23 April 2014
The pieces have all been cut and thicknessed. The original has movable shelves resting on pins in holes spaced 1' apart on the inner legs. I have an X-Y table coming for my mini drill press and may attempt the holes once I get it installed.
The original also has floating tenons between rails and posts, but I think I am going to cut tenons on the rails as usual and use basic mortise and tenon joinery. I will test my oil finish and others on some scrap to see what looks best.
The back is composed of boards with "ship lap" joinery which is basically the same as half lap joinery. The back boards and side panels 'float" in the mortise grooves, and the back boards are not glued together which can give an uneven but authentic look. I will make that decision to glue or not when the time comes
This will be considerably faster to complete than the Morris Chair was, although I will be away from my shop for the next three or four days. This "kit" awaits my return.
I received the package I was waiting for and found that to mount it to the drill press table I would need a drill press, and an M4 metric die and 3.3mm drill... Luckily Harbor Freight has a set of combination drill and tap that eliminates the need to change bits and the inherent wobble hand tapping seems to create.
I set my large press to as slow as it would go, marked and center punched the hole locations per the diagram that came with it and proceeded. The drill bit part made a clean hole, and when the threading tap portion made contact it self fed through the mini drill press table and deburred the hole with a tapered section at the top of the bit. Turning off the press and loosening the bit allowed it to be unscrewed from the new hole. Neat and clean! I will take some pix and insert them here where appropriate later.
With a little practice I should be able to drill the shelf holes evenly spaced. The numbered black dial on each knob is movable so once I get the spacing figured out and shrunk to metric I can zero the dial, drill a hole, turn the wheel however far I must for the next hole, zero the dial, drill and repeat over and over and over. Each turn of the wheel equals 1mm and is graduated in 10'ths.
One thing I really need is a depth stop for this drill press. If anyone knows a link to a tutorial on modifying an early Microlux drill press to add a depth stop, please email me or message me with the link. thanks...
9 May update..
After figuring out and building the depth stop (see the depth stop blog entry) I driled the shelf pin holes.
The next task was to attempt the half lap ship lap edges on the back boards. I tore a couple up trying to run them under an overhead router. The problem is that they are only 0.020" thick and to ship lap I needed to take off a small strip of half of that, or 0.010".
Today I clamped them under a hardwood block (future hand clamp body half) up against a 0.012 inch thick piece of aluminum with just enough showing to form the edge when scraped.
After turning them over the same thing was done on the other edges. I chose the front sides and assembled the back with tape to hold the boards in place as I do not plan on gluing the back boards together at this point. Dry fitting the rear posts and upper and lower rails gives me hope that it will look pretty good once all together.
Dry fit of sides and rails prior to mortising the fromt posts for the front rails.
Gluing bottom shelf in after gluing the front rails.
Blue tape removed.
Squaring up and gluing shelf, repeated for next shelf
Assembly complete except for small metal angle brackets beneath the shelves to emulate pinned brackets, and cutting and attaching the corbels.
The backs of the back boards are rough hewn looking which is not uncommon for a piece that will be against a wall. The ship lap can be seen from this angle.
But not so much from this angle...
Corbels and shelf brackets installed.
I am hoping that the oil will mitigate the over application of cyanoacrylate near the brackets.
Final gluing of spline fillers in the dadoes on the bottoms of the legs.
After application of a coat of boiled linseed oil.
It appears that the back and side wood choice was walnut and not the mahogany. They came out a nice deep warm brown and have a nice contrast to the mahogany frame and shelves.
The under shelf brackets which are also on the front shelf corners.
Other than a future coat of carnuba wax or two once the oil has set, I declare this project complete!
What next? Maybe another couple of these in solid walnut, solid mahogany, and solid oak. I do have plans for an A&C lamp that would go nicely with this. If it turns into a room box it will need some light.
Stay tuned!
