Preliminaries - Milling

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Chris Hall
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Preliminaries - Milling

Thu Feb 02, 2012 1:23 pm

Once you have a handle on the basic dimensions and configuration on the box, you want to choose material and commence preparing it. For my box, I looked around my shop to see what sort of offcuts might be kicking about, and dug out a couple of 10 / 4 (63.5 mm) thick pieces of mahogany. Not sure if the stock is Honduran Mahogany, or Khaya (African 'Mahogany'), though I'm leaning towards it being Khaya.

There is a wide range of possibilities in terms of materials here. Most Japanese toolboxes are made from softwoods or mahogany-faced plywood. You would really want a medium density material that is reasonably hand-tool friendly.

I invariably choose material based on a grain orientation that minimizes movement, which leads me to look for stock that have growth rings, visible on the end of the board, in a vertical orientation all the way over to about a 45˚ orientation. I avoid flatsawn wood, even for panels. Flatsawn wood is however easier to plane in most species, and is typically available in wider boards, so depending upon the size of your box sides, floor and top, and your skill with a plane, and what you have available, make your choice accordingly.

The two chunks of mahogany I have to work with are at least 6 inches longer than I expect my box to be, at 30" (76cm) or so, and significantly wider as well, at 11" (28cm).

Now, due to the equipment I have in my shop, I am going to make choices as to how to proceed that might not be possible for you. It depends. I have a large resaw bandsaw, so my choice is to take a relatively thick slab of material and slice it into boards. If you lack a resaw, your options are to pay someone else to do it, rip it by hand (have fun with that!), or use stock only marginally thicker than the finished boards are going to be, and joint/plane it down to dimension. In this project, the boards are specified at 0.5" thick. In metric, well, pick 12 or 13 mm. So if I were needing to start with a thicker board and plane it down, I would try and find some material that was 5/8" (16mm) , or 3/4" (19mm) thick ideally.

My choice is to resaw. I start with wood that is 2.5" thick, and allowing for the 1mm blade kerf, I can saw 3 boards out of my plank, each board being roughly 3/4" (≈20 mm) thick. Even if my stock were slightly thicker, I would still tend to resaw boards a fair amount thicker than they will finish out at, unless I know for sure that the material is absolutely stable. When you resaw, you quickly can see how stable the material is by whether it bows and sproings as it is cut.

So, starting with stock jointed flat on one face, I make the first rip cut:
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Watching as I go, the stock remains absolutely stable:
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The cut is done and as you can see the sliced-off board has remained dead straight and flat:
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If the off-cut piece was bowed or warped somehow after the cut, I could decide that the stock is too unstable for this application and go and get something else. If the movement was slight, then probably things will be okay, however I would have to re-joint the other face of the board preparatory to any further ripping.

Then I flip the plank over to lay its remaining flat face against the fence and make rip cut number 2:
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That cut also went swimmingly, and I had my three boards all calm and orderly like:
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It's often interesting what you discover on the inside of a board - this one has some checks from kiln drying:
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Finding internal checks is a whole lot better than rocks or metal, but still, these checks are undesirable all the same. I hope the preceding photo has provided a good demonstration of why I elected to resaw an over-length, wide piece of wood. Imagine if I had cut the stick closer to final length and then resawed - the face cracks would have made for added repair work. By keeping the board longer and then resawing, I am able to simply trim the defect off the board later on.

The middle board has a rough-sawn face on both sides, so I jointed one face:
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If you lack a wide jointer, then you have several options:

-joint by hand plane
-joint using a support sled in the planer
-joint using a router in a 'gantry' jig, similar to what people who make slab tables do.
-rip the board in half lengthwise and joint each half on your jointer -later the boards can be glued back together. If any of you have seen the bubinga step tansu that I made, this ripping process is how I prepared the stock as my jointer at the time was 'only' 12". Now I have a 16" (400mm) jointer and would very much like a 20". I wanna be friends with Martin or Hoffman.

Anyway, with one face flattened, I then I jointed an adjacent edge on each board:
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Then I put the boards aside, spaced to let air circulate, to let them sit for a day or two prior to doing anything else to them:
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Letting them sit a while allows for any follow-up movement to take place. The boards are still plenty thick enough to allow for further adjustments. I now have the two long sides of the box, and the third resawn stick I will cut in half crosswise to form the end boards of the box. Trimming these boards to width will produce material for interior partitions, tray sides, etc. I'll need to find some stock next for the floor and lid.

Then it is back to the drawing board to work on the design a little more. Every maker here should be drawing their own box and figuring out the dimensions and arrangements of drawers, tray, partitions, etc. At this point I'll give you all a few days to get things rolling. once you have your design more sorted, please post up pictures on the forum so others can see what you are up to. If you're confident in the overall dimensions of your box, it would be time to go looking for materials. let us all know what you go with.

For Now,

Chris
ya
yanai

Re: Preliminaries - Milling

Fri Feb 03, 2012 10:40 pm

Looks like I should be getting started with my milling by the end of next week. Should be fun as the only "machines" I have with electricity is an 18" underpowered band saw and a little Bosch table saw. The rest are 3 phase and won't have power until Spring or Summer.

This means I'm left with no choice but to actually use the hand tools I have. I'll have to think about the wood to use. Without experience hand planing boards flat, I probably want to start with something that I won't have to fight while learning.

I'm still trying to figure out this wood I got from the shop that went under. It looks like mahogany, but it's really, really dense like Jatoba, only stable. One slab is 4000 x 600 x 30 (mm) and weighs over 80kg. I'll try to post some pics in the material thread later to see if one of you have any ideas.

mike
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Chris Hall
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Re: Preliminaries - Milling

Fri Feb 03, 2012 11:24 pm

...it's really, really dense like Jatoba, only stable. One slab is 4000 x 600 x 30 (mm) and weighs over 80kg.
That's quite a slab of wood! If you can clean the surface up decently and post pics I'd be interested to see what you have on your hands.
..an 18" underpowered band saw
Well, if the blade is sharp and you proceed slowly and evenly it should make it through.
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Dan McC
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Re: Preliminaries - Milling

Mon Feb 06, 2012 3:41 am

Chris Hall wrote:There is a wide range of possibilities in terms of materials here. Most Japanese toolboxes are made from softwoods or mahogany-faced plywood. You would really want a medium density material that is reasonably hand-tool friendly.
I have enough quartersawn catalpa to do this project. But it is quite soft. It's similar to chestnut or alder in hardness and density, and pretty hand tool friendly. I have alternatives in the woodpile that are a bit harder/denser, just wondering if you have an opinion on the suitability of catalpa for this project?

Cheers, Dan.
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Re: Preliminaries - Milling

Mon Feb 06, 2012 8:38 am

Hi Dan,

hmm, well, I have no personal experience working Catalpa, though I have heard it is quite soft and works easily. It's also apparently quite rot resistant. I guess the toughness of the wood is a factor in the durability of the box in relation to the circumstances that the box is likely to endure in service. If the toolbox is getting dragged around from job site to job site, lugged in the back of a truck or van, where it might slide around and bash into other stuff, catalpa is probably not the best choice. It would certainly be a great choice no matter what for box internals. How are you thinking of using this toolbox?
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Re: Preliminaries - Milling

Mon Feb 06, 2012 4:06 pm

Moving the milling along a bit. The boards for the box sides were still decently flat, so i ran them through the planer for a few passes:
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As you can see, there is still some internal checking present, so I made a mark where I would trim the excess off:
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Then I trimmed the boards a bit, and will let them sit another day or two:
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After today's work, they finish out slightly fat - by about 1/16":
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For those who like metric:
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Then I decided to rough out a bit more stock. Here's my rack of off cuts:
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From which I dragged these three candidates:
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Yep, I've decided to make use of some quartersawn Wenge - it will become the top board. I ripped the material up on the bandsaw into the appropriate sized pieces:
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The two boards which will become the top panel (lid) are on the left, next to them are two sticks of mahogany which will be the dovetailed lid battens, then the next two are the end caps, and the last two on the right are to be the handles.

I thought it would be fun to do an impromptu mock-up of the lid:
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It should look alright, and Wenge is nice and stiff which makes it a good choice for the lid. It will be a pain to plane though.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Preliminaries - Milling

Mon Feb 06, 2012 4:28 pm

Some stock dimensions I am working with at this stage:

Caps: 2.75" x 0.5" x 16.0"

Dovetailed Battens: 1.625" x 0.75" x 16.0"

Handles: 2.5" x 1.375" x 16.0"

The length of those pieces, of course, is according to how wide your toolbox is to be.

The top finishes out at 0.375" thick, and mine is about 14" wide and 24" long at this point.

The bottom panel will be 0.375" thick, and mine finishes out at about 14.125" x 25.25".

All of the above dimensions are slightly fat, and should be enough info for your to start some preliminary milling at least. I'll supply the measured drawings for each part soon enough.
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Dan McC
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Re: Preliminaries - Milling

Mon Feb 06, 2012 7:10 pm

Chris Hall wrote:Hi Dan,

hmm, well, I have no personal experience working Catalpa, though I have heard it is quite soft and works easily. It's also apparently quite rot resistant. I guess the toughness of the wood is a factor in the durability of the box in relation to the circumstances that the box is likely to endure in service. If the toolbox is getting dragged around from job site to job site, lugged in the back of a truck or van, where it might slide around and bash into other stuff, catalpa is probably not the best choice. It would certainly be a great choice no matter what for box internals. How are you thinking of using this toolbox?

Thanks Chris, I think the box I build is not going to have a very tough life. Definitely not going to be dragged and tossed around. Likely will be a bit of a "trailer queen". I think I'll start with the catalpa, I guess I can switch mid stream if it starts to go pear shaped during the build.
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Re: Preliminaries - Milling

Mon Feb 06, 2012 7:28 pm

I'm sure it will be fine.
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Re: Preliminaries - Milling

Tue Feb 07, 2012 5:23 pm

Moving right along chaps. The boards for the carcase of the box greeting me today with utter flatness, so i planed them down to a hair over dimension, and cut them to length. I also did the same with the two wenge boards which will become the top:
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As for a 'hair' over size, this is what I mean:
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The Wenge boards remain about 1/32" (0.5mm) oversize. I placed the boards alongside one another so that their grain ran the same way. I don't tend to book-match boards for edge joining as this always places the grain of one board going the opposite way to the another. Once I had the boards arranged as I wanted them, I 'folded' one against the other and placed them on my planing beam so I could hand-joint the edge of the pair:
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Once I had a long clean pass with the plane, I set the two boards on a flat level surface. I have placed marks on the boards so you can see their relationship as they came from the planing beam:
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Now I treat the top edge as if it is a hinge and 'fold' the front board up and place it so as to rest on the edge of the back board:
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This technique ensures the the edge jointed on the board edges when they were together, even if the edge you plane is tilted over at a slight angle will effectively from the boards into a flat plane once the boards are placed edge to edge.

You'll also want to check that the two boards, when sitting edge to edge, form a flat plane using a straightedge:
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Also, sight along the join to see if light gets through anywhere. If there is going to be a slight hollow anywhere along the edge, it should be in the middle, which is termed 'springing the board'. You want the board ends to be tight to one another at the edge. If there is to be a hollow area in the middle of the board, it should be slight - on the order of 0.005", a pass or two with the plane.

This board is only 3/8" (9.5mm) thick, so there isn't much point putting a tongue and groove joint in to connect the boards. I edge-glued the panels using yellow glue. Before gluing I placed painters tape along the board edge, both sides, so as to minimize clean up work later on with glue squeeze-out:
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Once everything is ready, I glued and clamped:
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After drawing the clamps tight, make sure the two surfaces are well aligned to one another and that the clamped pair is laying flat. If your jointing and planing was done with care, the clamps should not need a lot of force to do the job, and the boards will lay flat when clamped.

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