Skeleton Chest

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billw

The Tattooed One
Joined
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Location
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As I'm now approaching the end of one project I thought it best that I prematurely start another one, as so to add to my 100% success rate in making furniture that never gets a finish applied to it.

Now wanting to do anything that I'd 1) find too easy, 2) manage to make in less than 2 years, and 3) not make at least 2 or 3 monumentally stupid mistakes that require a 'clever' redesign to cover up, I have decided that I'll take inspiration from Andrew Lawton and make the skeleton chest of drawers that he demonstrated as a project in F&C Issue 141 (June 2008).

I would post a picture but I am not sure of the copyright issues of using my mobile phone to snap a pic of a page of a magazine!

Andrew mainly used sycamore and walnut in his piece, and I have decided to follow my own "style guide" by using at least one less-used wood in my interpretation (well, blatant copy). Therefore I have decided to make the frame from a mix of rippled and plain sycamore, the drawers from bog oak, the drawer bottoms and dust panels from cedar of lebanon, and there will be some detailing in copper, and potentially a hint of purpleheart.

If you've not seen the magazine I'll try and add some of my own pics as I go along so you'll get an idea of what I'm attempting.

I bought all the stock I needed from English Hardwoods, Geddington. I'd bought plenty of stuff from there before, so was pretty comfortable with supplier. Sadly this time I felt a litle bit let down.

Some of the sycamore is a fantastic creamy white with little in the way of defect, but some of it was a terrible mix of light browns, reds, and greys. Luckily from the stock I had I managed to salvage enouh good stock for everything I needed except the uprights, which I have subsequently bought from John Boddy's in Boroughbridge, in the shape of one large piece which will make marking up of the 4 uprights a lot easier.

The bog oak is excellent, although the intention was to get both drawer sides out of one piece, and after planing and thicknessing one of the pieces it was virtually impossible to get sufficient thickness remaining to split it in half - I'll therefore need some more stock for one side of each drawer, but not a major issue as the drawers will be the last thing I do anyhow.

So my progess so far - I drew up my cutting list, and have got every piece for the drawer frames ready and cut exactly to size. The next step for those will be a production line of getting them put through the spindle moulder and then the morticer / tenoner depending on which they need.

Next I need to mark up the uprights, then cut the 4 of them out of the piece of timber I have, cut the mortices, and then I'll do the tenons that fit into those.

The uprights will then require a fair bit of detailing work done to them and a taper put on as they're 35mm at the bottom and 22mm at the top. Once this is one I'll commence the process of gluing the frames into them.

The whole carcass appears, on the face of it, reasonably simple as it is very much based on repetitive process, so as long as I get one right, I'll be fine. Of course, it's getting the first one right that I worry about.

The drawers, because they're visible from all sides, will be a challenge! They're going to be dovetailed on all corners, all by hand.

Anyhow I realise this is enough words and not enough pictures - I'll rectify this over the next couple of evenings and get some snaps of what I've done so far. I might even try and use sketch up to design what I'm building!
 
Looking forward to seeing this mate. I have loads of cedar if you haven't bought any yet, your welcome to have some.
 
Mattty":3hirm4au said:
Looking forward to seeing this mate. I have loads of cedar if you haven't bought any yet, your welcome to have some.

That would be good - some of the stuff I got didn't meet my QC so I think I'm going to be a bit short.
 
I've just had a quick eyeball at that one in 141. Looks fairly straight forward, but you'll need to be spot on with the marking out and drawer making to make it look good - Rob
 
"Looks fairly straightforward", just 37 exposed drawers and external joinery :D

Piece of p*ss obviously :wink:
 
With my attention to detail, patience, and a range of high quality machines and tools - I could do it blindfolded.
 
Ironballs":1993rbz3 said:
"Looks fairly straightforward", just 37 exposed drawers and external joinery :D

Piece of p*ss obviously :wink:
...as I said IB...simples 8-[ :D

There are no curved components and everything in it is straight. What makes it tricksier is that all the bits are exposed, so any errors will glare at you big time :x but apart from that minor detail, it's a walk in the park...sort of - Rob
 
billw":32fgusww said:
Mattty":32fgusww said:
Looking forward to seeing this mate. I have loads of cedar if you haven't bought any yet, your welcome to have some.

That would be good - some of the stuff I got didn't meet my QC so I think I'm going to be a bit short.

Pm sent
 
Steve Maskery":3vn89wrj said:
This sounds very interesting. Is there any chance of a photo of the proposed piece, I'd like to follow this one.
Thanks
Steve

If this breaks any rules I apologise as F&C is obviously copyright material

skeleton.jpg


The bend in the page is misleading - the uprights are vertical on the inside and the drawers are all the same width.
 
Although looking at that picture if the uprights were on an angle and the drawers got narrower as they went up as well as thinner then it would look even more impressive.

I'm not helping much am I? :wink:

Steve
 
Abso-bloomin'-lutely! :)

Actually that is a good point. You really do need a good method of producing M&T's for that. Anyone know of a good jig?

Please form an orderly queue, and all that.


Cheers
Steve
 
OK proper post number 1.

I saw this piece on F&C and knew I just had to make one for myself. It's a blatant copy design wise, so thanks to Andrew Lawton for sharing his work in the magazine. I think for something like this it would be unwise to attempt to tinker with the measurements as they work so well anyhow.

The only difference with mine will be the woods used. The frame is still made from sycamore, the drawer bottoms and the dust panels in the frame from cedar of lebanon. The big change is that the drawers are being made from bog oak. I've got a large supply of the stuff sitting in my hallway, of which I have planed and thicknessed 3 pieces to see how it came out - so far so good I have to say.

The other change will be the top panel, Andrew used a veneered panel but I like using only solid timber so I am still thinking about what I'm going to put there (had a few wacky ideas, I'm a Villa fan so purpleheart and the search for a blue timber.....wife would absolutely kill me....).

Additionally I'm going to try and integrate some copper into the piece, it'll fit in with the house for one thing and I do like the mix of timber and copper, especially after seeing one of the students at college make a table using copper as a feature.

A few weeks back I rough cut all the timber and then planed/thicknessed it all down to size. Most of it was finished off down to size using the belt sander.

After my last project, I learned one thing - if you're going to make components that share lengths, widths, or depth - make sure you cut them down to size at the same time! I was careful in planning the sequence of cutting so that any pieces that needed to be 532mm long were all cut to that length whilst the saw was set - meaning dimensions should have an excellent tolerance, essential for this piece where mistakes are completely impossible to hide.

So with the introduction out of the way, here's the pics.


1. These are all the components for the frames, so basically every horizonally aligned piece of sycamore that's needed. I've also got most of the cedar for the frames cut too, but that's set to one side for now.

sk1.jpg


2. To ensure I had everything, the components were all labelled, and numbered in sequence and the measurements written on so I could go back and double check that I had got them down to the right size.

sk2.jpg


3. a close up of some of the pieces - quite a wide range of colours and markings!

sk3.jpg


4. Once everything was cut I commenced the sorting out - getting components into pairs that matched to the best I could get them. With 7 identical frames to make I wanted to ensure that the 5 components of each matched, and furthermore that the best sides of each component faced outwards AND that when they were put in order from top to bottom they looked as "sequential" as they could with relation to colour and marking. Phew!

This is me matching up the pieces that fit from left to right.

sk4.jpg


5. Once the L/R pieces were matched it was a case of picking out two front-to-back side rails and a central muntin for each of them. These are three of the final choices....

sk5.jpg

sk6.jpg

sk7.jpg


Each frame is now marked up to show the front, top, and joins, and a letter designating its order from top to bottom when I come to afix them to the uprights. I have left nothing to chance! I have also drawn a line on the sidees that need putting through the spindle moulder as it would be typical of me to put one through the wrong way round.

6. Once I'd chosen all the pieces it was time to start marking them up. The L/R pieces were first as they need tenoning at either end, three mortices for the B/F pieces, and then a groove for the dust panel.

I started at either end and worked towards the middle - the result being that the final two lines should be 40mm apart which is the width of the tenon in the muntin. So, aiming for 40mm I got.....

sk8.jpg


7. For the F/B aligned pieces, they just needed marks for the tenons. Instead of working from both ends and hoping for the best, I started at one end, marked a line, and then measured the correct length across to the other side and marked the tenon line that way. This ensures they'll be the correct length rather than having the correctly lengthed tenons!

sk9.jpg

sk10.jpg


So the frames are now ready for machining. We have a spindle moulder, a tenoner, and a morticing machine so they'll all get a hefty bit of use in the coming weeks! As has been pointed out before, there is a lot of repetitive work so it will be a case of getting a machine set up using a test piece or two, and then machining everything at once.

The rest of the evening was spent marking up the uprights - I'm getting all four of them from one board, the reason being that I wanted to mark the mortice points up equally, and what better way then by drawing one line across one board. I'll get the photos of it next week before I cut it into four ready for morticing. It's fully marked up, and I even went back and drew on where all the pieces of wood are going to join so that I could double check the drawer gaps were spot on. They are indeed, and what should have happened is that the length between the bottom frame and the foot of the upright should be 60mm - I got 58mm so I can live with that!

Anyhow that's the end of my first report - not sure what'll be next as I haven't decided whether next week will be machining these parts up or getting some ebony ready for my other project.

Stay tuned!
 
Good start...is there any way you could replace those bits with the big knots in?..possible if you've got spares (always advisable :wink: ) - Rob
 
I agree with Rob - these kind of pieces need really decent looking wood to give it justice, and those knots I think would really spoil all your effort and hardwork if they are visible. I'd definitely see about replacing them now before you are too entrenched in the project later down the line.
 

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