Sawdust on the Floor

Welcome back. In this post we’ll finish the table top clock project.

With the sides cut, and milled with all of the dados cut, it was time to consider the top and bottom of the table top clock box. Both the top and bottom are simply more of the 4/4 cherry. It extends a 1/2″ left and right from the side of the case, and an 1 1/4″ from the front of the case. I added a door to the front of the case, and it is 3/4″ thick, so this 1 1/4″ overlap will leave a 1/2″ of the top and bottom exposed, when the door is closed. To attach the top and bottom to the sides, I simply used one of my favorite tools, the Kreg Pocket screw jig. I was not concerned about the screws showing with the top, as the holes for the pocket screws would be behind the face of the clock. The ones on the bottom, would like wise be hidden behind the drawers, but I didn’t want them showing when the drawers were removed. The solution for this was to install Kreg pocket hole plugs. These plugs, which are available in many different species of wood, are simply glued into the pocket hole after the screws have been installed, allowed to dry and then sanded smooth to the surface. Before the top trim piece was installed and secured, I added the 1/4″ plywood into the front dado. I made sure that it would not interfere with the top horizontal dado which had yet to be installed.

Since the horizontal dados slots were made to be 1/4″ wide, it was time to mill some of my cherry down to that thickness. So after dressing the stock on the jointer, I then ran a couple pieces of stock through the thickness planer that was set to a 1/4″ thickness. I also machined extra pieces to be used for the drawers at the same time.

Making the drawers was somewhat of an interesting challenge, not because of the drawers being complicated, but because of their size. These drawers are simply small boxes with a bottom attached. I didn’t bother with any fancy joints for the corners, after all these are designed to hold light weight jewelry, not some heavy woodworking tools. The only concession to that concept was a small rabbet cut into the front of the drawers, where the sides are let into the front. I didn’t feel that simple butt joints would have been correct. There is a rabbet along the bottom edge of the drawer parts for a piece of 1/4″ cherry that forms the bottom of the drawers. The sides were simply glued to the front, and the back was attached to the sides with glue and a couple of small brads from my small nail gun.

The only remaining woodworking task was to make the door. I choose to make a very simple door, with no fancy trim details. I used pieces of 3/4″ cherry for the top, bottom and center rails and stiles of the door. The corners where the rails and stiles meet were mitered and glued. The glass is set into a 1/2″ deep rabbet cut into the back of the rails and stiles and is held in place with glass retaining strips I obtained at my local woodworking supply store. The retainer strips were nailed into place with small pin nails after the finish was applied to the project. The center rail was installed with a simple butt joint. The placement of the center rail, coincides with the placement of the top dado slot, so that when the door is closed, the top divider is not seen.

It was now time to install the clock hardware and face plate, and this is where I discovered that I had goofed. The clock mechanism that I choose to use is battery powered, so you need to have access to the back of the clock to periodically change the battery. I also found out that you need the same access to adjust the clock’s time. Problem was that I had intended to install a piece of 1/4″ plywood into dado’s cut into the sides of the cabinet. If the plywood were installed, and the top and bottom were glued and screwed to the sides, there was no way to obtain access to the back of the clock. My solution, after uttering a few choice words, was to convert the dado’s into a rabbet.

This is where I discovered my second goof, I had forgotten to install the plywood back. But maybe it was a good thing that I goofed, as it made correcting the mistakes easier.  I ran a hand held router equipped with a rabbeting bit and bearing along the rear edges of the sides, removing the outer tab that was part of the dado. Now I had a clean rabbet that I could drop the plywood into. I attached the plywood with a couple of very small brass screws. I always worry about the router tipping and either destroying the project or causing an injury when I am running a router over the edge of a piece of stock. The normal 3/4″ width of the stock doesn’t present a very wide base for the router to sit on. To help eliminate this problem, I temporarily added an additional board or two to the sides of the cabinet to increase the surface area that the router base could rest upon.

After a complete sanding the entire project was wiped down with a clean rag and naphtha. Once the naphtha dried I applied my favorite finish, which is a combination of tung oil, linseed oil and polyurethane. This is a multi step process with the first coat being a 50/50 mixture of linseed oil and tung oil, followed by another 50/50 mixture of tung oil and polyurethane. A third coat of 100% polyurethane completes the finish. I completely sand the entire project between these coats with 400 grit wet sand paper and tung oil. The combination of the sand paper and oil forms a slurry that helps smooth out the surface.

The only thing left do was to install the face and clock itself, add knobs to the door and drawer faces, and find a home for this unique project.

I hope you will give this project a try.  As always, I appreciate your feedback so leave me a comment.

This past summer my family and I had an opportunity to visit Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.  While the restored historic homes and building were vastly fascinating, the one place that really captured my attention was the Colonial Williamsburg woodworking shop.  Here, skilled artisans hand crafted period pieces of furniture using the same techniques and tools the original settlers of Williamsburg would have used.  Now I love my power tools and I am not suggesting that we return to the only hand tools era, but some of those tools really merit consideration by today’s woodworker. 

All of the magnificent pieces crafted at the Williamsburg shops were all hand finished.  Yet the surfaces were as sanded a smooth as glass, not a ripple, divot, rough spot or seam could be felt.  The secret to this finish was quite simple, the cabinet scraper. 

Scrapers are simply small flat pieces of high grade tool steel.  The typical scraper is about 6” long, by 2 ½” high.  The top edge of the scraper is tooled so that a very small burr occurs on its edge.  To use the scraper, you would either push or pull the scraper along the surface of the wood, in the direction of the grain.  The results are very thin slivers of wood, much like when you use a hand plane.  As you repeat this over and over again, the surface becomes extremely flat and smooth. 

Unlike the original craftsman, today’s woodworkers normally will not find full width boards for tabletops, or dressers. So we often will glue up several narrower boards to make up the width desired.  No matter how carefully you are in preparation or clamping, the joints of the surface always seem to need a little attention.  Or maybe that’s just in my shop. While I often turn to a random orbital sander to clean up the surface, a much better tool would be the scraper. The sander will always leave sander marks, and if your not careful ridges and valleys.  This will not happen if you use a scraper.  Instead you get a nice smooth surface that any woodworker would be proud of. 

So maybe power tools are nice, but sometimes we need to go back to the traditional ways of woodworking, because sometimes the old way is really better.