| Blog series by drewnahant | updated 04-10-2011 02:33 AM | 4 parts | 7408 reads | 6 comments total |
Part 1: design and drawing
I have been thinking about making something in a more classical style for a while. The decision of what to make was actually an afterthought, im building it mostly for fun and practice, so I was more concerned with style, technique, and joinery, but here’s the criteria I came up with -Incorporate turning ( I enjoy turning, but have never actually turned a set of spindles, legs, or any other kind of matching set)-Mortise and tennon joinery ( I’m in the middle of building a p...
Part 2: practice
Since this project is mostly for practice, with no deadline, and I want to end up with a really high quality piece of furniture, I have decided to first make the project in poplar for practice in the techniques I am expiramenting with, as well as to work out any bugs in the design. I figure that poplar is relatively inexpensive, readily available, and hard enough to turn, mill and generally work like whatever hardwood I choose for the final piece.Today I turned the legs, I have never turned ...
Part 3: learning to cut half-blind dovetails and a wood gloat
I started practicing through dovetails a couple weeks ago, since I had never even attempted hand cutting before, they are still a bit rough, but I realized that for this project I will need half blind dovetais, since with the curved front I will not be able to make a drawer box with a seperate face, and I really wouldnt want to do that for furniture anyway, it’s just what ive done in the past for cabinets. So tonight I cut my first practice set of half blind dovetails. here’s a ...
Part 4: Base is almost done ( in poplar)
This has been going a bit slower than I expected, I just dont have as much time for my personal projects as I would like. But today, I got the whole day in the shop, YAY! Here’s the base, 3/8 mortise and tennons on all leg joints, all hand cut since i dont have a tablesaw tennon jig, or a mortiser, and I cut the two sets of dovetails for the back of the drawer, the front has to wait until I laminate up the face. Earlier this week, I took an hour to make a form out of some plywood...
