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Chisel Cabinet - Day 1
Entered: 2010-01-01
Edited: 2010-01-02
Type: woodworking

To go along with my newly clean workshop I also need some upgraded tool storage. Specifically I need a cabinet to store all my chisels so that there's room for them all, I can find the ones I'm looking for and I don't drop razor sharp steel off the wall and onto my face. All requirements that my current storage solution fails to meet.



Like any good project this one begins with a plan:



That's about as elaborate as I like to let my plans get. Just rough sketches - to scale - of what I want to do. After that I just sorta run with it. The nice thing about working by hand is that rather than work out a meticulous plan ahead of time and cut everything exactly to size you build the parts that matter to a required measurement and then size everything else off of that piece as you go. So the only dimensions I need to plan for really are the width and height of the final cabinet, everything else I'll figure out as I go.

My first step was to cut the four boards for the carcass (case) to length and square them up.



This is the four boards cut to length and a picture of me using a shooting board and block plane to square up the ends. The shooting board is a kind of guide that holds the end of your board perfectly square to your plane so you can easily true up saw cuts that were off by a degree or two.

After getting the edges and ends squared up right I need to deal with the faces of the boards. In general most lumber you buy will not be perfectly flat. A living tree is basically a giant bundle of straws evolved to suck water up from the ground hundreds of feet to leaves at it's top. As such a living tree has a lot of water in it and when it's felled for making into lumber about 2/3's of it's weight is water. In order to be usable for building furniture it needs to be dried even if the boards were straight and flat before drying chances are good that they'll be less so after drying, even when dried properly. As the water leaves the wood the wood shrinks and if different areas on the board loose water at a different rate it will warp and twist a bit too. To make matters worse wood will absorb water from the air as humidity changes after it's been initially dried so it can change size and shape based on how it's stored. A big part of woodworking and furniture design involves coping with wood's relationship with water and humidity.

This board here has chosen to cup a little across it's width:



This one is in wind, in other words twisted. Look carefully at the marks on the bars (called winding sticks) in this picture. Notice that on the left only one mark on the far stick is showing up over the close one but on the right there are three showing:



For both boards I'll use the same tool to fix the problems, basically the same way. Find the high spots and remove material until they match the low spots. Since these are small boards I can use a jack plane (a plane about 2" wide and 14" long) to flatten them. On a larger board, like for a table top, I'd need to use a series of smaller and larger planes to get it flat.









There all even and level now. Flatting all four boards for this project by hand took a little less than an hour, taking all the pictures took about half an hour. I hope you appreciate it ;-)

Now that all the boards are flat and square I need to make them pretty using what's called a smoothing plane. This is shorter plane, about nine inches, with a very sharp blade set to take a very shallow cut. Cutting the wood in such thin slices with such a sharp blade leaves a very smooth and kinda shiny surface:




After all my boards are smooth and square and flat I can finally start turning them into a cabinet. I've got about two and a half hours, plus picture time, into the project at this point. My first step is to cut a notch along the inside of the back edge of each board. I'm cutting a one inch wide by half inch deep notch, called a rabbet (or rebate depending on where in the English speaking world you live), is there so that we have a place to attach the back so it doesn't show from the sides of the cabinet. I'm making my extra wide to accommodate both a half inch thick back and a device for hanging the cabinet. I'm not planning on hanging it but I want the flexibility to wall mount it later if need be. There are a lot of ways to cut this rabbet into the wood, I use what's called a moving fillister plane (don't ask). It's a complicated looking device that has a guide fence on one side that you set to your width (one inch) and depth stop on the other side so you cut exactly as deep as you need to.

I kind of hate this plane. It's all metal and is uncomfortable to hold, it can only be used right handed (I'm a southpaw) is fiddly to adjust, doesn't like to hold it's settings, clogs easy and is in general unpleasant to use. Unfortunately it's also the most common type of vintage moving fillister plane available, these things were widely used in both home construction and furniture making for decades so it's easy to find them in pretty condition for cheap on eBay etc... There are nicer vintage ones out there - beautiful all wood planes that are a lot nicer to use - but are much more expensive if found in working order. One company makes a very good quality, left handed version that I'm saving up for. In the meantime I can make this one work:



I was able to cut these rabbets in about ten minutes using this plane. Obviously the size of the rabbet and the hardness of the of wood will vary the time.

Counting all these pictures I spent about four hours in the shop to get this far. The boards are up on their sides in order to keep the air flow as even as possible to prevent them from warping again overnight. For the post on Day 2 I'll show laying out and cutting the dovetail joints that will hold the carcass together.




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