inch too wide is much less of a problem as I can shave the tenon to fit with a hand plane or work on the mortise with a rasp.  The actual cut on the table saw is the same as above.

Once the tenon is sized I cut the waste off on the bandsaw.  Mind you this is not the final length of the tenon, it’s about 1/16” short.  The final cut will be made later.  Now I want to do is free the tenons up and fit them to the mortises. 

For as much care as I take in doing setups and making test cuts to assure the pieces are identical when the top rails were lined up ready for the bandsaw, I noticed that one of them was shorter than the other three.  Not the most pleasant revelation.  A chip must have gotten between the stop on the chopsaw and the board when it was being cut to length causing it to be cut short.  Fortunately, finding it now makes the fix pretty easy.  The important measurement is not the overall length of the rail but the distance between the shoulders of the tenon.  That’s what establishes the distance between the legs so all I have to do to correct the problem is to make one tenon shorter by the same amount the rail is short.

Making a snug fitting tenon and mortise joint is next.  After looking at the two parts I decided that since the inside of the mortise was the roughest, I would adjust its width in lieu of adjusting the thickness of the tenon.  The thin light-colored piece of wood is a pine blank exactly 3/8” thick that will be used to gauge the mortise width.  When it is slightly loose the fit between the mortise and the actual tenon will be just about perfect.  A couple of rasps of differing coarseness are used for the fitting.  The rasp with the blue tape is the coarse one and what I start with.  The tape is set ¼” longer than the tenon for a couple of reasons.  First, no need to size the mortise where there will not be a tenon.  Second, and more important is I do not want to damage the other side of the mortise.  There will be a faux through tenon set in it later and I want a tight joint between it and the mortise.  Any minor cleanup of the opening will be done from that side and the sizing will be done on the faux tenon piece.  More on that later.  Once I got into the rhythm of fitting things went pretty quick only two or three minutes for each of the 16 joints.

Next up – Finishing the Leg/Rail Tenons

FLW Cabinet - #9 More Leg Problems, Cutting Mortises & Peg Holes

Doing some layout work on the legs is next or at least I thought it was going to be.   Checking one last time to see if any of the legs had moved uncovered a bit of a problem with two of them.  Below you can see the gap at their center.  What was once a set of nice straight edges had developed a bow.  Naturally these two legs are the front ones where the door goes.  Trying to put a straight square door into a curved opening is not a good plan.

Straightening them required a bit of setup.  Since the legs are tapered, I could not work off the opposite edge.  Using the router with a ½” carbide spiral bit run along a known straight edge is the solution. Below is the setup.  Three legs are clamped together to make a level surface and my straight edge in this case the 8’ level is clamped down so the router will take off nothing at the low point of the curve.  That ended up shaving of just under 1/16” at the high points.

After a couple passes with the router the two legs have straight edges and fit together with no gaps.

NOW, I can start working on the leg layout.  Up until now all the legs are the same.  From here on they will be split into left/right legs and also front/back legs.  I need to carefully mark which is which as ending up with too many of one type of leg is not that hard – that’s the voice of experience speaking.  As you can see, I do put a lot of information on pieces to make it easy to keep track of what’s what.

The top photo below is the layout for the mortises and the square holes for the pegs.  To speed things up and make sure the layout is the same from piece to piece I made a jig with master layout lines.  The bottom photo shows the bottom end with the jig in place with the mortise and square holes laid out.

Since the 3/8” mortise chisel is already set up the through mortises will be cut first.  Here is the setup for cutting the mortise into the tapered face.  The machine is set so it cuts the mortise dead center and slightly more than half way through the piece.  A stop makes sure that all of the mortises start at the same point.

The order of cuts is to make one at each end then cuts between them followed by cuts to remove the remaining material.  I use full cuts because it equally loads the chisel.  A three-sided cut could cause the chisel to drift stressing the chisel/drill assembly.

After all the pieces have this cut made the piece is flipped end-to-end so the same face is against the back of the clamping assembly.  That’s so the cuts are all registered against the same face and line up perfectly.  If I were to just flip the piece over and make the cut any difference from the mortise being absolutely centered would keep the cuts from lining up and that’s a problem.  There is one other little quirk in cutting this face and that’s the taper.  Since the tapered face is now down the mortise would not be square to the first setup.  It’s not hard to fix, a short piece from the original tapered offcut is put under the leg which squares things up.  With that done the second half of the mortise can be cut so it ends up aligned with the previous mortise.  Because the leg top and bottom mortises are not the same distance from the end of the leg the whole procedure needs to be done with different start and stop points.

Once all the mortises have been cut a little interior cleanup using a rasp and occasionally a chisel was needed to smooth the surface left by the mortising chisel and clean up any small irregularities.

Cutting the square holes for the pegs in the legs is next.  Here is the top half of the cabinet to give you and idea of the leg pegs.  

 

Changing the mortising bit from 3/8” to ½” is first.  That is followed by setting the distance the pegs are from the inside face on the mortise machine because it is the same for all of the holes.  Last is to set up a roller stand on each side to support the leg when it is cantilevered way out beyond the edge of the table.  The center photo shows that except the left stand is out of the photo.  The right photo shows one hole cut and my small square being used to align the edge of the bit with the layout line.  What does not show up in any of the photos is a 3/8” spacer that fills the through mortises so when the peg holes are drilled the interior side does not blow out when the chisel exits.

After drilling 64 holes for pegs the legs can be set aside until later.  They well underway now but still need; a stopped rabbit for housing the back, final sanding and putting a small radius on some of the edges to soften them.  Below are the legs and a closeup of the bottom of the leg.

Next up are the cross pieces or rails that go between the legs at the top and bottom.  First is to sort through the blanks to decide which ones will be used in the front, the back, which will be the show face, its up/down orientation and marking them accordingly.

Since the rails are 1 1/8” thick and the legs are 1 3/8” thick and I want the inside faces flush means that the tenons are not centered but offset.  Add to that the bottom tenons are not centered vertically means there will be lots of places where things can go very wrong very fast.  Looks like I will be doing a lot of measuring and double checking before cutting.

Next up – Starting the Leg/Rail Tenons