Mouldings and Miters

Heritage Door Update

I had a pretty productive weekend here in the wood shop. I managed to get all of the main door panel mouldings made as well as mitering them for a dry fit. I also picked up the glass for the opening and was happy to find it perfectly fit the recess I had made. The mouldings came first and that's where I'll begin...
The first thing I needed to consider when starting the mouldings is that the panels are not centered within the doors thickness; they're slightly set proud to the front for some reason (if I had a time machine I'd be able to ask someone) and the exterior of the door to the interior profiles will be slightly different. The profiles themselves will be the same but the back of each moulding and how it sits in relation with the door frame will be different. I began with the front ones for no reason other than the door was lying on it's back and the less I need to move this thing around the better!
I have to cut this back rabbet before the front profiles because if I were to cut the profiles first and then try to plane a rabbet into the back, holding them in place would be next to impossible. I should also mention that each panel moulding is taken from one piece of stock for grain continuity and the miters are run from one end of the stock to another working my way around the panel perimeter. Again this is purely aesthetic to create a nice flow in the wood grain. The main door panel stock was also cut this way to keep the grain consistant throughout; one of the benefits of custon work I suppose.






















I used my skew rabbet and shoulder planes to establish the first rear rabbet of the pieces and then turn them over to lay out the 'steps' to create the moulding profile. When we look at the curves of the profile we can determine these series of steps required to remove the bulk of the waste. It's funny when I used to think of moulding planes and the work they do but the reality of making the mouldings, the actual moulding planes are only used at the end of the process. Kind of putting the icing on the cake, so to speak.






















Again, it's a series of skew rabbet plane to the shoulder plane or the skew angle block to the shoulder depending on grain direction. In the following shot you can see I've already established the rear rabbet and have created these 'steps' to follow...















I went ahead and brought all four pieces to this stage before introducing the moulding planes. This speeds up the process of 'sticking mouldings' by performing each of these 'pre' steps before moving on to the hollowing and rounding over.






















From here it's time to get out my moulding planes and round over these steps in the Oak. You may remember my ealier blog about these planes; Phil Edwards from Philly Planes made them for me and before today I had only run some test pieces on some poplar scrap. I'm happy to say that the planes worked perfectly! This White Oak is a great test for the Beech planes and they exceeded expectations. Comfortable and accurate a few people commented on the fact that Phils wedges are not tapered and wondered how they would perform in a harder wood. Well anyone out there thinking about some moulding planes I can't say enough...they're great!

















I should also mention that just prior to taking the first cuts with the moulding planes I ran down the edges of these 'steps' with my small block plane to relieve the corners. After watching Don McConnell's video on Molding Techniques he suggested doing this step to elongate the life of the moulding plane sole. Makes perfect sense right?
With the four mouldings shaped (still a little rough but they'll get a final smoothing once they're mitered) I'll get set up for the mitering process. I used my old Stanley miter hook back when I did a test run for these pieces but since then I received my Bad Axe Saws. The only issue with my Stanley miter box is it wouldn't fully support the back saw due to some warping in the metal bracket of the antique bench top appliance. It works o.k. but the plate that holds the saw firmly is slightly bent and these miters I want to be damn near perfect.

















Instead of spending my Saturday afternoon setting up this vintage hand tool appliance, I instead decided to quickly make a miter box out of some 1" poplar I had. Nothing fancy, I simply glued and nailed two fences to a bottom piece and carefully sawed in the 45 degree kerfs. These need to be dead on accurate so take your time if you make your own. This one is about 11" long, and just wide enough to handle the largest moulding stock on this perticular project. The length of the jig is random because it was the off cut I had...
















Speaking of bench top appliances, my shooting board with it's miter hook attachment and my dedicated No. 9 is all I'll need to take the slightest shavings while I fit the mouldings to the panels.


















My bench top 'clutter' is feeling great from the miter box to the shooting board I work my way through the pieces.














When I shaped the mouldings I tried my best to keep the profiles consistant from one end of the stock to the other but any slight discreprency will be magnified once the miters are cut. I'm happy with the results and only have some minor areas to balance out. This will be done with some sand paper and a shop made sanding plane. This is essentially a scrap piece of wood cut with the same size mouldings planes to create a matching round. The scrap is then wrapped with some 220 grit sandpaper and attached by way of a thin slot and a wooden cleat. I'll be able to work any of these questionable areas down using this method and this jig. Thank fully, as mentioned they look pretty good right off my shooting board so I didn't have to do much sanding...
Here's an illustration by Jim Richey taken from an article I did for Fine Woodworking Magazine awhile back showing you how to build a convex sanding plane:

From here I dry fit the pieces going back and forth from the door to the shooting board, taking the finest shavings to achieve that perfect fit. When the four panels are wrapped in their new Oak borders I'll go ahead and remove them being careful to label each piece as I go.
All the time it took to insure the continuity of the wood grain, gracefully flowing around each of the panels could be lost if I mixed up the pieces at this point. On Sunday I got in a crew of helpers (my wife and I)and turned the door over...this same process was followed and the back panels are also ready to go. They didn't get the rear rabbets in the back but simply live within the frames, sitting flush with the panels. From here it's on to the main window surrounds...















Stay tuned.

Krenov

1920-2009

I'm saddened to write that James Krenov passed away this week at the age of 88.

"When we discover what wonderful things our eyes and hands are as they seek fine lines and use sharp tools, when we listen to wood and not just use it, then cabinetmaking can take on a new meaning." JK

Almost six years ago I quite literally stumbled over a small pile of books in a Halifax library. Looking down I noticed one of them had some furniture shots on it so I picked up the hardcover book and read the title: The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking. The front cover photographs, three rather unique looking pieces immediately grabbed my attention enough that I decided to borrow it.
James Krenov eh?...never heard of him but the title alone seemed to conjure up a kind of curious discovery into some alternate path through the craft that I was only beginning to discover and understand. I had been building wooden boats at the time and had come off of about 8 years of set building. Screws and glue, some plywood and lots of smoke and mirrors I'd never felt any connection between working wood and art. I was an established writer and musician and was fortunate to have been exposed to all forms of art and craft growing up on the East coast of Canada but for some reason never felt the connection between the two. This Fine Art of Cabinetmaking, again suddenly hit me like a hard maple mallet; Krenov eh?
I read the book from cover to cover and then started to read it again and again. I wasn't aware of any 'on-line' wood working community at the time and the name Krenov really didn't mean all that much to me. I certainly didn't know about any of his unique philosophies nor had I ever heard of the College of the Redwoods; all I knew that as someone who has always enjoyed writing and was starting to begin my own personal journey into wood craft that the words that curled up and out of the pages were more powerful than any of his pieces ever could be. Yes, his cabinetmaking is second to none but it was his words that pulled me into this new path of working wood.
Not too long after that I noticed Lee Valley Tools were selling strange little plane irons and again the Krenov name rang a bell. That's him, that's the guy who wrote the book! I ordered an iron and following the chapter on making a wooden plane I built my first Krenov style hand plane. I think it was that same year that I really started to notice this Internet world of wood working and soon discovered his web site. This would have been around 2006 I believe and there I read that Jim's eyes were failing and while he would no longer be making his cabinets, he would continue working with his hands and making his hand planes available for order. I immediately sent off a letter and waited for a response.
In my mind at the time, still not realising just what kind of man Jim was I suppose I was expecting to get a letter back from perhaps a secretary or something with an order form or a credit card bill. I figured maybe he had an office somewhere at the college and someone would be answering his hand plane requests but this couldn't have been any further from the truth. If not the following day then it was indeed the same week I checked my e-mail to find a letter.

Tom, Thank you for the nice e-mail. I know the plane you need for building your boats. Before all: don't send payment before you have the plane and like it. If you want to call me, my telephone number is......best wishes, Jim Krenov

I can still remember the feeling I had after reading this letter, I ran down and told my wife about it and she also thought it was pretty cool that this author and seemingly famous cabinetmaker had written back to me himself. This was who he was and the kind of personality he had. The plane arrived a few weeks later carefully wrapped up in Californian news papers and packaged inside an old sneaker box. Perfect! I've used the plane ever since and I'm happy to say that I still 'like it'
Fast forward a few more years when I started to write my own book on working wood and I again contacted Jim. This time it was to show him my 'Cabinetmakers Tool chest' design. While drawing the chest I wondered if he used to lug around a tool box with him, full of his hand planes from client to client. I wondered how he would have built it and if he spent any time on it? I wondered if he would have just tossed his tools into a make shift box too busy to waste time on something as utilitarian as a tool chest?
I told him that my design was indeed inspired by his work, from the split dovetails down the front to my choices of hardwoods for the carcass. "I don't recall ever being much of a tool box man" he told me! This made me laugh. We corresponded again in February this past year about the design and he always found the time to answer my letters and take time to consider my questions and thoughts. "It's a very beautiful piece." I'm proud to say he wrote. I asked him about his writing and if he was planning on any more books. "I'm an old man now" he wrote and I left it at that but again it brought a smile to my face when I read it. He's a funny old crank that has influenced thousands of wood workers all over this planet, myself being included in that list. He is missed already. I'm happy to have connected with him those few times through this 'on-line' platform and I'll think about him and his words again when I hold his plane in my hands while I work. Perfect indeed.

Wood Moves

...an Update

Two years ago I built a trestle table for our home and I incorporated bread board ends into the design. When building with bread board ends it's vital for the main cross grain surface to be able to expand and contract, moving freely within the bread boards. Last February I posted a blog showing how the main surface had shrank in it's width by 1/4"! (you can see that original post here:
http://tomfidgen.blogspot.com/2009/02/wood-movesget-over-it.html
At that time I mentioned that my hopes were the table would expand back to its normal size and the bread boards would keep everything nice and true.
Well I'm happy to report that the surface has indeed swelled back to its original width ( God knows it should with all of the humidity here in Southern Ontario) and all is right in the world of wood movement.



















The table was built in the summer so when I originally posted the picture in February it had really shrank back. Here's a another great example of wood movement from one of the pieces I built this past winter for my book, Made by Hand.
It's some Cherry wood and the same bread board procedure was used. It's interesting to see the opposite happening from a piece built in the summer to a piece built in the winter. The top of this piece has also swelled but because I made it in the winter, it's now substantially wider than the ends.






















So my point to all of this?
Wood moves...get over it!