With the action and adventure that comes with a newborn in the house, I haven’t been able to get to the shop too much, save for a few times in the past week. I have been able to move the drawer parts along a good measure, however, and am finding this portion of the project going faster than expected.
Here I’m about to start mortising a drawer side for the drawer rear wall’s tenons, having already cut a dado previously with another cutter:
For mortising I purchased up a Freud 3-flute spiral carbide the other day, which, though pricey at $75, does cut impressively well. I wanted a fresh cutter so as to be able to through-mortise without fear of exit surface blow out.
Here’s one pile of drawer side walls, dadoing and mortising completed:
A closer look at one set shows the clean exit holes attained with the mill and fresh cutter:
I had zero problems with that bit, which excels at plunge mortising.
A look at the work on the inside faces of another set:
I have a lot of chisel paring work ahead!
Here’s the other pile of drawer sides, along with the drawer rear walls which have all been tenoned:
Drawer rear walls, the shortest walls receiving two tenons per end, while the middle and large drawers take three tenons per end:
Another view, this time of the tenoned ends of the drawer sides:
While at home, life has been turned a bit topsy-turvy, however in those occasional moments of relative calm I have been digging into a French menuiserie textbook put out by Les Compagnons Du Devoir, part of a multi-volume encyclopedia on the topic. In the next post I’ll share a bit about that endeavor, which has comprised a bunch of geometry study.
All for this round- thanks for visiting the Carpentry Way. Post 67 is next in this series.
I know this might seem lame to you, but I would appreciate a video of your paring some of these to dimension. I get a lot from just watching how good craftmen use their hands and noticing their subtle methods. No worries of course if that is too mundane for you!
Chris,
Congrats again on the newest addition. You thought your new milling machine was fun, you just wait. Blowouts will have a whole new meaning to you. Great to see you back in the shop working on this unbelievable project. I noticed you new 3-flute bit had some red tape on it. Do you take the shaft before chucking it up? Does that hold better or just prevent damage. Keep up the exceptional work and congrats again.
John Gray
Jamie,
thanks for the comment. Time for video work is a little limited these days, but i'll see what I can do. It does seem like it's time to have another stab at video work.
~C
John,
good to hear from you. That red color you see is not tape. Freud likes to put red paint on their products, and that portion of the shaft immediately above the flutes has red paint. The portion inside of the collet is of course bare carbide.
~C