Woodworking / Furniture Building

A few weeks ago my wife mentioned she thought we should get my daughter a jewelry box for her birthday in February. I told her instead of buying one it might be fun to make one for her that she can someday treasure (she is only 4 now. I'm just about finished up and wanted to share the results. It's definitely not perfect but it was a fun project.
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Very nice! I wanted to do something like this when my girl was younger - but now she's in college, I might ask for her input - she's pretty artsy-craftsy, so a traditional jewelry box might not appeal to her right now.
 
Great work!
 
Thanks guys, it really was a fun project. I finally got the finish completed on it and my wife is working on lining parts of it with velvet. It's a good feeling seeing something come together like this.
 
Thanks guys, it really was a fun project. I finally got the finish completed on it and my wife is working on lining parts of it with velvet. It's a good feeling seeing something come together like this.


Suede-Tex flocking. Easy-peasy.
 
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Well I finally broke down and got the drawer pulls installed and can claim victory. Now the real challenge begins: finding a place to put it.


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Did you build it?


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Woodworking / Furniture Building

It's that time of year again when I begin the project to raffle as a fundraiser for my wife's American Cancer Society relay team. For this year I've elected to do a small table:

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The original was made from mahogany, but I had a stack of curly maple on hand so I selected the best pieces for the top, leaves, and end rails. Here are the pieces laid out and marked for cuts to rough length:

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The pieces with the most figure and best matching went to the top and leaves:

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The center board of the top needed a lot of work to get flat. I started with a scrub plane to knock down the high center:

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I switched to a jack plane working diagonally down the board:

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When the sticks line up the board is flat enough to run through the planer:

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A few passes through the planer with the board and its mates yields stock ready to be joined together once the edges are straightened. Some glue and clamps yield the panel for the top. The side with the triangle will face the underside of the table:

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The leaves were prepared in the same fashion.
 
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Well I finally broke down and got the drawer pulls installed and can claim victory. Now the real challenge begins: finding a place to put it.


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Very nice piece - I like it


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Well I finally broke down and got the drawer pulls installed and can claim victory. Now the real challenge begins: finding a place to put it.


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That is beautiful! Fantastic work man!
 
With the top and leaves glued up its time to move on to the base. The table legs are square for the top 6" then are tapered on all four sides from that point to the floor. The legs get a mortise on each of their inside faces:

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There are many ways to cut the tapers on the legs. I have a fairly simple tapering jig I made to ride on the miter slot of my table saw, so I used that:

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The stops are set so that the blade engages the leg at 6" down from the top and ends at the desired taper:

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The jig works well for legs with tapers on two sides since the entire leg registers against the stops. When all four sides get tapered the already tapered sides must be shimmed to get proper support:

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The fourth side gets shimmed on the bottom also:

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The tapering operation goes quickly but leaves some saw marks on the faces. A plane makes short work of removing them:

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With the legs formed I cut the tenons on the aprons. The ends were glued up individually, then the two end sub assemblies were joined with the structural aprons:

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The end aprons are flush with the outside faces of the legs while the long structural aprons are held to the inside.
 
I'm enjoying following along with this. I've been needing to make a jig like that, I'm glad you posted those pictures and descriptions. Nice work!
 
Woodworking / Furniture Building

With the base glued up it's time to add the swing arm aprons.

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The swing arm aprons are made from the primary wood and are glued into place on the outside of the structural aprons. The swing arms will support the drop leaves when they are raised into position.

The apron blank is cut into two pieces, with enough material to overlap and form the hinge to swing the arm:

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The fixed portion of the swing arm is square while the swing arm itself will receive a curved treatment. The treatment is decorative but also serves to relieve some material and allow more room under the drop leaf and will enable some relief so it can be easily pulled away from the side:

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After a bit of sanding I can begin to see the swing arm take shape. The hinge will be laid out next, the fixed side will get three knuckles, and the swing arm will get two:

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I use the table saw to define the sides of the knuckles. The blade is set just shy of final depth:

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Some saw and chisel work removes the waste and cleans up the joint to the base line:

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I use the fixed side to mark the swing arm:

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And I repeat the process on the swing arm. Once the swing arm is cleaned up I test the fit:

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We can mark and drill for the hinge pin now.
However we're not quite done. The pieces mate nicely together but the cannot pivot on the hinge pin. We need to relieve some material on the back side of the apron:

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Start by defining the sides with a saw cut:

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Some time with mallet and chisel gets the waste between chopped down. Take care not to chop too far down on the front:

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Once the waste is relieved from both halves we can assemble the apron and test the swing:

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Only one issue remains, the inner points on the swing arm protrude past the inner face of the apron during its swing travel. We need to remove these points as well, otherwise we won't be able to swing the arm a sufficient distance to support the leaf:

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We can now make the complimentary piece for the other side of the apron. It is a flipped image of the swing arm and forms a finger hole. The swing arm has a relief routed on the back side for fingertips to grasp and pull forward. The finished apron:

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Well done...well done indeed!
 
Woodworking / Furniture Building

With the base assembly complete it's time to turn to the top. The entire top consists of a fixed center with two leaves:

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Curly maple looks fantastic but it's reversing grain is difficult to deal with. Even taking all precautions during stock prep does not always prevent tear out:

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For our woodworking forebears this would have meant hours of difficult work spent with plane and scraper to clean this up. Today we are fortunate enough to have machines for the job, in this case a drum sander. Before I take the parts to the sander I trim some excess length:

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With some time at the drum sander I get the tear out removed on the show faces of the top:

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To speed the process (and because it's the only one I had on hand) I used a heavy grit on the drum sander. It made this step proceed more quickly with the trade off being deep score marks which will require more time finish sanding to remove:

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The top and leaves will receive a rule joint. The joint gives the leaves support along their length when raised and leaves a nice profile along the top when the leaves are folded. The inside edge of each leaf gets a cove profile cut:

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The two edges of the top get a matching round over profile:

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The pieces mate together and are ready to have the drop leaf hinged installed:

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Drop leaf hinges are a specialty hinge with one leaf longer than the other. The leaves are also located in the center of the barrel, as opposed to a typical butt hinge where the leaves are tangent. To set the hinges a deep mortise is first cut to capture the barrel. The mortise is placed so that the barrel is directly below the fillet formed on the top edge:

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With the barrel mortises cut we can hold the leaves tight and mark the outline of the hinge leaves. The long hinge leaf picks up the table leaf, the extra length allows for the swing of the leaf:

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Some time spent chopping the waste lets the hinges sit flush with the table bottom:

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Rare is the rule joint that requires no fine tuning after the hinges are installed, and these were no exception. Several iterations of testing the fit, disassembly, fine tuning, and reassembly gets a smoothly working joint with no horrible squeaking:

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Beautiful Work JohnSin. Nice joinery. I also love the multi species look. I have built several pieces out of Maple/Walnut. they go well together.
 
Thought I would post a few pics of winter projects I built this year. To me woodworking is a winter sport, I don't spend much time in the shop when it's nice out. That is until Momma suggests she needs something:act-up:











 
Really nice work JohnSinVA and Mesemann777, I mean very impressive. Rich that end table is awesome and almost exactly the size (except round) that my Fiance has been trying to find for a small space we have in our living room. I may have to get with you come next winter and contract you for the job, if you're interested.
 
Really nice work JohnSinVA and Mesemann777, I mean very impressive. Rich that end table is awesome and almost exactly the size (except round) that my Fiance has been trying to find for a small space we have in our living room. I may have to get with you come next winter and contract you for the job, if you're interested.
thanks Rob. it's a design i keep coming back to. I've done several similair with that leg layout, including round and oval tops. We can talk when the leaves turn.
 
Thought I would post a few pics of winter projects I built this year. To me woodworking is a winter sport, I don't spend much time in the shop when it's nice out. That is until Momma suggests she needs something:act-up:












I call BS. It's simply not possible to build stuff in a shop that clean :banana:

Very nice work! I see some tools in there I'm a little jealous of too :D
 
im kind of anal. last week i walked in to discover i left a window open a crack, 2 days after a heavy down pour. All of my tops were rusted!!!!!!. I spent several hours yesterday refinishing them. that sucked.
 
im kind of anal. last week i walked in to discover i left a window open a crack, 2 days after a heavy down pour. All of my tops were rusted!!!!!!. I spent several hours yesterday refinishing them. that sucked.

That's not rust, it's patina :D

ETA I just noticed the DC piping in one of the pics. That certainly helps keep things tidy. Is your piping grounded? :banana:
 
That's not rust, it's patina :D

ETA I just noticed the DC piping in one of the pics. That certainly helps keep things tidy. Is your piping grounded? :banana:

LOL too funny man! I do not ground the pipe to the machines. My last DC system had PVC and I did ground those. I have never had a static build-up, so I never ran grounds. Each drop has an electronic blast gate that turns the DC on when you open the gate. Those are metal and grounded, so they ground the line to the DC.
 
This isn't the best photo to show the blast gates, but you can see the cable going to the control box which is grounded.

 
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