Other hobbies - cabinetmaking

[Cugel]

Cugel, I thought I had a good knowledge of all the joints used in woodworking but what is a domino keyed mitre?
I'm only guessing but is it some type of biscuit joint?
Nice work with the boxes, especially the stained glass, an art in itself.

Mitre joints are rather weak if just glued, especially if the glue surface is small and the strain on the part varies, as in a door or lid. Oily exotic timbers are even less gluable. Some form of reinforcement of the joint is needed. As you will know there are various kinds, including wee right-angle nails (used in picture frames a lot) with some reinforcements "honest" (can be seen) and others hidden in the joint.

Very small mitres are difficult to biscuit as the biscuits are generally too long so show on the inside or outside corner - perhaps both. The Festool Domino tool - a cross between a biscuit joiner and a mortiser - allows the insertion of very teeny internal dominoes (loose tenons) that are a third or quarter as wide as a biscuit. They act in the same way - a small internal mortise & tenon joint to keep the edges of the mitre joint together with proper long grain to long grain glue faces. The ones in that door are 20mm long by 4mm thick by 12mm wide.

https://www.axminster.co.uk/festool-dom ... s-ax820641

https://www.axminster.co.uk/festool-dom ... e-ax377925

If you haven't used a Festool Domino machine I recommend finding somewhere to have a go on one. They are tremendously versatile and will make all sorts of mortise & tenon style joints with precision and speed. The machine can be used to make the initial (accurate) mortise that one then expands or reshapes by hand to use hand-made tenons, such as through and/or wedged tenons.

I've tried (and sort of suceeded) to make all hand-made mortise and tenon joints but it takes a tremendous amount of time if one is relatively unpracticed; and can easily go badly wrong, wasting a workpiece. Such skills need that 5 year apprenticeship where one makes 100 poor ones before getting the skill to make a thousand proper ones, in less than a day each.

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The stained glass is not quite right yet, especially the soldering - another skill needing many man-hours of practice before one gets neat and regular solder lines of the required width. I suspect that I need a lot of refinement also in my aesthetic sense before the designs look better than just juxtaposed dollops of coloured glass.

Cugel

[reohn2]

Mitred joints(Sycamore with Mahogany splines):-

Some turned timber:-
Mrs R2's favourite piece (Elm)

Red and brown Malee:-

By my own fair hand

[francovendee]

Now you two are just showing off and high lighting my limitations!

[francovendee]

I have made a secret mitre dovetail joints. Very difficult for me and the end result had many faults.
I used this joint to provide some strength to the mitre for a large sewing box I made for the ex - Mrs francovendee.

I'm sure it burnt very well

[francovendee]

Just taken a look at some videos of the Festool Domino tool. Very impressive including the price.
I think I'd not use this a great deal as I find taking my time to produce a good mortise and tenon joint is very satisfying. It's something about using a sharp chisel and mallet, very soothing.
If I had an ounce of artistry I'd like to try wood sculpture. Sadly I have always been hopeless at any form of art.
We have a chap who makes and sells wooden sculptures living in the next town. It really is wonderful to see him working on a piece.

[kwackers]

It's cheating a bit but I just use a Trend mortice and tenon jig with my router.

I've also used a jig on my table saw in the past together with a mortice attachment on my drill press.

[Cugel]

Mitred joints(Sycamore with Mahogany splines):-
20191202_101331.jpg20191202_101654.jpg

Some turned timber:-
Mrs R2's favourite piece (Elm)
20191202_102001.jpg

Red and brown Malee:-
20191202_101903.jpg
20191202_101826.jpg

By my own fair hand

Those are very nice - a good sense of form and surface as well as the joint-making expertise. The former is my weak spot: I am not very "artistic" and tend to prefer a rectilinear form-follow-function approach, which is not always as pretty as it could be.

Turning is a queer aspect of woodworking. Many items - particularly those beautiful yet functional items such as bowls - are wonderful things; several notches up the beautiful-scale from even the nicest factory-made equivalents, yet extremely useful for containing or displaying all sorts. But then there's the other end of the turned-stuff range: hordes of queer little gewgaw things that appear to have no function other than perhaps serving as decoration; or (more likely) a demonstration of the turner's ability to do difficult albeit purposeless things.

I sold my lathe before moving to Wales, as I used it little. Of course, I'll find I want a-one again in a few months, when I become obsessed by making bowls.

Cugel

[Cugel]

I have made a secret mitre dovetail joints. Very difficult for me and the end result had many faults.
I used this joint to provide some strength to the mitre for a large sewing box I made for the ex - Mrs francovendee.

I'm sure it burnt very well

I've not yet attempted the secret dovetail corners - although my new direction of box-making surely demands I make the attempt now. Patience and sharp tools are perhaps essential. And at least one try with scrap to discover the degree of difficulty and thereby the degree of care needed. Of course, there's always the veneer to stuff in the gaps; and the beaumontage; or even the hard wax!

Cugel

[Cugel]

Just taken a look at some videos of the Festool Domino tool. Very impressive including the price.
I think I'd not use this a great deal as I find taking my time to produce a good mortise and tenon joint is very satisfying. It's something about using a sharp chisel and mallet, very soothing.
If I had an ounce of artistry I'd like to try wood sculpture. Sadly I have always been hopeless at any form of art.
We have a chap who makes and sells wooden sculptures living in the next town. It really is wonderful to see him working on a piece.

Years ago I formed a similar ambition, despite knowing my artistic sense is poor. I bought a large range of carving chisels of the Pfeil and Two Cherries ilks then looked at a Chris Pye course or two. Before committing the hundreds of quids to the courses I had a few goes at this and that and realised I was never going to be able to carve 3D structures that were anything other than badly proportioned. I confined my carving to nice easy motifs for edging or other wise simply-decorating furniture and never did the courses.

Even those bits of carving have remained simple, so I sold all the more exotic carving chisels before moving to Wales. The sale underlined the benefit of buying better quality tools to begin with, as they sold for £50 more than they cost me a decade before.

They didn't do much carving with me, then. On the other hand, they taught me an enormous amount about how to sharpen edge tools.

Cugel

[Cugel]

It's cheating a bit but I just use a Trend mortice and tenon jig with my router.

I've also used a jig on my table saw in the past together with a mortice attachment on my drill press.

"Cheating" is often an accusation tossed at those who use jigs and machines to make better joints than they can make by hand. I feel this unjust as use of jigs and machine tools takes skills of different kinds. And one still has to design, plan, assemble and finish the item made.

In addition, even the most zealous hand tool user, stuffed full of anti-machine rhetoric and scorn, does in fact employ jigged tools. Even a chisel is jigged, in that it has a handle, a length and a bevel. And a plane is just one big jig around a sharp edge, especially if it's a more complex item like a plough or combination plane.

https://www.axminster.co.uk/veritas-com ... ade-104176

Purists! I can admire their skills and abilities but not their intolerance of different skills and abilities in alternative domains using different methods. Such purists tend to be purist about every little thing. I once knew a fellow who would go red in the face and ballistic i' the temper if one ate a pear in a manner he didn't approve of. I won't bore you (as he did me) with his "correct" pear-eating method and its arcane "justification".

Cugel

[kwackers]

I sold my lathe before moving to Wales, as I used it little. Of course, I'll find I want a-one again in a few months, when I become obsessed by making bowls.

Cugel

Here's my lathe, it's probably older than me - although that could just be wishful thinking.
Don't think I've ever made a bowl with it, I tend to use it for stuff that simply needs something turned. In this case I was making part of the stand for a rocking horse but I have also used it to repair balusters, spindles and various other decorative bits over the years.

(No idea what all those light coloured dots are all over the image!)

[Cugel]

I sold my lathe before moving to Wales, as I used it little. Of course, I'll find I want a-one again in a few months, when I become obsessed by making bowls.

Cugel

Here's my lathe, it's probably older than me - although that could just be wishful thinking.
Don't think I've ever made a bowl with it, I tend to use it for stuff that simply needs something turned. In this case I was making part of the stand for a rocking horse but I have also used it to repair balusters, spindles and various other decorative bits over the years.

133_3398.JPG

(No idea what all those light coloured dots are all over the image!)

You must have long arms, you! To reach the lathe over all that ... that .... stuff under it. I foresee a terrible "accident" in which your long arms become shorter or perhaps get made barley-twist.

I've made three bowls, as I recall - during my green woodworking phase. They were adzed and draw-knifed into shape from a short half log rather than turned. The gutter adz and the drawknife have both been sold now - for a small profit, as is generally the case with good tools kept & used for a decade or thereabouts. I bet you'd get a pretty penny for that lathe, which (as you mention) must be several decades old now; and still performing well I imagine.

One day I'll make a pole lathe. as this is a green woodworking tool I neglected to make at the time of my obsession with the wet woods. They are simple and relatively easy to make & use. But where to put it? As ever, the toolen has somehow already expanded to fill all the available space. Mind, my shed is neat & tidy, unlike that lathe-nook o' yourn.

Cugel

[kwackers]

You must have long arms, you! To reach the lathe over all that ... that .... stuff under it. I foresee a terrible "accident" in which your long arms become shorter or perhaps get made barley-twist.

It's not as bad as it looks - probably...

I need somewhere to put all those teeny bits of wood offcuts so that I can have a rifle for that little bit of packing etc and a box under the lathe was the ideal spot.
I've since moved workshops so lots more space now for those offcuts.

[Cugel]

The latest makings. First, a small maple tea-sachet box made of offcuts (normally burnt in someone's log burning stove but now devoted to wee things). Finger-jointed carcass with two styles of housing joint used to retain the internal dividers.

Another off-cut item: a picture frame of some left-over limed-oak used because it matches the shades of the dead leaves.

And finally, a large oak trivet made with a chunk of oak kitchen worktop cut out to make room for a bigger sink, then framed with some oak off-cuts left from making a Cotswold style table earlier in the year.

Current things part-made include another key box made of oak offcuts full of shakes and splits; and some windowsills made of large planks of an unknown exotic timber. to enclose the existing windowsills that are made of painted mdf and are therefore boring ole things. It takes the hot dishes of delicious things made by the ladywife for breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner or supper. (Not all 5 in any one day, mind)!

Cugel

[Cugel]

Well, the weather has gone all autumnal at last - heavy showers, wind and even coolness now. And dark evenings. I'm squeezing in the bike rides here and there, when it ain't going to blow me off going past the field gates. but there's suddenly time for other hobbies.

This cabinet has been getting bits done all summer - but only a couple of hours or so a week as outdoor stuff has taken preference 'cos there was so much good weather this year. However, this week I decided to complete it before too much longer.

It's a frame & panel solid oak hall cabinet that'll have a cupboard with one moveable and one fixed shelf in it, two drawers above that and a sort of tray-top. It'll probably display some fancy pottery by a local potter (Billy Adams) who does reet rude-looking items that are quite exciting of the libido. I'll keep secrets in the drawers.

The cupboard door will have leaded glass in it, diamond pattern. The door and drawers will have knobs that are acorn-shaped (made by me on the drill press, used as a sort of vertical lathe). At the moment I'm making the ship-lapped backboards out of old deal that came out of an ancient outside door now replaced with one not falling to bits. They'll be stained to match but can be made of old tatty stuff as they aren't really seen, being in the back of the cabinet agin' a wall.

I'm making the shiplap rebates using a combination plane rather than a router. It's an excuse to use that fancy man-toy (can be a woman toy too, of course) which is one hand tool used by all cabinetmakers for making grooves and rebates of various kinds before motorised routers existed. I bought it 'cos it has loadsa shiny brass knurled-knobs to twiddle. It has it's own box, a dozen different blades with various profiles and some extra-long arms for making grooves well away from the guiding edge of what's being grooved. What a gubbins it is!

Cugel