treadle lathe

The drawers are straightforward and use common techniques. Such as, the sides joined to the fronts with half-lapped dovetails, and the floor being 1/4 inch plywood fitted into grooves. Less common is the extended length to the sides, which allows the drawer to be pulled out enough to give full access to the interior, yet have the tails keep it within the chest. Also a bit different is the back piece fitted into a housing joint and secured with wedged through tenons.

To my eyes, “grain matching” worked out well. I cut the top front of the chest and the upper drawer front, side by side, from a section of lumber Then, I found the lower drawer front from grain running at the same angle immediately adjacent in that board. It was as much careful planning as it was happy accident to have this distinctive angular grain pattern running through that board. By the way, all lumber in this chest is some sort of mystery pine from the big orange store.

You can already see hardware mounting holes in the fronts of the drawers. The chest will end up in a place that doesn’t have room for drawer pulls that protrude very much. I chose drop ring pulls for the drawers and quickly settled on the “antique bronze” finish. That was probably a mistake, because now I was on the hunt for matching finish for the other parts. After tedious wandering through the hinterlands of the internet I gave up on finding larger, rectangular, “antique bronze” drop handles for the sides. I actually found some, but they looked like wilting lilies and their $3 per pair cost signaled they were probably junk. I compromised with some “antique bronze” bin pulls from the big orange store. The hinges come from yet another source and are yet another shade of “antique bronze.” Yet, they are very sturdy and happily the pair is actually the same size.

Next, a bizillion coats of shellac.

The top and bottom use frame and panel construction. The dimensions, 19 inches by 12 inches, are at the small end of needing this type of construction for managing wood movement. Yet it was fun to do them this way.

The long rails were intentionally left over-long. Those tails sticking out were very practical for knocking the frame apart while fitting the pieces. And thanks to the previously mentioned mortise and tenon helpers, there was very minimal fitting needed.

The bottom panel is simple 1/4 inch plywood, and the assembly is glued and screwed to the carcass. The screw holes get plugged. The top uses raised panels, shaped from 5/8 inch thick material. The assembly is only glued to the top of the carcass. Instead of the full bull-nose that Paul Sellers prefers on his chests, I used a less severe round over.

After the glue set, the lid is freed from the rest of the chest by sawing all around. The task looks scary, but was frighteningly easy. ( I had just sharpened that 150 year old Richardson saw. ) A few swipes with the plane cleaned up the kerf marks with minimal loss of material.

Stuff accumulates! … and when not organized, gets lost.
Then, we have to play Beethoven’s “Rage over a Lost Penny” while looking for the lost thing. This happened once again recently while looking for a misplaced lathe tool. So, let’s corral the things into a more confined space.

No, not the turning tools; I made a rack similar to my carving tools racks for the turning tools. It’s all the rest of the stuff, the chucks, drives, tailpieces, plates, mandrels, etc. that has scattered itself all around the shop. After rounding up all the pieces and laying them out in “these things are like those things” manner, I decided I wanted a three drawer tool chest, or maybe one with two drawers and a flip-up lid.

The Paul Sellers tool chest looked like a good choice, so that’s my current Work in Progress (WIP). Mine is a version sized to what I want, a bit smaller than the Sellers version, but constructed the same. So far, the raw carcass is done and I’m working on the top and bottom panels.

Helpers

Furniture building is not my strength. Rarely do I do case work or drawers. For infrequent operations, I’ll gladly use “helpers,” some might say “training wheels,” to get a better result than what comes from random hacking. Here are three helpers that I learned about from following Paul Sellers.

Dovetail helper

Cutting dovetails is not a daily occurrence for me. I’ve done enough to feel confident and become almost accurate enough. Yet, they are still infrequent, and if a simple guide helps, I’ll readily use it. Yes, all the accuracy is in making dead-square cuts. Here’s a very simple guide. Doubling the thickness of the cut makes it easier to cut square. Adding some guide cuts for nudging the saw in the right direction adds even more accuracy. This carcass has more dovetails than I’ve yet done on a single piece. Using this guide, I got my “best yet” dovetail results.

Mortise helper

The top and bottom of the chest uses famed panel construction. The rails for the frame are grooved (1/4 inch groove, 3/8 inch deep). Then they are joined with mortise and tenon joinery. M&T is yet another infrequent activity for me. So far, all of my M&T joinery is still together, although if someone were to rip it apart, the innards would be found ugly. Here is a very simple mortise guide that assures the mortise walls remain parallel with the work piece, essentially removing unwanted twist from an assembled panel.

Tenon helper

Long ago, I learned to use a router plane as the last step in making well cut tenons. Yet, there’s always the possibility of having  the far end of the tenon be cut too small from having the router hanging off in space while cutting. This helper technique eliminates that problem. Use an over-long piece of wood and leave a “tail” as a platform for the other side of the router. Bingo! A nicely uniform tenon. Then, cut off the tail when cutting the tenon to exact length.

For a refined version of these M&T helpers, Paul combines them in his latest video series. If you’re a subscriber, see episode 8 of the Blanket Chest. In constructing the lid, frame and panel construction, Paul cuts tenons on one frame piece using the tenon helper technique. On that same piece, he cuts an extension, which when cut off becomes the perfectly matched mortise guide. This approach cleverly gets the joinery sized so nicely that the frame comes together with no twist and smoothly joined surfaces. (Frame and panel pictures next time.)