Craftsmanship in Wood

Paul, great work as usual! Hopefully those dry-fitted carcase dovetails will do their job over time.

The trays are finally being assembled. The trays are held together without glue by way of wedged tenons and dovetails. There are 3 tenons on each end from a center rail and 2 tenons from the drawer bottoms. The tenons on the drawer bottoms are closer to the center so most of the seasonal movement will be towards the outside of the trays where the grooves for the bottoms is deeper. The dovetails on the corners will not get glue because I believe the tenons will hold everything together. For the joints to fail, something pretty dramatic would have to happen. I did put a drop of glue on each of the wedges, although I think they would hold without it.

I see the logic in your design.

It's interesting to walk the line with glue-less construction, deciding upon what you can trust seems to be half the battle. Some great looking work there Paul!

I built 2 boxes with 2 trays each. I will post pictures after I have put on a finish. I will use tongue oil as a finish. You may notice holes and blemishes in several places. This is reclaimed barn wood and I left some of the old nail holes to reflect this.

That's cool seeing that you made two boxes! Gotta love it.

If the joinery in these trays fail, I will not be too unhappy and will hopefully learn something if they do. I built these with material pared down as much as I dared. I knew if I used thick material I would not have to worry about them breaking but they would be overly clunky and heavy and not at all "elegant". Any observations and suggestions from members would be appreciated (it is almost impossible to offend me). I built 2 boxes because it's only slightly more effort than building 1 while you have the saws/routers set up.

I used tongue oil on an eastern maple countertop and it wouldn't take. The wood continued to squeeze it out or bleed it out and i never achieved a nice finish. I used steel wool, very fine , to apply it as well as 400 grit paper. Eventually i stripped it and applied a waterbased hard finish, urethane i believe and it's okay now. The tongue oil i used was a natural oil from lee valley and it worked fine on the baltic birch ply drawer boxes. Be interested in hearing how you work your finish. Congratualations on that construction by the way, very impressive.

I would also suggest trying the water-based urethane instead of Tung oil. All the Tung Oil products, pretty much, are just resin based wiping varnish with a little Tung Oil added. Real Tung Oil without metallic driers takes a week to dry between coats and does not build up to a durable film. Add the metallic driers and you can do a coat a day, but then there is the toxicity of the driers. Then there's the fire hazards from the rags, and the clean up of brushes using more solvents.

I'm really pleased with the Enviro-Var water based urethane so far. Very easy to apply, dries quickly and very hard. No VOC's. Can be tinted readily with aniline dye to darken the wood more if you want that. sands flat quickly and doesn't gum up the sandpaper. In a warm room you could easily do three coats per day. I mean, you'd be done in a day and half if you wanted. Then let it cure for 5~7 days and polish it out. I'm using micromesh for that.

For this project I am happy to wipe on the tung oil as I am working on something else in the shop and the saw dust doesn't affect the tung oil. I use water born finishes when I can and hopefully won't regret not using it on this project.

Well, okay. I will say though that I have not found dust nibs to me much of an issue at all with the Enduro Var. It dries so fast that the amount of settled dust which attaches to the surface is miniscule. Besides, then you scuff #320 between coats, so it's really a total non-issue.

After the micromesh, before waxing: