Topping It All Off

Week five is now complete at Rosewood and with it my first piece of furniture at the school as well.  This small table is not the first piece of furniture I have built, but I would say this is the first piece of fine furniture I have built.

The table is built out of walnut, maple and basswood.  The top is finished with 13 coats of shellac and all other surfaces have 5 coats.  The pull on the drawer front is maple dyed black.

Cheers
Hans Christopher

All the Fittings

Week four is over and done with and it was a bit of a whirlwind, and not just because of the weather.  This week was about building and fitting drawers the traditional way, hand cut dovetails and a drawer pocket.  I made two (almost) drawers this week.

I started the week by preparing all the pieces for my drawers.  Two sides a front and a back for each drawer. Then it was onto cutting the dovetails for the drawers.  Half blinds on the front and through dovetails on the back.  For the desk top drawer the drawer fits right into carcass, but for the table drawer the drawer rides on runners and is held from above with kickers.

The kickers also serve as a point to secure the table top.  Screws pass up through the kickers and into the top.

After the drawers are assembled it is time to fit them to there opening.  This requires planning them on four sides.  To make planning all sides possible a hanger board is used to hold the drawer.

The finished desk drawer

Not bad for my second set of half blinds.

I have decide to work on getting my dovetails to fit right off the saw.  This has been going well but there are some gaps in some places that I will fix later.  Practise makes perfect.

Cheers

Hans Christopher

Table Week

Week three at Rosewood finished and I have almost two full projects to show for it.  The main project for the week was a shaker night stand.

The first step was to rough cut all the parts and mill them to thickness and cut them to final size.

Each leg has two mortises one on each of the inside faces that will accept the aprons.  After using machines to cut the mortises and tenons the parts come to the bench and I use hand tools to tweak all the joints to get a perfect fit.

After fitting all the joints I go back to the bandsaw and cut the taper on the legs, and after that I use hand planes to clean off all the machine marks.

After all the pieces are handplaned to remove the machine marks I tried a dry assembly to make sure everything fit together.

Once all the parts fit well together everything comes a part and I start to prefinish all the parts.  I used shellac that Ron provided.  This was my first time using shellac and I loved it.  It went on easy, dried quickly and looks great.

With all the parts prefinished I can start to preassemble parts of the table.  Glue goes in the mortises and on the tenons and then two clamps with minimal pressure brings the assemblies together.

After the sub assemblies are finished the whole table can be glued up.  The most important thing I learnt from Ron about glue ups is that a trial run is important before any glue hits the joints.

Once the table was assembled the next step was to cut the runners and kickers that are necessary for fitting the drawer (to be built next week).

I managed to finish the table before the end of the week so I started a second project to keep myself busy.

Stayed tuned for draw making one o one.

Cheers

Hans Christopher