Patience Equals Perfection

So it has been a week now since I announced that I have made the move to hand tool only woodworking and I am loving it.  The transition is a little cumbersome, having to find homes for some of my machines was difficult but worth it.  The amount of space I have now is amazing plenty of bench top room to work and another whole surface just to put pieces done and do some assembly.

So what has gone on inside the shop this past week, a fair bit but unfortunately not as much as I had hoped.  Lets take a look shall we.

The first post of the blog had me explaining the process of making a bead molding for a door frame I am working on.  This week sees the completion of all the parts ready for final fit and finish.  I began with the raised panel.

Cutting the rabbets to define the tongue to go into the rail and stiles and the edges of the raised profile.

Using a molding plane cut the profile in the long grain and end grain of the panel.

Using my Veritas Bevel Up Jack Plane with a 50 degree iron i smooth panel.  Then using a card scraper I clean up the tea rout and the finally hit all the profiled areas with some 180, 220 and 320 sandpaper.

A few notes about the raised panel.  For my first raised panel it's not bad, saying that there is lots of room for improvement and I look forward to showing everybody how I make a profiles using molding planes.

The next part of the project was getting the mitres on the rails and stiles to fit nice and tight.  I cut the mitres using a sliding compound mitre saw (I made these cuts before I went all hand tools) and they came out poorly.  The mitre was very close to a perfect 45 degree however every cut had a bevel making a tight mitre very difficult.  Luckily using hand tools I knew how to correct this issue.  I used a shooting board and my jack plane to shoot the mitres to get some nice fitting joints.  However I did have to build a mitre shooting board first, not a hard process.  If people wanna learn how I made the shooting board leave a message in the comment section below, and saying please helps.

A ugly open mitre (looked worse in real life)

Shooting the mitre

nice tight closed mitre (looks better in real life)



And the nice shooting board I made so worth the 3 hours it took to make

While using the shooting board something to remember is to be patient.  The first couple of cuts I made i had the plane set real heavy and tried to rush resulting in a very harsh and sudden stop of the plane, hurting my wrist and marring the work, so as with all woodworking patients pays off.

So starting tomorrow I can begin the final assembly and then all that is left is to put stain and finish on it.

And a few more pictures from my trip to Italy.  Enjoy.

Till next time cheers.

Hans Christopher