Before diving in to the sculpting efforts I performed one more operation on the arms.  This was to prepare the arm to rear-leg joint.  To do this, I first cleaned up each of the rear legs at the arm joint location.  These were still rough from the original band sawing.  I just did this with a few swipes of a sharp block plane.  Next, I clamped each arm at the front leg transition area and adjusted it so that it was fairly tight against the rear leg at the joint location.  Because the angles were no perfectly matched, these joints needed to be trued to one-another.  This was done with some strips of 100-grit sand paper between the two pieces at the joint.  I pulled the sand paper through the joint, pulling away from the side that the grit was on so that I did not round over the edges of the pieces.  This took a while with the grit alternating from the arm-side to the rear leg side.  After a bit of work I had good tight joints.  After I had done this and ripped several strips of sand paper in the process, I thought about putting some strapping/packing tape on the back side of the sand paper to strengthen it – I’ll file that idea away for the next time I have to do this which will be when I fit the rockers to the chair.

With all of the possibilities of stalling exhausted, I arrived at the point where I needed to again take the angle grinder to the chair.  After all of the work so far, I was both excited to start the sculpting as well as a bit concerned over this step.  This work was done with the angle grinder and a 36-grit disk so material was going to be removed very quickly.

I started with the relatively simple task of leveling the joints between the rear legs and the seat.  This got me again used to the motions necessary to smoothly move the grinder and the aggressiveness of the stock removal. Next I moved to the front legs for the more complex of the sculpting tasks.  The difficulty here was two-fold: first, sculpt the leg to reveal a smooth curve between the leg and the seat and leaving a continuous line of the front leg; second in doing so, work to move the transition of the joint between the leg and the seat away from the corner.  The second point was necessary in order to achieve a smooth curve between the legs and seat without having an abrupt 90-degree corner.  Surprisingly, this was accomplished by grinding further into the side of the leg – effectively moving the joint line away from the corner!

In the pictures you can see the progression of the sculpting on the front legs.  The first picture shows the original joint.  Each subsequent picture shows the steps of removing material to sculpt the leg into the seat.  Note how the joint line moves from the corner outward.  This was helped on the front side of the leg by relieving the front corner of the seat to allow better access for the grinder.

The last thing to do before putting the grinder on the shelf for a while was to form a round-over along the top and bottom of the seat sides in between the legs.  To do this I first marked a line along the edge about ½” in from the corner.  I then chamfered between these lines with the grinder trying to keep a smooth line.  After that I made smaller chamfers along each edge to create the round-over.

Of course, all of this sculpting will still require more work with the rasp, files and sand paper to complete the job.  But, for now the chair is starting to look more sculpted.

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: More Rear Leg Work
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs

Before doing any glue-ups I needed to create some transition blocks that will sit atop the front legs where they will join into the arms.  These blocks started as 3″ by 5″ blocks at about 1 1/2″ thick and will get sculpted into the arms and legs after they are mounted with glue and screws.  Because of the compound angles of the front legs the angles for the screw holes were marked by eye to align with both angles of the front legs.  This was done on adjacent faces of the transition blocks with a white pencil.   Then the blocks were put into a vise at the drill press so that both of the lines were set square to the table and the screw holes were drilled.

With the holes in the transition blocks drilled, the blocks were held in position on top of the legs and the holes were started into the tops of the front legs.  These holes were drilled to depth after removing the blocks to allow the bit to reach full depth.  Next, glue was applied to the tops of the legs and the underside of the transition blocks and the screws were put in aligning the inside faces of the blocks with the inside edge of the front leg joints.

After the glue on the transition blocks dried, curves were laid out on two faces of the blocks.  These curves were done such that they can be sawed on the band saw and/or ground away to fair the  legs into the arms.  I cut two ends of the blocks on the band saw but kept the offcuts to help later with clamping to the arms.  The remaining material will be ground away when shaping the legs into the arms.

I spent a good deal of time dry fitting both the front and rear legs into their respective joints and dry clamping the assemblies to check the fit of the joints.  Because of time passing between the initial fitting of these joints the wood has dried out and a few small gaps appeared.   As a result I needed a couple of tiny shims the close the gaps.  Finally satisfied with the fit of the joints I moved on to the glue up.

I can tell you that the few words that I write here will not convey the amount of prep work and effort involved in the glue up of the legs.  The rear legs were first and involved using a couple of 6 degree wedges to apply clamping pressure appropriately.  The joints were glues with a liberal coating of Titebond III one legs at a time.  Once the first leg was fully seated, then the other leg could be glued before clamps were applied.  After the clamping the excess glue was wiped away with a dry towell and the joints were left to dry over night.

The next day, it was time for the glue up of the front legs.  I rigged a temporary support to hold the chair up as the first legs was being glued.  The other leg was left in place as a clamping point until the first joint had fully seated.  Then the other leg could be glued and the clamps were applied.  No clamping blocks were needed because the front legs have a “built-in” set of blocks in the excess material at the joint that will eventually be ground away to fair the legs into the the seat.

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Sculpting the Leg Joints
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Rough Shaping the Arms
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery

The shaping process for the arms involves two steps.  The first step utilizes a jig that facilitates cove-cutting a grove diagonally along the length of each arm blank.  This cove cut removes stock that will eventually become the area that your arms rest in when sitting in the chair.  The second step of shaping the arms will occur when they have been attached to the chair and more stock can be removed and the curves can be faired into the legs.  Before doing any cutting, I first marked the outlines of the arms on the blanks so that I could see their eventual orientation and not get confused while performing the following steps.

The jig for the cove-cutting at the table saw is a rectangular box with an angled portion that rides against a fence while transporting the arm blank over the table saw blade.  The angled piece allows the blank to travel, top face down, across the blade so that the resulting cove is cut diagonally through the length of the arm blank.  These cuts were done in a slow and methodical manner, raising the blade about 1/32″ – 1/16″ for each pass over the blade.  The jig was moved across the blade slowly to allow the blade to cut the cove as smoothly as possible and to also allow the significant dust to be cleared.  Even with this technique I stopped every few passes and used the shop-vac to clean the dust remaining on the table top.  The jig has handles with threaded rod through t-nuts to clamp the blanks in place as well as a handle to help push it through the blade.  I also used a Gr-ripper push block for added control and security.  The jig flips over and the handle reverses for the alternate arm to be cut with a reverse orientation of the diagonal cove.  The first two pictures show the right arm being cut and the last picture shows the left arm.

Once the cove cuts were completed I again traced the outlines of the arms onto the blanks (albeit a carefully due to the now undulating surface of the arms).  Then the arms were band sawed to shape and sanded with the oscillating spindle sander to remove the band saw marks along their edges.  In the picture you can see the rough shaped arms after cutting and sanding.

The other step that I completed at this time was to glue up stacks to the rockers.  These stacks consist of rocker strips and are located at the points where the front and rear legs will contact the rockers.  The stacks serve to elevate the chair above the rockers an additional distance as well as to provide material for shaping and fairing curves from the rockers into the legs.  This was a bit of a tricky operation as the stacks wanted to squirm away while they were being glued.  I again used the same rocker clamping caul to distribute the clamping pressure to the stacks.

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Laminating the Rockers and Back Braces
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Stock Prep, Layout and Rear Legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Coopered Headrest and Ripping Thin Rocker Strips

When I last left the project, I had completed sculpting the seat.  With that task completed my attention turned back to more processing on the rear legs.

The rear legs needed to have a 20-degree angled cut from the top of the legs down to the arm rest area along their inside edges.  Also, a parallel cut to this one needed to be made at the top of the legs (to match the height of the headrest) along the outside edges.  The result will form a parallelogram shape at the top pf the rear legs which will match the angle of the headrest.

These angled cuts needed to be made at the band saw.  However, because my band saw table (like most others out there) will only tilt greater than 20 degrees in one direction (i.e. it is limited to about 10-degrees of tilt when angled back toward the saw) I needed to either cut one leg in the reverse direction or to find a way around the tilt limitation.

I chose to create a simple 20-degree jig that could be clamped to the saw table and reversed for each leg cut.  This allowed me to make the cuts from the tops of both legs downward toward the arm rest location which is the most desirable direction.  You can see the jig in the pictures.  The riser blocks beneath the jig are just there so that I had more clearance when rotating the legs during the cut so that they did not run into the saw table.

As, I mentioned, there were two cuts to do on each leg.  The first cut was from the top down to the arm rest area.  Then the leg was rotated and the second cut was made from the top downward to match the headrest height.  In the pictures you can see the cuts as well as the parallelogram shapes that resulted at the tops of the legs.

With these shaping cuts completed I next moved to the seat joint areas of the rear legs.  As you will recall, these curves have only been roughed shaped and marked along the seat top and bottom for later shaping.  To do this shaping, I first penciled in the curves to meet up with the lines that were scribed earlier with a shallow saw kerf.  These curves were based on a 2” diameter circle – the reason for this will become clear shortly.

Next, it was back to the band saw to cut along these curves.  The important thing here was to keep the leg balanced on the seat joint area during the cuts.  The picture shows the results. With the band saw work completed.  I moved to my oscillating spindle sander with a 2” diameter drum and I sanded these rough curves to shape until I just barely met the scribe lines marking the top and bottom of the seat. This resulted in legs that will require only minor shaping where they meet the seat.

With this shaping completed, it was a good time to drill the holes to allow attachment of the headrest.  This was done in two steps.  The first hole was drilled with a 3/8″ Forstner bit to counter sink for the the screw head.  With the leg in the same position I switched out to a 3/16″ bit to drill through the leg for the screw shank.  Doing it this way assured that this hole would be perfectly centered on the countersunk hole.

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Rough Shaping the Arms
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Stock Prep, Layout and Rear Legs

The morning was filled with  some lectures and demonstrations on dovetails and drawer making.  One of the assistants demonstrated the Rob Cosman method of laying out evenly spaced dovetails using a set of dividers.  Then, Jeff Headley showed how he and Steve cut dovetails for drawers.  Interestingly they gang the two side boards together back to back with a couple of brads.  Then they plow a groove on each side for the drawer bottom and lay out their dovetails on each end.  No special methods for layout here – just done by eye and using a shop made brass layout marker for the slope of the tails ( approximately a 1:5 angle).  They also scribe a baseline for the tails first.

Next, it was on to the band saw to cut out the tails.  Jeff demonstrated this by cutting to the line and nibbling out the waste in between tails leaving very little paring to be done afterward.  The remainder of the joint was done in the traditional way.  They did use a 1/4″ block set into the drawer bottom grooves in the front and side pieces when marking the pins.  This was done with the front board in the vise and the side board laying across it and on top of a plane laying on the bench.  The 1/4″ block kept things locked together while marking out the pins.  These are half-blind dovetails and the marking gage was set slightly wider than the side thickness when marking the baseline for the pins.  This causes the pins to be slightly proud after the joint is assembled – they can then be planed flush.  Also, when cutting the pins they make no issues of cutting well below the baseline in order to get as far into the pin as possible – this was very commonly done on period furniture.

We also discussed the fine-line inlay, cock-beading and escutcheon for the drawers. The escutcheon for the Hunt Board is the same as done in the embellishments class that I discussed in an earlier post – it’s put in after the fine-line is completed.  They do the fine line with a shop-made scraping tool after the dovetails are cut,  but before the drawer is assembled.  In this case the fine-line is only about 1/16″ wide.  An important thing here is that the fine line must be allowed to dry completely after gluing before scraping it flush otherwise, it may shrink below the surface when dry due to swelling while wet with glue.  In this piece there will also be some fine-line installed in the top.  The cock-beading is installed after the drawer is assembled.  The top and bottom pieces are installed to the full depth of the drawer front.  The side pieces are mitered to the top and bottom but are not as deep so that the dovetails on the sides of the drawers are not covered.

Most of the remaining time for me on Friday was spent fitting the drawer fronts very closely to their openings.  This took a bit of time, but I have them now fit precisely.  After the dovetailing and fine-line is installed I will plane them down to leave a very small reveal around the drawer.  Unfortunately this work will be done at home in my shop because the class had to come to an end.

After cleaning up the shop and packing my piece for the long ride home, I bid farewell to the school, the assistants and Jeff and Steve.  This was a great experience and I will definitely do it again.  There were no great revelations learned, but rather many, many little refinements in technique and process plus, the comeraderie was great.  I’m already searching for my next class!  I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of the piece with the drawer fronts fitted before I packed it for the trip home.

• Queen Anne Side Table: Dovetailing the drawer
• Hunt Board Class: Day 1
• Queen Anne Side Table: Dovetailed top rail and scroll work
• Classes at the Marc Adams School
• Hunt Board Class: Days 3 and 4

I started out by applying more cross-band veneer to my piece.  These were strips in between the semi-circular corner elements.  This process differed a bit from day 1 in that we were fitting pieces of veneer to a specific opening rather than scribing for the opening from an existing piece of veneer.  I did a thorough job of getting my dry joints nice and tight only to find out that veneer really stretches when it comes into contact with water-based glue!  This was not an issue, just another part of the process as I learned the technique for slicing the pieces of veneer to create an invisible joint.  The interesting part here is that it is actually best to do this in the middle of the srtip rather than at the ends.  This way you can overlay the long pieces and get a perfect scarf joint.

After this was completed and while the glue was drying, I moved on to creating a lock escutcheon.  This was done with a cardboard template much like the semi-circular corners were done.  Thin white cardboard makes a cheap and easily tooled template materials for these kinds of tasks.  I layed out the pattern on some thin stock and then drilled two holes and drew in the outline of the remainder of the escutcheon.  The escutcheon was cut out on a scroll saw and the bottom edges were undercut with a gouge and hand plane to provide a tight fit when inlayed into the piece.  The recess for the escutcheon was done with a small hand held router and a 1/16″ bit.  It will be installed slightly proud of the surface and scraped flush.

When the glue on the cross-banding was dry we moved on to edge banding.  The rebates for this were done with a sacrificial fenceon the table saw with part of the blade buried in the fence.  The top surface was first scribed with a marking guage and then the rebate was created on the table saw.  The scribe step eliminated and tear out as long as the cross-band venweer was glued to the surface well.  Mine worked out fine.  The edge banding was mitered at all four corners.  This was done one piece at a time mitering the dry banding with a chisel.  Of course the last corner took some additional fitting to obtain a tight joint.

Throughout the day we broke for short lectures on various topics including: bell flower and fan inlay, escutcheon inlay, edge banding and even a couple of unexpected things like door assembly with coped inside corner molds, scratch-stock jigs for cutting flutes/reeds on columns…there was even a quick discussion about doing flared federal-style feet on case pieces.

The weekend went quick but I learned a lot. I’m really looking forward to starting on the Huntboard tomorrow.

• Embellishments Class: Day 1
• Hunt Board Class: Day 5
• Modern Shaker Table: String Inlay and Glue Up
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Sculpting the Leg Joints
• Dreadnought Guitar: Assembling the sides and kerfed linings

This class is an exploratory of different kinds of mainly Federal-style embellishments.  We are creating a mock-.up that ultimately might be a drawer front on a piece. However,  we are doing some other things with it that would also be appropriate for a table leg or top.  This is all in the spirit of learning and trying different techniques to be used later on our own pieces rather than creating a functional piece during class.

The base material for our piece is a poplar board.  Today we veneered one entire face with a light colored Mahogany.  Jeff and Steve use Elmers White glue for their veneering work due to the fact that it dries clear and is reversible with water and heat.  In fact, that reversibility enters into their technique for adding other features to the piece after the face veneer is applied.

In the pictures (sorry for the blurry one) you can see a bit of what we did today. After the face veneer was clamped for about an hour we cleaned up the bleed-through of glue with a card scraper and scored around the edges in preparation for cross band veneers of a different species.  Then the scored areas were coated with water and covered with a wet cloth and a hot iron was used to loosen the veneer.  With a sharp chisel we lifted those areas and then re-clamped the piece to dry.  You also can see the rounded corners made from a darker Mahogony veneer.  These cross banded corners were made from two pieces cut at 45 degrees to keep the grain in a cross-wise orientation as you go around the corner.  More cross banding will be put in between the corners all around the piece.

Tomorrow, we”ll be inlaying a small fan and some bell flowers as well as the remainder of the cross-banding and also applying a another stringing/banding all around the edge of the piece.  In the interests of time, the fan and bell-flowers were pre-made at a veneer factory.  Today we cut them out of larger sheets with a knife.  An interesting fact that Jeff mentioned to us was that in the days when this kind of period furniture was being made, there were people who specialized in things like inlay, carving and turning, etc.  Furniture makers would often buy their banding, fans, bell-flowers and things like that from those makers for incorporation into their furniture pieces.

I’m having a great time so far and looking forward to more tomorrow.  The Marc Adams School is a great place with alot of talented and creative individuals and it certainly gets my woodworking juices flowing!  Oh, and did I mention the free ice cream machine in the cafeteria…

• Embellishments Class: Day 2
• Classes at the Marc Adams School
• Hunt Board Class: Day 1
• Hunt Board Class: Day 5
• Hunt Board Class: Day 2

Well, maybe after a quick commercial interruption…you’ll recall that in the last post I had glued the two perfectly good front legs together with a piece of two inch stock in between them.  Well, of course they were not going to stay that way.  So, I traced a curve onto the adder piece between the legs and then cut them apart on the band saw.  The front legs will be cut and sculpted further at a later stage.  Now that that was out of the way, I could turn my attention to the first efforts of sculpting on the chair – shaping the seat.

To start this process, I first layed out the outline of the seat area from my templates.  Next, I carefully layed out the locations for some depth holes.  I drilled these holes into the seat to help me judge when the sculpting had reached the desired depth.  The rear holes were drilled at 3/4″, the center holes at 5/8″ and the two sets of front holes at 1/2″.

To do the rough shaping I used a coarse Kutzall donut-shaped disk in an angle grinder.  This disk removed material very quickly and produced copious amounts of dust!  However, if careful I was capable of fairly fine work with it.   The key was to use slow, steady movements of the grinder in the direction against its rotation.  I started the shaping at the rear of the seat, staying about 1/4″ away from my layout lines and gradually working toward the finished depth.  When I was about 1/8″ away from the finished depth I moved to the front to work it to a similar level.  The center keel of the seat had to be shaped manually as I went along.  After I got the entire seat to within about 1/16″ of finished depth, I carefully used the grinder to shape up to my layout lines.  The sequence of pictures below shows the process from start to finish.

The next step was to move on to sanding with the random orbit sander.  I started this with 60 grit to even out the coarse surface left by the grinder and then moved on to 120 grit.  I also used folded sandpaper and my thumb to ride the curved surface along the edge of the shaped seat leaving a crisp line along the top.  In the picture, you can see how rough the surface was prior to sanding. A little more layout on the front of the seat, some filing and some sanding and I had contoured the front of the seat to allow the user’s legs  to wrap nicely over the front edge of the seat.

In the final pictures you can see the final shaped seat ready to be joined with the legs.

Next up: Shaping the rear legs and arm rests

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Sculpting the Leg Joints
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: More Rear Leg Work
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping

As you will recall, in my last post I created the joints in the seat that will receive the legs.  These joints essentially have a tongue that must mate with a corresponding grove in the legs. There’s a bit more too it, as you will see, but that’s the basic premise.

Before I could create this joinery on the legs, I needed to do two things: for the rear legs, I needed to create profile on the inside faces and visible from the front and on both the front and rear legs I needed to add some material to make parts of the legs wider.

In the pictures you can (barely) see the outlined profile toward inside of the rear legs which was to be cut on the band saw.  Because the legs had already been contoured, these cuts were a bit tricky.  I was careful to be sure that there were always two points of the leg in contact with the saw table – sometimes one of those points was at the edge of the table as the leg was either entering the table or leaving the table. This allowed the cut to be completed safely even though it was sometimes happening at a point elevated above the table. In the second picture you can see the profiles cut on the inside of the rear legs.

After profiling the rear legs I milled adder pieces for both the front and rear legs.  The front adder piece runs the length of the legs. The rear adder piece runs just between the sections that will eventually contact the seat.  For the front legs, the adder piece will be profiled to become the outside of the legs. For the rear legs the adder piece was ripped at the band saw after gluing in preparation for more detailed operations to follow.

The rear legs of the chair need to cant outward at the top at an angle of six degrees.  In order to accomplish this, the adder pieces on each rear leg must be ripped at six degrees from the outside faces of the legs.  In order to accomplish this, I created a jig to use at the table saw.  The jig is designed to ride against the fence on the saw and it has a fence of it’s own that is fixed at six degrees to the table saw blade.  With a leg clamped to the jig the piece was pushed through the blade cutting off a six degree wedge. For the other leg, the jig was rotated 180 degrees and the other leg was cut in a similar fashion.

I took this opportunity to clamp the legs together in the vise using the angled offcuts from the previous operation so that I could smooth the seat joint area and square it to the angled faces which were previously cut on the table saw. After achieving smooth and square faces, I laid out for the joinery that will join the legs to the seat.

The notches to accept the seat joinery were cut on two faces of the rear legs using a sled on the table saw.  Because each leg had only a small bearing surface resting on the sled, I clamped a block to the outboard side of the legs to prop them up at the correct angle.  One leg was cut in the orientation as shown in the picture and the other leg was done at 180 degrees from this orientation. The notches were nibbled away with repeated passes of the leg over the table saw blade until the joint would just fit the seat. Once the rough notches were cut, I cleaned up the saw marks with a shoulder plane.  The last step for this joint was to round over the inside corner of this joint to match the corresponding rebate that was cut into the seat.  I did this with a ¾” round over bit in the plunge router.  Because of the small size of the area where I could rest the router, this did not give optimal results. So, I subsequently repeated this step with the same bit in the router table.  In the picture, you can see the general fit of the rear leg into the seat.

The front leg joinery was done in a similar manner to the rear legs.  However, the notches were made on three faces of the legs. Also, this joinery was done prior to gluing the adder piece to the two front legs.  In the pictures you can see the competed front leg joinery and the adder piece being glued between the outside surfaces of the two front legs after the joinery was completed.

Next up: Sculpting the seat

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Sculpting the Leg Joints
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat

The joinery starts on the seat blank.  So, I first used a sled on the table saw to trim the seat to finished length and width. The rear legs will be joined to the seat via a 3 inch by 3 inch cutout that is rabetted top and bottom on each back corner.  The front legs have a  similar configuration except they are set back from the front corners into a 2 inch wide notch in the seat.

These joints need to be very precise and with the thickness and size of the seat blank, that’s a challenge. In order to create the notches to exact size, I first laid out the joints with a pencil and then rough cut them at the band saw.  This allowed me to get very close to the lines without worrying about the precision of the joints. The rear leg notches were cut out as single blocks.  However, because the front legs are attached set back from the front corner, I used the band saw to create a series of kerfs to rough out the notches for them.

I created a couple of jigs to help with the process of precisely finishing these notches.  In the picture you can see the front and rear leg jigs that I made to use with the router with a top bearing pattern bit.  The openings on the jigs are exactly the size of the notches to be cut and the bearing on the bit rides along the edges of the jig to trim away excess material from the joint leaving a perfect notch.  Because of the thickness of the seat, my pattern bit would not cut the entire rear leg joint in one pass. So, I first used the rear leg jig from the top and then again from the bottom to finish the joint.  After routing the rear notches, I used a sharp chisel to remove the radius left by the router bit and to square up the inside corners of the notches.

The second operation for this joint was to create a rebate along both the top and bottom of each notch.  This effectively leaves a tongue in the center of each notch that will later mate with a corresoponding groove in the legs. This was done with a series of shallow passes with a 1 1/2″ by 1/2″ rabetting bit.  In the pictures you can see that I used a scrap block clamped to the outside of the seat to eliminate any tearout. The resulting rebate leaves a 3/4″ radius on the inside corners of each notch.  Later the corners of the legs will be rounded over with a corresponding 3/4″ rounding over bit to create complementary profile on the legs.

With the joints for the front and rear legs completed I setup another jig to rout holes for the back braces where they enter the seat.  These were done with a template that I got from Hal Taylor.   The holes were routed with a 1/4″ straight bit and a 5/8″ OD collar on the router.  These holes are actually slightly oval in order to allow the back braces to flex slightly as you sit in the chair.

Next up: Leg Joinery

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Sculpting the Leg Joints
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping

There are a bunch of potential ways to do laminations of this type – everything from a using a vacuum bag to building a form and using veneer screws to create a press. I don’t have any vacuum press equipment or veneer screws so I elected to make a couple of forms to be used with clamps for this process.

The forms were built out of construction lumber that I laminated together to double thickness and squared up with the jointer and planer. I then band sawed the curves into each form and carefully smoothed the curves to eliminate any flat spots  This is especially important for the rocker form because a flat spot on a rocker will be easily felt when rocking in the chair.  Next, I drilled a series of holes in each form to accept the heads of C-clamps. Along one edge of each form are metal stops (I used some scrap aluminum angle and steel straps that I had lying around). These stops allow the parts to be aligned evenly along one edge while they are being laminated.

As a first step, I laminated a backer strip on each form with the extra strips that I had previously cut.  This allowed be to get acquainted with the clamping process and to determine how much glue to use and open time I would have.  After the backers were dried I cleaned up the glue squeeze-out and trimmed them to be slightly narrower than the finished parts will be.

The moment of truth arrived and it was time to laminate the first rocker. I went about the process of spreading the glue as quickly as I could. I am using Titebond III for the gluing and it does not allow a lot of extra open time – the rockers have 9 strips so I had to move fast.  With the wet stack on the form I went to work clamping – progressing from front to back on the rocker with the stack lightly clamped to the metal alignment strips.  In the end it worked out OK, but let’s just say I had no time to spare when tightening that last clamp and let me tell you, there was a lot of glue squeeze-out! I left the rocker to dry in the form for 24 hours.  Laminating the second rocker went a bit smoother as I was more prepared and familiar with the sequence of operations.

In the picture you can see the stacks of strips for the back braces.  I am using Ash for the two inner strips for flexibility (I am also using original Titebond for this to avoid the dark glue lines that Titebond III would give).  The Walnut strips on the front and back of the stacks were cut in sequence from the same piece of stock to give a visual repetition to the braces when viewed from the front and back of the chair.

The process for laminating the back braces is similar to the rockers except that they are done two at a time – one on top of the other. This process does alter the curves of the top brace somewhat when compared to the bottom brace. However, they are laminated in an order such that the bottom braces (with the greatest curves) are placed toward the outside of the chair and the top braces are placed toward the inside.  This results in a change in the curves that is consistent across the back of the chair. With seven back braces, this arrangement requires four gluing operations with a 24 hour drying period in between each.  While that’s going on, I can move on to some joinery for the chair.

Next up: Joinery for the seat and legs

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Coopered Headrest and Ripping Thin Rocker Strips
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Rough Shaping the Arms
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Sculpting the Leg Joints
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs
• The Benefits of a Mentor

The headrest (as well as the back braces of the chair) curves substantially to provide a more comfortable position while sitting. To obtain the necessary curve for the headrest you either need a very thick piece of stock (with a lot of resulting waste) or the pieces must be put together using a process known as coopering. For this headrest I am coopering individual pieces of stock with the grain oriented vertically.

The coopering process is much like the process that would be used to build a wooden barrel. The individual pieces are beveled on along their edges so that when glued together they form a segmented curve. The bevel angle on each edge can vary depending on how much of an overall angle or curve is desired and also how many pieces are being assembled. In my case, I needed an overall width of about 26″ for the headstock with an overall included angle of 40 degrees. I started with six pieces at 8″ high by about 4 to 5 inches wide.  The six pieces provided 5 interior glue joints (the ends of the headstock are not beveled). Each of these joints has two edges to bevel.  Put that all together and you have 10 bevels to provide a total of 40 degrees which equates to 4 degrees per bevel.

To create the bevels I elected to make multiple passes over my jointer with the fence set at 4 degrees from vertical. With a setup for a very light cut (less than 1/32″ per pass) this operation was much safer than using the table saw with the relatively small size of these pieces. After the beveling was done on the jointer I elected to take a few swipes with a hand plane over each edge to eliminate the mill marks and to assure a pristine glue surface.  In the picture you can see the pieces dry fit after beveling the edges.

Because of the bevels on these pieces, the glue up operation was very tricky.  The glue up of the six pieces was initially done in three pairs. Next, two pairs were glued to each another with the use of angled blocks faced with sandpaper adhered to the clamps. Because the headrest now exceeded the depth of the heads on my clamps, the final glue up required the addition of some temporary blocks glued to the headrest to act as clamping points. At a later stage, these glue blocks will be cut off and the curve will cut into the headstock at the band saw.  In the pictures you can see the sequence of this series of gluing operations.

Setting the glued up headstock aside, I moved on to cutting the thin strips for the laminated rockers and back slats. This was a repetitive operation that required precision and safety.  So, I created a simple jig to allow me to rip thin strips at the table saw to a very tight dimensional tolerance. The jig also allows the strips to be ripped on the waste side of the blade so that strips can be ripped from a larger piece of stock and avoiding the dangers of trying to do this between the blade and the fence.

Each rocker requires 9 strips at 1/8″ thickness and each back slat requires four strips at 90 thousandths of an inch thickness. For the rockers, I made additional strips because some will be needed to create stacks under each leg where they join the rockers.  I also made some extra strips to create a curved backer for use when these strips are later laminated with a clamping form. There are seven back slats required but I made an extra for safety as well as some additional strips to create a backer. for their glue up as well.  In the picture you can see the resulting strips for the rockers.

Next up: Bent lamination and creating the leg joints in the seat

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: More Rear Leg Work
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Laminating the Rockers and Back Braces
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping
• Dreadnought Guitar: Assembling the sides and kerfed linings
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Rough Shaping the Arms

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this table is going into a house with very dark wood floors. Because of this, I chose Hard Maple for the main wood to provide contrast with the floors. However, the Maple alone was too bland for my liking and I wanted to give this table a bit of a contemporary flair. So, I decided to add some Cherry string inlay along the arched aprons as well as bordering the entire top. I felt that this would provide some visual interest along with a more modern look while not being too overbearing.  Just a subtle design element.

The first task was to lay out the inlay lines on the parts to be embellished. On the aprons this was just a simple arch parallel with the bottom of each apron. On the top things were a bit more complex. I wanted the inlay to border the top at a fixed distance from the edges. To mark this, I layed out and marked the intersecting points at the corners.  Then I connected the points with a straight edge and compass set at the desired offset distance for the inlay.   The compass was used on the curved sections running the point along the curve while tracing out a line with the pencil side.

The trick to routing the channel for the inlay was to keep the router bit running parallel with all of the edges of the parts – this included running along the straight sides of the top, the concave edges of the aprons and also along the convex edges of the ends of the top.  To do this I used my Bosch Colt router with an edge guide. I milled two small arched blocks.  One block had a convex curve and the other a concave curve – these curves were made slightly sharper than those of the table to allow me to maneuver the router to track the inlay lines .  I (separately) double-stick taped these blocks to the edge guide.  The convex block was used on the aprons and the concave block was used on the ends of the top – as I routed, I concentrated on keeping the center of the guide block against the edge of the part while tracking my lines.  At the intersection points on the top I stopped short of each intersection with the router and finished the corner with a small chisel.

The next task was to rip some Cherry stringing at about 3/16″ wide by an 1/8″ high. I did this by ripping a few 1/8″ pieces from a 3/4″ Cherry board. I then placed these pieces flat on their wide sides and set up the band saw to rip strips slightly wider than 3/16″ – leaving room to clean them up with a hand plane.  I used double-stick tape to hold the pieces of stringing to my bench and dressed the edges with my plane until they just fit into the routed channels.

For the aprons, fitting and gluing the stringing was straight forward. I applied a bit of glue into each channel and pressed the inlay into position leaving the ends a bit long for trimming later. With a bit of waxed paper in between the pieces, I butted the aprons face to face and clamped them together to dry. The top was a bit more challenging because four pieces of stringing had to be cut to fit.  I contemplated mitering the corners but finally opted on a slightly different technique.  I first cut and fit the shorter arched end pieces. With these pieces temporarily and lightly in place, I marked one end of each long piece to match the angle where they met the end pieces.  I made those cuts with a sharp chisel. With those ends temporarily set in place, I then marked the opposite ends where they met the arched pieces on the opposite ends of the top. Again, I cut the pieces with a chisel, however, I initially stayed away from my line and gradually trimmed away the ends until I had a good fit. With these pieces fit, I again put glue into the channels and set the stringing in place.  I clamped on waxed paper and cauls over the stringing and left it to dry. Once the glued stringing had dried I leveled it all with the surface of the parts using a block plane and card scraper.

With all of the stringing glued in place and leveled I did a some sanding on all of the parts and then moved on to the the glue up of the table.  In the pictures you can see the table being clamped during the glue up as well as after a final hand sanding and ready for finish.  In the next post I’ll cover the finishing process and show the completed table.

• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Aprons
• Modern Shaker Table: Completion
• Dreadnaught Guitar: Notching the sides for the top braces
• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Top
• Embellishments Class: Day 1

I was working with some pieces of Walnut today and nearby there was some white chalk on the bench that I was using for marking out parts on the dark wood.  The pieces I was working with were about 2 inches thick and 8 inches long and I needed to edge glue them. As is the norm, I held two of the pieces together edge to edge and inspected the joint it offered after a pass over the jointer knives – it looked OK, but not perfect.

I spotted the chalk again and thought maybe I should see just how good that jointed surface was. In the pictures you can see the surface of one of the boards after rubbing the edge lightly with the white chalk (the second one is a close-up of the same board). You can clearly see the uneven surface left by the jointer.  As you can see, the rotating knives of this tool leave little scallops on the wood surface – in fact the width of these scallops changes depending on how fast the piece is moved over the knives. The slower you go, the closer together the scallops are and the better the resulting surface – better yes, but not perfect.

After seeing this, I felt I could make the surface better. I don’t have a jointer plane, so, I pulled out my #4 smoothing plane to see what I could do. I made a few passes along the edge of the board watching as the plane removed the white chalk leaving a stripe of chocolate colored wood in its wake.   The first picture is the resulting surface (the second picture is a close-up of the hand planed edge). I put some Naptha on a paper towel and wiped away the residual chalk that was still in the pores of the wood. The smoothing plane only removed one or two thousandths of an inch of material, however, as seen in the pictures, the surface quality was now infinitely better.

I often use my smoothing plane on the faces of panels and other parts that have been face jointed in order to remove these milling marks. However, I don’t always edge joint with a hand plane after using the jointer.  My edge-glued joints are usually pretty good but, I sometimes think that they can be better.  After this little experiement, I’m sure of it.  Of course, a smoothing plane is not the best tool for this job…so, it looks like I’ve got a good reason for a jointer plane to be the next entry in my hand tool arsenal!

• In search of a smoothing plane
• Modern Shaker Table: Completion
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs
• DVD Review: Coarse, Medium and Fine
• Embellishments Class: Day 2

I then broke down the rough stock into more manageable, slightly oversize, pieces. I previously wrote about my method of using the jigsaw and band saw for this process.  To me this is the safest, most convenient and economical way to do this.

For the legs of this table I want a finished 1 3/4″ square leg at the top, tapering to about 3/4″ square at the bottom.  I started with 8/4 rough stock and ripped it to 2″  square by 29 1/2″ long to accommodate a 28 1/2″ finished leg length.  For the legs, I tried to utilize the stock such that the grain lines run diagonal across the ends of the leg.  This yields the straightest grain along the faces of the legs.  In this case I used the more quartersawn faces for the front of the legs – this helps to keep any face grain on the legs from competing with the simple design of the piece.  I mention this here because it is important to realize that it is at this point in the build process where these kinds of decisions must be made.  In my mind, this is just an extension of the design process that started with the initial sketch. Choosing your stock wisely here will pay dividends in the look of the finished piece.

I milled the rough leg blanks to 1 3/4″ square and then cross cut them to length on the table saw using the miter gauge with an extension fence.  However, because the legs on the table will be splayed out to each side by 2 degrees, it was at this point that I needed to account for that detail.  I first made a pencil mark on one face of each leg at both the top and bottom to indicate the general angles to be cut – it’s easy to get these angles turned around in your head and to make a mistake.  So, a quick set of pencil marks to orient you when cutting is helpful.  I then set the miter gauge for a 2 degree angle and cross cut one end of each leg.  Next, I set a stop block on the miter gauge fence at 28 1/2″ and cross cut the other ends of the legs, again at 2 degrees.  Batching these operations to occur at with the same setup assured me that each of the legs would be cut with exactly the same angle and also to the same length.  In the picture you can see the angled cuts on the top ends of two opposing legs.

I am using loose tenons for the joinery on this table.  So, while the legs were still square in cross-section I machined the mortises to accept the loose tenons for both the front and side aprons.  The side aprons have only single tenon but the front and back aprons have double tenons for added strength.  I used the router mortising jig that I wrote about previously to create the three 1/4″ mortises in each leg blank.

With the angled ends and mortises cut on the square leg blanks, I could now move on to the operation of tapering the legs.  To start, on the two faces to be tapered I marked the legs at a point 4 3/4″ down from the top and at the bottom 3/4″ from each of the inside corners.  There are many ways to taper legs.  I contemplated just marking out the tapers and free-handing the cuts on the band saw.  I also thought about just using the jointer and making repeated passes to achieve the tapers.  Then, I noticed a little used jig in the corner of the shop.

This old jig was one that that I once used to cut straight edges on rough stock with the table saw.  I thought that it could be re-purposed for the process of tapering the legs of the table.  The jig is simple – it consists of a piece of melamine coated particle shelf stock from a home center and a couple of De-Sta-Co type clamps.  I re-oriented the clamps on risers to account for the thickness of the legs, added a couple of stops to account for the tapers to be cut and I was ready to go.

The jig rides along the fence on the table saw.  To cut the tapers I aligned the edge of the jig with the blade and positioned the fence against the jig.  Each leg was positioned on the jig aligning the 3/4″ end with the edge of the jig at the leading end and the 4 3/4″ mark at the trailing end.   The stock was pushed through the blade cutting a perfect taper – then the stock was rotated 90 degrees and the second taper was cut.  The important thing here was to cut the faces in the correct order so that after rotating the leg I still had a square face resting on the jig.  Doing so required the addition of a small block under the front clamp for each second taper cut.  In the picture you can see a leg blank in the jig with a taper already cut.

Next up I’ll start the work on the aprons and the top.

• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Aprons
• Hunt Board Class: Day 1
• Queen Anne Side Table: Leg mortises, knee blocks and posts
• Queen Anne Side Table: Roughing out the legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery

The basic steps from Rough to Ready

Lot’s of articles have been written about taking a board from rough to 4-square. The basic steps that I follow are:

1. Crosscut to rough length
2. Rip to rough width
3. Joint one face of the board
4. Joint an adjacent edge square to the previously jointed face
5. Rip to final width
6. Crosscut to final length and/or add joinery details such as tenons, etc.

In this post, I’d like to focus on the first two steps of the process and to discuss how I typically approach them, and why.

As a point of clarification, the process and order of operations that I follow is deliberate. Some might argue with the first step of crosscutting to rough length so early in the process. My rationale is as follows: I try to get each piece as close to finished dimension as possible before any surfacing with the jointer or planer. Smaller pieces are easier to handle and the inevitable task of removing imperfections in a board (cup, twist, bow, etc.) are easier remove and with less wasted stock when the pieces are smaller. In some cases, a piece of stock that is basically unusable due to a condition such as bowing while in its long state can be successfully managed when cut down to smaller lengths because the condition is less pronounced in the shorter pieces.

Crosscutting to Rough Length

As I mentioned, the first thing that I do is to crosscut pieces to rough length. The only time that I deviate from this is when the finished parts may end up too short to rip, joint and/or plane in future steps of the milling process. My rule of thumb is a minimum of about 16″ in length. Shorter than that and I will usually try to layout and group like pieces within the same piece of stock. Then I will safely mill the longer board until the final step where I can crosscut to final lengths and add the joniery.

My tool of choice for this cross cutting step may surprise you. I typically use the hand held jigsaw for this operation. I do this because the jigsaw is portable and easy to maneuver in my small shop. I can also choose to crosscut in a larger area if necessary if the piece is to long to easily get into my shop. Those are the practical reasons however, the more important reason is safety.

Rough stock by nature is uneven and uncooperative when trying to hold it against a tool’s table or fence. It tends to wobble and shift in those situations. Of course, those conditions are a problem for tools such as the table saw, radial arm saw and/or miter saw. The way that those tools work with their relatively thick rotating blades tends to allow for conditions that support kickback to occur. Because the jigsaw is portable, I can set the rough stock across my workbench and with the aid of a roller stand for support, crosscut pieces as necessary without any worries. The jigsaw also has a very narrow blade that reciprocates rather than rotates. Thus, kickback is rarely a concern.

Ripping to Rough Width

Once the pieces have been crosscut to rough length, I can rip them to rough width. I can hear you out there saying that if I do this now before the stock is smooth I will either have to use a jig or risk kickback on the table saw. Well, the reason that I can do this now without the need of any special sleds or other jigs is because of the tool that I use.

My tool of choice for the rough ripping operation is the band saw. Because of the same dangerous condiitons that I described which can promote kickback during crosscutting rough stock, using the table saw for this operation (without the use of a rough ripping sled or some other device to make it safe) is not advisable.

I use the band saw to rough rip for much the same reasons that I use the jigsaw for rough crosscutting. The blade is thin and moves in a single direction toward the table. Even with the tendency for rough stock to close in on the cut while it is ripped (caused from relieving stresses in the board which develop during the growing and/or drying process) there is virtually no danger of kickback. The worst thing that may typically happen in severe cases is that the blade can bind requiring the kerf to be propped open with a wedge in order to complete the cut.

Other merits of using the band saw to rough rip are numerous. Some examples are: the ability to follow certain grain patterns in a rough board rather than ripping parallel to the edge in order to have the best looking piece result; to easily work around defects in stock; to get maximal use of a board due to the very narrow kerf of the band saw; and finally to more easily work with and rip thick stock avoiding potentially risky operations at the table saw.

Again, with the band saw I will sometimes group parts when I lay them out on the rough stock so that the ripping operation is safe both at this tool as well as later during final ripping on the table saw. I do not like to rip anything on the table saw that is shorter than 16″ in length and/or with a finished width narrower than about 2-3″. Generally, I do these dangerous ripping tasks safely at the band saw with a longer piece of stock and then joint or plane to finished width before the final cross cut.

If you don’t have a band saw, you could also accomplish these rough ripping tasks with a hand held jigsaw. Alternately, if you do not have a jig saw, you should build a rough ripping sled for your table saw in order to rip rough stock safely.

Hopefully, this sheds some light on the process that I use and why I do it this way. My main goal is to stay safe and to make the process as easy as possible within the constraints of my shop. I’d like to hear your thoughts on the subject. Please leave a comment with the comments field at the end of the post or send me an e-mail.

• Woodworker’s Safety Week 2009: The 12″ and 3″ Rules
• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Aprons
• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Tapered Legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping
• The benefits of rough lumber for design and building

I have to say that this was the most nerve-racking part of the build so far. After all of the work that has gone into building the box up to this point, the idea of taking a router to it was a bit daunting! As I will explain, this operation had the added complication of dealing with the arch of the top and back while routing to maintain the router in perfect position so that the channels were at the appropriate depth and width to receive the binding and purfling.

I didn’t take any pictures of the flush trimming operation, but I will walk through the binding/purfling operation because the same procedure and jig were used to first trim the top and back flush with the sides. Of course, this was done with a flush-trimming bit in the router.

What you realize very quickly when examining into how to perform this operation is that because of the arches in the top (1/5 degrees) and especially the back (5 degrees), the router base – even on a small laminate trimmer – will not allow the cutter to remain parallel with the sides while moving around the guitar. Similarly, because of the varying contour of the back and top the cutter may also have a tendency to move up and down during the cut leaving you with channels that vary in size.

There are varying ways to deal with the challenges posed by this situation. Everything from scoring and cutting the channels by hand with a specialized tool to creating an elaborate telescoping and/or vertically movable fixture for the router to mount on while moving around the guitar body. In the end, I opted for a compromise and created a simple jig for my Bosch Colt router. In the pictures you can see the jig clamped into position on the router base. The main section is designed to align with the bearing of a rabateing bit that cuts the correct depth channel. If If this section is held vertical and in contact with the side of the guitar while routing the channel will have a uniform depth. To help with this there is a small piece double-stick taped to the router base, effectively moving the base contact point very close to the edge of the guitar where the arch will not affect the width of the channel being routed. The last picture shows the router in position to rout the channel for the binding.

The operation started with trimming the back and top to be flush with the sides. There are some other issues to deal with here concerning grain direction. Because of the rotation of the bit and moving with and against the grain there was a danger of tearing out pieces of the back and top during the routing operation. As a result, I first made a series of clockwise climb cuts in select places and then followed up with a complete pass around the guitar in the standard counter-clockwise direction. The picture shows the path of the clockwise climb cuts in red and the following counter-clockwise pass in blue.

Routing the channels for the binding was next. Even though the back had more arch to deal with, I started there thinking that if I made a mistake, any fix would be less noticeable on the back. The four climb cuts came first and then the standard cut. This was done with a bearing on the rabateing bit which cut a channel that was bout .60″ deep to match the thickness of the bindings. Things went OK on this, with a couple of bobbles of the router that will require some hand cleanup. So, then it was on to the top following an analogous procedure. Again, things went OK but some hand cleanup will be required. Next, I switched bearings on the bit, reset the cutter depth and adjusted the jig to allow routing of the purfling channel along the top – same sequence of cuts with lots of trepidation! Again, a bit of hand cleanup will be required but, the stepped channels for the top binding and purfling are now in place.

In the pictures you can see the results of the operations along with the dry fit of the binding and purfling. The jig worked well. Probably the only thing I would change the next time is to use a slightly smaller piece for the contact point so it is affected even less by the contour of the back and top. Also, I found that keeping the body stationary while routing was a challenge. It turned out that keeping the router in position was not that hard with the help of the jig but, keeping the body from moving during the operation was an issue. The next time I think I will create a fixture that clamps and raises the body into a stable position for the operation.

• Dreadnought Guitar: Installing the binding and purfling
• Dreadnought Guitar: Enclosing the body
• Dreadnought Guitar: Sanding the kerfed linings and installing the rosette
• Modern Shaker Table: String Inlay and Glue Up
• Looking ahead: How about lutherie?

In order to do this I first had to repeat the process of fitting the back to the sides and notching the kerfed linings to receive the back braces. I followed the same procedures as for the top described in an earlier post. The important thing here was to assure that the body length was 20″ from the neck block to the tail before cutting the notches. Even with the inside mold and the top applied, the sides still flexed a bit so, I made sure that things were aligned to the previous marks that I made on the underside of the back.

Once I had the notches cut for the back, it was time to finally remove the inside mold. I scored an X-shape into the cardboard with a sharp utility knife and pulled out the triangular pieces. This finally gave me a view of how I did on the top glue-up. I guess I did a reasonable job of estimating the amount of glue to apply because there was no squeeze-out on the inside of the guitar body!

One more thing needed to be completed before attaching the back. For reinforcement, strips of spruce were applied to the sides periodically along the perimeter of the guitar. These were simply cut to size to fit between the kerfed linings and glued. The clamping was a bit cumbersome because of the depth of the sides. As I went along on this I created some cauls with some scrap and added tape to the ends so that one clamp could apply pressure to the entire strip. The only thing I found that was problematic during this process was controlling glue squeeze-out . I tended to wait until the glue gelled and then scraped it off however, working around the clamps in a tight area was a bit tedious.

I made sure that the inside of the guitar was clean and then went about gluing and clamping the back. This operation followed much the same procedure as attaching the top. I used the same spool clamps along with a couple of Quick-grip clamps at the neck and tails blocks. In the first picture you can see the glue applied to the neck and tail blocks and the kerfed linings. The second picture shows the clamping masterpiece with the back in place waiting for the glue to dry!

I waited 24 hours for the glue to set, removed the clamps and inspected the joint all along the back. Things looked good so, there was one more operation to complete before I could move on to routing the channels for the binding and purfling. The last thing to do was to remove the little square of wood on the top that covered the neck mortice. I scored inside the edges of the neck mortice with a utility knife and then cut short saw kerfs with a flush-cut saw (just because that is the smallest saw have no hand, not because I was cutting flush with anything). I worked the end of the piece with the knife until I could snap the piece off and then cleaned things up with a sharp chisel.

As I said, routing the channels for the binding and purfling is next. That will be an interesting operation. It will require some jigging in order to do it properly. We’ll cover that in the next post. If you have any questions or comments, please either leave a comment using the comments link at the end of the post or send me an email at thecraftsmanspath@gmail.com.

• Dreadnaught Guitar: Attaching the top
• Dreadnaught Guitar: Notching the sides for the top braces
• Dreadnought Guitar: Assembling the sides and kerfed linings
• Dreadnought Guitar: Adding the back braces
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs

Because the top must be clamped all along its perimeter, any normal clamping scheme would require quite a number of clamps in oder to adequately attach the top to the sides. When I previously glued the braces to both the top and back plates, I used the go-bar deck with flexible go-bars as clamps. This technique would also work for attaching the top (and the back as well) however, there are a few issues with it. First, in order to do it I would have to cut down all of the go-bars due to the hight of the sides. Second, because there is a radius along the edges of the sides, the setup would not be very stable to clamp with go-bars without something to compensate for that radius.

So, what to do? Go out and buy a bunch of light duty clamps? No – just borrow another page for the old-time luthery book and make some spool clamps. In the picture you can see the pile of these that I made. Twenty-four of them, to be exact.

The spool clamps are fairly simple to make – an 8″ carriage bolt, some 1 1/4″ dowel rod, some fender washers, wing nuts and cork. It was a bit tedious to glue the cork to the pieces of dowel – I did this in strips (after the dowel pieces were already cut) and then trimmed the cork to the edge of the dowel with scissors. Not pretty because the cork is a bit crumbly, but it works. The only other issue was drilling holes through the dowel and cork for the carriage bolts to pass through. To do this I cut a circle in piece of MDF and cut a line with the band saw into circle from the edge. This allowed me to squeeze the circle closed with a screw in order to clamp each piece of dowel while drilling the holes.

OK so, with that activity all done, before I could attach the top, I needed to cut away the side material that was overlapping the mortise in the neck block. To do this I scored inside the lines of the neck mortise with a sharp utility knife and snapped away the side material. Finally I trimmed away the rough edges of the sides with a sharp chisel until they were even with the sides of the neck mortise. The rounded bottom does not need to be perfectly true because the neck tenon does not actually contact it when assembled.

With the neck mortise clear, it was time to dry fit the top, make any final adjustments and then glue it up. The important things here were to be sure the the neck edge was 3 15/16″ from the sound hole and that the tail edge was 20″ from the neck edge. I had previously measured these locations and marked them on the underside of the top with a pencil so, I was ready.

I applied glue sparingly to the kerfed lining strip along the top edge of the sides – I did not want any squeeze out on the inside of the guitar body. The clamping started at the neck end with a couple of Quick-grip clamps and a caul. With these clamps in place, I added a few spool clamps along the upper bout on each side of the neck block. This allowed me to then apply a clamp from neck to tail to bring the tail in to the 20″ mark. From there I just clamped the tail and added spool clamps along the sides – the last two being applied after the waist clamp was removed.

• Dreadnought Guitar: Enclosing the body
• Dreadnought Guitar: Assembling the sides and kerfed linings
• Dreadnaught Guitar: Notching the sides for the top braces
• Dreadnought Guitar: Adding the back braces
• Dreadnought Guitar: Installing the binding and purfling

When we last left the Dreadnaught Guitar project, I had completed all of the bracing for the top. The next step in the project is to glue the top and the back to the sides. However, before this can be done, the kerfed linings must be notched for the braces and the braces must be trimmed to intersect with the linings appropriately.

In the picture, you can see the guitar sides (still in the waist clamp) mounted in the vice on my workbench. I clamped the top to the sides temporarily in order to mark where the top braces intersect the sides. This was important step which required some careful measuring and squaring. Even though there is an inner mold supporting the sides, there is still some play in them. When clamping the top on, I made sure that the neck block area was as square as possible to the guitar top. This is important because it will minimize adjustments to the neck when it gets attached later (I’ll need to repeat this step when I actually glue the top, as well) It was also imperative that the neck block be located at 3 15/16″ from the sound hole and that the tail block be 20″ from the neck block. Once all of this was set I clamped the top to the sides.

With the top clamped in place I marked the positions of all of the braces where they intersected the sides. I made sure to capture than angles that the braces made as they crossed the sides. After this was done, it was time to mark the braces along the sides to indicate where they would need to be trimmed to. I did this while the top was still clamped in place so that I would not have to repeat the placement again later.

Now it was time to cut the notches in the kerfed linings to receive the braces. I’ve seen this done two ways – one way is to cut all the way through the sides where the braces intersect, the other is to cut only through the kerfed linings to create a little “pocket” for the ends of the braces to be glued into. I chose the latter. It just seems to be a more refined way to do this. To do this, I used a knife along the marked lines at an angle to create a kerf on each side of each notch and then carefully removed the waste with a sharp chisel. It was important to only recess these notches down to the height of the braces (about .100″). They also had to be angled slightly to match the angle on the ends of the braces.

With the notches cut in the linings, I moved on to the top to trim the braces. Because my previous marks were made on the outside edge of the sides, I moved in toward the center of the top a distance equal to the thickness of the sides from my marked locations. I made a narrow saw kerf at that location and then removed the ends of the braces with a chisel. I also reshaped the ends of the braces to be sure that they finished at about .100″.

Next, it will be time to glue the top to the sides. However, before that can be done I need to make some special clamps to help with the process. Of course, once that is done, I will have to repeat this process for the back.

• Dreadnaught Guitar: Attaching the top
• Dreadnought Guitar: Enclosing the body
• Dreadnought Guitar: Assembling the sides and kerfed linings
• Dreadnought Guitar: Bracing the top
• Dreadnought Guitar: Adding the back braces