I've decided to make a 'feminine' type of gift since I was more generous to the nephews than the nieces this past couple of years. This will (hopefully) be a small wall-mounted cabinet. The plans are still in my head since I saw something I liked on the web, but my lumber pieces are different in size. Also I didn't want to spend my whole year on over-complicated joinery.
Here's a few of the pieces being prepared. I've been able to spend as much on hand-tools in recent years as on the Shopsmith. About a hundred dollars -- Rain Man. There is a bookmatched tiger maple piece (courtesy the SS bandsaw) being smoothed, some elm side pieces being rabbeted, and a rough back piece made of walnut veneer glued to the 'woven side' of some hardboard:
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Top and bottom slabs will need some stopped rabbets. I ganged them together so I could hog out most of the wood with a Forster bit and the world-class horizontal boring machine:
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Today I did some trimming/squaring on the top and bottom slabs, and also ganged them together for boring some matched pilot holes through both. Certain holes for initial attachment of the side panels, other holes to accurately locate matched knife hinges at the top and bottom slabs....
Now I delved into the dreaded hinges.... knife hinges. They are close to working OK. With some geometry established, I can revisit fine-trimming on the door and the walls and the hinge-plates:
My stopped dadoes didn't match exactly as I altered things on the fly to make the door proportions look right. So I'm adding some tiny pieces, chamfered on the strip-sander, to cover any gaps:
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All along I wasn't sure if the "hanger scheme" would really work out, so I tried it out on the shop wall; luckily it does fine!
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For the bookmatched front panel I have added some small buttresses which may or may not control warping very much, but they at least make me feel better. And the style of cabinet will tolerate some bowing on the door. After this stage, I have to make some shelves and also some latching & knob scheme, possibly magnetic:
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Dick 1965 Mark VII S/N 407684
1951 10 ER S/N ER 44570 -- Reborn 9/16/14
1950 10 ER S/N ER 33479 Reborn July 2016
1950 10 ER S/N ER 39671
1951 jigsaw X 2
1951 !0 ER #3 in rebuild
500, Jointer, Bsaw, Bsander, Planer
2014 Mark 7 W/Lift assist - 14 4" Jointer - DC3300
And a plethora of small stuff .....
"The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never know if they are genuine." - Benjamin Franklin
Not going that fast as work-life gets in the way, but some more progress has been made.
I found a couple of small but strong magnets in my piles of junk to serve as a "soft yet assertive" door-closing aid. As you can see, all the holes in the top (for attachment-screws and hinge-pilots as shown before) have been plugged with the same type of Elm lumber. This view also shows tiny coves in the elm stabilizer-pieces inside the front door; those coves were done prior to gluing with the Shopsmith and horizontal-boring with a Forster bit.
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Also from my junk pile, an old Gerstner chest drawer-pull was buffed-out on my Shopsmith and attached to the front door. Then I've applied my favorite indoor finish which is just a bit of the Formby's gloss formula, which I will knock down with steel-wool and wax over:
That is my 'hybrid shorty' station. The headstock-in-crable runs a bandsaw that's always there (to the left). The right side is the Overarm Pin Router station which I typically keep in vertical position. But occasionally I want to lay-down the OPR to horizontal mode, and that's when I remove the headstock/cradle.
