Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Pennsylvania spice chest 8, outside of cabinet completed.

Out here blogging takes longer time than building.
Not that I am such a slow writer, but just getting blogspot to open the page where I can actually write takes half an hour every once now and then.

But Brian Eve has sent me a tutorial on how to make my pictures smaller, so hopefully that should speed up the process of uploading pictures on the blog. Let's see about that. I remain skeptical until proven otherwise.

The crown moulding and the base moulding were difficult to mount. Mostly because I managed to make the box a little bit out of square, and on top of that I had to struggle with workholding for non flat pieces of moulding.
The front of the crown moulding was glued to the entire width of the case, and the two side pieces were just glued in the forward 2.5" more or less, and then got a few brads to secure them near the backside. Hopefully that will allow for a bit of wood movement.

The base moulding all attaches to a frame that was joined with mortise and tenons. So all the mouldings are simply glued to that frame. The frame is also where the legs are attached.

For the feet of the spice chest, I considered either turning some or making shaped feet. Spruce is not a super good wood for turning, plus I wanted to prove to myself that I could make shaped feet without a bandsaw or a jigsaw, so shaped feet it was.
The front legs were joined by gluing the miter. I didn't ad any reinforcements, cause they would also be glued to the sub frame anyway, besides there was no idea in pushing the difficulty of this to an extreme level.

The rear feet were left as a long block of wood (7.5"), so I could plane the shape for both feet at the same time.
I sketched the desired shape on the end of the feet, and used my moving fillister plane without the depth stop and the fence. The outside curve was a walk in the part to make, the inside curve took a bit longer and was cleaned up using a half round file with some coarse sandpaper wrapped around it.
When the shapes were planed on all the parts, I drilled a couple of holes to remove some of the clumsiness. For some strange reason, we have some incredible fine wood drills on board, approximately 1" and 1.25" in diameter. I used the 1"drill and the result was perfect.

After the drilling, I marked some angled lines that I sawed next to, and finally I eased the outside edges with a round file and a bit of sandpaper.

The feet were glued and screwed in place after I eyeballed their position.

Thanks to Brian Eve's trick, it only took 8 minutes to upload a picture :-)
Please note the very neutral and non disturbing background for my picture. I take a lot of pride in presenting my work so it looks the part. A key ingredient to this is to make sure that there is no clutter in the picture..


Outside completed.










22 comments:

  1. Wow! It looks amazing. I can't believe you did those moldings with no molding planes.

    And the picture looks great. Even when I make it bigger, it is still big enough.

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    1. Thanks.
      I guess I need to take a close up picture of the mouldings at some point.
      I am getting increasingly better at using the moving filister for all kinds of stuff that it is not intended to be used for.
      Cheers
      Jonas

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  2. Looks great! if you are making that at sea I bet its the first Pennsylvania spice box to made there.

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    1. Thank you.
      It is made at sea, well, more correctly in port, but on board a ship at least. So I still hope it is the first seaborne Pennsylvania spice chest.
      Brgds.
      Jonas

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  3. Awesome, Jonas, amazing the detail you're getting with that tool set. You're helping the rest of us set ojur sights higher. Hope to see more images when you get back to dry land, want to understand better how you did the decorative work.
    Jeff

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Jefski
      I will try to get the "in house professional photographer" to take some better pictures once I land.
      Maybe I'll try to move the piece to the control room, there is slightly less clutter.
      Brgds
      Jonas

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  4. Jonas, das ist wirklich unglaublich, was Du mit den wenigen Werkzeugen in dieser Werkstatt gebaut hast!

    Liebe Grüße
    Pedder

    Jonas,

    unbelievable what you did with this few tools in that workshop.

    Cheers
    Pedder

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    Replies
    1. Danke schön Pedder.
      Es hat spass gemacht so weit, aber es ist nur möglich weil wir in Hafen sind. So ich kann fast jedes Abend ein bisschen darauf arbeiten.

      Liebe Grüsse
      Jonas

      It has been fun so far, it is only possible because we are in port. So I can work a bit on the project most evenings.

      Cheers
      Jonas

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  5. Jonas,

    I love the manly man tools in the background :-). I join the others in awe of what you do in limited conditions.

    BTW, the chest looks great with no caveats,

    ken

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    1. Hi Ken
      Thanks for the nice comment.
      All the mitering of mouldings almost made me convert to Shakerism. But once it is all in place the problems are forgotten.
      Pictures can be deceiving - There are some gaps at the mouldings, but I might paint the piece, and then I can use some putty to cover the gaps.
      Brgds
      Jonas

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  6. Hi Jonas,
    the little spice chest came out great.
    As always I'm thrilled about your result in relation to the conditions you have.
    At any rate inspiring.
    Cheers,
    Stefan

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    Replies
    1. Hi Stefan
      Thanks for the nice comment.
      I am glad that I am able to inspire with my wood work out here.
      The drawers will probably wait until I get home in a little less than a week, because the last week on board is always kind of hectic.
      Brgds
      Jonas

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  7. And you never cease to amaze, in particular the moulding. I had a difficult time making a moulding in my garage, let alone a ship at sea/shipboard!!
    How do you plan on finishing? I've seen some examples stained, some painted. It's a very nice design so I bet either way it will look awesome!
    Bill

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    1. Hi Bill.
      I have to confess that I used a bit of sand paper for the mouldings, but they did turn out pretty good. The most difficult thing was to cut an accurate miter and clamp them onto the case. I guess that is why there are a few gaps when seen from the top.

      I haven't made a definite plan for finishing the chest, but I am leaning towards trying out some grain painting.
      My idea is that people like myself who couldn't afford to get a spice chest made out of mahogany or curly maple etc. would perhaps have had someone make a spice chest out of pine and then it would have been grain painted to look like a much more expensive species of wood.

      Thanks
      Brgds
      Jonas

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  8. Nice work Jonas. Really looks great. I was going to ask how you did the mouldings, but you mentioned the moving fillister. I'm guessing you made the curves with sandpaper. Can you elaborate?

    Matt

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  9. Hi Matt.
    Thanks for the comment, I am glad you like the piece.
    The mouldings were made by sketching the desired profile on the end of the board.
    I deliberately chose to make a profile without too many concave curves. Because these would be the most time consuming to make without the proper tools.

    Try to look at the picture from this entry:
    http://mulesaw.blogspot.se/2016/11/pennsylvania-spice-chest-6-crown.html


    Once I had sketched the profile, I adjusted the moving filister so it would cut down to my lines. The profile as it looks on the picture has got 3 standard rabbets that have different heights and widths. The concave section was made just like a rabbet, except that I stayed a bit mor away from the line. whenever I felt I was near the line, I adjusted the rabbet to be something like 1/32" narrower, In the end I dismounted the depth stop because it got in my way, so I had to eyeball that the cut wasn't too inconsistent in the depth.
    Before sanding the concave part looked serrated with lots of small steps, but a generally correct shape. I wrapped some coarse sandpaper around a piece of threaded rod and smoothed it out by sanding it. You can use a dowel or something else you might have on hand that will fit the curve.

    After ripping the moulding from the wide board, I used the moving filister for making a convex rounding (outside rounding) on what would eventually become the upper part of the moulding. again it was just a matter of eyeballing it and getting it close. Sandpaper took care of the rest.

    Compared to mouldings that are planed, mine look more fuzzy since I have used a lot of coarse sandpaper on them. But I guess that if I moved through the grades they would look smoother. I'll probably do something like that before painting the chest - if that is how I end up finishing it.

    If anything is still unclear, please let me know, then I'll try to make a pictorial "how to" once I get home. The Internet connection out here does not cooperate when I need to upload more than one picture, but I can do that from home.

    Brgds
    Jonas

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  10. Looks fantastic Jonas! Just to echo the above, you never fail to impress.

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    1. Thanks Greg.
      It has been an interesting project so far.

      Brgds
      Jonas

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  11. Never cease to amazed me what you can do with limited tool set in trying conditions.
    Your'e the man Jonas :-)
    That cabinet look pretty good. You are correct in your thinking about the wood selection for the various classes back then. Such pieces were often painted and with a wood grain faux finish.

    Again awesome Jonas.

    Bob in snowy old Quebec city

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    1. Hi Bob
      Thanks for the comment. I am so glad that I can amaze all those excellent woodworkers that comment on my blog.

      I wish we had some snow here. I am on the west coast of Norway, and all the locals say that they can't remember a year with so much rain. There was supposed to be snow and frost, but so far there is no telling when that will happen.

      My problem with the grain painting is that I have never tried it before. And the pieces I have seen that people start out grain painting are usually fairly flat sections of e.g. a door or a tool chest.
      Given that I have mouldings and bracket feet and a raised panel door etc, I think it might be difficult to get it to look good. But I guess I won't ever know if I don't try it.

      Brgds
      Jonas

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  12. Looking Good. I like the idea of grain painting, it would be a most authentic way to finish it. Also, an idea for you which I have found on period pieces and employ myself; pre-drill holes through the carcase into the moulding and then nail from that direction. use pairs of nails angled towards one another.

    Cheers,

    Johann

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    1. Hi Johann

      I like the idea of nailing from the carcase into the moulding - instead of the way that I did it from the outside.
      I haven't worked on the spice chest while at home this time, Christmas, New Years eve and getting a new puppy has kept me fairly busy.
      I am constantly reminded of the more humid climate in my workshop compared to the ships engine room, as the door of the cabinet has swollen as has the rest of the piece. I am glad that I only glued on the first few inches of the crown moulding, so it is free to move with the seasons in the back.
      Though it would be even better if there hadn't been such a thing as wood movement..

      Cheers
      Jonas

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