Shaker Chimney Cabinet - Part 6 the front doors

 With the long vertical face frames attached, I basically have three major operations left - the cabinet doors, the drawers, the top.  On projects, where there are choices for the order of operations, I prefer to do the harder stuff first.  Of these three options that would be the doors for me.  On the mini ATC chest I made earlier this year (or was it last year .... it all blurrs), I had made a frame and panel door for the top of the chest.  As such, I was comfortable with the process.  Mostly I need to make sure the wood is square and twist free.  As such, I really took my time doing this.

I cut mortises first then tenons and fit the tenons to the mortise.   Not sure if everyone does the order of operations like this or not or if there is some pins vs. tails approach.  I don't think there is but honestly, I try hard to avoid reading those kinds of debates much.  I'd rather woodwork and try various ways to do something and learn when one way might be more applicable than another.

I used my tabletop mortiser and then cut the tenons by hand and got a good fit.  Before I could fully insert the tenons, I ran the grooves with my small plough plane.  I really like this tool and after this project I think I finally feel confident that I can make good grooves.  It took a while to get there but I think I finally feel good about that skill.  

The one error I made was cutting off the haunch on my tenons.  Grrrr.  Not the end of the world.  Filled the gap with plugs and then made flush.  Unless you are looking for it, it won't be noticed.

Cut the cherry plywood and used continuous grain from top to bottom pannels.  The glue up was uneventful.  Given the break out issue I had in the back, I was mindful of being sensitive during this glue.  Only minimal hand planing was needed to get the surfaces flush.  I was careful in using my reference faces and this really helped.

Since I had spent a lot of time on layout, there was only minimal fitting I needed to do after I cut the horns off.  I like using horns on frames and panels as it is traditional and helps minimize the chance for end grain blow out.  The hinges were done by hand and it was reasonably uneventful.  Bought both the hinges and cherry knobs from Horton brasses.  Knob installations was uneventful as well.  Before cutting in the final piece, I did try a scrap just to make sure I was getting the proper fit on the hole.  Closing in on getting the woodworking done.  Now, onto making drawers.

Shaker Chimney Cupboard - Part 5 the long front vertical face frame.

This design doesn't have a complete face frame.  It just has long vertical pieces.  I suppose you could even make it with out it but it would look different.  I ripped the two pieces from the same board so in theory the grain flows from one to the other not that I expect anyone to notice this.  After resawing to near dimension. I left it a bit fat so that I can hand plane it once they are attached.  I find it a little funny to have to climb up on a ladder to saw the wood.  At some point I want to build saw benches.  So many projects to do, so little time.  The wood developed a bit of a bow in it once it was sawed out.  From experimenting, it was clear that I could clamp out the bow.  Sometimes I'm amazed at how much flex there can be in wood.

Some of the interior shelves need to get notches cut in them.  I could have done this before assembly but decided not to.  I was worried that in stress of glue up I might have troubles getting them aligned properly and thought it would be easier to cut them out after the fact.  It turned out to be a bit more challenging to cut these than I had anticipated.  It was also difficult to the them all cut so that the vertical face frame could sit flush against all of them.  Again, we're talking less than a sixteenth of an inch.  If I were to do this over, I would cut the notches out first before glue up.  The face frame would cover if not properly aligned in glue up in the groove.  For some reason, I didn't take many photos of this work in this blog post.  That is atypical.  Not sure what happened.

The glue up went reasonably well but if I had to do it over again, I would have cut them even fatter.  Between the notched shelves and bow in the wood they didn't sit quite as proud when glued up as I would have liked. 

After glue up was done and out of the clamps, I planed all the surfaces flush.  The gaps, though reasonably small, between the shelf/drawer dust frame and vertical face frame slightly bothered me and it was easy to fix.  I simply glued in some shims and then cut and planed flush.  Another imperfection hidden.

With this, it was time to move to the front doors of the cabinet.

Getting Past the Ick Stage - My Mind Plays Games

 For Christmas, I received a Gramercy 12" Bow Saw Kit from Tools for Working Word.  Thank you sweetie.  I like building my own tools and try and do at least one a year.  The instructions are pretty good and this past weekend I was roughing out the shapes of the two sides.

What I find fascinating is that after six years of woodworking, my mind messes with me.  Typically things get to look ugly going from S4S wood before getting to the final form.  I've done enough projects in six years and I know this.  However, I often find myself rattled and have some self doubt.  I was fitting this project in between another one and I had to stop for a few days at the ugly stage before I could further refine it.  

The above image is what one near completion looks like relative to the rough stage.  I wish it wouldn't feel me with self doubt but that few day gap in getting to finish it weighed a bit on me.  It turned out like I knew it would.  Yes, why do/did I worry (maybe worry is too strong of a word).  Do others have this happen?  I'm guessing yes.  

I'm happy with the progress on the frame of the bow saw.  Eventually, I will get a longer blog out about it but I have a few others to publish first.

Shaker Chimney Cupboard - Part 4 the Back Pannel

 Now with the main carcass glued up, I wanted to get the rear panel made.  It's the largest one I have done to date.  For the actual mortises, I decided to use my table top mortiser.  Still don't feel confident in making mortises.  At some point in 2022 I am going to dedicate time to practicing skills and dovetails and mortises will be top on the list. The tenons were done by hand and I got the desired level of fit on most of them.  Update:  On 29Dec2021 while working on another project I did in fact do some mortises by hand.  They came out nicely and I got a nice self supporting friction fit for the tenons.  I am very happy about this.  As such, moving forward I plan to make mortises by hand.  I will reserve the table top mortiser on future projects for where there a lot to do and don't want to do as many by hand.  Either way, life is good as I am now confident I can make them by hand.  Now if I can only get my dovetails to look a bit better (2022 will have my practice a dovetail a day for 30 days as Chris Schwartz has written about as a good way to get better).

One of the fun moments was my daughter helping me.  With the long pieces and multiple grooves, I had asked my daughter if she could hold the ShopVac to help collect the chips from the mortising.  When she saw me pulling the handle, she really wanted to do that.  I let her.  It can be hit or miss on my daughters interest in what I'm doing.  I'm always happy when she wants to participate.  Her attention span is often 15 min max and when I have it, I like to have her participate.  With the mortise and tenons done, I used my plough plane to cut the 1/4" wide grooves.  It went well.  I am starting to feel confident in manipulating the plough plane so it doesn't rock sideways in the groove.

Now it was time to move onto the panels.  The plan had been to use 3/8" cherry and I had wide enough stock in the initial order premade.  It came to me flat.  Unfortunately, it developed a cup in it.  I found that I could clamp out the cup.  As such, I put the appropriate grooves in the panel so it would fit in 1/4" wide grooves in the rails and stiles and tested each one to make sure it would fit.  Each did fit.  During the dry assembly, I found that I couldn't clamp out the cut in all three at once.  I was frustrated by this.  I needed to make a decision.  Try and fix the cup or get different material.  I decided I would simply get different material.  I went with some sort of high end plywood (think it was baltic) for the back panel.  That way there would be hidden color contrast when you open it up.  I knew the front would have the same issue.  For the front I ordered 1/4 thick cherry skimmed plywood (and later discovered it had an MDF core) but we are getting ahead of ourselves so back to the back panel.

I did a dry clamp up of the back.  It worked well.  There was some bow in the long stiles (as best I can tell there was internal tension in the board when I sawed it to final width and it bowed) but it could be clamped out.  During the glue up, I ended up with an issue and rather remain calm and cool, I got stressed and "used a bigger hammer" to try and fix the problem when it wasn't coming together.  Big mistake.  I head a sickening crack sound.  I got a long fracture on one side of the stile.  It was due to me being an idiot and forcing things that shouldn't have been forced.  Rather I should have kept calm and problem solved. I know for certain I could have fixed this problem without the wood fracturing.  This is a big lesson that will hopefully stick with me moving forward.  

When I composed myself, I took a good look at the damage.  It looked like I might be able to get glue into the cracks and clamp everything back into place.  So, the next day, after the mortise and tenons were dry, I did a dry clamp up to see if things would come back together; if they didn't I would have to remake the back panel and fortunately I have ordered enough extra cherry to allow me to do so.  Luckily, it appeared that all was moving back to proper place when clamps were added.  I added glue to the crack and clamped everything up.  Eagerly the next day, I took it apart and after a few swipes with the hand plane, the cracks were barely visible.  I mean, they are there but if you aren't looking for them you wouldn't notice them.  As such, I will use this frame and panel.  I paid a price for forcing things and not thinking and I doubt I will forget this lesson.

A little clean up, cutting up the angles for the lets, and some final fitting and the back was done.  This was a big component to the project.  Still a fair bit to do but I am happy so for.  Next, I move onto the front and put on the face frame.  Hopefully, I will keep my lesson of forcing things bad will stick.  Stay tuned to see.