Our experiences in life are shaped by many things: family, friends, school, things that we do, places we travel to and everything we encounter along the way. As we grow and learn we are malleable and many impressions, both small and large are left in the soft shell of our existence. We learn from seeing, from hearing and from doing. Often, the lessons that we learn in life aren’t apparent at the time however, they almost always surface at some time later when we need them most. These lessons help us to define our path in life and to navigate the course that we have chosen.
This week I lost a teacher, someone who taught me many lessons both in hand and in heart. This teacher taught me many things about life and about myself. As often happens with the best teachers, many of the lessons he taught me I did not know of at the time. Not until I drew upon them later did I understand how and why they were learned. From this teacher, I learned both the practical and the abstract. I learned a work ethic and the lesson that nothing was beyond my capabilities if I worked hard to obtain it. I did not know it at the time but in these lessons he taught me to use my mind, my hands and my heart in everything that I do.
My teacher had only an eighth grade education. However, he was skilled and wise well beyond those years. He did not practice as a craftsman or an artist but, many of the lessons he taught were the ones that shaped my abilities in these areas. I learned mostly by watching him and listening to him and sometimes helping with the things that he did. I learned to do by doing and that trying and failing is better than not trying at all. Beyond the practical, he taught me that kindness, compassion and sharing a helpful hand would always yield returns in the end. He was always there for others and he was always willing to share everything that he had to give.
I’ll always have an undying respect and admiration for my teacher. He taught me how to love, how to laugh, how to work and how to cry. From him I learned to be a better husband, a better father and a better friend. He taught me how to learn, how to teach and how to share. He gave me my passion, he gave me my skills and he gave me my humility.
This teacher also gave me my life – this teacher is my father. He has shaped me more than I may even understand. The lessons that he taught are innumerable and the gifts that he gave are immeasurable. Being with him during his last days and holding his hand I could not help but think of the times when the roles were reversed and he had held mine. Guiding me and teaching me from then until now.
The best teachers are not always who we think they are and the best lessens are sometimes the hardest to learn. I know that even in his passing he has taught me things that I may not yet understand and I am certain that those lessons will continue to be realized as I go on without him. I can only hope that I can pass on those lessons as well as he has done with with me.
I’ll miss you Dad.
Proverbs 7:1-3
My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you; keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye; bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.
With the carcase of the table completed in the last post, it was finally time to build and dovetail the drawer. This is kind of a long post but, I thought everyone would rather see the entire process at once rather that breaking it into multiple posts. So, here we go!
The design for this drawer includes an overhanging lip on the top and sides so, the blank for the drawer front needed to be 7/8″ thick. This allows for a substantial drawer front with about a 3/8″ overhanging lip and half-blind dovetails at the front of the drawer. The back of the drawer has through dovetails and is designed to allow the drawer bottom to slide into groves in the sides and front while being secured to the back with a single screw. During the previous milling operations for the table I had already created a blank for the drawer front. So, the remaining components (sides, back and bottom) were still remaining. For the drawer sides and back, I chose some Soft Maple stock that I had in thicknesses just over a 1/2″ – my aim was to have the drawer sides and back all milled to a finished 1/2″ in thickness.
After cutting the thicknessed stock to rough size, I measured the pieces directly in the recess for the drawer. I offset the side pieces from the runners with a some scrap pieces of laminate to result in a consistent offset from the runners with minimal side-to-side play in the finished drawer. With the drawer components cut to finished length it was time to start the process of marking and cutting the dovetails.
As I mentioned, the front of the drawer has half-blind dovetails and the back of the drawer has through dovetails. I chose to use two tails at the back of the drawer and three at the front. The first step in marking out the dovetails was to set a marking gage to the thickness of the drawer stock. Then a line was scribed on both the faces and edges of the tail boards. For the pin boards, only the faces of the boards needed to be scribed. These scribe lines do two things: they give you a visual place to stop your saw cuts and they also give you a starting point to achieve crisp edge while chiseling out the waste between tails and pins. I usually scribe the lines with my Japanese marking gage and then go over the scribed lines lightly with a pencil so that they can be seen easier.
As you probably know there is almost a religious war over whether you should cut the pins or tails of the dovetail joint first. The fact of the matter is that it is absolutely possible to do it either way and get beautiful dovetails as a result. Both methods have their merits and shortcomings. Here, I chose to do the tails first. This is mainly because I am self taught and that was the way I started. So, I tend to get better results that way. I have used both techniques before but, as it has been over a year since I last cut any dovetails, I wanted to give myself the best shot at success!
The layout of the tails was done using a set of dividers, a bevel gage and a small square. For the drawer back, I used equal sized tails. For the drawer front, the center tail is slightly larger than the two outside tails to add some visual interest. To do this, I started by marking a point on each end of the tail board to denote the outside pins I then set the divider to a distance that I thought would equal the width of one tail and one pin and starting at one edge of the board I stepped across the end of the board trying the get the divider to land exactly at the pine line on the opposite edge of the board. This took a few tries, adjusting the divider accordingly. Once I had this setting, I stepped off the tails leaving dimples in the end of the board. Then with the same setting, I started from the opposite edge of the board with the same technique. The resulting dimples marked out the locations of the ends of the tails. I squared these lines across the edge of the board and then used the bevel gage to extend them on each face down to the baseline. I did the front dovetails the same way, except I used the same setting on the divider and only stepped of once from each edge leaving a larger tail in the center.
With the tails marked, I started the cutting operations at the back of the drawer. There were two reasons for this: first, because I have not cut any dovetails in a while, hiding any mistakes back there was preferred and second, the back of the drawer has through dovetails which are a little more straight forward to cut. The cutting process is the same as I performed on the top rail in a previous post. I clamped each drawer side into my vise at an angle so that the line of the cut was vertical and sawed to the baseline with my Japanese dovetail saw. I sawed all of the cuts on one side, then repositioned the board and sawed the other side to maintain consistency. I did this for both ends of the tail boards. The next step was to remove the waste between the tails so that the pins could be marked from the tails. This was done by using the coping saw to first remove the bulk of the waste while staying clear of the baseline and then chiseling down half way from each face at the baseline.
The process of marking the pins from the tails is straightforward. I put the pin board into the vise on my bench getting it perfectly square to the bench top. I then placed the tail board on top of my bench plane which was on edge on the bench. With the pin board in the vise at the same height as the plane I carefully aligned the tail board to the top edge of the pin board until I saw a consistent sliver of light coming through between the boards at each dovetail recess. With the boards aligned I held the tail board in place and marked the pins with a knife along the edges of the tails. I then used the square to extend this lines down the faces to the baseline. The use of the plane in this operation helps to direct the pressure to the end of the tail board keeping it in place while marking as opposed to having pressure get directed to the center of the board while on the bench potentially allowing the tail board to move.
Having marked the pins on both the drawer back and front, it was time to saw the pins and then remove the waste material. For the drawer back, this was straight forward, first cutting the pins with the dovetail saw and then using the coping saw and chisels to remove the waste. The drawer front was a bit more of a challenge. This was because of the 3/8″ lip that I created with the table saw and planed smooth on three sides of the blank.
The pin cuts for half-blind dovetails can only go part way through the drawer front. So, the saw needs to be held at an angle sawing along the waste side of the line until the saw kerf meets both baselines. In this case I had the added complication of the lip which kept me from sawing completely to the baseline at the front of the drawer blank. To protect the lip, I used some masking tape along the lip and sawed as far as I could without cutting into the lip. From there, the rest of the work to remove the waste was done with chisels paring to the marked lines. With all of the tails and pins completed the initial dry fits caused me to do a bit more paring along the pin faces before the joints would seat. I did this by very lightly paring across the grain of the pins until I had met the scribed lines.
Next, using the table saw I cut grooves into the drawer front and sides to receive the drawer bottom. I milled the stock for the drawer bottom from some leftover Poplar that I had. I thicknessed this stock to about 5/16″ and glued up the blank such that the grain ran from side to side in the drawer. I marked and planed a bevel on the three sides of the bottom that are to be housed in the grooves. 
Because the drawer back is shorter than the sides, the drawer bottom sits underneath the back and is affixed with a single screw in a slot to allow for wood movement from front to back in the drawer bottom.
With the bottom completed, I glued up the drawer box assuring that it was both square and also sat evenly on a flat surface without rocking. The last step will be to flush up the tails and pins on the drawer sides with a plane. I’ll do this when I do the final fitting of the drawer. As I stated, I had not cut dovetails in quite a while. These certainly are not prize winners but, they are definitely functional. Many woodworkers seem to get hung up on perfection with dovetails. Due to the way the joint works they there is both a mechanical linkage as well as a glue bond so there is no need for perfection beyond mere aesthetics. If we wanted things to look perfect and exactly uniform, we would simply cut dovetails with a router. We cut them by hand precisely to avoid this production look and to allow the world to see the path of the craftsman that created the joint.
Tags: dovetails, drawer, half-blind dovetails, hand cut dovetails, lipped drawer, pins, tails
In the last post I documented the process of dovetailing the top rail and doing the scroll work on the front and side aprons of the table. With all of the joinery completed on the table carcase it was time to glue up some of the components and to begin work on the interior drawer runner assembly.
The table was glued up in stages in order to make the process manageable. What I have found to be the biggest benefit when doing glue ups is to have everything ready and available and to do a dry run rehearsal of the the entire process before every spreading any glue. This allows you to make your mistakes without the pressure of drying glue and stuck joints while trying to remedy a problem situation. By the time the real glue up occurs, all of the bugs are worked out, materials are at the ready and the process generally goes off without a hitch.
With that said, I started by gluing the back legs and apron as one assembly and the front legs and apron as a second assembly. Though not terribly exciting, in the pictures (click for larger view) you can see these two assemblies in the clamps. As I said, uneventful is a good attribute for glue ups! At this point I also took the time to glue up the boards for the table top. Because four boards make up the top, this too was done in stages. I glued two boards together at a time and then once they had dried, the two pairs of boards were glued together to complete the top.
With the front and back assemblies dry, the next step was to add the side aprons. However, because the drawer runner assembly still had to be installed, this too needed to be done in stages. The process was to first glue the side aprons to the front assembly only. This was done by assembling the entire table carcase to ensure that everything was square and true, while only gluing the front portions of the side aprons. This allowed for the assembly to be disassembled once dry so that the drawer runner could be installed from the back and then the remainder of the table carcase could be glued together.
The drawer runners are fairly simple and consist of an extension of the front apron with an L-shaped runner assembly on each side. There is a small mortise and tenon between the front extender and the L-shaped runners. The joints on these pieces were small so, I decided to mill the mortises with the router and to cut the tenons by hand. The back of the runners are mounted to the rear legs with screws.
You can see in the picture that the front extender was glued to the front apron after the side apron glue up had dried. At the same, time the drawer runner assemblies were glued so they would be ready for assembly once dry. The final glue up consisted of the two drawer assemblies being glued to the front extender and the two side aprons being glued to the back apron assembly that had previously been glued up. This step was the most complex part of the table glue up but, with a dry run everything went together very smoothly.
While the table carcase glue dried I spent some time working with the new (old) smoothing plane on the table top. With a sharp blade and after a bit of adjustment I was able to get some nice fine shavings and a very smooth and flat table top. That was very gratifying and made the previous time I spent restoring the plane all worthwhile.
With the tenon work on the aprons completed, it was time to turn my attention to adding the top rail above where the drawer will go. Also, previously the aprons were left square to more easily facilitate cutting the tenons but, now it was time to add the decorative Queen Anne scroll work to them.
I started with the work to add the top rail. I thought about this much like you would a mortise and tenon operation. I needed to cut a socket (much like a mortise) and then fit a dovetail (much like a tenon) to it. Without getting into a pins vs. tails first debate, doing the socket first in this case makes sense. Just as it is easier to size a tenon to an existing mortise, in this case it is easier to mark and fit a dovetail to an existing socket. I marked the top of the two front legs for the dovetail sockets using a square and a bevel gage. Because this joint was not going to be on display, I just set the bevel gage to a reasonable looking angle and marked the sides of the socket. Then I extended these lines vertically down the inside face of the legs a distance equal to the thickness of the top rail.
The first step in cutting the sockets was to saw the side walls. These cuts had to be done at an angle, only partially cutting the socket – just until the point where the saw kerf met the baselines at both the bottom and back of the socket. This avoided any potential unsightly saw kerfs beyond the dovetail socket that might be seen. However, it also required a bit more chiseling to be done to remove the material from the sockets. I started this removal by chiseling a notch at the end of the sockets on the top of the legs as seen in the picture (click for larger view). From there I chiseled out chips from the face of the legs – repeating these two operations until the sockets were clear.
At this point it was necessary to mark the tails on the ends of the top rail piece. To do this I dry fit the table and clamped the top rail in position above the front legs until just a sliver of light was visible between the end of the rail and the sockets below. I then turned the entire assembly over on my bench and marked the tails with a knife. I removed the top rail from the clamps, continued the baselines around the rail with a square and then darkened all of the knife lines with a sharp pencil.
Next, it was time to cut the tails. I started this operation by clamping the rail into my bench vice at an angle so that while sawing my saw would be perpendicular to the bench top. I sawed the tails just leaving my layout lines, shifting the rails position in the vice accordingly as I cut cut each side. Next, I chiseled a notch along the knife line at the shoulders of the dovetails. This notch acted as a guide for my saw
while I made the shoulder cuts. 
After cutting the tails I made a slight chamfer on the under side of the tails starting it just short of the end of the tails and continuing to the shoulders. This chamfer provides clearance for the tails as they are seated into the sockets. After a few dry fits and some trimming of the tails I had a joint that fit. There were a few small gaps but it was secure and I was not attempting to create a joint for show. The excess material you see on the side apron and front rail will be trimmed flush with a plane later once I have completed the glue up of the table carcase.
After completing this joinery, the next step was to complete the scroll work so that the carcase of the table could be glued up. I had previously made templates to replicate half of the symmetrical scrolls for both the side and front aprons. I used these template to trace a line for cutting at the band saw. 
A line was traced along the template on one side of the apron, the template was flipped about the center line of the apron and then another line was traced to complete the other half of the scroll. This technique assured perfectly symmetrical scrolls. The scrolls were cut at the band saw with a 1/4″ inch blade. For the long scroll on the font apron, I started by drilling a 3/8″ hole at the center in order to assure a perfectly half-round element there. After that, the remainder of the work was at the band saw. Because of the tightness of some of the curves, I had to make some relief cuts at 90 degrees to the cut line to allow small pieces to be cut away thus allowing me to get into tighter areas without any binding of the blade.
Once the scroll cuts were completed I cleaned up the saw marks using both hand tools (rasps, files and sandpaper) and the oscillating spindle sander with a drum sized appropriately for the inside curves. In the picture you can see the table, dry fit with the top rail and the scroll work complete. The next operations will be the glue up of the table carcase and table top and the construction of the drawer runners.
As always, if you have any comments or questions, please leave them here using the comments link at the end of the post, or email me at thecraftsmanspath@gmail.com.
On Friday I attended a meeting of the Rochester Woodworkers Society. This meeting included a lecture by Thomas Pafk . Thomas operates his shop and custom furniture business in East Aurora, New York – just outside of Buffalo. He designs and builds custom furniture in many styles but, is most influenced by the Arts and Crafts style. The most unique aspect of his designs is his use of veneers which appear somewhere in every piece that he builds.
The East Aurora area is also the home of the Roycrofters, a group of artisans following the philosophy of Elbert Hubbard and preserving the ideals which made the Roycroft Campus a center of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Thomas is also one of the few people recognized as a Roycroft Master Artisan which allows him to use the Roycroft “double R” symbol on his work. To become a Roycroft Artisan one must submit his work to a jury comprised of Roycroft Master Artisans who judge it based on the following criteria:
- High quality of hand craftsmanship
- Excellence in design
- Originality of expression
- Professional recognition
- Continuing artistic growth
Periodic reviews of all Roycroft Artisan’s work are mandatory in order to maintain the integrity of the movement. To maintain their status, Artisans are reviewed yearly and Master Artisans every five years.
Thomas is degreed in modelmaking and spent the early part of his career doing work for architects. As his career evolved, he took on freelance work including built-ins and kitchen cabinets. Eventually he gravitated toward furniture and discovered veneering. Living in close proximity to Certainly Wood (one of the best sources for premier veneers) has definitely influenced his progression as a woodworker. Thomas uses veneer in some way in every piece of his work. He feels that the use of veneers really opens up the design possibilities and he describes his work as Arts and Crafts for the 21st century – more modern and contemporary. He does all original designs rather than reproductions though, his work is most certainly influenced by the roots of the movement and designers such as: Harvey Ellis, Charles Limbert and Rennie McIntosh. This influence is evidenced by his heavy use of tapers and arches. In addition to his Arts and Crafts work, Thomas also does some work in the Art Deco style.
During the lecture Thomas, showed many examples of his work and noted various construction techniques as well as the specific use of veneers to enhance the designs. Very often in his designs he will use veneers on panels in the construction. This does two things: it allows for a very solid construction because the panels do not need to float and it also promotes the use of contrasting wood types to highlight specific design elements. For some of his curved pieces Thomas will actually laminate up layers of veneer in a form to create the piece – this allows him to use the most beautiful veneers for the outside faces of the piece. Some examples of this technique were in slat backs of some of his chairs and also in some bow front and Art Deco tables. Thomas noted that in doing veneer work you need to be a bit anal about grain matching but, making this effort results in pieces that set themselves apart from normal solid work. In his veneer work he uses Unibond exclusively for gluing. MDF is his most common substrate because it is flat and stable however, he has used many things including foam for very light weight structures.
Thomas’ lecture was very interesting and informative. I have not done much in the way of veneering however, after seeing some of Thomas’ work and hearing his philosophies on using veneer to enhance the design possibilities I am feeling that this is something that may be worth a try on a project in the near future. Also, it’s funny that I live only about 60 miles away from East Aurora yet I have never been to the Roycroft Campus. Looks like there may be a Woodworking roadtrip in my future!
