my neighbor is a professional cabinet maker. he does some absolutely extraordinary things that i just don't get. i hang out in his shop while he and his crew build some things and i have to leave after only 10-15 minutes because i just can't understand how they do what they do.

This thread is too cool. I idolize Norm Abrams, but can't personally operate a power tool to save my life.

This is the only power tool I know of that can save your life. All the others hunger for fresh meat. I watched a fella shorten his right index finger by one knuckle on a bandsaw once. Those machines care nothing for the length of your life, unless it means they get fed something besides wood wood wood, day after day.

Although, this machine operates so well, that I find it hard to believe. A strictly vegetarian table saw. Whooda thunkit?

A joiner (power tool) can make a good edge, but my dad uses a hand plane and a straight edge. Use a long straight edge to find bumps and valleys, and plane them down.
Here's a cross section example.
You just have to get it all ready before starting to apply the glue. Or you can do one joint at a time.

Nice work, glatt. :thumbsup: The "footballs" are beech, I think. They're pressed and dried so they expand to hold tight when they come in contact with the glue. If you clamp them up with an overlap then saw down the length, through the overlap, the pieces will match. Same as matching wallpaper without a pattern. They do it one step at a time. To understand how, you have to break it down into those steps. To understand why, you have to do it wrong at least once. :biggrin: Your Dad is extrordinary. Most people would spend years developing that skill and some could never get it right. Knowing exactly what your hand and that plane are going to do before they do it, on every stroke, is damn near witchcraft. :lol:

Tell me about it. I never got the hang of hand planing. Whenever I try, I get chips and skitters everywhere. I put it down to some combination of two factors: 1) I'm left handed while many planes are right handed, and 2) I never practice. http://www.cellar.org/images/smilies/yelsick.gif

hey glatt, did you stain your cabinet yet?

I'm not sure which thread to put this in so, as I'm now using flickr, I'll go ahead and put it in both!

My dad just finished making me a cool box to store my markers and tape in. Here it is, closed, empty, and full:

http://photos7.flickr.com/9354936_1176e256f0.jpg

http://photos5.flickr.com/9354937_c6c542d1f3.jpg

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We're starting a new project, a chest of drawers for my sister. It starts with a trip to the lumberyard.

http://static.flickr.com/27/64955734_8058a8e418.jpg

It's a pretty nice lumberyard, with good variety and quality wood. This view was substantiated during this trip when we ran into one of my dad's woodworking inspirations, Peter Kramer. If he's willing to drive an hour to get wood there, it's good stuff.

http://static.flickr.com/31/64956301_a3ad483e6b.jpg

We picked out three cherry boards, eight feet long, an inch and a half thick, and six to eight inches wide. These will be the sides of piece.

http://static.flickr.com/33/64956761_74d5b37437.jpg

We bought the boards rough, so we put them through the planer until the faces were clean.

http://static.flickr.com/33/67305743_f88bc98fe0.jpg

This creates a lot of sawdust.

http://static.flickr.com/34/67306801_4a8cd20805.jpg

And here are the boards with the large faces even. Now for the edges.

http://static.flickr.com/26/67307651_159720b9bb.jpg

The chest will be about four feet high, so we cut the boards in half.

http://static.flickr.com/31/67308648_7eca5de916.jpg

Ready for edging.

http://static.flickr.com/24/67309411_2332a3781d.jpg

We have a very nice tool that lets you run a router along a track in a straight line. Our previous efforts without this router trolley have been much more labor intensive.

http://static.flickr.com/30/67351252_ce36f4ad63.jpg

An action shot, from the side.

http://static.flickr.com/27/67351953_feb4e9b9f6.jpg

With the edges squared using the router and trolley, the gluing went extremely smoothly. Next up, squaring the ends.

http://static.flickr.com/34/67352579_9ba6f8e44d.jpg

Router trolley?
You jumped from the 19th to 21st century. :eek:
Is this a git-r-done by Christmas project?

Wait till you see the next picture...

The sides are going to be tapered; thinner at the top than the bottom. My dad is doing this with hand planes. (How's that, Bruce?)

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/happymonkey/68170862/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/20/68170862_931d7e8e8a.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Glued" /></a>

The pencil mark shows how far down we have to get at this end. Click on the photo (or, indeed, any of them) for the flickr page, then click "All Sizes" to see the line clearer.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/happymonkey/68171614/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/30/68171614_5a3d880754.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="The Goal" /></a>

And these are the planes he's using to do the tapering.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/happymonkey/68172811/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/9/68172811_f96fb1886d.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Planes" /></a>

Hey, I wasn't being critical, it just seemed like a philosophy shift which made me wonder if there was time constraints.

btw- I got a nice email from Peter Kramer. :thumb:

No worries, I wasn't being defensive, just making a segue into the next phase.

It wasn't so much a philosophy shift as a new tool availability (we got it in August, and hadn't tried it out yet. It works great). Our power tools pre-trolley were too imprecise to get a result better than a hand plane, and power tool imperfections are harder to deal with than hand tool imperfections. Additionally, this wood is thicker than some of the handplane blades are wide, and would have been much harder to work with.

Why'd you get the Peter Kramer email?