I am about a week and a half into my next job. Same customer that I built the mahogany TV/FP Mantle for in November.
This job is 2 bedroom night tables with drawers. She requested that I use her left over marble counter tops sections soooooo that is what I am doing.
This time red oak, this is a nice change as red oak is lighter weight and noticeably easier to cut than white oak. But staining is required.
Anyway here are the pieces to the side panels. I prefer to prestain and varnish the inner edges that will show along with the panels. I taped off the sections that will receive glue. This is all stub tennon and grove jointery.
In the back ground you can see the front and back face frames. The back FF's are assembled with lap joints reinforced with Domino's. I use lap joints to create a rabbeted recess on the back to receive the back panel. The front FF's are held together with glue and Domino floating tenons.
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The sides will fit into the groves on the front and back FF's stiles.
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The dry fit of the 4 panels. There will eventually be 3 drawers in each cabinet.
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A closer view of the inside. The bottom grooves on the sides bottom rails need to be completed on each end and will meet up with the bottom grooves on the bottom rails of the front and back FF's. A 3/4" thick piece of plywood will form the bottom and fit into all of those groves.
I have yet to make a joint as tight as that. With my new dado saw, and some new proper router bits I hope to do as well, or close to it. To me that was a thing of beauty.
Here is what you did not see. Not the same job but the same procedure. I have made about 80 front and back face frames for half as many components of furniture this way in the last 4 years. This is a lap joint reinforced with 2 Domino floating tenons. This is a joint on a back face frame that forms the recess for the back panel.
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And the result..
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One of my favorite shots.
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And another similar job, back face frame and side panel.
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Practice, practice, practice..... And a good set of plans developed on Sketchup.
None of the above joints were done with a router bit, all with a stacked dado set and the mortises were made with my Domino mortiser.
I bet you could make that paper work on your sander.. Dust collection is a must however to remove the debris and glue.
Seriously, I sanded the face frames with a piece of paper that I used on my last project to remove a finish that came out bad. Yeah it removes "dried" varnish without loading up too. ;~) I had to repeat that statement to Swingman several weeks ago when I showed him the paper.
I'll try to do/remember to do a video showing the sanding process and how quickly that goes.
It's all a WOW to me, compound fittings and rails and stiles, almost a shame that they are mostly hidden from view. It was funny to hear my wife today, we pulled out several drawers from my dresser cabinet so we could move it, while I installed some return air grills in the master bedroom. She took a look at the cabinetry work on the inside and said WOW, all nice wood and fancy work, you could have knocked by socks off. Guess she is learning too. No metal anything on our bedroom furniture and as solid now as when we bought it 45+ some years ago.
Well, I'm limited on the domino thing to a special version for the home hobbyist. But the practicing part I am doing now. Like a kid in a toy shop. :)
I'm going to get a brand new FussTools handheld mortiser, it can be seen here,...
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ROTFL.
Seriously, while that is out of my picture, especially for a one kitchen job, I will be following you all's advise regarding Dado's and grooves "?", half laps, etc. on the case work, and something solid for the ff's.
I am also going to take a picture of my dado with the old blades, new, but old and compare them with the new so you guys can see why I was so concerned about the sloppy bottoms.
I have been playing around with the version 16, with free "make" after
30 days, what ever that is. I Just wish I had my old drafting program from Auto Cad, with its library and stuff. But they don't support it anymore, and it won't run properly on the new hardware and operating systems. It wasn't AC LT, but it was an autodesk product.
I dry to limit my screws and or fasteners to leveling feet, drawer slides, hinges, and pulls. Carcasses are typically all joinery and glue.
I typically will stack the dado set on the saw and apply the nut. With the teeth on the two outer blades opposite each other I measure the width using an inexpensive digital caliper. Then I use the caliper to measure the wood or panel that will go into the resulting groove or dado. I subtract the difference and add the appropriate shim. A caliper measuring in decimal is most helpful since most shims are measured that way too.
Dado, a groove across grain. Groove, a groove along the grain.
With kitchen cabinets you are pretty much dealing with a cabinet that will remain in place until demolition and replacement way in the future. You will be fine with constructing the face frames with pocket hole screws and dado/groves to apply to the carcass. In fact I remodeled our kitchen in our other home 25 years ago. Face frames were pocket holed and the face frames were simply glued and finish nailed to the carcass. The cabinets are probably just as sound today as they were then. Having said that the cabinets were moved about 20 feet from the construction location to the kitchen. Swingman and I have worked together on about 6 kitchens. I typically cut the panels, him the face frames, in two different locations. I gring the panels to his shop and we build the cabinets. After assembly we typically haul them to a storage unit until we are ready to install. Then we load them up again and transport to the final location. The cabinets always held up perfectly during all the moving.
Because furniture gets moved much more often I build the face frames with stronger joinery and I add "back" face frames to double the rigidity. My thoughts were that some day some one that knows what he is looking at will look at the back of one of my pieces of furniture. I did not want him to think a hack built it. :~)
It is good to have flat bottoms for better glue adhesion and fewer gaps.
Sketch comes in two varieties, Make and Pro. For the last few years when a new version comes out you typically download and install Make, the free version, and you also get the Pro version for a 30 day evaluation. After 30 days you can upgrade to Pro for about $600 or not. Sketchup then disables some features exclusive to the Pro version if you choose to not upgrade. A few of the Pro features are that ability to make more styles of drawings, Layout, dynamic components, and a more complete set of Solid Tools.
For woodworking for your self Make if just fine. If you were a professional and handing out specific drawings to different contractors the Layout feature that is in the Pro version would be very helpful.
The number "1" ONE thing to do with Sketchup is to draw each part as a separate and editable small drawing and then turn it into a component. Until you learn to make all separate parts of the project in the drawing into a component you will continue to be frustrated, and do a lot of head scratching. And then assemble the parts together in the drawing like you would in the shop. The lines in components do not stick to other lines in other components. Until your lines become a part of a component they will all stick together and create all kinds of headaches. ;~)
I Just wish I had my old drafting program
I have used drawing programs since 1986 and used AutoCAD LT for about 10 years up until I finally switched permanently to Sketchup. I think Swingman and I tried Sketchup two times and uninstalled it until finally Google came out with a version that worked pretty good. I was also tired of upgrading AutoCAD.
In all seriousness Sketchup will do what you need for it to do concerning woodworking. There are countless tutorial videos and good ones are accessed through the Sketchup web site.
If you want your woodworking projects to soar with regard to design, cost effectiveness, as well precision fabrication - everything from kitchens, to one off furniture projects - take Leon's advice on learning SketchUp to heart.
A good part of both our successes in making a living woodworking has come from being able to do meticulous, 3D planning, presentation of that plan to clients, and our subsequent execution of the approved plan.
AAMOF, Leon will say the same ... I doubt either of us ever walks out to our respective shops to start any project, large or small, without first detailing every component and step with SketchUp.
We both previously used AutoCAD, and both switched over to SketchUp about the same time ... amazing what a boost to the bottom line that has been.
Both Karl and Leon have spoken about the value they see in Sketchup, and Karl has even provided me Setchup drawings for a project - so given the accomplishments of these two guys, I certainly cannot contradict Karl's advise. That said - as many times as I've tried, I just could not seem to get it. I must be stupid, because I just could not get my head wrapped around the whole Sketchup thing.
I found a "book" on SketchUp to make all the difference. Watching video's, I missed key points. For those in the business, I cannot think of a better way to make a contract with a customer than with a SU diagram.
Mike Marlow wrote in news:n7pkhh$lr7$1@dont- email.me:
You're not stupid because you can't get a software program to work.
Sketchup does take a bit of getting used to, but you may find another program does the same thing in a different way that works how you work.
Sketchup works on faces defined by lines. I often draw a 2D object then use the Push-Pull Tool to make it 3D. Press the CTRL key to create a new face as you're pushing/pulling the face. (You don't always want to create a new face, for example you may be extending an object.)
If you think about the model as a series of lines, you're not working the same way Sketchup does. It's kinda like Japanese vs Western style saws. Both work well, but they work completely different ways.
Well that can present a general understanding problem but if you want to learn the program I would be happy to answer any questions about how to do something and or why something reacts or works differently than you expected.
I appreciate that. Perhaps at some point not too far from now, I'll download a new/fresh version of it and give it a try again. I have always managed quite well without such a tool in the past, but I recently undertook to build a new rolling stand for my SCMS and the number of "redesigns" that I ran into on that project really pointed out the value of mastering SU. Amazing the number of "Oh Shit" moments that little project brought on. I guess I don't juggle stuff in my imagination as well as I used to...
Any time Mike. The beauty to most any drawing program is the ease in editing and making changes. I typically present drawings to customers to consider, they ask for changes and typically with in a few minutes the changes are made.
One other thing, the drawing validates whether the project can be built the way you want and or illustrates problems.
I picked up on their advice several years ago. The first time I tried to learn it, I failed miserably. I just didn't "get" it. A while later, I think it was Leon said that it's a modeling tool. I tried it again with the "modeling tool" (drawing pictures of 3D objects) construct in mind, rather than "CAD" construct (making pieces with measurements), and I picked it up easily. I'm certainly not in the league with either Karl or Leon but I couldn't do much of anything without Sketchup.
Exactly and just to put that another way, The pieces that you are going to cut in the shop as parts of a project should also be drawn as separate objects and made into components "before" moving to the next part to be drawn and made into a component.
Components can be edited at any time should you need to do that and copies of that component will also update.
Then you can move the components in the drawing to form what you want to build.
Do not draw every thing at once and or as a single unit.
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