Making Wing Templates

There are two approaches to creating full-size templates for the butler tray’s short and long wings: you could head to a photocopier and enlarge the gridded drawings, or draw a grid on some scrap plywood and plot several points of the curves, then join them with a strip of thin wood or hardboard bent to shape as I did. A few casing nails hammered into my half pattern registered the batten ends as I drew a half curve for both a short wing and a long wing. Then, I cut out the half patterns, faired them on my spindle sander and used them to draw full templates on some 1/2″ MDF. Now lay out the handle shape on your short wing template. Cut it out and refine its curved shape on a spindle sander or with a small-diameter drum in the drill press. (You can use the same cutout for template-routing all four handles, so save time by making just one handle cutout.)

Mortising the tray’s curved brass hinges would be tough to do by hand, so I printed out a PDF that ran with Rob’s original CNC Shark article, and I used spray glue to affix two of the PDF’s hinge patterns to my short wing template. Cut these mortise shapes out with a jigsaw or scroll saw, and smooth them carefully to complete the short wing template.

Template-routing the Wings

Glue up a panel for your tray, and cut oversized blanks for the four short and long wings. Try to make all of the tray parts from one piece of stock so the grain and color are consistent. Trace the wing shapes onto their blanks, and step to the band saw to cut them slightly larger than their layout lines. Transfer the handle outline from your template to all four wings, and cut these to rough shape, too.

Shaving off the extra stock so your wings match their templates exactly is standard template-routing work, but with one caveat: you’re routing both end grain and long grain on these curves. Routing against end grain on the bias can lead to tearout if you feed into the curved ends, so here’s what I did instead: with the template located on top of my blank and affixed with double-sided tape, I used a large-diameter flush-trim bit — bearing at the tip — and started my cut where the long grain begins, at about the handle position, trimming off the waste and feeding left to right. Then, I flipped the workpiece over so the template was on the bottom, switched to a pattern bit — bearing on the shank — and finished trimming off the remaining overhang. With this two-bit method, you’ll always rout the end grain “with” the grain and “downhill,” so to speak, instead of against it. Use a starter pin in your router table as a fulcrum to begin each cut.

Once the outer curves of all four wings are done, double back to the flush-trim bit and rout the handles to final shape. Just use your short wing template, taped to either a short or long wing, to template-rout all four handles. Remember to feed the work counterclockwise around the bit to avoid climb-cutting.

Hinge Mortising Next

Grab your short-wing template, and trace pairs of hinge leaves onto the four wings. I positioned them 2-1⁄4″ in from the ends. The hinge barrels will require that you cut a 1/8″-deep rectangular mortise into the edges of the wings. Make these shallow mortises 1/4″ wide, and chisel them out by hand. Then clamp your short wing template into place and rout the curved hinge leaf mortises 1/8″ deep into the faces of the wings. I used a short piloted mortising bit in a trim router for this job.

Set the wings aside and cut your tray’s center panel to final size. It requires its own set of longer hinge leaf mortises that must be carefully laid out and milled in three steps. To start this process, I made a “tray side” mortise template using Rob’s PDF pattern once again (it includes full-size layouts for both wing and tray hinge mortises), spray-mounted to a piece of scrap MDF. Cut out the curved leaf shape to make this template. Now set the wings into place against the tray and transfer the exact locations of the wing hinge leaves over to the tray side. Use your new tray leaf template to mark the hinge shapes onto the tray.

The underside of these hinges have both a recessed barrel and a steel flap that serves as a spring. I mortised for the spring first, excavating a 5/8″-wide, 3/8″-deep channel in the center of the hinge leaf area to give the spring and its adjacent brass stop full clearance. A 1/4″ carbide upcut spiral bit in my trim router was all it took, guiding the router freehand — it’s very controllable on soft mahogany if you work carefully. Then I raised the bit to 1/4″ depth to rout a 1/4″-wide slot along the wing edge for the hinge barrel; square up the inside corners of these cuts with a chisel. Last, clamp your tray-side hinge mortise template into place and zip through the eight curved leaf mortises at 1/8″ deep.

Completing the Tray

Chuck a 1/8″ roundover bit in your router, and ease the inside edges of the handle cutouts and outside curves of the wings on both their top and bottom faces. Give the tray parts a thorough sanding up through the grits to 180, and you’re ready for some “test” assembly. You’ll understand why I say “test” as soon as the hinges are screwed in place.

Fit the hinges into their mortises, and drill pilot holes for the tiny screws with a self-centering Vix-Bit. Now, attach the hinges, and tip the wings up gently. Do they raise to 90° and just touch at the ends? If not and the tips intersect, you’ll need to nibble a bit of material off to improve the clearance — for me, this was about 1/4″ from all eight ends of the wings. When the wings fold up properly, take the tray apart and apply your choice of finish. After the finish dries, wax the tray parts and put it all together again.

Preparing Leg Templates

Now that you are thoroughly entrenched in a templating state of mind, there are more to make for building this project’s stand. Templates make the slender legs safer to rout and ensure that the leg shapes are consistent. Any undulations or irregularities along the long curved edges of the legs are very easy to see, so uniformity and smoothness are paramount here.

I enlarged the gridded leg pattern to full size, spray-mounted it to a piece of 3/4″ MDF and cut out the shape. Primarily, this will serve as a rigid tracing pattern for your routing templates. But it also helped me make a quick mock-up with a second scrap leg to determine whether the end angles of the legs would give the stand the proper spread it needed beneath the tray.

Prepare two blanks from 6″-wide void-free plywood or MDF, about 38″ long. Trace the inside curve of your leg pattern as close as possible to the edge of one workpiece to form an “inside” leg template, and trace the outside shape of the leg pattern onto the other workpiece, close to its edge, for the corresponding “outside” leg template. Band saw these to rough shape just outside the traced lines. Now tape your MDF leg pattern securely to each template, and bring them to exact curvature at the router table with a flush trim bit. Finish your leg templates by tacking a long strip of 7/8″-thick, 11⁄2″-wide scrap wood along the bottom face of each template and flush with its back edge to complete them. (These backers will stabilize the templates during routing.)

Shaping the Legs

Choose a piece of straight-grained mahogany for your leg stock, and trace the pattern four times to form leg blanks. Head to the band saw to cut these to oversized blanks. Be prepared for possible slight springback once the parts are cut free; you may want to make them as much as 1/8″ overly wide all around just to be safe. Use the leg pattern to mark centerpoints of the legs around their faces and edges, and mark your inside and outside leg templates to reference the same centerpoints.

I chose to rout each leg to completion before moving on to the next: I routed the inside curve first, with the leg blank firmly fixed beneath the template with short strips of double-sided tape. Then I lined up my center line on the workpiece with the outside template’s centerline, taped it and flush-trimmed the leg’s other broad edge. (Keeping the center lines aligned will ensure that all the legs will be routed in the same relative positions on the two templates, in case there are any slight deviations in the template curvatures.)

Once the template-routing is done, use your leg pattern to carefully mark the angled ends of the legs. I cut these by taping the legs down to my table saw’s crosscut sled, aligning each cut to the sled’s blade kerf line. It worked great.

Forming the Cross Braces

Rip and crosscut stock for pairs of long and short cross braces, but don’t bevel rip the top ends of the top cross braces yet. Before doing that, there are several preliminary steps to tackle first. You need to cut a 1/8″ x 5/8″ shallow rabbet into the bottom edges of the top cross braces to recess the metal clips that will hold the stand’s straps in place, plus a shallow kerf near the inside edge of these braces to fit the flared edge on each clip. Then lay out and drill centered holes in the ends of all four braces for the 3/8″-diameter dowels that will connect the braces and legs. Use metal dowel points inserted in these cross brace holes to find the corresponding centerpoints on the inside faces of the legs for their holes.

With this prep work behind you, tilt your table saw blade to 22° and bevel-rip the top edges of the top cross braces to match the top angles of the legs.

Assembling the Stand

One final order of important business before putting this stand together: choose the two legs that will form the inside pair of your stand, and mark center points for the pivoting Roto hinges that will allow the stand to scissor open and closed. Drill 1/2″-diameter holes, 5/8″ deep for this hardware in the outside faces of these two legs.

If you want to soften the long edges of the legs with roundovers, do that now too, but stop the profiles where the cross braces go.

It’s finally time to bring the inside legset together with the short braces, dowels and glue to form the first leg subassembly. Once that dries and comes out of the clamps, press the Roto hinges into their holes. Add the remaining legs, longer braces and dowels to create the outer leg subassembly.

Before you glue these parts together, though, double-check that the leg angles and curves face opposite the first subassembly — an obvious thing but a complete frustration if you get it wrong and realize it is too late!

Wrapping Up the Final Details

The end of this elegant little project is close, but there are still a few more steps. Drill 1/8″-deep, 1/2″-diameter holes in the angled edges of the top cross braces in order to partially recess four rubber bumpers. Screw them in place.

Now invert the stand on your bench and hold it open so the bumpered cross braces rest flat on the bench (the spread should be about 18″). Cut two strips of chair webbing 1″ longer than the inside span between the legs. Then, fit the webbing fully inside the metal clips, and close the clips by squeezing them in a vise. Make sure the flared edges of the clips face the same direction on each of the straps before pinching the second clip closed. (Again, it’s common sense here, but Murphy’s Law is in full effect for me when a project is nearly done!)

Fit the clip flares into their kerfs in the top angled cross braces, and secure the clips with short screws to complete the stand. I then removed the straps but used a length of string tied to the clip screws to keep the stand upright and open. It was convenient as I applied a spray lacquer finish.

Enjoy your new project and a woodworker’s brush with Old World aristocracy.

Hard to Find Hardware

Brass Butler Tray Table Hinges #81258
Roto Hinges #36251
Non-Skid Rubber Bumpers #45929
Chair Webbing #40998

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List for This Project.

The post PROJECT: Butler Tray and Stand appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

Once the basic design was conceived, built around a handy insert that included the anti tarnish cloth, the wood species was the next choice to be made. Here at the Journal, we have been examining sourcing wood from small local sawmills, and during that effort we procured some remarkably colored walnut with really attractive figure. One reason the wood had such rich coloration was that it had been dried using a combination of a solar kiln and old-fashioned air drying. By avoiding an industrial kiln — where they often inject steam into the drying chamber to prevent case hardening — it kept the walnut from shifting to the bland grey that is so often found in walnut today.

The final consideration was the hardware. Only a foolish woodworker would build a project without having their hardware in hand — the number of problems that can arise from failing to do that are legion. With the richly colored walnut selected, our art director, Jeff Jacobson, argued strongly for the solid brass hinges and catches you see on the chest. While they are not cheap, this heirloom project certainly supports the cost, and they really add to the overall look. That done, it was time to get down to making sawdust.

Breaking Down the Lumber

The process started with resawing the stock to approximate thickness, and then flattening the pieces with an 07 hand plane. A planer would have been faster, but it’s good exercise, and you can listen to the radio as you work. Then it was time to joint the long edge of the top and bottom panel pieces (pieces 1 and 2), and butt-glue them together. The top was constructed of book matched walnut, and the bottom from clear pine lumber. Find the dimensions for all the pieces in the Material List. You could also use 3/8″ veneer-covered plywood for these pieces, but for us, the look of the glued-up panels was worth the extra effort. With the panels in clamps, it was time to get started on the sides and the front and back (pieces 3 and 4). After being ripped to width, they were planed square and flat with the bench plane. As the pieces were being processed, the relationship of each piece was determined: the most attractive piece reserved for the front, the next most attractive for the sides, and so forth. With that determined, it was over to the chop saw to miter the pieces to size. Always check the accuracy of the miter cut on scrap lumber. Miters look deceptively simple, but if the setup is off by a degree or two, the joints look really bad.

With the miters cut, it’s time to set up your router table to plow the panel grooves as shown in the Drawings.

You are making some really solid progress now. Step over to the glued-up panels that you made earlier and take them out of their clamps. Scrape off the glue squeeze-out. Now you have another choice to make. The glue lines need to be leveled and the panels flattened. You can do this with a hand plane or a power sander. Either way works just fine.

We started with a hand plane going across the grain, and then finished with a disc sander. When the panels are flat and smooth (sand through the grits), cut them to their final width and length. Now you are ready to machine the rabbet on their edges. Once again the router table is a great machining choice here, and a 1/2″-diameter straight bit works well for this task.

Again, it is wise to use scrap lumber to test how the rabbeted panels will fit into the grooves you plowed into the side, back and front. When you are comfortable with the fit of the rabbet, go ahead and cut it into the panels. Test-fit all six pieces of the box together before glue-up.

Remember, if you use solid wood in your panels as we did, they will expand across their width with seasonal humidity changes, so there needs to be room for them to expand in that direction. They won’t expand along their length, so that does not need any accommodation.

When you are satisfied with how the pieces fit together, it’s time to glue and clamp them. Put a thin coat of glue on the mitered ends of the sides, back and front, and a small dab of glue in the center of each side’s groove.

This will help keep the panels centered in the box over time. We used a band clamp and a few Quick-Grip® clamps to close up the joints and keep the whole assembly square. Let the glue cure completely before you take off the clamps.

A Simple Dovetail Key Jig

The dovetailed keys that help keep the miters strong over the years are easy to make and install, but you are going to need to build a jig to make them. The jig is stone-simple: as you can see in the Drawings, it is made from a thick piece of wood that is bisected at 45°. Flip over one of the pieces, secure them together as shown in the Diagram, and Bob’s your uncle.

Next, chuck a 7°, 1/2″ dovetail bit into your router table. You can find the proper locations for the keyways in the Drawings, but as stated before, test the cuts on a piece of scrap. You don’t want to start the whole project over from scratch, do you?

When you have the setup ready to go, and the glue has properly cured on the silverware chest, cut the keyways with one smooth pass through the corner. One setup will work for eight of the 12 keyways, then reset the router table fence and cut the last four. Now that you have keyways, you need to cut the keys. That is done in a long strip of 3/4″-thick stock.

When you’ve got the shape correctly set up, form the strip of key-molding, and then cut the keys to length. Glue them in place (no clamping for this step) and let the glue cure. When the glue has dried, carefully trim away the excess material from the keys and then sand them flush. There is no need to pussyfoot around with this task; we started the sanding with 50-grit paper. When the keys are sanded flush, continue sanding the outside of the box up through all the grits, stopping at 180-grit.

Now it’s back to the router table. To cut the top off of the six sided box, we used an 1/8″-diameter router bit. This version of our small shop does not have a table saw, so it was the best method. The little router bit was not long enough to cut all the way through the 5/8″-thick walnut, so we used a Japanese handsaw to complete the last of the cut. Because the handsaw blade was less than 1/8″-thick, there was a bit of waste to be removed. A sharp block plane made short work of that task.

Installing the Hardware

With the top cleanly removed, it is time to mount the hinges. Locate the hinges on the edge of the bottom as shown in the Drawings. Mark the locations with a knife. Then set a marking gauge to half the thickness of the barrel of the hinge, and use it to scribe a line on the back of the box, between the knife lines. Grab a fine-cutting handsaw (we chose the Japanese version we used earlier), and cut shallow kerfs down to the marked line as shown in the photo. Chisel the waste away, cutting cleanly to the scribed line until you have the hinge mortise completed. In this case, it spans the width of the 5/8″-thick walnut, making the whole process just a bit easier. Repeat the process on the box top and you are ready to mount the hinges.

As you may have experienced, solid brass screws can break in the wink of an eye as you are putting them into hardwood. To avoid that, drill properly sized pilot holes (hold a drill bit in front of your screw, and just the treads should extend past). Drill the pilot holes a tad deeper than the length of the screw and then drive a steel screw into the hole. The hinges we used here provide that steel screw — which is a really nice detail. Then drive the brass screw home with a handheld screwdriver (if you use a power drill/driver, you’ll regret it).

Although it may seem an odd time to do so, we chose to apply the finish to the box before we installed the catches. (It keeps the mortises clear of finish.) Sanding the box pieces completely through 180-grit, and then hand-sanding with 220-grit, prepared the surface. The three coats of shellac (inside and out) from an areosol can put a beautiful finish on the piece. We de-nibbed between coats with 320-grit sandpaper.

With all that done, you are on to installing the catches and close to the end of this project. As a precaution, take a moment to put a light coat of wax where the edges meet between the top and bottom of the box. This will keep the finish from melding together where it touches … not good!

One odd detail about these specific catches is that they are not screwed in place; instead, they are secured with epoxy adhesive. You will need to make a jig like the one shown in the photo. Use a rub collar and 1/4″ straight bit installed on your handheld router. We made our jig so that it located the catch mortises by aligning the edges of the 1/4″ hardboard with the corner of the box. Test the cut — the catch should fit in the opening and sit deep enough so that the dimples formed in the sides of the catches are below the surface of the box. (That way, you can get some epoxy flowing into the dimples.)

Note the orientation of the catches from the Drawings; you want the lower section of the catch to be the one without the button. Carefully rout the mortises into the box, but double check everything before you cut … this is not the time to mess something up! When you’ve completed that task, mask off the catch mortises as shown, apply a good coat of long open time epoxy (not the 5-minute stuff), and put the catches in place. Allow the adhesive to cure, and the silverware chest is done. After the finish has cured for about a week or two, apply a coat of clear paste wax and polish it out.

This silverware chest is not a complicated project, but by combining simple lines in proper proportions and adding beautiful wood with classic hardware, it is a real heirloom quality piece. And of course, at the end of the day, it is simply a box — so it could store other things than silverware. But in this case, we can’t think of anything else more appropriate.

Click Here to Download the Materials List and Drawings.

The post PROJECT: Silverware Chest appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

Sorting Your Stock

A proper Morris chair should be made from quartersawn white oak, and you’ll want to save your most highly figured wood for the prominent parts: the arms, front stretcher, wide side rails and slats. I identify the best figure by wiping my rough-planed stock down with denatured alcohol, mineral spirits or water so the figure comes alive, and then I measure those pieces, holding aside the wide boards for the widest chair parts.

Once you’ve sorted your stack, go ahead and mark out the parts with a pencil and chalk. Cut the parts to rough size and plane them down to correct thickness. Be sure to label your workpieces clearly.

Forming the Laminated Legs

If white oak trees were perfect, we could harvest solid legs for a Morris chair that have quartersawn faces on all four sides. But, that’s just plain impossible, so we have to do the next best thing: laminate some thinner stock together and apply quartersawn veneer to hide the edge grain that would show on two of the leg faces. You’ll see how I address this glue-up process. First, I rip 12 strips of 26″-long stock to 2-1/16″ wide from 13/16″-thick material. Three of these will serve as the inner laminations of each leg when face-glued together, but that still doesn’t solve the problem of hiding those flat-grain edges and glue lines. So, once my glued-up “cores” are dry, I sandwich the four of them between five pieces of 1/2″-thick, 2-1/2″-wide quartersawn oak to create an even larger glued-up slab. Why? Because this way, the thinner material beside the cores will become veneer for those two faces of each leg when I rip the big glue-up into four leg blanks again.

Now, maybe you are saying to yourself, “I don’t have a jointer as wide as Mike does for flattening the face of that big slab,” and that’s OK. At CU Woodshop School of Woodworking, we are very well equipped, so I can tackle this job on a 12″ jointer. But, you’ll get the same end result if you just make up two narrower sets of these leg slabs instead of one so you can flatten their faces on a 6″ or 8″ jointer. Note: you’ll need an extra piece of 1/2″ stock to hide the edges of one side on the second slab.

After I jointed one face of my big leg assembly smooth, I set up my table saw with a thin-kerf blade to rip through the centers of those thick veneer pieces. But, there’s still final sizing to do here. Your goal is to end up with 2-1/4″ x 2-1/4″ legs. So head to your planer and plan your strategy: you want to take the legs down in size so the pair of veneer faces on each leg are uniformly thick. And, since the core stock was just over 2″ wide to start with, the final thickness of that veneer will end up pretty thin — around 3/32″. You also need to plane down the two original quartersawn core faces to reach final thickness there. Work carefully!

Next up, it’s time to lay out the various leg mortises. It’s easy to get confused when marking out a bunch of mortises on four legs, even if you’ve been building mortised furniture for as long as I have. So I recommend starting by marking your legs as front right, front left, rear right and rear left. Pick the two with the showiest ray flake patterns for your front legs, and choose their two best faces to point forward on your chair.

Now, study the Drawings to mark 1/2″-wide mortises for the front and rear stretchers as well as the upper and lower side rails. All of these mortises are centered on the thicknesses of the legs and face inward. Notice that, even though the mortises for the upper side rails on the rear legs will get shortened when you cut these legs to fit the curved arms, at this stage those mortises should start out at 2-1/2″ long — just like on the front legs. Double-check your layouts before chucking a 1/2″ hollow-chisel bit in your mortising machine and milling the 12 stretcher and rail mortises.

Steam Bending Basics

A steam box is really just a steam-tight chamber with a door on one end and a drain hole for condensed water on the other end. Mine is made from marine plywood, and it will hold four arm blanks at a time. If you work by yourself, I advise making yours smaller and steaming only one arm at a time so you can bend and clamp it before it dries and cools. Plans for these simple steam boxes are plentiful online. To heat mine, I use three Rockler steamers (item 42826), which heat up quickly and produce a high volume of steam. You could get by just as well with two steamers on a smaller box.

The two arm-bending jigs I use for this Morris chair are very straightforward: four pieces of 3/4″ sheet material cut to match the arm curvature and glued and nailed together with spacers in between to form a wide support. A base board with blocking underneath provided room for clamp heads.

You will need at least 15 clamps to secure the arm once it’s steamed through and pliable. At that point, you only have a few minutes to get the boards out of the steam box and clamped up in your bending jig before it cools and stiffens up. Have your clamps ready, plus short scrap-wood cauls to bridge across each pair of clamps. A helper can be invaluable, too, even if only to weigh down the board while you tighten up the clamps. Work smarter, not harder here!

Making Stretchers, Rails and Slats

Round up your workpieces for the front and rear stretchers, side rails and slats. Pair up the upper and lower side rails with grain patterns that are most consistent, and mark them with eight mortises for the side slats. See the Drawings for these locations. Since your mortiser is all set, fire it up again and mill the 3/4″-deep slat mortises.

There aren’t too many more operations to complete before you can commence with some assembly, but all of those mortises you’ve just cut now need mating tenons. My method of choice for tenoning is a stacked dado blade, but you certainly could also use a tenoning jig and a standard blade on your table saw, a straight bit in a router table or even your band saw. All of these tenons are centered on the workpieces, but the shoulder sizes vary, depending on part thickness and width. I mill my tenons on the saw until they are just a hair too thick for their mortises, and I pare them down to a good friction fit from there with a rabbet plane set for thin shavings.

Hand-planing gives excellent control over fine-tuning, and it also cleans away the saw marks and creates smooth tenon faces for good glue adhesion. Lastly, use a narrow strip of hardboard or thin scrap as a batten to lay out the arch on the bottom edge of the front stretcher. The apex of this arch should be 1-1/4″. Cut the curve to shape at your band saw or with a jigsaw, and smooth it with a large-diameter sanding drum — it’s easier to fair an even curve with a larger drum than a smaller one.

Creating the Side Assemblies

Patience is always a virtue in woodworking, and while I know the urge to start gluing parts together is strong, patience will save you effort in the long run here. So, get out your sander and give the legs, stretchers, rails and slats a thorough sanding up through the grits to 180, then finish that work off with a round of hand sanding. It’s much easier to sand pieces flat on your bench now, and if you plan to stain this project, you want all of those fine scratches and blemishes taken care of at this stage so they don’t show up when the stain goes on. When that dust clears, glue and clamp the side slats between the upper and lower side rails. Try to orient the slats so their quartersawn patterns are harmonious — it makes for a better-looking end result. Now is a good time to bore a 5/8″-diameter hole in each back leg for the back pivot pins, later. Make these 1-3/8″ deep.

When the side rail glue-ups dry and come out of the clamps, spread glue onto their tenons and into the leg mortises, and clamp the front and back legs in place. Allow these glue joints to dry overnight so you can round up any and all clamps you’ll need for steam bending the first arm, which comes next.

By now, you’ve no doubt reviewed the section on steam bending basics and have your steam box, bending jig and steamers ready. Here are some pointers from my experience with these arms. In order to steam these 1″-thick arm blanks sufficiently to bend them, I kept each one cooking in my steam box for 70 minutes. Put several spacers under the arm blank inside the box so steam can penetrate the wood from all sides and so the arm blank doesn’t become saturated with the water that condenses on the box bottom. I filled my Rockler steamers to the water line, and even after an hour and 10 minutes, there was still plenty of water left in the reservoir.

Once you’ve reached that time mark, pull on thick gloves and retrieve the blank. Starting at one end, clamp the arm to your jig with a caul under each pair of clamps. When the clamps are all in place, leave the arm in the jig for a full 24 hours so it can cool and dry thoroughly. Even after a full day in the clamps, I don’t take my bent arms out of the jig until I’m ready to install them. It ensures that the curves are set.

At this point, unclamp the arm and set it against the legs and upper side rail so you can trace the bottom curvature onto the assembly. Register the arm on the front leg at 24-1/4″, and leave about an inch of tenon length in the rear leg for the upper side rail. Head to the band saw to cut this curve, and sand it smooth.

There are five 5/8″-diameter back support adjustment holes to drill on the inside edge of the arm near the back end for the support pins. Mark and bore them 2-1/4″ deep at your drill press. Then, use the Top View Drawing of the arms as a reference for laying out the arm’s tapered shape. Cut the taper, soften the corners, and ease all of the edges with a 1/8″ roundover bit in your router. Final-sand the edges and faces. At this point, I glue and clamp the arm to the top of the side assembly, overhanging its inside edge 1/8″ past the inside leg faces. The arm should overhang the front of the front leg by 2″.

Give the glue overnight to dry, then repeat the whole process to bend and install the other arm on the second side assembly. It’s best to tackle one arm/side assembly at a time, because each arm will probably produce a different amount of “springback” when you release it from the jig, and thus a different curvature.

Building the Back Support

While the glue dried on my second side assembly, I went back to my project parts and retrieved the two back support sides, wide top slat and four narrower back slat blanks. Don’t surface the long back supports down to final dimensions just yet: I leave these a little wider than necessary so I can joint and fit the backrest snugly between the arms of the chair after it’s assembled. But, go ahead and cut the five back slat mortises into each of the side supports now. They all are 3/8″ wide. When those are done, mark and bore the 5/8″ through holes for the pivot pins.

The back slats obviously have a curved profile to make the chair more comfortable, but before you can cut these curves, the tenons come first while the blanks are still flat and in full portion. Notice in the Top and Lower Back Slats Drawing that tenons are nearly flush with the faces of the workpiece blanks; their front shoulders are just 1/8″ wide. Lay out the shapes of these parts with a flexible batten, and mark the tenon sizes. Turn back to your table saw, band saw or router table to rough out the tenons. You’ll see in the photo that cutting these tenons required me to raise my dado blade pretty high to form the back cheeks and shoulders. At this point, you can also cut the top and bottom shoulders on the ends of the tenons even though, in the photo series above, I didn’t. (I cut these with a hand saw after shaping the curves; either approach works.)

Now crank up the tension on your band saw blade, and cut the broad inside and outside curves of the slats, tracking those cuts so they are just outside your layout lines. Then step over to the drum sander and smooth away the saw marks and refine the curves down to the layout lines.

With this joinery work completed, give your supports and slats a final hand sanding, and glue the works together.

Assembling the Chair Frame

At this stage of the game, all of those subassemblies are really starting to have the makings of a nice chair, so let’s put a few of them together and really get excited! Spread glue on the tenons of the front and back stretchers as well as into their leg mortises, and clamp up the chair frame. Once the clamps are tight, you can see how your back support will fit between the arms. If it rubs their inside edges, take it over to your jointer and skim some material off the outside edges of both side supports until there’s a nice bit of clearance for the back support to pivot up or down.

And how is the pivoting process going to work? Well, I’m fortunate enough to have a metalworking buddy who milled me some beautiful pivot and support pins from solid brass. I thought they’d be a really nice and contemporary touch for the chair I built for this article. But, these pins are usually made of white oak on most classic Morris chairs. (You can see an example of what those can look like in the photos – I built it a number of years ago for a client.)

So, now you have a chance to spend a couple of hours at your lathe spindle-turning the pins from four sticks of scrap white oak. Make the small diameters of your pins just a tad shy of 5/8″ so they fit nicely into their holes in the chair frame, and turn the larger diameters to 1″. When you’re done at the lathe, round over the large ends of the pins on your disc sander.

This chair also has a decorative support under each arm, so make those next. Since you’ll need four supports, and their shapes match, I’d suggest creating a hardboard or MDF template so you can lay out the long curve just once. Grab your flexible batten, and use the Decorative Arm Support Drawing as a reference. Cut out the template and smooth it at your drum sander. Use it to trace the shape onto four 1-1/4″-thick blanks. Cut these out on your band saw, and leave about 1/16″ of waste all around. Then mount the template to a blank with double-sided tape, and chuck a piloted flush-trim bit in the router table to shave the support to an exact match. Repeat for the other three supports. Switch to a 1/8″ roundover bit and soften the long curves.

Adding Faux Arm Tenons

You just wouldn’t have a real Morris chair without some leg tenons poking up through the bowed arms. But, faux is just fine here. Their 1-1/2″ x 1-1/2″ mortises are easy to make with a template, a router and a rub collar guiding a 1/4″ straight or spiral bit. My template has two adjustable sections so I can use it for routing a variety of mortise sizes, but you can just make a square cutout for this “one-off” jig if you like. Lay out the mortise locations on the arms so they’re centered over the legs, and clamp the template in place. Rout each mortise in a series of deepening passes down to a depth of 3/4″. Chisel the corners square.

The tops of these faux tenons stand just proud of the tops of the arms. It’s a nice detail. To make them, start with a long 1-1/2″ x 1-1/2″ blank, and ease both ends at your disc sander to create a gentle curved profile. Or, if you prefer, you could just carry the roundover theme from other aspects of the chair and knock off the sharp edges and corners of these tenons at the router table.

Slice a pair of tenons off the ends of your blank, and repeat the shaping process to make two more. When all four are done, hand sand them so the ends are smooth and scratch-free. Brush some glue into their mortises, and press the tenons down into place on the arms.

On to the Finish

With the arm tenons now secured, it’s time to add the decorative supports. Depending on your arm curvatures, you’ll probably need to shape the top ends of the back leg supports so they snug up nicely under the arms. This is easy to do at a disc sander without a lot of fuss. Sand a little, check the fit and sand a little more until you reach a satisfactory intersection. Now cut the rear supports to their final length (all four supports should line up with the bottom of the lower side rails when installed). Then glue and clamp the supports beneath the arms so they’re centered on the widths of the legs.

Glue alone forms a strong mortise-and-tenon joint, but a dowel pin driven through the parts will lock them forever. So, I drilled and installed a pair of 5/16″ dowel pins into the joints of the front stretcher and upper back support slats, and a single pin for the rest of the back slats and the rear stretcher.

Wrap up construction by screwing a pair of cleats inside the stretchers to support a plywood seat board. You’ll need to determine the final position of these cleats based on the thickness of the seat cushion you use.

There are all sorts of recipes for “authentic” Arts & Crafts finishes, but choose a color you like. I applied a dye stain to pop the figure, followed by a dark pigment stain to accentuate the grain and then topcoated with lacquer. Now find some leather cushions, and your new Morris chair is ready for the den!

Click Here to Download the Materials List and Drawings.

The post PROJECT: Classic Morris Chair appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

Although everyone calls them jigs, grinding aids are actually fixtures. This is because a “jig” guides the cutting tool, using the work as reference, and a “fixture” guides the work, using the cutting tool as reference. Your turning tool is the work, and the fixture guides it using the grinding wheel (the cutting tool) as reference.

One of the most widely used systems of jigs for sharpening turning tools — and frankly the one I prefer — is made by Oneway Manufacturing in Stratford, Ontario, Canada.

Their basic Wolverine set costs about $88 and consists of two clamping tubes that fit under the wheels of your grinder. Either will accept an arm with a pocket at one end. The kit also includes a quality platform rest. To sharpen gouges you also need their Vari-Grind gooseneck jig that works in combination with the pocket jig and costs an additional $53. So let’s get started with how to use this system. Much of this also applies to similar sharpening systems on the market.

All grinders come with a small platform rest for each wheel that is designed for grinding small HSS (high speed steel) cutters and twist drills in a machine shop. Turners generally replace this rest with one that has a much larger platform that is easily adjustable. You can get aftermarket replacements or even build your own. The platform rest is great for scrapers, spindle roughing out gouges or parting tools.

When in use, scrapers do not cut with a sharp edge presented at an acute angle in the way that the rest of our turning tools do. For that reason, scrapers are ground or burnished to a burred edge. Because the depth of cut is limited to the height of the burr (which is only a few thousandths of an inch high), you only need about a 15° or so grinding angle for your cutting clearance.

While my suggested grinding angles are fine for spindle gouges regardless of your turning skill, my bowl gouge suggestions are simply good “starting-out” angles for beginning turners. Grinds for bowl gouges tend to get very personal and are also modified for various types of turning. Therefore, great variations from my basic grind are possible as skill grows.

Three Basic Grinds

If you’ll look at the illustration below, I’ve provided three locations at which to set the V-arm of the jig. By marking these settings on the V-arm, you’ll get consistent grinding angles that are easily repeated.

These suggested locations will work for most grinders. However, if you are using alower cost grinder, you may need to add a plywood base under the machine and then make some adjustments.

Also, the settings are for an 8″ grinder, so if you are using a smaller or larger wheeled grinder, you’ll need to adjust for that as well.

Tools on the Side

The remaining tools to grind are the skew and its cousins the beading and parting tools. These chisels need flat, rather than concave, grinds. All commercial jigs impart a hollow grind, which will catch in your stock much more readily. The only way I know to obtain a flat grind is on the side of the wheel, a practice that is proscribed by any grinder manufacturers.

With that said, I do not know a machinist that does not grind on the side of the wheel occasionally, and there are twist drill sharpening jigs that are designed to use the side of the wheel. Common sense is what is needed. I won’t grind on the side of a wheel unless it’s at least 1″ thick, and only then with a light touch. Grinding a skew is only needed rarely, usually due to a mishap. Day-to-day sharpening of this tool is on whetstones.

Grind, Don’t Burn

The great advantage of high speed steel (HSS) is that you do not have to worry much at all about overheating tools during grinding. Unfortunately, conventional carbon steel tools cannot be heated over about 350° without drawing the temper. If in doubt if a tool is HSS or carbon steel, it is easy to spark test it. As shown in the photo, the color and characteristics of the spark will tell you which you have.

Buffers

While bowl gouges and scrapers can be used directly from the grinder, spindle tools work much better if honed to a razor edge, the same as bench chisels and plane blades. As I stated earlier, I maintain the edges on my skews — and beading and parting tools — on whetstones. While stones can be used to hone gouges, it is time-consuming and difficult to get all areas of the working edge to keen sharpness. A small dull spot means that a spindle gouge rolls a bead to the left smoothly but goes awry to the right. You blame yourself when it is, in actuality, the tool, because you are pushing harder when you come to the dull spot. I’ve found the quickest and most assured way to come up with superlative edges on spindle and spindle roughing-out gouges is with a buffer.

The buffer is best made yourself from a simple jackshaft unit with 1/2″ arbors that can be purchased from any industrial hardware retailer. It needs to be powered by a 1,700 rpm motor in the 1/4- to 1/2 horsepower range. Pulleys should be sized to give a surface speed at the periphery of the wheels of 3,500 feet per minute. You will need two kinds of 8″ diameter buffing wheels. For the left side, you will need spiral-sewn wheels, which are a hard resilient wheel. For the right side, you will need cushion-sewn wheels, which are much softer and fluffier. Wheels are sold in 1/2″ sections, so you will have to buy two to three sections of each kind of wheel to give yourself a 1″ to 1-1⁄2″ working wheel.

On the left wheel, I apply medium fine (180-grit) Satin Finish Compound, which is about $7 per tube. It is a mixture of a water-based glue and emery compound. Don’t buy a lot as it doesn’t have a good shelf life unless refrigerated. The newly opened tube needs to be kept on a damp pad in a cup or jar. This compound turns our resilient spiral-sewn wheel into the equivalent of a very fine abrasive belt. It is crayoned on, but needs about one to three minutes drying time before work can start. Buffing the bevel and the flute will remove the grinding scratches and all trace of burr.

On the right wheel, I use Chrome Compound (some companies call this Stainless Steel Compound) that comes in a white bar for about $13. This wax-based compound is crayoned onto our cushion-sewn wheel. Work can start immediately bringing our edge to a mirror finish. Compound, the wheels, the jackshaft and the motor can be purchased online at www.mcmaster.com.

A very important safety point is that you always buff off of an edge (not into the edge, as done when grinding). Buffing into the edge will result in the tool being thrown back at you. The trick is to present the bevel or the flute at a tangent to the wheel. The center of contact should be a bit behind the edge so that when the wheel deflects it bleeds to the edge. Have fun and enjoy your sharp tools!

The post Sharpening with a Grinding Jig and Buffers appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

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In the July/August issue of Woodworker’s Journal Magazine, Chris Marshall tackled the same project with more traditional woodworking methods.

No matter how you decide to build this project, you’ll want to have a perfect layout before attaching the hinges. To that end, we’ve prepared this hinge pattern drawing to use with your project.

Click Here for the PDF.

The post Butler Table Tray Hinge Layout appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

The post Using a Bench Grinder to Sharpen Turning Tools appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

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