Dan's Hobbies » joints

Router Table (Pt. 8)

Dan — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:27:37 +0000

I finished the case late last week, and started working on the top late Saturday night. One of the things I struggled with, was how to cut a hole in the back of the case for the dust port. I didn’t want to buy a hole saw that would most likely never be used again unless I absolutely needed to. The solution I came up with, was to use an adjustable circle cutter to make a hole in a piece of MDF scrap, I then used the MDF as a template to router the hole into the case.

Circle cutter & template.

The template made it easy to ensure the dust port was flush with the bottom shelf.

The following shots are a hodgepodge, but they show some interesting details.

I used rift sawn red oak for the face frame, and really like the contrast it creates with the birch plywood.

I used bridal joints for the access door, because they're strong and simple.

I used two catches on the access door to keep it from deforming while it's under vacuum from the dust collector.

Router Table (Pt. 6)

Dan — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:54:29 +0000

Friday, I finished up the three bottom storage drawers. The drawer joinery, is another one of details that my design deviates significantly from Norms. For utility drawers like these, that aren’t going to see a lot of daily use I like to use dado & rabbet joints. They’re easy to make on the table saw, & provide a strong mechanical connection.

The following rendering shows a drawer constructed using this joinery method. The drawer sides have a dado cut into both ends, while the front & back have rabbets cut on their ends that fit into the side panel dados. The false front is glued onto the inner front panel.

Rendering of a drawer with a false front, that's held together with dado & rabbet joints.

The following shots show the steps I use to make drawers using dado & rabbet joinery. For reference, the drawer sides are 1/2″ ply, the bottom is 1/4″ ply, and the false front is 3/4″ ply. Before you start, one thing I recommend, is to place indicator marks on key faces. It’s really easy to get a board turned around and cut a rabbet or dado on the wrong side when your running a batch of boards. Indicator marks help prevent this, assuming you remember to pay attention. Trust me, I’ve learned this the hard way many times over.

Step 1 : Make a dado on the bottom inside edge of all the sides. Since I'm using plywood, I don't have to worry about wood movement.

Step 2 : Make dados on the inside ends of all the side boards. For a clean look make sure to cut the dados a little further back from the edge than needed, that way then can be planed or sanded flush with the front after glue-up.

Step 3 : Make rabbets on both the outside ends of the drawer fronts & backs. Since you cut the side dados first, you can sneak up on the rabbet width and thickness, and thus achieve an excellent fit.

Step 4 : Once the side joinery is complete, do a dry fit, and measure the exact length and width the drawer bottom needs to be.

Step 5 : The final step as always is glue up. I prefer to only apply glue to the dados because I get less squeeze out that way. Once the clamps are in place, set the drawers on a flat reference surface, and adjust the clamps as necessary to ensure the drawer sets flat.

Router Table (Pt. 4)

Dan — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:26:54 +0000

On Friday, the plywood I ordered finally arrived, so construction has commenced. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the main differences between my table and Norm’s are the joints. He’s well known for his use of screws & biscuits. For example he used biscuits to join the case back to the sides and internal dividers, and well I find this method substandard. I chose to use dados, but as you can see below this leads to a scenario where 3 stopped dados intersect with a 4th dado.

Normally stopped dados have to be cleaned up with a chisel, but since these intersect with another dado, a router equipped with a special template bit can do the clean up faster than anyone could do by hand. Check out the following photos you’ll see what I mean.

Here's one of the dados fresh off the table saw, all that's left is a little ramp that most people would remove with a chisel.

The secret wepon is this Whiteside template bit, it's cutting length is only an 1/8". Because of the short cutting length, the bearing can actually fit into the dado and ride along the wall.

Five seconds worth of routing yields a perfect dado. Mental note, always doble check the router depth setting.

Finished shoe racks

Dan — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:25:50 +0000

I finished Rebecca’s shoe racks a few days ago, And tonight, I could no longer smell the finish, so it was safe to bring them inside. I had originally thought about finishing them with polyurethane, but at the last minute, I decided to finish them with boiled linseed oil cut with 50% mineral spirits. They didn’t turn out as nice as I would of liked, but Rebecca loves them none the less. The main flaw with the design is the dado joints used to join the top cross beams to the sides. Getting all of them cut to just the right length and thickness was tedious. Ultimately, I spent more time with chisels fine tuning the fit than I would have liked. If I had to do it again, I would use through dovetails.

Shoe Rack (Pt. 1)

Dan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:12:48 +0000

Last weekend I started making Rebecca some stack-able shoe racks for her closet. I wanted to make them from materials I had on hand (cherry), so after an hour or so of fiddling in Sketchup I came up with the following design. The design is pretty simple, it’s made from 1″ x 3/4″ stock. Something I strive for in all my projects is a minimization of fasteners, thus I only used Dado-and-Tongue, & Slip joints, to hold the racks together.

The following series of pictures shows the progress I have made to date.

The Grizzly tenoning jig made the repetitive task of cutting all the slip joints easy once it was dialed in.

After gluing together several of the ends, I have decided I really like slip joints as they make making square joints almost fool proof.

After a few tries, I figured out how to use my new low angle block plane to clean up the slip joint end grain, without causing tear out.

A tenon planed down close, that is now ready for some sanding. I probably could have made another pass or two with the plane on this particular one.

One joint planed down, and sanded smooth (only 23 more to go before the end pieces are done).