Joinery layout and milling for a dresser
I am making Mike Pekovich’s low chest of drawers, FWW, number 248. I am finding the joinery layout for this project quite daunting. I’m almost done but it’s taking me about five hours and I’m wondering if there’s any tips that could make this a more efficient process in the future. Also, I didn’t mill all the parts initially ( did in stages) and I’m finding there’s a few 1/16 inch discrepancies here and there. Is milling of all parts at the onset the preferred way to go on most projects? Also, I haven’t incorporated a shooting board into my woodworking but with these discrepancies, I’m wondering if this is almost an essential step in the process that most people utilize in their work? As usual, thanks in advance as I’ve found this forum to be very helpful in starting this retirement hobby two years ago.
Replies
Getting matching thicknesses milled together is a good practice, especially if your machines are not easily re-set to match something exactly. Cutting matching parts to length at the same time makes sense for the same reason; set up a stop block and cut the matches... no way to get them closer off the saw. When the parts all match mistake opportunities are fewer.
A shooting board is a handy thing to get square and to take off less than what a saw might...miscuts on a machine happen WAY faster. With a shooting board I can sneak up on my miscuts slowly and carefully.
I can second the power of a shoot board and a hand plane. I easily am removing only 2 or 3 thou per hand plane stroke. The toughest part is just being patient at that point on the number of strokes between measurments so you don't overshoot.
Some woodworkers prefer to mill all of their parts at once to ensure consistency, while others find it more efficient to mill in stages. As long as you are diligent in checking your work as you go, either approach can be effective.
Also, a shooting board can be a helpful tool for ensuring that your joints are perfectly square and true. While it's not strictly necessary for all projects, it can certainly be a valuable addition to your woodworking toolkit.
I have had success using the table saw and a large sled to nicely fit two 68" boards into a frame butt joint. Cut them a bit long, then set the boards in the sled and just let the board touch the blade. Cut and repeat until I got a seamless fit.
If you mill everything at the start there will be some movement of parts unless you can build the entire piece in a few days.
If that isn’t the problem you might be having some issues with relative dimensioning.
That's what I would have said. As a hobbyist, it takes me months to complete a job as big as the one you're working on, and a lot can go wrong during that time as the parts wait.
My woodworking spirit animal is a turtle. I am slow as well. Months are a good unit of measure. As such, I tend to mill as I need parts. Fortunately where I live humidity is stable year round without any drastic swings and that helps. As primarily a hand tool woodworker, I mostly care about just two faces being square and straight. The others just need to be smooth and look parallel. I have only had a few pieces go really wonky on me and they gave signs of being fussy wood rather soon in the build.
Have you ever used story sticks? They're a great tool to help get consistent and accurate measurements on cabinets. Here's a FW article on them.
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2001/12/01/story-sticks-leave-little-room-for-error
I always mill to the right thickness at once, if possible. I cut almost nothing to length until I am ready for those parts. If you do it at the beginning, things will get screwed up. Drawer part widths and lengths especially wait until it's their turn.
I try to think about how the part is going to be used in the piece. For example, if I'm cutting the rails for a table, I want the matching pieces to be exactly the same length and ditto for the length of tenons at their ends. So I cut them together, but not neccesarily at the start. But a drawer front, that should be cut to fit the opening in the case, so leave that until the case is done. The length of a table top or dresser top may not need to be exact (if it overhangs, you have some leeway), but if it's made of multiple boards, they need to be the same thickness.
All this is by way of saying that one of our skills as craft people is imagining the order of operations and how that affects the dimensions. It takes time to get better at that, even when following a project in a magazine. I find doing the piece in SketchUp first helps me -- I get to see where the tricky bits are and the piece becomes clearer in my mind. If that's not for you, drawing it or doing a pencil layout of the parts on the raw stock can also help.
You still there, chancito???
Always send a couple extra boards through when milling for set up or an "oops".
For length, I use a table saw sled. I feel it is more accurate than a miter saw.
It is not always that easy to dial in consistent lengths using a shooting board. But with accurate knife lines, it can be done. Important to gang up equal length parts, clamp and mark together rather than marking individual boards.
I'm sure you're finding now in furnituremaking, exact dimensions are not as important as corresponding parts of equal length.
Thanks to all for the thoughtful comments. Sorry, got tied up with life issues for a few days. A lot to consider but, in general, I’m going to slow down and plan more carefully so I can get get consistent parts for each phase of a longer project like this. The table saw sleds and story stick are intriguing options that I’ll have to look into further. I think I failed to understand the complexity of this project for someone with my skill level and had pretty unrealistic ideas about how long things would take. Hearing your comments is reassuring in knowing others haves experienced and figured out ways to solve these type of issues.
Regards,
Chancito
We all at one point under estimate the complexity inherent to cabinetmaking. The one most significant thing I found very late in life about woodworking is that having tools that are sharp and square can save you a lot of rework and adjustment later in the project. I now carry a trusted square in my pocket and regularly check cuts for squareness and flatness as well as placing the square on the fence of the jointer or on the side of a blade to verify it’s trueness. I never used a shooting board or stick. I now find that measuring twice and cutting once saves time in the end even if it seems a waste of time when starting a project.
Great advice, I’ve started doing this more as the mistakes take so long to undo and are never quite satisfactory.
One option is “all at once”. Another is “as you go”.
A third that often works for me is “In stages”. This works when I may need to adjust some measurement due to a miscut that can be addressed by a slight alteration is a downstream dimension of other parts.
I have some principles that I try to follow:
If I want pieces to be the same length, I only measure the first one, to set up a stop block. I always use a stop block, even if it is only two pieces. (I should mention that first I cut one end of each piece square, marking it clearly. I also stack the pieces with the square ends all at the same end of the stack so I don't have to check each one. I stack them so it is natural to put the square end against the stop block.) I try to always cut all pieces that need to be the same length at the same time. (More on this below...) I have a variety of sticks of different lengths ready to be clamped to my sled as stop blocks, and lots of practice using them.
I concur with others that a table saw sled is vastly more accurate than a miter saw.
If I want all the pieces to be the same width, I rip them all at the same time.
If I want all the pieces to be the same thickness, I plane them all at the same time.
I try to always (when possible) make extra parts as I am making parts. For test set-ups later, as well as for screw-ups and to replace pieces that become less than desirable. (Cupping splitting, warping, etc.)
So now what do you do when you don't have an extra part ready made, and need to duplicate the parts you have already made? Fortunately, FWW had a good article on this decades ago.
If you need to rip a piece to the same width as your work piece, set your fence farther from the blade than the width of the work piece, set your work piece against the fence, and rip a piece of scrap to the width of the gap between the work piece and the blade. Then put the scrap piece against the fence, and rip a piece the same width as your work piece.
Similarly, to cut a piece to the same length, set your stop block farther from the blade than your work piece is long, put the work piece against the stop block, put a scrap piece (with a square end) against the work piece, cut it, then put it against the stop block and cut your new piece (with a square end against the stop block) to the correct length.
You can even do similarly with your thickness planer: get your new piece within one pass thru the planer of its desired final thickness. Attach a scrap piece to your work piece with double sided tape. Put the work piece down against the table, and plane the scrap piece to an even thickness. Now separate the two pieces, and attach the scrap piece to the new piece with the tape, put the scrap against the table, and run the pair thru the planer without changing the table height. Voila!
Thanks for the detailed advice on how to get parts the same dimensions after the fact; I will definitely try these techniques going forward.