Panel Preparation

Another Elm slab threw itself in front of the bandsaw. Sliced up into panels for the highboy dresser.

The rabbets were roughed out a hair oversize on the router table, then came to the bench for clean up.

Once the two edges were fitted, it was just a matter of flushing the end grain.

Also time to dress the frame surfaces.

More Shelix

My letter to Santa was delivered successfully. My planer was upgraded years ago, it's the jointers turn.

Joinery

Mortises for the L tenons:

Mortises for the mitered rails:

A quick dry fit of the miter'd rails into the miter'd frame:

Some shaping, bevel:

Surface prep before cutting sliding dovetails:

Cutting a series of stopped sliding dovetails for these ribs that run across the cabinet. One of my usual plywood offcut, double stick tape, router template guide type jig:

Miters

There's something about a clean miter.

I'm reinforcing these miters with L tenons, aluminum angle with some wood strips glued on. Another idea borrowed from Fine woodworking magazine. Here's the lamination with eco-poxy glue.

Then trimmed to fit at the bandsaw.

My design called for these mitered blocks/rails. To glue up this edge joint I reused a square box I'd made to cut keyed miters.

It produced a perfectly square sub-assembly with a seamless re-sawn joint, this is straight out of the clamps, ready to be cut into lengths.

Milling

I devoted time to sitting in the office, designing a highboy dresser. Wood was piled up, Elm slabs. Then there was much cutting of wood.

The parts emerged eventually.

The Three Benches

A special case. A couple contacted me to see if it was possible to re-purpose grandma's table.

The table had been in the family for 80 some years, but it's days as a table were close to done. Grandma had brought the table with her when she arrived in Canada from the States to take up free land. Three members of the family had been very close to grandma and have many memories sitting at the table. So they had the idea of converting the table into three benches, one for each of them. The wood, not worth saving. The memories, well that's a different story.

Here's the table and leaves as they came in. I sketched a design that would work with the materials, ran it by them, and put together the three benches.

About 44 dowels in each bench, 88 holes per bench. A good exercise in working off square and off flat. Thought I'd try out the veritas dowel jig, my usual dowelling method would have taken too long. The veritas jig is designed for edge joints but I used it to make a template then screwed the template down to the workpiece. Not sure how much time it saved, dowelling is time consuming, but definitely a saving, and it worked out well.

The Makeshift Man Desk

So I had the amputated section of the now modified Outlaw coffee hutch kicking around... Suppose I could stick some legs on it.

My son had outgrown his piece of crap baby desk, and was in need of a real man's desk. The thing turned out rock solid. just as well, he's a prolific drawer of birds and general crafts maniac, so it will see heavy use. Threw in a couple trays to hold his pencils.

Couple pics of the 3/8 dowel construction.