Toolbox

School's back in session and I am almost done with my toolbox.  I started working on it before last semester ended, but was really bad about taking pictures and never got anything posted about it.  Now I am  nearly done, so I will post what pictures I have now and will take a full set of pictures once it is completely done.

Cutting pins for the case dovetails.  There are lots of dovetails on the 17 in wide case.

Case glue up.  You can see my almost finished night stand in the background.

Close up of case dovetails.

Case with dividers and drawer stops installed.

Fitting drawer fronts.  The drawers are under construction and sitting on top of the case.

Cutting pins on the drawer fronts.  Most of the time you label what pieces go together with numbers or letters, but I decided to start drawing pictures like this surprised face.

Drawer construction complete.

I turned knobs which get progressively bigger to match the ratio of the drawers.  The smallest is 3/10" and the biggest is around 1".

This is one of my panels for my lid with my new tool,  my shoulder plane, sitting on top of it.

The lid being constructed.  It is floating raised panels with mortise and tenon joinery   

My finished lid.  The panels are curly maple which is resawn and bookmatched.  I will explain that more in a future post.

Ready for the finishing room!

Mortise and Tenon

The next type of joint we practiced was a mortise and tenon.  A mortise is a hole that goes through one piece of wood and a tenon is a part of another piece of wood that sticks out and goes through the mortise.

The tenon is on the top piece, the mortise on the bottom.

Here it is put together.

Instead of just practicing the joints individually we did 4 different styles of mortise and tenon.  We arranged them to make a little fence so that all the shoulders had to close at the same time.

Good for keeping my tiny sheep contained.

You can see some subtle differences between the tenons.

My favorite is the through wedged tenon.  The mortise goes all the way through so the tenon sticks out the other side.  You flare the mortise on both sides, so you can drive wedges into the tenon to lock it into place.

You can see the lay out lines for the flare of the mortise.  Plus the wedges can be a nice decorative element.