Now with the drawings and cut list complete, its time for the construction to begin. The Mussey book, gives a description of the woods used in the breakfront, but not what those woods are used for. I decided to use cherry for the drawer fronts, birch for the interior parts of the lower case, and pine for all other secondary components.
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Due to space limitations, both for the raw lumber and the scraps left over, I only ordered about 2/3 of the lumber. This way I can place another order later and not have as much left over lumber, which can quickly take over a shop and is just added expense. As usual Groff and Groff came though for me. I needed 4/4 20” wide planks of mahogany, and when I first called them, they only had 5/4 32” wide boards. I was not crazy about the idea of chopping a 32” plank down to around 19” and planning off 5/8”, but you do what you have to do. This bothers me not only from the standpoint of wasting a fairly rare board, but from a financial point too; 4/4 20” boards are about $9-10 a BF and 5/4 32” ones are $15.00 and up. The next morning they called back and told me they had some nice 4/4 mahogany that would finish out to 19” wide, and wanted to know if that would work. That phone call saved me several hundred dollars, and only reinforced my impression of them as a first rate dealer.
I started by constructing the base units. Taking care during the stock preparation phase will pay off at every future step. I don’t have the space for a decent size jointer and to be honest, the big ones scare me to death, so I will never own one. Instead I use a portable power plane, the modern version of a scrub plane, to flatten one face. But, before any tools are used, I thoroughly wire brush the faces of the lumber to remove any grit, which will prolong the life of the planer knives. Mahogany is typically well sawn and due to its inherent stability remains very flat and true when dried. Birch on the other hand is not as stable, yet this lot was very well sawn and quite true, which made it easy to flatten. The first step is to eyeball the board for any gross humps or cupping, and remove these. Then, with an accurate straightedge, (I use one made from a piece of straight grain cherry), check for straightness and plane accordingly. At this point, the board may very well look flat, but could still have a twist in it, so winding sticks are used to check for this. I have a pair of winding sticks I made from mahogany with holly and ebony inlays, but I prefer two framing squares and an off cut piece of melamine; the melamine placed behind the far square, helps to highlight the deviation or lack thereof, in the top edges of the framing squares. You can view a two part video of using a power plane to prepare stock here.
With one face flat, the stock can be sent through the thickness planer. Scaling the photo, showed the sides measured 11/16” thick, so for uniformity I planed the interior partitions to this thickness plus 1/32" for later clean up.
The mahogany plank for the sides, wouldn’t fit through my planer, so I flattened one face, with the power plane, taking off approximately half of the total amount needed to bring it to its final thickness; in theory, this keeps the moisture content equal and the plank flat. When used carefully, the power plane is capable of extreme accuracy. I hold it very lightly and kind of glide it over the surface. I also work with, across and diagonal to the grain to keep things flat. The progress is check frequently with a straightedge, winding sticks and a rule. With a face flat, a line is struck from that face, with a marking gauge, set 1/16” thicker than the finished dimension. That last 1/16” is removed with various hand planes. Starting with a fore plane, the mahogany is planed across the grain; even the most stubborn wood, planes like a dream across the grain, just be sure to have sufficient width that the inevitable splintering will allow the plank to finish out to the desired dimension. Again frequent checking is required with the straightedge and winding sticks. I like to start with the face that was planed to establish the rough thickness. This way the scribe line to establish the final thickness is on the opposite face and the two can’t be confused. After planing across the grain, I go with the grain using a 30” wooden jointer plane, which is light and very accurate. With an accurately flattened face, it is just a matter of scribing that other line and planing to thickness, following the same procedures for the first face.
The birch has to be glued up to achieve the necessary width. I had asked for 9”-10” wide boards, so I would only need two pieces for each panel. Groff and Groff did their best to fill that request, but most of the boards were in the 8” range, necessitating a 3 piece glue up on several of the panels. The vertical sides for the central base section have a strip of mahogany glued to the front edge because that section protrudes pasts the flanking end sections.
Typically I make edge joints with only hand planes, but lately I have been using the shaper to roughly straighten the edges, by offsetting in the infeed and outfeed fences (think of a jointer laid on its side). This has proven to be very accurate, despite the relatively short fences on the shaper.
I had not used birch in quite a while, and I can’t say it was a happy reunion; birch is notorious for its hardness and revering grain. With more cooperative wood, the edge joints are made by clamping face to face, the boards to be joined and planing both at the same time, which causes any deviation from a true square edge, to cancel out and results in a flat panel. The cantankerous nature of the birch made this a bit difficult, so I planed each board separately, which called for more attention to keep the edges square. The wooden jointer, despite its higher center of gravity, is much easier to “keep” square, and add to that, its 50 º bed angle made short work of jointing the edges. The edge joints were planed with a very slight hollow or spring joint, and joined with hot hide glue, which was retarded with urea. With accurate stock preparation, the glue up will go easily, but some misalignment will exist no matter how careful you are. I like to work with the boards on the floor and use my knee and hands to make slight adjustments to get the faces flush. A few minutes of careful work, will save a lot of effort when it comes time to plane the panels after glue up.
Planing the glued up panels is similar to the mahogany plank, but the panel should already be quite flat and true, so the straightedge, winding sticks and marking gauge won’t be needed. Start by planing across the grain, which is the only viable option with the difficult birch. With a very sharp plane and a light cut an excellent surface can be achieved by going across the grain. That surface is quickly and easily cleaned up with a scraper plane.
The next installment will detail the dimensioning and joining the panels to make the base sections.
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