Cooking with leftovers – FineWoodworking

I normally make sufficient further items for each challenge I train within the Misplaced Artwork Press store in order that at the very least two of the six college students can cock issues up, and I can merely hand them a brand new piece. If I’ve further items sitting round, odds are nobody will want them. If I don’t, at the very least one particular person will.

And since I’ve taught two back-to-back lessons in making a easy dovetailed Shaker tray, I’ve two full trays’ price of additional elements sitting round. The catch is, they’re from the dregs of my cherry: items with sufficient reversing grain that they’re a bear at hand airplane; knot holes that, although they may add engaging visible curiosity, are likely to snag on delicate items (and if giant sufficient, let issues fall via); cathedral grain in inconvenient locations (tougher than gentle, straight grain for rookies to dovetail); an excessive amount of white wooden (to which some college students object); small checks (which might be sufficiently restrained from additional splitting by at-least OK joints).

The perfect of the worst

The unfinished tray proven simply above is constituted of one of the best of the worst items from the second of my current lessons – the items my college students didn’t choose. I assume it’s destined to develop into a container for the attic cat toys? Or a last-minute reward for somebody with unhealthy eyesight, as one tail isn’t as tight on either side appropriately –  an excessive amount of trying up and speaking whereas transferring or reducing, I believe. So I can’t promote it. (Maybe the subsequent one – the leftovers tray I’ll make the subsequent time I want the stress aid of bashing out dovetails – shall be ok to alternate for money or cat meals.)

And maybe I’ll make my stress-relief “leftovers tray” extra like the unique – the interval inspiration for this challenge, with the underside inset in grooves. The one I train makes use of 1/4-in. by 1/4-in. strips to carry up a two-part backside.

By no means sufficient hours in a day

So, why, requested a current pupil, do I not train them learn how to minimize the stopped grooves? And the way would they minimize they grooves by hand had been they to take action? The quick reply is as a result of this can be a two-day class for starting hand-tool dovetailers, which additionally includes reducing and fairing curves (by hand or by energy, as time permits), and there isn’t all the time time to even get that accomplished, a lot much less time to make a extra concerned backside.

However it’s additionally as a result of I’ve two skew rabbet planes – and if time permits, we take turns with these planes to rabbet the two-piece bottoms, and maybe use my two beading planes (the gateway drug to all molding planes) so as to add a shadow line and good visible element to cover the hole and ease the sharp edge.

Shallow rabbets and stopped grooves

A grooved backside would require a number of plow planes (I don’t have even one which’s first rate; I borrow Christopher Schwarz’s after I want it), and a number of small router planes (I’ve however one). I can’t anticipate college students new to the craft to have these specialty objects. To chop a stopped groove by hand (which one should do within the facet boards –the tail boards – on this challenge to keep away from having the groove present), I drill a gap to the groove depth, then use the plow airplane to take out all of the waste between the holes that it could possibly attain, and end the groove at each ends with the small router airplane. (On the tip items—the pin board—one can plow a through-groove.)

I additionally like to show rabbeting slightly than grooving on this challenge as a result of it brings us again to a query at the very least one pupil all the time asks at the start of sophistication, once we bounce into dovetailing: “Do you ever minimize a shallow rabbet on the baseline on the tail board?” The quick reply is sure. A shallow rabbet (I purpose for 1/32 in. deep) the width of the inventory’s thickness on the baseline creates a cease. It makes transferring the tail shapes to your pin board (or vice versa I assume … however I nearly all the time minimize tails first) a lot simpler. The mating board nests into the rabbet, making it simple to align the items.

Follow makes excellent

However I don’t train that technique in newbie lessons as a result of it’s troublesome to choose up a rabbet airplane for the primary time and minimize an ideal 90° rabbet. And it should be an ideal 90° rabbet. Inevitably, that first (or tenth) rabbet shall be sloped, so then one has to chase 90° with a straight rabbet airplane or shoulder airplane. Failure/frustration isn’t any strategy to introduce people to the enjoyable of dovetailing! (If the dovetailed challenge is giant sufficient to warrant the assistance of a rabbet, we “extrude” one as an alternative, by tacking a straight-edged piece of wooden on the baseline.)

Working towards rabbets on the finish of the challenge, on backside boards the place 90° isn’t strictly crucial, is decrease threat. Then following up with a beading airplane, which shortly delivers quick and engaging outcomes, makes everybody go away blissful, and with two extra profitable abilities.

However after I’m working with leftovers, I can prepare dinner issues up nevertheless I like. Assuming Chris will let me borrow his good plow airplane.

Extra from Megan Fitzpatrick