Jewelry chest + resawing some Oak (UPDATED)

[jlawrence]

Hi All,
I'm in the process of making a jewelry chest for swmbo for xmas.
It'll be approx 200x140x140mm with 3 drawers.
I've not really draw this out as such and the size of the drawers will be measured from the size of the resulting carcase.

The carcase and drawer fronts will be cherry.

[NOTE] click on the pictures to see a bigger version.

a plank of cherry was cut roughly to length - left well over size. Then I actually used the bandsaw for the reason I bought it - resawing bits of wood


After resawing the bits they were cleaned up with the P/T.
top bits.
a couple of side pieces.


sides, top and bottom shown matched up a bit. The bit on the right is what it all started of like.

The joints were tidied up a little with a plane and are currently glued and clamped up.
I'm intending using finger joints to join the sides to top/bottom - but may change to dovetails when the littlerat arrives .

Meanwhile I made a start on (very) roughly resawing some oak for the next project:
started off with a fairly big bit of Oak (thanks Mike) and chopped it in half to make it a little more manageable
it was only a little more manageable.
It's way too big for my little bandsaw so over to the table saw.
Off came the riving knife and blade guard so I could cut partially through it (from both sides) on the table saw
(I did try with my CS and a straight edge to begin with, but my cheap Tesco CS didn't have the guts and seriously struggled with the Oak.)
Cutting the last sliver by hand
Finally after an hour and a half I ended up with this little lot there's actually 2 piles there, so 12 bits of wood. I've left them well over size (about 30mm thick) as I'm expecting some of them to cup (bow ?) a bit and want a final thickness of around 15->18mm. That's less than half the wood I need - will get around to cutting the other 20 bits at some point.[/img]

Should get the carcase for the jewelry chest done tomorrow - and hopefully get the drawer bits cut to size.

 

[OPJ]

Good to see the rollers getting some use, Jon. :wink: I also see now what you meant about the garage door!!

Did you try upping the tension on your bandsaw? Hope you can still count to ten after deep-ripping on your table saw...! :shock: :?

 

[jlawrence]

Olly, it would have been quite awkward without the rollers.
Because of the size of the oak and using the push stick when needed, fingers were never at any risk . The bit I really hate is having to remove the riving knife - thus use of the screw driver sticking into the gap to keep it open. I need to get a riving knife made which sits below the blade - that can wait for another day.
Obviously it would have been a lot easier with a bigger bandsaw.

I haven't had time to play with the bandsaw yet. I'll get around to it at somepoint this week. I'll also get around to tidying the mess behind the tablesaw one day

 

[Mikey R]

The bandsaw looks like a good find! Just for info, how big is it? From the pics it looks like it might be 14", but its hard to see properly. Whats its power rating?

Im asking as Im STILL agonising on what bandsaw to look for.

 

[jlawrence]

Mike, I'll look up the model number and spec for you - can't get to it at the moment as I'm taking my lad swimming.
I bought it off Ebay - all I can remember was it was under £100 but it was near enough that I could go and collect it.
I do wish it was a bit bigger - but I don't think I've really enough room to fit a floor mounted one so as a bench top bandsaw it's pretty useful.

 

[jlawrence]

I think the bandsaw is a Delta 185 - I'll check for sure when I find which drawer I put the manual in.

Caught swmbo browsing the forum last night so there won't be any further updates to this jewellery box until after xmas -suffice to say it's coming along quite nicely imho.

 

[jlawrence]

Now what sort of joints to use to fix the sides, top and bottom together. I really fancied using dovetails, so out came the saw and marking stuff. Some practice on spare bits quickly showed that I don't have the skills to attempt that many dovetails yet - I think I'd still be trying to fix them this time next year. Fortunately Philly came to my rescue by deciding to sell his littlerat. £100 later and I had a rat in the shop.

I still couldn't do dovetails as I only had 8mm dovetail bits and no 8mm collet for the T11 router (an insert has since been ordered) so I decided to go with finger joints. I used a half inch straight bit to create the joints and decided on an even spread.

I made the fingers oversize so I could cut them flush. This was my first attempt at something with the littlerat so I was quite chuffed with the outcome. There were a few joints with gaps in, but I reckon that just makes it look a bit more like hand cut.

sides, top, bottom clamped and glued up
Now to sort the bits for the drawers. I ended up with measurements of 35mm for each draw which left me a 1mm gap between them.
After resawing and flattening I ended up with this little lot.

The drawers are simply held together by a couple of rabbets and glue. A 3mm groove was cut into the bottom with the table saw so I could fit in the plywood bottom. Once assembled I routed in a 5mm groove to take the runners.
Unfortunately I've lost the photo's of the drawers being made.
It was then I noticed I'd forgotten something. How the heck was I going to align the drawer runners one the case. The runners were just strips of cheery. Ideally I would have routed in grooves in the case as well as the drawers but I hadn't. So to say it was a bit fiddly to get the runners in the right place would be an understatement.
Eventually I managed it and with a few dabs of CA they were held in place.

A few bits of felt on the bottom of the drawers and the assembly was finished.

Everything was sanded down to 320Grit.
Finish wise I put 3 coats of danish oil and around half a dozen coats of black bison to give it a nice sheen.




I did try to make some little knobs for the drawers but that went horribly wrong. Time ran out before xmas so some kind of knob will be added later.

All in all I'm pretty chuffed with how this ended up, more importantly SWMBO likes it

 

[OPJ]

I like it, Jon. Finger joints look good, as does the finish.