pecan desk + Dodgy Loner's projects

SwampDonkey · June 24, 2007, 02:03:59 PM

What they staying in? Condo? I did well to get the bedding and clothes into my dorm room. :D

Nice work Pigman, I like the pecan to, although I haven't one of them unfinished desks up this way. ;)

Nice cherry chest of drawers to WDH, I like the streaks in it.

WDH · June 24, 2007, 05:01:13 PM

Thanks SD.

The Southern Cherry will commonly have mineral steaks and some pitch pockets. But I like it anyway :D. You have to make do with what grows and what you can mill. Better to have it come from our property and have the streaks than be the finest pennslyvania cherry as far as my daughter is concerned ;D.

Dodgy Loner · June 26, 2007, 03:40:48 PM

That's a purdy chest, WDH. I agree with you about the cherry - I'd rather work with cherry lumber that came off of my property any day. It's got more character and a better story behind it to boot! Good thing I've got plenty of it ;).

WDH · June 26, 2007, 06:52:43 PM

Now you need to build something ;D.

SwampDonkey · June 26, 2007, 07:59:24 PM

Yeah, to take a line from the movie 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly', and put a twist on it here...

Don't talk, if your going to build, build it. ;D :D ;)

Dodgy Loner · June 26, 2007, 10:25:28 PM

Oh, I've been building...what I haven't been doing is posting pictures :-\. I guess I'll have to remedy that sometime soon

.

WDH · June 26, 2007, 10:55:14 PM

The recalcitrant picture poster syndrome, huh ??? ;D

OneWithWood · June 28, 2007, 11:51:58 AM

Forum police

That type of behavior (picture posting avoidance) cannot be tolerated here

Get some pics posted now!

WDH · June 28, 2007, 06:37:18 PM

The gauntlet has been dropped on the Dodgy Loner

;D :D

Dodgy Loner · July 02, 2007, 02:43:32 PM

Sorry for the delay - been on vacation for the last 6 days, but now it's back to work. Pictures shall be forthcoming tomorrow, I promise ;).

OneWithWood · July 03, 2007, 08:29:46 AM

Ok. It is tomorrow already :D

Left Coast Chris · July 03, 2007, 11:38:22 AM

Bob and WDH,

Would you mind showing a pic of your drawer construction? Im in slow motion on a computer desk project and need to start the drawers. A pic or two on the drawer joint conections (especially the front piece to the sides) would help me get out of the analysis paralysis mode. :

:

WDH · July 03, 2007, 01:05:44 PM

Farmer,

I don't have any drawer pics of that chest, but the drawer boxes were joined to the front with half-blind dovetails. I made a matching night table that I happened to take a pic of the drawer connection.

I have also used a sliding dovetail to join drawer sides to the front. You cut a dovetail groove in the back of the drawer front on each side leaving about 3/4" of wood from the edge of the groove to the edge of the drawer. Then mill the pin (male) part of the sliding dovetail joint on the drawer sides, and slide the drawer sides up into the dovetail groove on the back of the drawer front. Very strong. If you want a pic of that, I can take one for you.

The disadvantage of the sliding dovetail is that you have to leave the drawer front full thickness on the overlay of the drawer to the face frame. With the half blind dovetail, you can cut a rabbit on all the back sides of the drawer front that allows the drawer front to be inset about 1/2 inch. That makes for a more elegant look in my opinion.

pigman · July 03, 2007, 02:47:00 PM

Farmer,
My pecan desk is at the customers house about thirty miles away. :(
I do my drawer fronts like WDH does his drawer fronts. I sometimes will make the drawer box with the half-blind dovetails and then screw on a false front. If you go with the metal slides that fasten on the side of the drawer, don't forget to allow for the width of the slide, usually onehalf inch on each side. The picture below is of the back conner. I just cut a dado in the side and glue in the back. I also brad nail through the side " until the glue dries". The back sits on the bottom material. If the bottom is plywood, I will brad nail the bottom to the back, but if the bottom is made of solid wood, I will fasten the bottom to the back with a screw in a slotted hole to allow for movement.

Bob

Dodgy Loner · July 03, 2007, 03:51:28 PM

Alright, you asked for it, so here it is. These are most of the projects I did this spring. There's a few that I couldn't include here, primarily because I gave them away before I took any pictures. All of these projects were done with wood from trees that I cut myself. WDH did most of the sawing, but a few of the trees were sawed by one of my friends up near Athens. It sure makes these projects a lot more special to be so closely connected to every aspect of processing. Hope you enjoy!

This project in still in the works. I'm remodeling the extra bedroom in my small house with T&G cherry wainscoting and flooring. All of the cherry came from a tree at my childhood home that my family has since sold. It's the darkest cherry I've ever seen. The walls are faux-finished plaster.

This cherry table is a reproduction of a piece at a Shaker village in Pleasantville, KY. I made it from one of the sorriest-looking cherry trees I've ever seen, and it turned out beautifully. The log was less than 10" butt diameter, it had several knots and lots of sweep, and it had been dead for over 3 years, so the sapwood was rotting off. I flitch-sawed it to get the most out of the wood. I ended up with enought to make two nice end tables. I'm still working on the second one, which will be a Craftman-style table.

This is the log:

The table before finishing:

The table after a coat of linseed oil and several coats of orange shellac:

And a close-up of the grain in the top:

The next piece is a Shaker-syle cedar chest that came from an equally ugly tree. I didn't take pictues of the lumber, but I did go back and find the stump to give you an idea what I was working with. The tree had been dead for at least five years when I found it. I put my flip-flop in the picture for comparison (it's about a foot long ;) :D)

When I went to get the pictures, I decided to count the rings while I was at it. I counted 125 rings in this stump, which was less than a foot wide. Pretty tight-grained stuff!

Now the good part. Construction was pretty simple, except for the dovetails. I don't have a dovetail jig, so they're all hand-cut. I pattern-routed the outline of the plinth.

Here's a close-up of the dovetails:

I've actually been doing quite a bit of hand-cut dovetailing lately. It's become my favorite part of woodworking. I still have the first box I ever dove-tailed, which I built out of ash. I cut them with a $5 Stanley flush-cut saw and a dull $10 Stanley chisel.

After I bought the proper tools, dovetailing got a lot easier. This is the fourth set of dovetails I cut. It's just a little box of walnut and sycamore:

Well, now that I'm caught up on my picture-posting, it's time for the rest of you to do the same. What has everyone else around here been up to this spring? ???

Norm · July 03, 2007, 06:09:30 PM

Beautiful craftsmanship DL.

Thanks for showing us, well worth the wait.

Patty · July 03, 2007, 06:13:35 PM

My goodness! Those pieces are absolutely beautiful.

metalspinner · July 03, 2007, 09:56:52 PM

I love the wainscoting. I'm in the middle of that as well.

My problem lately is that when I look at a log, I see specific projects, so my list just gets longer and longer. Even those scraggly logs seem to have projects in them.

Your shop sure is nice and bright. Look at all those tools hanging neatly on the wall.

Is that a Jet lathe I see back there?

Dodgy Loner · July 03, 2007, 11:42:08 PM

My shop is definitely well-lit, but the tools are only hanging neatly on the walls when I'm preparing for a picture ;D. Good eye, that is a Jet lathe in the background - a 1442, to be exact. It's been a great little workhorse for the last year and a half

.

pigman · July 04, 2007, 12:05:30 AM

Beautiful projects. 8) They even have hand cut dovetails

. I haven't tried any hand cut dovetails yet. :( That word "plinth" did cause me to go to the dictionary. I put bases on some chests, but I don't think I ever put a plinth on any to my knowledge. ;)

Bob

WDH · July 04, 2007, 12:46:47 AM

Good stuff Dodgy Loner. I like the pegs on the cherry table and the hand cut dovetails. The remodeled room with the cherry is just what I like ;D.

OneWithWood · July 05, 2007, 10:02:13 AM

DL, thanks for posting the pics 8)

Beautiful work by the way

SwampDonkey · July 05, 2007, 07:08:35 PM

Nice work DL. White ash wood and the tree are about my favorite. I like the cherry too and the dovetailing is really great in your projects. You are so right about using wood of your own, grown locally.

Here is an old bruiser of an ash for ya. I think the tree was 22" DBH. That's a couple inches wide. ;D

Dodgy Loner · July 05, 2007, 07:45:37 PM

That's some nice tight-grained stuff. Is it black ash? Looks a little dark to be white ash, but it might just be the light. If you like ash, you would love the living room in my aunt's house. The ceiling is about 20' high and the entire room is done in select T&G ash paneling.

SwampDonkey · July 07, 2007, 11:59:49 AM

It's a white ash. Black ash up here is a small tree, maybe up to 12 inches, but mostly around 8. Those rings are close to the pith. Taken from a 6" wide board. But I do have some black ash yard trees that must have tight rings. They were planted over 20 years ago and might be 1.5 inches wider since then. They are even open grown. Now, on other hand, I have a couple white ash lawn trees that are growing almost as fast a aspen.

;D