Apothecary Chest – weekend three
This is
the work completed this weekend. It includes rebating the rear of the
carcase in preparation for the back (at the end of the build), tuning
up the dados for the horizontal drawer blades, and building the
drawer blades.
Rebating
the side panels of the carcase is pretty straight forward. The rebate
is 6mm x 6mm. Planing the full width is unobstructed.
However,
where the upper and lower panels need a rebate, planing through will
lead to gaps in the panels as these end in dovetail pins. There would
have not been an issue here had I used mitred dovetails, but this was
an oversight at the time. Now I have a couple of choices, one being
that I add a bead around the read panel, however I do not want
additional adornments on the chest.
The decision is made
to use a stopped rebate at each end. If completed at this stage it
would lead to a weak set of pins. This is where the rebates would end
...
Instead,
they will stop short of the end at this stage, and the remainder
chiselled out after the carcase is glued up (glueing up will support
the weakened pins) ..
The
ends of the panel are excavated to start and end a saw cut, and then
the shoulders are sawn with a azebiki ...
You
do not need to create a chisel wall for the saw teeth if you knife
the line with a Japanese cutting gauge or a thickish knife. This
opens a wide enough kerf ...
No
guide, just muscle memory...
A
cutting gauge from each side will clean out the rebates
...
Cleaning
up the dados
The strategy for the
dados was to make them 20mm with a power router, which was done, and
then fit panels to these. The panels were completed with the
assistance of a jointer-planer/thicknesser, and this made it easier
to dial them close to 20mm. Final surfacing was with
handplanes.
Although the dados were made with a brand new 20mm
straight bit, they were not as precise as I would have expected. A
little tuning was necessary to bring them to width.
The
tool of choice here is a side rebate (rabbet) plane. This one is by
Veritas. It is in stopped mode to cut to the end of the stopped dado
...
This
was the fit ...
A
total of 40 dados needed to be tuned (that took a few hours!). The
drawer blades below are, in fact, for the 24 drawers, and will be cut
to fit the compartments.
The
drawer blades
The design of the chest
called for vertical dividers. This would create an emphasis on the
vertical. Every apothecary chest I have seen used horizontal
dividers/drawer blades as the primary construction. It would have
been a lot easier to have done so as well since the bow front could
be shaped in, and then the curved drawer blades attached to the
carcase. This would have been followed with the individual vertical
dividers which, while needing to be aligned, would be straight and
uncomplicated to align. Starting with the vertical dividers meant
that the bowed horizontal drawer blades presented a complication with
alignment.
I built another template ...
This
was similar to the plan drawn up at the start. It differed in that it
represented the drawer blades plus the area seated into the 3mm deep
dados.
Cut to size ...
The
curved ends were removed ...
...
and a second template made to form the bow front of the drawer blades
(above and below) ...
In the
meantime the (horizontal) drawer blades were sawn to size. Not that
the grain for all runs across the width of the chest. Expansion takes
place front-to-back.
The
sections will still require shaping to a bow ...
I
had a chance to use the mitre gauge I built for the Hammer slider
...
The
shaped merbau drawer blades now need to be given their walnut end
faces ...
These
are glued with the aid again of blue tape ..
The
templates from before are now used to shape the ends ...
And
the result is a drawer blade ready to fit into the dados
...
Fitting
next ....
Regards from Perth
Derek
May 2018