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Fine Hardwood Furniture

by

Andrew Pitts ~ FurnitureMaker

Work in Progress
Night Stand Tables 2007 No. 4 and 5

Article completed 21 August 2007

Disclaimer: This discussion chronicles the making of a piece of furniture in my workshop. My intention is to bring the reader virtually into my shop to generally see how I do the work and share in my thought processes. Although I try to point out how the tools work and the applicable safety considerations, this discussion is not intended to be a text on how to work with tools, nor how to execute operations with the tools shown. I am not providing instruction in woodworking methods. Woodworkers attempting to imitate my methods do so at their own risk.

Click on images to enlarge

I was approached by some folks to make two matching night stand tables. The couple had been looking for nightstands for a while, but had not found anything suitable. I like to work with the clients to create exactly what they have in mind, or are at least tending toward, so I accepted without hesitation. I met them at their house so I

could see the environment for the tables and take measurements, and get to know them better. Designing and making custom studio furniture is a very personal experience -- if all that was needed were some tables, there are plenty of commericial sources, but buying commericially is often an impersonal experience and I know of no furniture factory that will come to your house to design exactly what you want! These folks live in a beautiful home nestled in the woods and on the water, with lots of windows providing a light, airy feel. It seemed that natural cherry with some lighter accents would fit well with their existing bedroom funiture and complement the natural surroundings of their home. Using my computer aided design software (CAD), I produced some variations on the basic design we had sketched at the house and I e-mailed color renderings to them for selection and comments. Here is a CAD rendering of what we settled on.

As you can see, this table design is very straight forward, but we wanted to put a little zip into it, so we came up with two ideas. First, although the bulk of the table would be cherry, finished naturally, the lower shelf would have a lighter panel to offset the color. I had some nice creamy pecan that would work very well. Also, we had thought of using some pieces of cherry crotch, kept by my client in his shed, for the table tops. However, after cutting into them we found checks, or cracks that would make this wood unusable. So, wanting to keep the tops special and interesting, I searched my stock of lumber for the perfect wood and found some very nice local cherry with pink highlights and nice bands of creamy sapwood on the edges. Keeping in mind that I had designed some gentle curves into the aprons of the table, I added a hourglass shaped curved strip of red oak to the center of each top, gluing the cherry to each side of this narrow strip. In time, the cherry will darken, but the oak will hold it's golden color to make an exceptionally beautiful but gentle contrast. Using a template to guide my router's straight trimming bit, I cut matching curves on the red oak insert and

the cherry, making the joints very tight. Unfortunately, I had not embarked on this documentation project at the time I made the tops, so I have no photos of the process. Here is a photo of the two tops and all the wood for the other parts, rough milled and "relaxing" for a while before final machining. Wood always has internal stresses, and when I cut a board open I usually see the resulting pieces move some as the stresses are released. This process takes days to weeks, so I usually like to work a couple of jobs concurrently just for the purpose of letting newly cut wood for one project relax while I do work on another project.

The bottom shelves with the floating pecan panels would need to be made before fitting up the leg assembly, so I tackled that job next. Having already rough milled the stock for the frames, I only needed to trim the pieces to the exact size before cutting the open mortise and tenon joints in them. I laid out the cut lines for the joints, in which the tenon on one piece fits inside a "U" shaped cut in the end of the other piece (hence the name "open" mortise and tenon), then took to the tenon jig on the table saw to do the cuts, shown at right. I used a dado blade in the table saw so I could cut the mortises in one pass. A dado blade is actually two circular saw-like blades mounted on the saw shaft, with various numbers of "chipper" blades mounted in between to make the cut the appropriate width. Dado blades can typically cut from 1/4" to in excess of 7/8" wide cuts in one pass. If a dado blade was not used, I would have to make successive passes with my normal saw blade, that cuts a kerf about 1/8" wide, to get the required width of the mortise. In this case I wanted the mortise to be 1/4" wide, so I mounted only the outside dado blades with no chippers. You can see how that works in the photo, and you can also see how the tenon jig holds the wood perpendicular to the table so a tenon (or in this case an open mortise) can be cut. The tenon jig slides in a slot milled in the table top parallel to the blade. It has two handles for holding the jig securely and enabling the hands to be far away from the spinning blade. The work is clamped securely in the jig to minimize the chance of kickback, where the blade tries to convert the work into an unguided missile by grabbing it and throwing it back at you. If you look closely, you can see a piece of wood backing up the work in the jig. That backup piece supports the work from behind and is cut along with the mortise in the work. The backup piece prevents blowout, or the severe splintering by the blade on the exit side of the work. You only make the mistake of not using a backup piece one time!

The tenons are cut in much the same way as the mortises, using the table saw and tenon jig. There are a few ways to cut the "cheeks", or sides of the tenons, and I prefer to use a standard circular saw blade with the tenon jig. A cheek is cut on one side of the work, then the work is rotated 180 degrees to cut the cheek on the other side. First, however, I used the crosscut sled on the table saw to cut the shoulder of the tenon. The crosscut sled holds the work and slides into the blade, enabling a cut perfectly perpendicular to the work. A miter fence, sold with table saws, does the same thing, but the work actually contacts the table and slides along it. With a crosscut sled, the work does not slide -- the sled does. That makes for a more controlled cut and is one of the attributes that makes a crosscut sled a better method of trimming work. The shoulder is the ledge formed where the full thickness of the piece drops down to the thickness of the tenon. That cut must be perfectly perpendicular to the work so that the joint fits together at a 90 degree angle with no gaps. By cutting the shoulder first, when I cut off the cheek the waste wood simply falls away and I am done. When you get used to the process, this is one of the fastest wood joints to make, and the joinery is visible, unlike with a blind mortise and tenon (we will talk about that when I discuss the apron to leg joints).

After cutting the mortises and tenons, the frames are assembled dry and the groove for the panel is cut. I use a slot cutting bit with a guide bearing in the router table to do this cut. If you look at the photo to the left, you can see how this works. A router is a motor with a chuck in which a bit is mounted. The router was originally designed to be a portable tool, but someone got the bright idea to mount it upside down in a table with the bit poking out a hole in the table top. Then the work could be moved into the bit, instead of moving the entire router into the work mounted in a vise on the workbench. The slot cutter bit cuts a groove the width of the bit, and a bearing mounted on the top of the bit rides along the work keeping the groove depth constant. For my panels, I like a groove of 3/16" depth, as that gives me a lot of support while allowing room for the panel to expand with the seasons. When making this cut, it is important to keep your wits about you, since the bit is very exposed (and is turning very fast!). By the way, this photo also gives you a good idea of how the open mortise and tenon joint fits together.

The panels are fairly straight forward to make. They are cut larger than the inside dimensions of the frame so a tongue can be cut along the edge to fit in the groove of the panel. I always allow room for the panel to grow as the humidity increases, as well. I use the router table to cut the cheeks of the tongues in much the same way as I cut the groove in the panel, except because the cut on the panel is on the outside edges, I use a fence with a blade guard on the table so that the work is supported and my fingers are far from the spinning bit. I don't have a photo of my cutting these panels, but if you take a look at the writeup on making the Chest of Drawers 2007 No. 3 you can see how I cut the panels for the drawer bottoms -- same technique.

After making up all the parts, I assembled the frames and panels and glued them up. To keep the panel from sliding to one side or the other, since they are cut undersized in the groove, I put a dab of glue in the center of the groove for the end-grain to keep the panel centered, while allowing the edges to expand and contract. Here is what the glue-up looked like.

Now that the tops and the shelves were roughed out, it was time to make the legs. These legs were tapered on all four sides, sized 1-1/2" square at the tops and 1" square at the bottoms. That meant that I had to cut a 1/4" taper on each face, starting below the level of the aprons. The aprons would be tenoned to fit into mortises in the legs near the tops. Since it is a lot easier to cut mortises in square blanks of wood, that would be the first task after the cherry legs were rough milled to 1-1/2" x 1-1/2" x 24". I used a thick piece of cherry that I milled for this type of project and made an extra leg for safety. It makes good sense to make an extra part any time there is a lot of operations required to make the finished product. Since any mistake might ruin a leg, or there might be a defect buried in the wood to be discovered only after

cutting the tapers, having a spare leg can save me from having to recreate all the tool setups required just to make one replacement leg. To cut the mortises I used a flat bottom end mill bit in the drill press with a shop made mortise jig. Here it is in English. An end mill bit is like a drill bit without a point. It cuts a flat hole. If the wood can be pushed sideways into the sides of the bit, it will cut a slot instead of a hole. Now, make the slot an inch deep and you have a mortise with rounded ends! Easy and clean! But how do you push the wood sideways into the bit? By making a jig that holds the wood securely and allows you to move the wood side to side a certain amount as the spinning bit is lowered into the moving wood. The photo to the left shows the jig. Notice my left hand is holding a lever on the shop made jig and my right hand is holding a lever on the drill press. Also note the clamps holding the leg to the jig. As I move my left hand lever side to side, the carriage holding the clamped leg moves side to side under the spinning end mill bit. Using my right hand, I slowly feed the bit lower into the wood as I continue to move the wood side to side. When the bit is an inch deep into the wood, I am done. Later I will cut tenons in the aprons and I will round the edges to match the round edges of the mortises. I could also come back with a chisel to square the ends of the mortises and keep my tenons square edged. I use whatever method I find appropriate for the project at hand. I did one other operation on the leg blanks before cutting tapers. I cut a notch and a screw hole in the corner of each leg at the height of the shelf so the shelf could fit in it and be secured by a screw. The screw hole was later to be plugged with matching wood saved from cutoffs of the legs.

After cutting all the mortises, notches, and drilling the screw holes, it was time to cut the tapers on the legs. For this I used a taper jig on my table saw. By now you are thinking that everything is done with some kind of jig. Well, that's true to a great extent. It is a great time saver and it makes for better quality if operations can be repeated the same way every time, and jigs enable me to do that. Take the mortises, for example. After setting up the jig on the drill press, I can clamp leg after leg and knock out the mortises quickly, and they will all the same size! For this project there were 16 mortises, so that was a great time saver, which showed up as a lower price tag for my client. The old way of cutting mortises was to chisel each one out by hand using a mortise chisel and a mallet. Were I to be cutting only one or two mortises, that might be faster than using the end mill jig, but for 16

mortises the jig will win every time. Same thing for the taper on the legs. They could be rough cut freehand on the bandsaw (NEVER try to freehand cut wood on a table saw -- always use a fence or jig! Table saws have a propensity to grab work pieces not well supported and hurl them back at you with lightning speed), and then be smoothed with a hand plane or on the jointer, but using my taper jig cuts consistently sized tapers in a fraction of the time. For the eight legs on these two tables, that's 32 tapers. See the savings? The photo to the right shows the jig on the table saw with the leg clamped in it. The jig can be set to start the cut anywhere along the leg and cut at any taper. The jig rides in the miter fence slot, one or two of which are cut in the top of every table saw. I sized this jig specifically to fit the top of my Delta Unisaw. I clamped the leg in the jig and cut the taper, and then I rotated the leg to cut the second side. I did this for all eight legs, then adjusted the taper for the final two sides of each leg and cut them. All that was left to do on the legs was to round off the sharp edges and sand them for finishing!

It's been six days since my last update on the site, but I have a great excuse for my neglect! I just returned from sea on a Navy warship, USS McFAUL (DDG 74) commanded

by a good friend and former shipmate, Commander Mary Jackson. I don't have a photo of McFAUL handy, but I did take a photo of a sister ship on the transit into Norfolk, VA and the two ships essentially look the same. Also, if you click here, you will go to the USS McFAUL website and learn all about the ship. The cruise, called a "Tiger Cruise" in Navy lingo where Sailors can take family and friends underway for more than a day, originated in Newport, RI. My daughter, Amy and I were fortunate to be "Tigers" of the CO! We flew from Norfolk International Airport on Friday morning, serving double duty as escorts for our young Tiger Rylander, Mary's daughter. The three of us barely made our connection in Baltimore, due to the late arrival of our first flight, but Southwest held our airplane until we were aboard and we arrived in the Providence, RI airport safe and sound and only a few minutes behind schedule. We arrived on the ship Friday afternoon and met the rest of Mary's Tigers, her family from Texas. We then went into town for a great dinner and a little liberty. The next morning, Saturday, we were underway with blue skies and light breezes. During the next three days we were able to observe a host of shipboard evolutions and sample life at sea. Now, those of you who know me realize that I served on seven ships while on active duty (but who's counting) and may wonder why I would put myself through going to sea, again, without protest. Well, it's in the blood. I commented on the third day that it seemed just yesterday that I stepped off a Navy ship for what I thought would be the last time. After being onboard a few hours, it all came back to me. I had to really fight the urge to start being the CO and giving advice (well, I did give a little, but I tried to be quiet).

Some of the evolutions we observed were pretty exciting. We saw the 5" gun in operation, as well as the gattling gun called the Close In Weapons System, or "CIWS" that can shoot what seems like a zillion rounds per second at an incoming missile (fortunately, we were not aiming at a missile). I think the most exciting evolution was

helicopter Deck Landing Qualifications, or "DLQ's" where a helo from the beach came out the second night to practice landing, takeoff, and Vertical Replenishment, or "VERTREP" for five hours. VERTREP is where the helo carries pallet loads of supplies from another ship to our ship by hooking a lanyard to a net enclosing the load, and hooking the other end of the lanyard to a big hook on the bottom of the helo. A Sailor has to stand under the hovering helo to hook the lanyard -- he/she definitely does not get paid enough! The photo to the left shows the helo with a load swinging below. As if that was not exciting

enough, the pilots needed to renew quals on flying with night vision goggles, which meant that we had to turn off all the lights that could be seen aft because they would blind the pilots. The helo was dark, also, except for one small blue light. Standing on the bridge in the pitch black, we could hear the helo over the flight deck aft, but could not see it. Very spooky. Later that night we watched a meteor shower in a crystal clear sky. The Milky Way looked just like a faint ribbon of high clouds as the meteors streaked by, their tails making long lines through the night sky. Very impressive! The next day, on the way in to Norfolk, the Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) guys came out to do a flyby for us. LCAC's are

hovercrafts that can carry Marines and all their gear to the beach from an amphibious ship offshore. They float on a cushion of air above the surface, and can fly right up the beach head to offload the equipment. Here is a close aboard shot of the LCAC. We did lots of other things, and for once I was able to sleep whole nights without the phone ringing off the hook. Sometimes it is good not being the Captain. Oh, and we ate very well all the time! As we were about to cross over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, we grabbed a quick photo of Mary's Tigers. A pretty good looking crew, don't you think? But now I am back in the shop making sawdust, so my next installment will be about furniture making!

OK. I'm back to furniture making. With the legs completed, I cut the aprons for the tables. I had rough cut the lumber earlier, so by now it was very stable and I

could immediately mill it to the exact required dimensions. With that done, it was time to cut the tenons. These would fit into the mortises in the legs. Using the crosscut sled on the table saw, I first cut the shoulders of the tenons, then using the tenoning jig on the table saw I cut the cheeks of the tenons, which simply fell away onto the saw table. You can see this in the photo at right. These would be blind tenons, meaning the would fit into mortises totally enclosing the tenons, and they would be fitting into mere 1-1/2 inch square legs. Strength is a concern, so to help maximize glue surface on the tenons and mechanically strengthen them, I cut a 45 degree bevel on the end of each tenon so that adjacent tenons in the same leg would meet inside the leg at those bevels. Again, the joints were made to be glued, but the real strength of the joint came from the mechanical properties of a good fit.

With the tenons cut and the fit checked, I had two more operations to complete before gluing the legs to the aprons. First I had to drill holes in the aprons for screwing the tops down. I had calculated the expected seasonal movement of the tops and had determined that I could accommodate it with oversize screw

holes in the aprons, and not gluing the tops to the aprons. With that "wiggle room" the tops could expand and contract a small amount with the seasons and not crack or buckle. I used the drill press to make the holes, with a large countersink to later be plugged. Larger tops require other means for accommodating movement, but in any case, wood movement must always be predicted and accommodated. If not, you will surely see the top bow or crack with time. Also, I had to cut a shallow curve on the bottom of each apron piece, spanning the distance between legs. That curve is a signature of mine, and I use it to make my tables feel a little lighter. The curve is first drawn on the apron, then is bandsawn, and finally the surface of the curve is cleaned up with a spokeshave. I have an easy way to draw curves like this. I have a springy steel rule, two feet long. I place the ends of the rule between the jaws of a bar clamp straddling my workpiece, tighten the clamp until the rule bends to the curve I want, then trace the curve onto the wood. Easy.

With the aprons and legs completed, plus the lower shelf panels ready, I did a dry fit up of all the parts. The shelf panels had to be trimmed to fit in between the legs, and I had to wait until this point to do that since any slight variation of the apron to leg fit up would be magnified where the panel was to intersect the legs. With the trimming complete, I performed the glue up and clamping. For this I used Titebond III glue because it is easy to use and the dark glue line would blend well with the

dark color of the cherry. I used my Bessey K-Body clamps for this, since they maintain their jaws parallel very well, making even pressure and not causing the assembly to warp under pressure. The clamps came with frame glue up blocks that hold the clamps in place for this type of operation, and if you look closely at the blowup of the photo to the right you can see the blocks under the tables -- they are black in color. Also, if you look closely you can see the screw holes in the corners of the legs where the lower shelves attach. As mentioned earlier, I had cut a notch in the legs for the shelf to fit into, and the screws were there simply to draw the shelf corners into the notches. Later, I would plug those holes.

In the photo to the right, you can see what the leg/apron assembly looked like glued up. You can see the holes I drilled to attach the top. Before moving on, I prepared the tops for installation. First, I smoothed them in the drum sander, as seen at left. This sander is great for table tops, as it ensures an even thickness and is quite fast. The moving conveyor belt pulls the work piece below the rotating sanding drum. Note the dust collector hose coming off the top of the sanding drum housing. Without dust collection, the shop would quickly fill with dust, as would my lungs. I have an extensive installed dust collection system consisting of six-inch diameter steel ducts leading to a cyclonic separator powered by a two horsepower fan. The cleaned air then goes though a 0.5 micron filter before being returned to the shop.

With the leg/apron assemblies and tops ready, I attached the tops to the aprons. As I mentioned earlier, I did not glue the tops to the aprons, but snugly screwed them in place to allow some seasonal movement of the tops. I plugged the screw holes with matching cherry plugs I made with scrap apron stock. In the photo to the right, you can see me trimming off the excess plug material so that there would be a nice flush finish. This is another signature thing with me. On a lot of tables you see, if you look underneath you see screw holes with the screws showing. I like a more finished look to my work, so I plug my screw holes. I know, you probably will never look underneath my tables, but I will and in a hundred years someone else will, too. It is quick work to plug my screw holes, so that is what I do. The only downside is that if the tops ever must be removed, the screw holes

must be opened. In cases where I suspect that may be a possibility, I use only a minimum of glue on the plugs so they can easily be popped out of their holes. With the screw holes plugged, I could start the finishing process. In this case I was using a six step oil finish consisting of three coats of Minwax Wipe On Poly, followed by three coats of a mixture of boiled linseed oil, tung oil, and beeswax. Each coat is rubbed on and wiped off completely before drying. This is easy to do on the oil coats, since they dry very slowly, but the Wipe On Poly must be wiped off expeditiously because it is pretty quick drying. The idea is to apply only a very thin film on each coat and avoid a lot of buildup. I chose this finish, instead of my favorite shellac polish, for its durability. The polyurethane helps protect the wood from water, and since these were to be night stand tables, the chance of some water spilling on them was high. In the photo to left you can see me wiping on the final coats. I use my bare hands to do this so I can work the finish into the grain thoroughly. The beeswax mixture is pretty thick, so rubbing it in heats it and thins it a bit for better penetration.

With all the finishing done, the tables were ready to photograph. I think they turned out very well, and my clients are very happy. That's all that matters ...