Small oak bookcase by hand tools

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Sheffield Tony

Ghost of the disenchanted
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I started this project at the end of August last year ... but I have been distracted from it a few times. I really only got the stock planed to size then. I'll spare you pictures of hours of sweaty hand planing ... but since someone was asking over in general woodworking if anyone worked entirely by hand tools I thought I'd dig out some pictures. Entirely hand tools, from rough sawn oak. It is English oak, kiln dried. I have, whilst working with it, come to appreciate how much more pleasant working with air-dried timber is. This is very hard, brittle stuff.

I have been watching with interest AndyT's project here. Managed to glean a few tips ...

Anyway, it is a small bookcase for my son. I decided to use it as dovetail practice - I mentioned in a thread in the Hand tools section that I have been struggling to appreciate my Veritas dovetail saw, but I thought I'd give it a go. I decided to go for pretty exposed joinery.

Top attached to the sides using lapped dovetails. I chopped out the waste between the pins by chisel, no sawing. Seemed easy and accurate (but annoyed my neighbour :( )

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I have scoffed at the "need" for skew chisels in the past, but I have to admit I found my homemade fishtail chisel useful for cleaning out the corners.

Glued up:

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I think I still need a bit of practice, the glue lines are thicker than I'd like in places, and I had to fix a minor cock-up - the groove for the back panel clipped into one of the pins, and I had to fill the gap with a little sliver of carefully matched wood. I can't find the repair myself now, so it goes to show what you can recover from.

The bottom and middle shelf are held together with sliding dovetails- because I've never done them before so thought I should give it a go. I think I'd leave the shelves slightly wide next time, it is a bit too easy to knock a chip off the front of the tails when planing away the waste.

Here's where I've got to:

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The glue up was stressful. I don't know how it is possible to juggle two sash clamps and a pair of clamping cauls with just the one pair of hands - I had to call in help from the kitchen ! Any tips on making this easier much appreciated.

There is quite a bit of colour variation in the oak; is seems to have come from quite modest sized trees so I've had to joint together 2-3 pieces to make up the width (it's 320mm deep). Some bits were rather dark, but I've tried to hide the worst mismatch at the back of the vertical dividers where hopefully nobody will notice.

Today's job has been resawing and planing up the wood for the back, hence the piles of shavings. I'm planning on tongue and grooved boards, with a little side bead so that I can play with some moulding planes. So far I've sawn the 28mm boards down the hard way to give me 2 x 3/8" pieces each (I love mixing my units). I first plowed a 1/8" groove on both sides to help guide the cut, then sawed down with my Thomas Flinn hand saw. I need to rest for a day or two now ...
 

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Wow, that looks lovely! Very tidy dovetails and impressively flat wide boards.
How are the vertical dividers fixed? If you had to manoeuvre them into place during the glue up I can see how it was stressful! When I've done anything similar I made the verticals continuous then fitted loose shelves on pegs afterwards.

I'll be watching the rest of this one closely so I can learn from you.
 
That is very nice very, and nice dovetails.

I have two sons who get called for glue ups, they are invaluable.

What finish are you using? Danish oil?

Pete
 
Nice one Tony, and no room for error with that many dovetails.
 
Thanks for the kind comments.

The vertical dividers were not part of the main glue-up; they are just slid into grooves from the back afterwards. In fact I've not glued them at all, they will be captive when the back is fitted. The stress was mainly the lapped dovetails at the top. Part of the problem was that these wide flat boards were not quite so flat as I would have liked - as I mentioned I started planing up the stock in August before I got distracted by making Christmas presents. In the meantime some had cupped a little. Once glued up, they are all held flat, but it did not make assembly any easier. Inspired by a Fine Woodworking article, I made clamping cauls what are slightly high in the middle, and kind of crenelated so that the clamping pressure goes only on the tails, not the end of the pins. Fine idea, but it means they need to be in the right place. Too much to hold at once ! Added to that I was using some Axminster sash clamps, that will not easily stand up either way up, but fall over sideways, usually meaning that the pin holding the far head in place falls out too ... much cursing. I might swap the pins for a bolt ! An assistant made life a lot easier.

The slight cupping of the sides played havoc with the sliding dovetails too - I had to g-clamp a piece of 2x2" to the sides to temporarily hold them flat in order for the dovetails to actually slide in.

I had originally intended to use a 6mm oak faced MDF back panel, but I decided it didn't seem right to take the easy option, and moreover I didn't have any to hand, but I did have one board of 28mm oak left, so I'm going for a tongue and grooved back. This seemed like a chance to have a play with some planes.

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The boards, having been resawn by hand, are only 3/8" thick, and I wanted to make a 1/8" tongue. Ploughing the groove was easy - I used my 050C - I know many recoil at the plastic handle, but I quite like it. Works better for me than my 043, which doesn't clamp the 1/8" cutter well. For the tongue, I don't have a cutter that small, so I just cut a rebate from each side with the WS A78. This was a drunken e-bay purchase (I already have a Stanley 78, so didn't really need it), but I quite like it. It is made from a very shiny and hard sort of steel, which never seems to show any sign of rust.

Cuttting the tongue like that makes the fit rather dependent on accurate thicknessing of the stock - I found that leaving it a shade thick then moving to a woodie rebate plane for fine adjustment worked well.

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Whilst playing with woodies, I thought a little side bead would suit. I have a 1/8 side bead that came in a mixed lot, and I rather suspect that this was the first use it had ever had - it came to me unoiled, and with no sign of ever having been sharpened, no hammer marks or anything.

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A few left to make. I'll have to rebate the back of the outer two boards and the top of them all to make it fit the 6mm groove I have already cut in the sides and top.

I was thinking of Danish oil to finish, but since it is going in my son's room and so may have to be more durable to water marks etc, I think I will probably use Osmo PolyX ?
 

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Very nice! I'm all in favour of deep ripping boards and hand planing them - very satisfying, and it also saves on gym membership. :)
 
I finally finished this, and delivered it to the customer today (i.e, hauled it upstairs to my son's room !)

Since last time I've fitted that tongue and grooved back. I've cleaned it up just with a card scraper, only resorting to Abranet for the curved bits - the side beads on the back, and the rounded front edge of the vertical dividers. Since it is going in my son's room and he is a proto-teenager (12 year old), I thought that instead of just breaking the edges with abrasive paper I'd do something to make the outside edges less vulnerable, and since I have my homemade chamfer plane I thought I'd give that a go. I was pleased it worked cross grain pretty well too:

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I finished it with Osmo PolyX hard wax oil, with a beeswax polish on top. I don't really fully grasp the relative merits of the various waxes available, but since FIL keeps bees and the wax is free, that's what I used :D

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Cleared the decks to start on another greenwood chair or two now.
 

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Thanks. I'm hoping my chamfers will stay crisp for a little while at least before it starts collecting the inevitable wear and tear !

How did I annoy my neighbour with just hand tools ? Chopping joints by mallet and chisel. I'm looking to try and reduce sound transmission with some rubber mats, but the bench top is a bit of a drum. Strangely, doing axe work outdoors has never brought a complaint :twisted: :lol:
 
Tony, great work.

And next time, just turn the stereo up really loud so the neighbour can't hear the chopping. It's bound to work :D
 
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