Flutterby™! : Rail and stile raised panels 2008-05-21 04:12:42.521378+00

Rail and stile raised panels

2008-05-21 04:12:42.521378+00 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

It really looks terrific. Truly a great feeling of accomplishment when one can complete such a classic assembly. What kind of wood did you use?

An eastern maple (that I got surplus that I got for cheap from a local stamp handle and similar small machining manufacturer). He says he buys it by the box car load from Quebec, I haven't tried to figure out which subspecies closer than that. It's surplus because all of that heart and sap interface. Of course that makes it more interesting to me.

These are destined for ends for a low (the height of the Festool table) set of drawers for the shop, and they've sure been a learning experience. I need to do a bunch experimenting on getting miters absolutely perfect (we're planning on going with miters for the kitchen cabinets because we want a very rounded shape on the frames), and I now know why to cut the panel with a single bit, meshing the bullnose cut with the straight cuts was a bear. The maple's also hard enough that it took quite a while to polish that cut with the sander.

I also cut the grooves in the frame with a slot cutter on the router table, and I think that next time I'll either just use a vertical 1/4" bit, or use the slot cutter in a handheld router.

Aaaand, I need to build a jig or two to get better rips, even the "sliding square with glazier points" trick to align the rail isn't as good as I'd like.

Cumulative error in floating point and woodwork is a cause of major pain. Equipment can never be trusted to be or remain square. A good cheap source of square standards are drafting triangles which are an adequate starting point for most work. But the best test, is of course your own cutting. For a gross test, cut flip and compare. For a finer test which includes cumulative error, recursively cut four sides of a plywood square with the reference being the newly side. Then check how square the final new angle is.

For mitered corners I have always found that setup against a standard is not sufficient. But you can also become obsessive. Sandpaper and block planes are your friends. Some of the pieces that I have made look much better in retrospect than when I made them. The minor faults glared like novas to me, and obscured the value of the pieces when first made. Over time the problems assumed a more appropriate weight. Listen to others assessments.

I came to woodworking after having put myself through school working in machine shops during the 60's. Wood is just different than metal. Generally when metal comes off a lathe or milling machine, the part is the best that it will ever be, except for plating and polishing. But with wood, it is different. Tweaking fits is part of the craft.

For future tuning, I was tending towards cutting the full miter out of plywood to start with, but I also realized that if I can build a jig that holds the frame close to square, and cut a saw kerf long, I can then lay the rail down over the resulting corners and get a cut that puts both sides exactly parallel. If I can be close enough to centered on those cuts that everything comes together square, that's probably within the limits of wood movement.

I thought about breaking out the plane to tune up these corners, but I was concerned about getting the edge further out of true. However, a sanding jig makes a lot of sense. For now I chalk most of these up to practice and "it's shop furniture", though I'm learning a lot.

Note to self: When doing the "cyanoacrylate the gaps before sanding" trick, don't use the sander that's really good at dust collection...