Thread: Stringybark Chest of Draws.

First port of call is legs.

The legs are 70x50mm, so it was a matter of choosing pieces suitable to get the the thickness i needed.



Then it was back to the trusty sled to clean up one side in the thicknesser.



He we have the high spots cleaned up showing what the sled can achieve.



Then a fully cleaned up top surface.



Then it was to the table saw to cut the four legs to finished outside dimensions.



More to come.

Steven.

I made up a small crosscut sled for the table saw and used this (with a rudimentry stop block thats just out of shot) to cut all the legs to final length. I used a 60 tooth blade for nice clean cuts.



This thing is a big cabinet for me to do and i have never made anything with such a wide span between legs, so i didnt know what dimensions i would need for it to be strong enough. My biggest worry is sag on the front rails or end assemblies not robust enough to hold the weight. So i just took a punt on 70x50 for the legs. I was really limited in what timber i had available. I also made the front rails rather large in my typical over engineering style. Hope it passes the test of time.

Next job is to mark and cut the mortices for the side rails to have an end assembly done.

Steven.

Watching.

Like your sled Steven.

Lookin' good so I'll pull up a stump!!!

I'll be sitting in too. I have something similar planned for this year so very interested.

I'm watching too.

ajw

Pulling up a seat here. Love it when you go oversize .....

I'm in as well.

70x50 legs... How enthusiastic is this kid with his furniture! The test of time will be well proven me thinks...it will last generations!

Originally Posted by Evanism

70x50 legs... How enthusiastic is this kid with his furniture! The test of time will be well proven me thinks...it will last generations!

Hi all, thanks for watching.

If you think 70x50 for the legs is solid, wait until you see how big the bottom rail is !!!! Like i said, i tend to over engineer just a wee bit.

Anyway...time to do a bit of work on these legs.

First up is to position and mark out the mortices for the side and front rails.
I was instructed to have a gap of 100mm from floor to the bottom rails to make such fripperies and vacuuming the floor easier, so this request was taken into account.

Here are some of them marked out.



I pulled out my trusty morticing jig i made for the Redgum Buffet and the spiral upcut bit to rough out the mortices.



And this is the result...followed by a clean up with a chisel.




It was only whilst chiselling out that i realised i had made the top mortices too close to the tops of the legs. The small amount of material left was quite fragile, so i decided that i would pin the rails with dowels later to help the joint out.

Steven.

Next on the agenda is side rails. These measured 70mm deep for the top rails and 90mm deep for the bottom rails and were cut to a thickness of 30mm (solid again!!!)

I used my router table and a planing bit to cut the tenons. This is how they turned out.



After a quick touch up for a nice fit, i had a dry run with both top and bottom rails. You can clearly see in the below pic there is already some break-out of material from having the mortices too close to the top of the legs. I was able to finish the project without loosing any of this wood, but had to epoxy some back in that fell out. These thing happen!!!



Steven.

I decided with this project that I would go with flat panels for the end assemblies.

Alot of the slabs i had to use were thick (some up 60mm), so to make the panels I wanted to re-saw some pieces and go for a bookmatched look. The stringy is not the prettiest timber but i managed to find some that gave a great effect. Each panel (2 at each end) was to be about 180mm wide and made up of two pieces each. I started by preparing them to about 13mm thick and then glued each together. After cleaning up the squeeze-out with a chisel, I ran each panel through the thicknesser again to finish up with 10mm panels.



Then i cut them to final size allowing for a stub tenon to be cut all round to fit into grooves in the legs, rails and dividers. The small dividers can be seen laying next to the panels in the below pic already perpared.



Steven.

I cut the grooves in all pieces (legs, top and bottom rails and dividers) with a straight bit on my router table. This was pretty straight forward but certainly gave the little straight router bit a bit of a work out.



Next it was back to the panels to cut the stub tenon (or rebate really in this case) i mentioned earlier to fit into these grooves, I again done this on the router table with a 19mm straight bit. I was after a nice fit but not too tight, to allow room for movement. Then it was time to see how they fit into each end assembly.



Slide in the divider, another panel and hey-presto...end assemblies done !!!!




Steven.

So Steven, let me get this right.....the project is actually finished, but you're doing a striptease for us over the next few days?