Logan Cabinet Shoppe

To begin making the panel, I rough cut a board slightly oversized and plane it to final thickness. In my Cabinet for the Shoppe build I used a full 3/4" thick panel and planed a rabbet all around the back so the panel would sit in the same plane as the door frame. For this panel, I planed the panel thinner so that I would not need to plane a rabbet in the inside. The final thickness of the panel is gauged from the frame and is equal to the thickness from the front of the frame to the back of the groove.

I place the dry assembled frame on top of the board and trace around the inside of the frame to transfer the shape of the panel to the board. I then remove the frame from the board and add the depth of the groove to the outside of the traced lines to arive at the final panel size. Then I cut out the panel to shape.

Next I lay out the panel bevel and field. From my design, I know the exposed portion of the bevel (i.e. the entire beveled portion minus the width of the portion that will be inserted into the groove) is 1/2 M wide. Using my divider I step off 1/2 M all around the panel. The center point of the arch lies on a line even with the shoulders of the field so I find the center along this line and scribe the arch of the field as well.

I also scribe the depth of the bevel around the edges of the panel at this time. Since I do not have a dedicated panel raising and fielding plane, I use a rabbet plane to make raised panels. Since a rabbet plane has no depth stop, I need a gauge mark to tell me when to stop planing. In addition, I won't be able to plane the arched section so I will need this depth gauge to guide my carving. I don't scribe the depth of the field preferring to simply eye this depth as I plane and carve. It's such a shallow cut that a little inconsistency won't be noticed anyway.

Not having a panel raising plane, I begin this raised panel like I begin a square raised panel, by creating a rabbet all around the panel to define the depth of the field. I can plane the rabbet along the bottom and sides of the panel just like I would with a square panel. However, the rabbet at the the top shoulders and arch will need to be carved.

To begin the carving of the rabbet at the top of the panel, I use a wide bench chisel to define the field at the shoulders and a carving gouge to define the field around the arch. Here I'm using a 1/2", #4 gouge. The sweep of this gouge was a good match for the radius of the arch. To keep the scribe continuous all around the arch I always keep a corner of the gouge in the previous cut. I make a vertical stabbing cut all around the arch to the depth of the field.

I then use a very sharp bench chisel held with the bevel down to pare away the waste at the shoulders and around the arch. I pare down until the depth of the field in these areas matches the depth of the field in the areas where I planed the rabbet. Again, I do this by eye.

The last step is to bevel the panel. Again, at the bottom and sides of the panel I can plane the bevel using my rabbet plane. I then use a bench chisel to carve the bevel at the shoulders and arch, working slowly and trying to maintain a straight bevel from the field to the depth of the bevel at the outside of the panel. A little convex is ok and won't be noticed in the final panel but you don't want to carve this area to a concave bevel as it would be very noticeable. I use a chisel as wide or wider than the bevel to aid in keeping a straight line from the field to the outside of the panel bevel.

The last step is to fit the panel to the door frame. Make small adjustments where necessary to make sure the panel fits the frame snug but not tight. You want the panel to be able to expand and contract seasonally without binding but you don't want it to rattle around either. It may be necessary to disassemble the frame completely and fit each frame member to the panel one at a time to make sure you only remove wood where it fits too tight. The you can reassemble the frame and fit the panel to the assembled frame.

This panel turned out pretty good. I'm very happy with it. The bevels are still a little rough and could use some scraping or sanding to clean them up but since this door is just a prototype practice piece, I stopped here. One area that was a little tricky was the junction between the arch and the shoulders when paring the bevel. A straight bench chisel just can't get into these areas very easily. I managed to clean out the waste by using a couple of smaller bench chisels, however, this area is still a little ragged on this door. I'm going to get a double beveled skew chisel before I tackle the real door panels. I think the skew will make it much easier  to clean out these corners.

After the arch is cut and faired, the groove for the panel and the sticking need to be applied to the rail. Having the groove and sticking already done on the shoulders provides a reference for adding them to the arch. I set a mortise gauge to the proper groove width and offset by referencing off of the shoulder portion. I then scribed for the groove all around the inside of the arch. I made the scribes as deep as I could to provide a good reference for my chisel. I then used a 1/4" chisel bevel down and pared away the waste between the scribe marks. I needed to pare in from both sides towards the center for obvious reasons. Once the sides of the groove were established, they helped to guide the chisel as I deepened the groove to it's final depth with continued paring.

I suppose I could have made a custom scratch stock type tool or something similar to a cooper's croze to cut the groove, but it's really not necessary. The groove is basically a long mortise so a chisel works fast and easy.

The fillet of the sticking is laid out next. I simply used a pencil and used my finger as a fence to draw the line a consistent distance from the edge as shown in the picture above. A marking gauge with a curved fence would work as well but again is not really necessary in this case. I am only marking a decorative element, not a joint surface so super precision isn't needed.

To define the vertical surface of the fillet, I outlined the fillet with a 1/2" #4 gouge. The curve of this gouge was a good match for the curve of the arch. I made stab cuts all around the curve to the depth of the fillet, keeping a portion of the gouge in the previous cut as I worked around to keep the curve continuous. Great care must be taken at the top of the curve to make sure not to split a piece off since the top of the arch is long grain.

With the vertical part of the fillet outlined with the gouge, it is simple work to pare away the waste to define a rabbet all the way around the arch. I again used a chisel bevel down for this task and pared down until the height of the fillet looked right and matched the height at the shoulders.

I then used the chisel, bevel down again, to round over the rabbet to match the sticking on the shoulders. This carving needs to be done from both sides toward the top of the arch, working with the grain to avoid tearing out a chunk. Care must also be taken at the top of the arch to avoid lifting a splinter while carving. Make sure to take it slow and come in from the other direction if fibers start to lift.

After carving, a little sanding with 220 grit sandpaper finishes off the sticking. Next it's on to the raised panel.

For the previous two blog posts about these doors, see here and here.

The frame for the tombstone raised panel door begins exactly the same as a frame for a square raised panel door would. In fact, I begin by making a square frame using the proportions from the design posts above. I build the frame exactly like I would a square paneled door, including plowing the groove for the panel, sticking the molding on the top rail and coping the molding at all the corners. This gets me to the point pictured here.

For a detailed description of how to do a square raised panel door see the build log of the cabinet for the shoppe under projects. A portion of the groove and molding on the top rail will be cut away later when I cut the arch in the rail, however, the shoulders will remain and the groove and molding remaining on these small sections will guide the carving of these elements on the arched section. It would be difficult to add these elements on the straight sections after cutting the arch and have them cope well at the corners so it's easiest to do it before cutting the arch.

Once the square door frame is done, I lay out the arc for the top rail. I opted to do this on scrap first to make sure I got it right and it's a good thing I did because I messed up the first try and ended up with an arc that was much too large. Using the scrap allowed me to plane away the marks and start over. If I had laid it out on the top rail, this would have been more difficult to do without altering the top rail thickness.

So I began the layout by cutting a scrap to fit between the stiles of the assembled frame. I then used a divider to step off the width of the exposed portion of the panel bevel on each side (the actual bevel will be a little wider because a portion of it will be inserted into the groove on each side of the frame). According to my design the width of the exposed portion of the bevel is 1/2 M (M= 1 module; see the design blog for an explanation of this). Then I step off another 1/2 M on each side for the width of the shoulder of the raised field. Finally, I use the divider to find the center of the panel.

Next I scribe the arc of the field from the center point. The radius is the distance from the center to the inside of the shoulder. Since the width of the exposed portion of the bevel is 1/2 M, I increase the radius by 1/2 M and then scribe the outter arc which is the arc of the exposed portion of the beveled section but also the arc of the top rail. On the scrap board this arc is a full semi-circle but on the rail it will not be.

To lay out the arc on the rail, I need to establish the center point. The center point lies on a line even with the shoulders of the raised panel field. Knowing that the exposed portion of the bevel is 1/2 M, I establish the line to locate the center point of the arc by scribing a line 1/2 M below the bottom of the rail. Then I use my dividers to find the center and scribe the two arcs, the inner being the field of the raised panel (for reference only to double check my layout) and the outter being the arc of the rail. As you can see, the arc of the top rail is not a full semi-circle because the center point is below the bottom of the rail.

Finally, I can cut the arc in the top rail. I used a turning saw to cut the arc just shy of the scribe line. The I used a 1/2" #4 carving gouge to clean up the arc and pare it back to the scribe line. Just like paring a dovetail baseline the last paring cut was made with the gouge placed right into the scribe line left by the divider point. This is why I don't use a pencil to do my layout, only to highlight the layout made by a scribing tool. You can also use a rasp and/or file to clean up the arc but a gouge is faster and leaves behind a cleaner surface so I like it better. After cleaning up the arc I put the frame back together to see how it looks.

In the next part I'll tackle carving the panel groove and the molding back into the arched section of the rail.

I've finally finished the case of the built-in I've been working on for the past couple of months and am in the process of painting it before installing it in it's final resting place. So I thought it would be beneficial to revisit my cabinet door design before I start the prototype. I was looking at the drawing I did of the door and something just wasn't looking quite right. At first, I couldn't place it so I went back through the process I used to design it. For the original post see "Designing Cabinet Doors" posted on 10/14/08.

As I was going back over my steps, it hit me. The width of the bevel on the panel did not look consistent around the entire panel. The width of the bevel at the arch of the tombstone looked narrower than the width of the straight sides and bottom. A quick check with my dividers confirmed this and caused me to rethink the design slightly.

Here's the original design. When I did this design, I determined the width of the tombstone shoulders prior to the width of the bevel of the panel. I determined the shoulder width to be (3/4) M. Then I set the width of the panel bevel to M/2. However, when I then drew in the arches of the tombstone, fixing the shoulder of the top rail at (3/4) M caused a bevel width of more like M/3. That was where I made my mistake. To fix it, I needed to go back to the point at which I began to set the shoulder width.

Rather than set the shoulder width first, I set the width of the [exposed portion of the] bevel of the panel first. This remained at M/2. I then drew the arches and made sure that the arch of the field and the arch of the rail were offset by the same M/2, using the same center point. In other words, the arch of the rail has a radius M/2 larger than the arch of the field. Then, the point at which the arch of the rail intersects the bottom of the rail defines the width of the shoulder. I don't know what this width is but it turns out it doesn't matter. This new drawing looks right to me. Before I actually make the door prototype, I'm going to make a full sized drawing on some posterboard to make sure I get it right. This will also allow me to pencil in the extra width to the panel where it will fit into the grooves plowed into the rails and stiles of the door frame. This "extra" material isn't noted in the drawings done here.

Time to go get some lumber for a prototype!

So there I go again. Thinking! It's always dangerous when that happens. But there I was reading "The Woodwright's Guide" and thinking. Thinking about wood; thinking about tools; thinking about furniture. But what really stuck in my mind this time was the format of the book, of all of St. Roy's books for that matter. His style of writing is so very well thought out and continuous (and witty, smart, etc.).

When you read any of the Woodwright's books, you are taken from the basic beginning and up through projects or processes with increasing complexity as the book progresses (e.g. from felling the tree straight through making a piece of furniture). As I contemplated this, it occured to me that this is what is missing from a lot of woodworking instructon media. Sure, there are tons of books on tuning up hand tools, how to use a table saw, how to build shaker furniture (with measured drawings of course). But I've yet to see one source that takes you through these things from start to finish. You are left on your own to put all the pieces together from several different sources. This includes most video instruction and classes as well.

So I had this silly idea that I could put together something using several short videos (maybe 10 minute each). Each video would build on the previous one like a mini apprenticeship but centered around an actual project. I could put the videos right here on the web site so people could check them out whenever they wanted, for free. I wouldn't just show how to set up a plane or sharpen a chisel. Rather I would actually walk through the recommendation I have made numerous times to folks seeking hand tool advice on several of the message boards. Specifically, I'll pick a project, acquire and tune the tools needed for that project and then build it. I'll use the process of building the project to demonstrate the techniques rather than just showing a video of a technique (like hand cut mortise and tenon for example) without applying it to an actual piece of furniture.

Of course this would be geared toward those just starting out in the craft or power tool folks wanting to incorporate more hand tool work. I certainly don't claim to be an expert by any means so experienced folks might not learn much from the videos (but you never know).  It might be something that the seasoned wodworkers might like to watch just to get a good chuckle though. If anything, you'll likely get to see me bleed and be able to tell your kids "See kids, here's an example of what not to do". It would probably be more entertaining than prime time television anyway.

So what do you think? How silly am I being? Would anyone actually be interested in something like this or am I that out of touch? Leave me a comment if this is something you'd be interested in seeing. If there is enough interest, perhaps I'll persue the idea after I finish my current project. If there isn't a lot of interest, that's ok too. There are plenty of other foolish things I can come up with the next time I get to thinking.

If you are a fan of Roy Underhill like me, chances are you were waiting in earnest for the arrival of his newest book, "The Woodwright's Guide - Working Wood with Wedge & Edge". If you've never heard of St. Roy or read any of his books, then where have you been? Seriously though, for anyone interested in working wood with hand tools, Roy's books can't be beat, and this one may be his best yet.

In his latest book on working wood by hand, Roy doesn't introduce a lot of new concepts (how much new can there be in a craft that has been around for centuries) but he discusses a lot of subjects in much greater detail than he has in any of his previous books. I've already gone through this book and have started it over again reading a little slower and soaking in more than I did the first time.

For the hand tool enthusiast, this book has everything. The book takes you from falling the tree in the forest, to hewing, log building (as in log buildings), timber framing, joinery, cabinetmaking, turning and just about anything else you might want to do with wood. In the appendix there are plans for workbenches, screw boxes and taps (for threading wooden screws) and foot operated lathes, one of which I plan to build VERY soon (like as soon as I'm done with my current project).

If you are unfamiliar with St. Roy's books, I whole heartedly recommend picking this one up. It gives you a very good feel for Roy's writing style and the type of information presented. If you're anything like me, you'll get all of his books (there are 5 previous books), though I already had most of his others prior to getting this one. If you're not sure, his other books are available through your local library. Check them out, I gaurantee you will not be disappointed. You can purchase "The Woodwright's Guide" or any of the previous books (which are now being offered in a new edition with updated cover photos) here.

And for those of you who live in an area like I do where the local PBS station does not and has never carried Roy's TV show, "The Woodwright's Shop" click on the link to "The Woodwright's Shop" on the right hand side of this page and check out the web site. You can even watch the episodes from the 2006 and 2007 seasons online. Roy also has some DVDs of past episodes for sale. You can email him directly through the Woodwright's Shop web site to see what he has available. He will email you back himself because that's just the kind of person he is.