Tool Cabinet - Part 7 - The Plane Stand (or whatever it's called)

In my limited time I managed to knock out the the plane stand.  This is a knock-off from Becksvoort's cabinet.  It isn't well executed and has a lot of flaws but it serves its purpose well.  The main reason for this 'accessory' is to house my larger planes that won't fit in the plane till below it (e.g. the LN 5 1/2 and Stanley 5) pictured.  I'm not finished dividing out the space yet - not sure what else I want to put there (maybe planes that are too small to fit in the plane till below but too large to put in drawers).  Becksvoort's design calls for small strips of leather underneath the toe of the plane.  I will probably follow his lead.

The stand is made out of Mahogany, Birdseye Maple and Poplar.  The sides are 1/2" thick with 1/4" BE Maple laminated to the Poplar.  The thin plane separator strips are also BE Maple (all leftover scraps from the drawer faces).

The height of the stand isn't arbitrary (although I almost made that mistake). It has the necessary clearance below the shelf for the handle and blade of the LN 5 1/2 when the stand is open. The depth is also calculated to make sure that when the doors close the blade clears anything that may be hanging on the door.

The inside will house miscellaneous stuff like extra plane blades, plane oils, waxes and other things I don't use that often or that don't store well in drawers.

I think my next step is a removable chisel holder that will live on one of the doors.  Unfortunately (for the tool chest sake) I just received a honey-do-list of projects my wife wants built for our 3-year old's birthday coming up.  I'm guessing the tool chest is going to take a back-seat for a few months.  I'll try to keep it alive with small accessory builds while I'm building my daughters stuff (a small stove, refrigerator, table and chairs) for her bedroom.

Tool Cabinet - Part 6 - The Doors

Well this post focuses on the doors.  They took a lot longer than I anticipated to get them mounted.  It wasn't easy.  I mounted the hinges flush with the door and carcass. I put a shallow rabbet on both the door and carcass the thickness of the hinge using my LN 140.  Balancing the door while trying to screw in the hinge (by myself) proved difficult.  I didn't get a picture of it because I didn't have a 3rd hand to take the shot.  So, I got a picture of the finished product (oh well).  This first shot shows the overall look of the inside (so far) with the doors attached.

This second shot shows a close up of the flush mounted hinge.  I thought going with a flush mounted hinge would be a nice visual touch but it proved necessary (not just cosmetic).  Installing a 4-foot piano hinge exactly square to the sides and parallel to its edge would have been impossible (for me) without the rabbet to 'lock it in'.  You can also see the dados in the doors left over from cutting apart the carcass.  The original plan called for cutting the dados after the box was cut apart.  I decided to do it before and thought I could use the dados in the doors.  I'm regretting that decision now. Some of them will be useful but not all of them.  I will have to get creative to figure out how to use them or fill them.

Here is a shot of the outside face of the doors.  I used some faux rails and stiles to trim out the doors (to hide the rabbeted inset panel).

Here's a side shot showing the hinge and door appearance from the outside.  Overall I'm pleased with the way things turned out.  The doors are heavy but these hinges seem to be holding up well and make the doors easy to open.

Next up... I'm changing the inside design a bit.  I'm not a fan of the swinging panels on the original plan (see first post) so I'm going with a different approach.  I have 2 or 3 planes that are too long to fit in the plane bays and I don't want to put them on the top shelf (reserved for the LN #8).  I'm going with a plane stand sitting on the second shelf.  I stole the idea from Becksvoort's cabinet.  This will hold my LN 5 1/2,  Stanley 5 and a few other miscellaneous tools.

Tool Cabinet - Part 5 - Finishing Up The Drawers

Well I'll start off by saying I did a pretty lousy job of taking pictures of the drawer build.  I usually have my son with me and he reminds me along the way.  He was off doing kids stuff so I was flying solo.  You can get the jist of what is going on but there isn't any consistency to the photos (some shots of a large drawer followed up by a shot of a smaller drawer).

This first shot is of the large middle drawer.  As with the carcass, being in the tails first camp, I start there. I ganged both the left and right sides together when marking out (and from what I remember, cutting as well).

I then move on to cutting out the pin waste in the tail boards.  I threw this in just to show off my new fret (jewlers) saw.  I absolutely love this saw.  It is super light weight and has a great design to holding and tightening the blade.  I haven't broken a blade yet (after about 6 drawers and some very hard Birdseye Maple).

After cutting out the pin waste in the tail board I mark out the pins on the drawer face.  I mentioned in a previous post that these would be half-blind dovetails.  I kind of cheated here.  I made the drawers as through dovetails and then glued on a 1/8" face to each drawer.  I wasn't really trying to avoid cutting half-blinds but instead I wanted to bookmatch the face on each drawer bay.  I resawed some Birdseye Maple and created a 1/8" thick veneer.  I then used this for the faces of the drawers. This process will be clearer as the post goes on.

Just a shot of the drawer face and two sides. I didn't get any shots of the drawer back (not sure why).

Here is where I'm gluing on the drawer face veneer.  I exhausted most of my small clamps.

After the drawer has been glued together and cleaned up I cut the grooves in the sides.  I made these cuts on the router table and cleaned up the rounded ends with a chisel and small router plane.  In the close up you can see how the veneer face creates the halfblind look.

This is a shot of the drawer runners.  They are 1/2" wide by about 11 1/2" long.  I cut oversized holes to allow for slight adjustments during the install as well as wood movement from the side boards.

Here I'm attaching the drawer slides.  I used spacers between drawers to help with consistency in spacing.  Even with these my gaps weren't perfectly consistent.

A shot of the final product. There is still some cleanup work to do but the drawers are pretty much finished.  Each drawer bay has the book-matched face that spans across all the drawers (kind of hard to tell in the photo). When I get a finish on it the matching should really stand out.

Tool Cabinet - Part 4 - Shelves and Bays and Drawers - Oh My!

Have you ever had one of those days in the shop where absolutely nothing went right? Well today was one of those days for me.  My dust collector bag sprung a leak (presumably when I went to empty it). I didn't notice it until after re-sawing a bunch of Tiger and Birdseye maple for the partitions and drawer faces. The shop air was getting thick and I couldn't figure out why. I went over to my dust collector and everything within a 5' radius was covered in fine dust. I cranked it up only to find dust spraying out of the hole.  Nothing a little duct tape couldn't fix but it left the shop an absolute mess. I hate power tools.

Next up - when preparing my drawer parts I cut several pieces too small.

After that - when cutting the dovetails I (for the first time ever) cut off my tails on two of my boards instead of the pin waste (even after I marked the waste).

And after that - I cut all of the pins on the face of one of my drawers before final dimensioning the board. The board was too wide and I had to start over.

Could there be more?  A few of the drawer sides curled up like a Pringle chip (seen in one of the photos).

Now you must be exaggerating right?  I split the side of one of my drawers when sliding in the bottom.

And to top it off I lost several pictures I had previously uploaded so there is a gap in the progress. Oh well, I guess it's better than no shop time at all.  And based on how things went today I'm not sure the pictures would have provided value anyways.

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Here is one of the culprits for all the dust in the shop.  I re-sawed 4/4 Birdseye and Tiger maple for the plane bays and the drawer fronts. Bringing these boards to final thickness is something I don't want to do with a hand plane. The drum sander comes in very handy

 

Here are a couple of shots of the plane and drawer bays.  I wanted to get as much space in the plane bays as I could so I went with thin stock here. Hind sight I wish these were a little thicker.  The scale just isn't right (1/4" would have been better).  Oh well, they will serve the purpose.  I made the thin dados about 3/4" apart from each other to allow for some flexibility in laying out each bay.  This was done on the table saw.  Once the final layout is decided I will line each bay with some thin carpet I picked up at the box store (or may I will leave them alone).  The dividers are 1/8" thick tiger maple I had left over from a Christmas project I made for the Mrs.  I was going to make them out of the matching Mahogany but thought the contrast (and match of the drawers) would be nice.  The second shot shows the vertical drawer dividers installed in the stopped dados cut in a previous post.  They were also made out of Tiger Maple (for the first few inches) joined with some Poplar. Also shown is one of the drawer guides for the bottom drawer.  All drawers will run on these guides.  And if you look close enough you can see the dust worked its way all the way over to my bench.  I was blowing maple dust boogers out my nose when I finally made it inside for the night.  Did I say I hate power tools.

 

Here, I'm shooting all of the drawer parts in preparation for the joinery. The No. 9 does an admirable job here.

Pictured are most of the drawer parts (backs not shown).  You can see where a few of the boards twisted on me shortly after re-sawing.  I cut several extra pieces in case of a mess-up (I've already sampled from that pile).   I mentioned in a previous post they will be half-blind DTs (sort of). The actual construction will consist of through dovetails with a 1/8" front veneer face to give them that half-blind look.  I did this because I wanted to book match a Birdseye face across all three drawers. I will show that picture in a later post.

Here's a shot of smoothing the inside of the drawer front.  This Birdseye Maple is one tough wood.  I went to my Veritas BUS and it was up for the job.  I don't use this plane all that often because I'm not very fond of the balance/angle/tote.  Instead of pushing into the wood at say a 45-degree angle (as with a normal plane) I find myself pushing forward (not enough down).  With extremely hard woods like this sometimes the plane wants to jump along the wood.  I'm sure it's more my technique than the fault of the plane - I'm just not use to this style.  But in the end things worked out. This wood sure did eat up the edge of the blade quickly.

Here I'm cutting the grooves for the drawer bottom of the first drawer.  I love this plane (A Rob Cosman special).  It makes quick work of it and is a whole lot of fun to use - perfect results every time (except when I hit the Birdseye).

Next up will be some shots of the drawers (if I don't run out of stock with all of my mishaps).