Getting started on my toolbox. I'm aiming to build pretty close to the DVD specs, only 1" longer to accommodate my longer hand saw.

Working from the stock list on disc 2, I added up how many bf of primary and secondary lumber. The lumber yard in Santa Fe was out of hard maple so they were selling the curly maple for the plain maple price--almost half off--so curly maple it is. Picked out two 10" wide boards, another narrower board for insurance, and a heap of poplar.


Turns out it's hard curly maple--makes sense, but I was still surprised--somehow I didn't put that together until my less-than-perfectly sharp plane bounced off it. I've never worked with hardwood before, so the hard maple reputation had me worried for a bit, but then I thought might as well try it.

I put some thought into how to match up the wood from the two 10" boards. Posted a thread in the design forum. It's hard for anyone to help much with a just a few pics to go on, but I got some good suggestions that have helped. (And just writing things out helps sort through some of the ideas, so if you've been lurking here like me--JUMP IN!) Problem is, the grain isn't going to match up very well along the entire length of the joint. I thought about splitting one of the boards and using the pieces to sandwich the other board, this helps balance the color differences, but doubles the mismatched grain edges. Another suggestion was to add a strip of darker wood--mahogany or walnut--in the middle. I think I'm going to go that route. If anyone else has suggestions I'd welcome the input, even if it's just to help learn for the next project.

Now I'm getting started milling. This is being done by handplane--don't have a jointer or planer--could be a while....

sounds great...i would find a 207 in your area and use his jointer and planer..

I'm making some progress--it's just too slow for anyone else to notice. I've been planing the lumber down by hand. Tommy, thanks for the suggestion, but I'll probably be doing at least a couple more projects this way, so it's worth learning. I don't mind the work. Hope it gets faster as I learn.

I got the boards rough cut. I cleaned up one surface on each piece, just knocking down the crown. Started to really flatten one of the long boards, and man, things really went off the rails.

The first thing killing me was the tear out. The first piece I really tried to flatten...I couldn't get away with anything. Planing any direction other than across the grain was tearing out like crazy. I ordered a toothed iron, and that's been great. You can plane any direction you want with no tear out, which is really nice when working on twist. I flattened with that, and then switched to a regular iron to clean up the corduroy...light cuts....

Second thing, I've never tried to flatten a board that was that much longer than my plane before. It took a while to get my head around it, especially getting the twist out. I was flailing until I figured out that I should work on just the twist. Pick one end as a reference, and march down the board with the other winding stick, knocking off the high parts. Never mind about bow or cup, and don't touch anything already level with the reference. Once you have the twist out, then get the bow, then the cup again, and repeat. It took me a couple of rounds of that. Don't know if anyone else here does this by hand--there's probably better ways of doing it.

Some of the maple already looks great. Alright back to work.

Your method sounds pretty good to me. I would take the twist out first by planing diagonally from the two high corners until you get a piece that does not rock on the bench. Next, flip it over and work that surface flat.

I have to say that you took on a big challenge here since hard curly maple is absolutely the last kind of wood I would recommend someone try this on. Upside is that if you can flatten this stuff, you will find everything else easy.

On the subject of tearout, don't worry about it until you are down to the final smoothing. If you take a real fine cut to avoid the tearout it will take you forever. Just let it tear until you are roughly close. For the final finish I think a scraper will be in order.

On wood orientation, I would save the most highly figured stuff for the drawer fronts. On the sides you can go one of two routes, either emphasize the joint between the wood or hide it. The problem will be if you try to hide it and are unsuccessful.

Good luck

Steven Naslund
Chicago IL

Thanks for the suggestions.
Just to make sure I understand--is the thinking to put the best looking stuff up front?

As to hard curly maple, yeah, I wouldn't recommend it to beginners either . Once I realized what I had, I thought about going back for something with a gentler reputation, but I decided to take a shot at it, either I'd pull it off or end up a bit smarter.

Yep, the front should be the focal area of the piece. It also has smaller pieces and sometimes it is easier to get smaller pieces of highly figured stuff than to get a good large piece for the top or sides. It is really up to you what the focal area is but I would say it is the front on this piece.

Steve

Hey Timmah, good luck with your project!

If you can pull it off with the hard curly maple it'll make for an impressive piece. As you know, or will, curly hard maple can be a bear, but is worth the trouble IMO.

Rick

Jeez, I haven't posted in forever. I've been working away pretty consistently, and have slowly made progress. The case pieces are all 4 square and a little heavier than final thickness. Last night I glued up my first panel, for the top, but it sagged during glue up, about 1/16" in the middle. I thought about planing down to flatten, but I wasn't sure if the sag was due to faulty clamping, or to the joint itself being off. It wouldn't take the edges being out of square by much to get 1/16" over 9"--about a half a degree would do it. I don't think it would be a big deal if it was the edges being a little out of square, but it there was a void because of lousy clamping, that could mean a weak joint. Since I couldn't tell, I ripped the panel apart and I'll redo it.

Steve--thanks for spelling it out! Jefferson, thanks for the encouragement. Getting there.

slowly...but surely...yeah well slowly anyway.

I ripped that first panel apart, improved my "bench" top (aka old computer desk), took my sharpening to a new level (go tormek!), and rejointed & reglued. It was flat, then after sitting overnight on the benchtop, the panel had curled up again. Stickering the panel solved it, and it flattened back out within a day. I understand a lot more than I did a couple weeks ago--especially that edge jointing should be easy going at the end, shouldn't take a lot of muscle.

That's kind of what this has been about--it's slow going, but I'm learning a lot. I had to re-flatten a board that had cupped a bit. Planing it down was fun--I can get the iron sharp enough now, and I'm getting the feel for when I need to stop and hone.

Another big help was getting up a scrub plane. It was taking damn near forever and a lot of work to thickness with the jack plane...downright discouraging. The scrub plane sped things up a lot. Maybe a bandsaw for Christmas, huh?

One more glue up, some trimming, and I should be ready to cut joinery! First three minutes of the DVD almost down! Woo-hoo!

Instead of a picture of giant piles of woodchips...I was taking some nice light cuts of maple end grain...happiness is a sharp plane iron: