Studley 2436
11th July 2006, 12:53 PM
Hi All
I recently inbetween everything else have been working on making a filing cabinet to keep my office in better order. Left over from last years order was a bit of Brush Box so I got into making it out of this.
Brush Box is pretty good timber. It is hard doesn't flex easily and polishes up a treat if you are prepared to put the effort in.
This was a job where I was learning about making a cabinet with drawers. The idea of half blind dovetails was nice but I don't have the gear to do that here. So what I decided to do was make sliding dovetails on the tablesaw!!!!! OK Major Drama wouldn't do it but he is better at this stuff than I am and I had to come up with a solution that I could manage in my shop with the gear that I had. So using a big pusher block that I have and by setting the blade to 6º angle I was able to cut one side of my dovetail. Then it was just a matter of moving the fence to the other side of the blade to cut the other side. I used a vernier to measure the gap blade to fence so I could get reasonable accuracy on the job. If it was out just a little it wouldn't work. Another thing to be careful of is that if you use the blade to run the waste out of the middle of the groove you will get a sawtooth profile on the bottom of the groove because the blade is at an angle. It might be best to do all the sides and then run the middle out with a straight set blade. Chiseling it all out was problematical because the chisel tended to catch on the sides and cause splintering at the top edge.
Anyway you can all see what I have done here with the base being morticed and tenoned to the side rails and the rails being morticed and tenoned into the top. I would really advise getting one of those comb toothed blades to plane this stuff it tears like you wouldn't believe. I was only able to handle it with a really sharp blade that had to be resharpened time and time again.
The sides are 12mm panels that are in a dado groove I cut into the rail. and then the drawer runners just go into the rails with a slider glued on top of the runner to keep the drawer runnning true.
To finish it off I sprayed it with Shellac and then put some Shellawax on top of that. My first experiment with Shellac, a few more coats would be pretty good but it hasn't scrubbed up bad. You can see the reflection of the drawer handles in the drawer faces.
Studley
I recently inbetween everything else have been working on making a filing cabinet to keep my office in better order. Left over from last years order was a bit of Brush Box so I got into making it out of this.
Brush Box is pretty good timber. It is hard doesn't flex easily and polishes up a treat if you are prepared to put the effort in.
This was a job where I was learning about making a cabinet with drawers. The idea of half blind dovetails was nice but I don't have the gear to do that here. So what I decided to do was make sliding dovetails on the tablesaw!!!!! OK Major Drama wouldn't do it but he is better at this stuff than I am and I had to come up with a solution that I could manage in my shop with the gear that I had. So using a big pusher block that I have and by setting the blade to 6º angle I was able to cut one side of my dovetail. Then it was just a matter of moving the fence to the other side of the blade to cut the other side. I used a vernier to measure the gap blade to fence so I could get reasonable accuracy on the job. If it was out just a little it wouldn't work. Another thing to be careful of is that if you use the blade to run the waste out of the middle of the groove you will get a sawtooth profile on the bottom of the groove because the blade is at an angle. It might be best to do all the sides and then run the middle out with a straight set blade. Chiseling it all out was problematical because the chisel tended to catch on the sides and cause splintering at the top edge.
Anyway you can all see what I have done here with the base being morticed and tenoned to the side rails and the rails being morticed and tenoned into the top. I would really advise getting one of those comb toothed blades to plane this stuff it tears like you wouldn't believe. I was only able to handle it with a really sharp blade that had to be resharpened time and time again.
The sides are 12mm panels that are in a dado groove I cut into the rail. and then the drawer runners just go into the rails with a slider glued on top of the runner to keep the drawer runnning true.
To finish it off I sprayed it with Shellac and then put some Shellawax on top of that. My first experiment with Shellac, a few more coats would be pretty good but it hasn't scrubbed up bad. You can see the reflection of the drawer handles in the drawer faces.
Studley