Dry Fit of Sycamore Pieces

Taking much longer than expected, I spent many hours today getting the mortise and tenons on the sycamore desk fitted.  The mortises need to fit well so that very little gap shows around the tenons.  I used a router and my template to locate and hog out the bulk of the mortise, but the corners are rounded from the router bit. All those corners need to be chopped out, and I found myself spending a lot more time than expected getting the tenons to fit.

The shelf pieces are a bit thicker than the mortises, so there is work to do on each one to make a nice fit.  The Arts and Crafts hallmark of course is the exposed tenon, which shows solid construction and craftsmanship.  So, I guess it is supposed to take more than a couple of minutes.

Dry Fit of Sycamore With Cover

After getting these first 8 tenons to fit, I am confident, or hopeful at least, that the remaining 24 will go much more smoothly.

After getting everything cut on the Sycamore desk, I dry fit the pieces together to make certain that everything will fit later when I glue the pieces  together.  The first picture shows the pieces dry fit together.

The second picture shows the cover just wedged in its spot.  There are a few other pieces that need cutting and placement, but I am not ready for them.

I am using the desk for my wife as the the experimental piece.  When I need to work out issues, I figured it was better to experiment on the one for our home rather than the pieces for our children.  So far,that has proven to be a good procedure.

All of the shelves needed planing to size.  I left them a bit thick so that I could hand plane them later after they had sat for a while.  After sitting for a few weeks, there was a little movement (warping) in the pieces, and I had enough thickness to take that out and remove sniping marks left from the power planer.

I ran each shelf through the table saw to cut as much of the tenons as possible.  For some of the shelves, this was a painless process.   The bottom shelf has two tenons and will require some extra hand work.

Template Clamped to Walnut

After cutting the tenons, I focused on the top shelves.  But, my pattern still needed a bit of work first.  The top shelf bumps out in the front where the latch for the cover is supposed to rotate up and slide into a slot on the bottom side of this rounded area.  I used the jigsaw since I do not yet have a band saw, and used my drill press with a sanding drum to smooth out my cuts.  I finished sanding the round shape by hand to get it near perfect.

Top Shelves Ready for Sanding

After shaping the pattern to what I thought looked appropriate to the1902 models I have seen in pictures, I clamped each of the top shelves to the pattern, and used a pattern bit to replicate the shape on each shelf.

The tricky part for me is clamping and unclamping so that the router runs along the entire length.  Since the shelf is pretty narrow, there is little room for clamps and the router to sit.

You really cannot beat this process for something that contains an irregular shape like this. If I were making more than four though, I think I might work up a jig to make this process smoother.

All Four Shelves Ready for Sanding

Jointing Style to Panel Core

In preparation for gluing the cover panel cores and the styles together, each joint where style and panel meet must fit perfectly.  A long time ago, all carpenters fit these seams by hand.  After finding out how they did it, I love the challenge of doing it myself.

If you look closely, the style is clamped to the core.  Using a low-angle jack plane from Lee Valley, I planed the joint as flat as I could.  A straight edge tells me when they are flat, and the seams then come together when the style is flipped up to top position.  It is a simple process, but takes a bit of practice.  Especially here, where the style is side grain, and the core is edge grain.

Sanding the Oak Panel

After gluing the styles to the panels, each cover needs sanding to bring all the layers into a nice flat plane.  I wish I could say that I got it perfect, but that would not be true.

Using a couple of hand planes I smoothed down most of the surfaces until they neared flat — front and back sides.  Fortunately, the grain on all the styles runs up, and the panel core runs left to right.

A lot more sanding would be required if the grain was any more mixed.  I sanded each cover to 80 grit with an orbital sander for now.  Once the panels are sized for the opening, then I will come back and complete the sanding with multiple grits.

All Four Covers

Here is a picture of all four covers sanded to 80 grit.

We had an unexpected event come up which made it impossible to finish any of the desks by Christmas, but I knew that was not realistic anyway.  The pressure is off now, and I am just enjoying working.

From here, I will now focus on the shelves.

Trimmed With Router

Tonight, I used the router with a pattern bit to trim off the excess wood on the bottom of the styles and the bottom of the cover arch after cutting them out with a jig saw.   The process actually worked pretty well.  Each desk cover has two styles, so eight total were roughly cut from a pencil line tracing the style template.

After rough cutting them, the idea is to clamp the style to the style template so that they are perfectly aligned.  Then, using a pattern bit in the router, you trim off the excess wood so that the pattern and the style are virtually identical.  This is sooooo much easier than cutting each one out separately, and it gives great uniformity to the pieces.

Temporary Jig

I set up a temporary jig for clamping the styles and the template together, one by one.  I find that with the use of the Irwin clamps, some scraps and the work bench, it is fairly easy to setup temporary clamping jigs.  Of course one needs to have a plethora of clamps, but if you watch they come on sale from time to time.

After running all eight styles through the process of trimming off the excess to match the bottoms, I then did essentially the same thing to each of the cover panels.  As you can see in the last picture, there is now an arch in the bottom of the panel.

The last completed step tonight was cutting the biscuit slots into the styles.  My template also served as a story board, and contained the locations of 4 slots on each style to match the 4 slots already cut into the center panel.

Styles With Biscuits in Place

Fortunately, biscuits cut quickly and easily.  Hooked up to the vacuum, they don’t even create much dust.  I took this last picture with the biscuits temporarily in place to show how it will glue up.

Maybe I will do that tomorrow.  I feel that first I need to get the arch on the bottom of the cover panel sanded before I glue the styles to the cover panel.  It will be much easier to get into those corners without the style in the way.