Using a Story Stick (Rod Measure) for accurate component cutting. (Recycled Jarrah Cabinet, Part 5)

The big jarrah cabinet I am making has been progressing slowly. Embarrassingly slowly. Interestingly, I have had an unprecedented number of group activities this year: across the Festivals, workshops, and school programs that I do. It's taken me be surprise, really, though it is what I have always intended, to transition from custom furniture to more group activities and teaching. My customers awaiting their beautiful jarrah cabinet have been incredibly patient. For that I am extremely grateful - but ultimately it will have been worth the wait. No question.

I am pleased to say a big step forward has taken place. The other day a friend came over to help me with the big glue-up of the top section. Phil's assistance was most appreciated, as it was a big job I couldn't do on my own. There was a huge amount of preparation before this event, with all the panels and fixed shelves having to be prepared and glued up, accurately cut to size, and every joint cut and test fitted, before the glue up could be undertaken.

That's most of the top sections assembled, minus one zig-zag shelf, the backing, crown mould, etc.

This top section is sizeable, and made up of two main sections. The big top section is 2.2m long, 1.7m high and 300mm deep. The smaller section is 1.8m long, 1.7m high, and 200mm deep. It's all recycled jarrah, 22mm thick. It sits on the lower cabinet's top, in the housings cut into the top. Plenty of planning and sequencing was needed to bring all this together.
... So how can all these components and joints be cut accurately beforehand?

The importance of the "Story Stick".
Long before there were rules and tape measures, there was the Rod measure. It has been used for thousands of years. It still remains the most accurate way to transfer measurements. Three rods were created to build this cabinet, and all the information on them tranforms them into what we'd call a "Story Stick". The first rod records the position of the stiles in the big bottom cabinet and the relative positions of the top section verticals.

This rod/story stick is a piece of plywood 4 inches wide and just over 8 feet long.

 The second rod records the smaller bottom cabinet stile positions, and the relative positions of the verticals in the smaller top section. The third rod records the vertical shelf locations in the whole of the two top sections. All markings in the story stick are made with the sharp point of a marking knife, to aid accuracy. No fat pencil lines here!

The Storey Stick is placed on edge and the scribed lines transferred directly onto the components. 

It was these 3 story sticks which were used to mark out and cut all of the housings, lengths, and other dimensions. This was no job for a tape measure. This was a job for the most accurate way of transferring measurements - the story stick/rod measure. That's how come the glue-up went together well... Measurements were taken off the story stick also with the point of a marking knife, not the inaccuracy of a pencil. Otherwise, it is scary how much small errors can multiply across the width of a cabinet over a heap of joints.

Even the depth of the housings were marked. These provided the fixed shelf cut lengths.

The upper right hand part of the big top section will have two "zig-zag" shelves. The Story Sticks once again are critical for getting these right. Jointed with half-blind dovetails at each bend, the component lengths were taken from the story sticks.

A zig-zag shelf cramped up and aligned on the set-out board.

Again using the Story Sticks, a set-out board was made, with the upper right hand section being marked out and drawn exactly to full scale on a big piece of scrap MDF. The half-blind dovetails were cut (by hand of course) and then glued and cramped up. This was placed on the set-out board, and small scraps of wood were nailed to the board such as to ensure that the zig-zag was exactly in the right position as marked on the set-out board. Once the glue is dry and the joints cleaned up, the zig-zag shelf will fit beautifully into the two housings which are awaiting it.

Howzat? A half-blind dovetail with mitred corner on the face edge. Just cramped up. Nice.

You can see from some of the close-up pictures that the edges profiled with a Scratch Stock have worked well. An earlier post told about these. This is to match an existing antique which will share the same room as this cabinet

The stopped housing joints have come up well - thanks to the ever reliable Story Sticks.

The set-out board is really a two dimensional version of a Story Stick. They are a very effective tool for measuring and making components - especially when making furniture I find. I also use them for setting out stringers when building staircases.

The rod measure is just as relevant and reliable today as it was for the ancient Egyptians. Write all over it and add more details, and the rod measure is transformed into a Story Stick.

When building any big piece of furniture or joinery, the Story Stick is one of your best friends.

Earthcarers recycling pallets.

Today I was involved in a fun Earthcarers activity at the Karrinyup Community Centre. All around the idea of making Christmas presents, there were a range of workshops to chose from, with people making soap, dukkah, dream catchers,  tea-light holders, and more. I was running the workshop on recycling pallets and wooden crates. It was a hoot.

With ute and trailer loaded up with pallets and crate material, I arrived on site.

My demo piece : A "folded pallet" garden seat.

The seat pictured above was a demo that I had made a couple of days beforehand, just to help convey some the wonderful potential of pallets for making stuff. This pallet was from the Czech republic. A folded pallet, as I call the method, required one pallet and just  couple of other pieces of timber pulled from another pallet.

Making a pair of Stilts.

Wheel chocks from a pallet which once shipped a ride-on mower. What better use for them?

Those wheel chocks nailed to the sticks just screamed of stilts. They just needed longer handles. I pulled a longer stick off another crate, drew a diagonal line down the middle, and ripped it down the line.

Cleaning up the cut edges with a block plane.

Nailing the handles on to the wedges (chocks).

One pair of stilts, ready for action.

Testing out the completed stilts.



The Stilts being put through their paces again!
 

Making a garden seat.
A couple made a folded pallet garden seat together, with some guidance from me. They'd never done anything like is before, and were very proud of their creation.

Very quick to catch on to using a saw! 

The finished seat... it's a beauty!!



Test drive! It's definitely a good one. And it fitted in the car ... just.

Making an occasional table/stool.
It all starts with an idea. The timber was found in the pallet pile, there's a discussion about technical stuff, like construction methods, and away we go!

Mum and daughter together, making the occasional table/stool.

The odd bit of input from me, but the project was all her idea...

Another nice job. A great little occasional table/stool.

One proud maker with her completed project. A gift destined for her grandparents.

It was a great day. A couple of kids shaped skateboard tops from some wider crate material, using panel saws, coping saws, block planes and spokeshaves. They did a really good job. Shame I didn't get any photos. Amid the making of stuff from the pile of material, there was also lots of  talk about wood recycling, tool selection and use, talk about the ISPM 15 Mark, and how to pull apart pallets and crates with minimal damage to the timber. The day just wasn't long enough...

There is so much recycling potential in pallets and crates. A bunch of Earthcarers had a good taste of that today.

A handy thing, the Scratch Stock. (Recycled Jarrah Cabinet, Part 4)

The big jarrah cabinet I am making will bear a number of features borrowed from a couple of antiques which share the same room the finished cabinet will reside in. It's a nice way of making the 3 pieces of furniture sit together nicely. One of these features will be the front edge profile of the top section, the verticals and the shelves. I am seeking to create a close match to the tall antique sideboard in the room. The profile is like a pair of parallel lines, almost like a pair of reeds along each edge of the face.


The edge profile on the tall antique sideboard. This is what I aim to match.

 

Creating an edge profile like this would have been traditionally done with either a specially shaped plane iron, in a wooden moulding plane - or it would have been done with a Scratch Stock. These are sometimes also referred to as Beading Tools.

Scratch Stocks are essentially just shaped scrapers, set in a wooden holder which determines the dimensions of the profile and helps to keep the profile consistent. They are easy to make and easy to use. While it is ground technically as a "scraper" and used as such, from here on we will refer to the metal part as a cutter. It will just make more sense to the readers I suspect...

A home made scratch stock.
In the past, I have always made my own scratch stocks whens I have needed them. Using a piece of sawblade, ground and filed to the required profile, housed in a wooden holder. The holder gives something to hang onto and sets the depth of cut and the distance from the edge. The pic below shows the stock, fence, and protruding profiled cutter.

Home made scratch stock for cutting the bead along an edge.

The scratch stock pictured above was used for cutting the bead along the side of rebated meeting stiles on a pair of doors. I did a post about the making of a pair of Rebated Doors a couple of years ago. The two pics below come from that post.

 

A home made scratch stock being used to cut the bead profile on a rebated door.




The finished bead on the edge of the door.

Using a Veritas scratch stock.
I recently acquired the wooden version Veritas "Beading Tool". I also obtained their very fancy metal one ... but I seem to prefer the wooden version. The fence on the metal one feels a bit flimsy. This wooden Veritas tool is the one I used to cut the edge profile on the shelf front edges of the jarrah cabinet I am building.

A pile of shelves and verticals, still to be cut to length and width. Ply tongues visible.

1. Material preparation.  The  boards were flattened and machined to 25mm, the meeting edges jointed, then a router was used to cut a 1/2" x1/4" slot along those meeting edges. 1/4" thick plywood tongues were prepared at just under 1" in width, and the boards glued and cramped up. The tongues help make the joints very strong. When the glue was dry, the cramps were removed and the boards machined down to 22mm (7/8") thick. This was a common dimension in older furniture, and looks very nice compared to the dreaded 19mm (3/4") which is so common in modern furniture.

OK, so we're three hundredths of a millimetre oversized. No drama.

2. Making the cutter. I started with a blank cutter - one of the ones I bought from Lee Valley/Veritas. I bought a range of pre-shaped cutters too, but for this job I would need to shape my own from a blank. Sorry, I forgot to take a pic of the marking out and shaping process of the cutter. I then set the cutter in the wooden scratch stock by careful measurement, and tightened the holding screws.

The tool inverted. Those little "teeth" are spaced just right and the right distance from the fence.

3. Creating the profile. The boards were held on edge in the vice along the front of the bench. Keeping a constant pressure with the fence against the edge (face) of the board, the tool is dragged or pushed along the length of the board, starting at a low angle and gradually tipping the tool towards the vertical with each pass.

The tool in action - shown minus my left hand on the protruding end of the tool's stock.

I found the tool works best for me with the right hand on the handle/fence side doing most  of the fore-and-aft driving, and the left hand holding the skinny end of the stock while pulling the fence against the edge (face). It is both pushed and pulled, depending on the quest for the best cut in the variable grain.

The forming of  the edge profile here almost complete.

Yep... that's just what I'm looking for. One down, lots more to go...

A clearer (though unfocused) view of the edge profile.

So there you have it. The scratch stock. It is a pretty handy tool, and can be made to create whatever profile is required.  On tough hardwoods like the recycled jarrah I am using, they work a treat.

Commercial versions.  However, if you are a tool junkie, you might like to have a look at the commercial scratch stocks/bead cutters available on the market. There are the Veritas ones, like the wooden model I used above. Alternatively, you could keep an eye out for an old Stanley #66 Hand Beader (which Stanley made between 1886 and 1941). Lie Nielsen also do a very nice but expensive version, based on the old Stanley.

Of course, if you are not seduced by shiny new tools, remember the  home made ones can work just as well and can be made from scrap. Either way, here's a nod to the humble scratch stock. Commercial or home made, it is a very handy tool to have around...

How to cut tight fitting Dovetail joints. (Recycled Jarrah Cabinet, Part 3).

The big recycled jarrah  cabinet continues to take shape. The top sections of the cabinet will primarily be used for the housing and displaying of ceramic art pieces. The bottom sections of the cabinet will house some serious HIFI and media gear, plus as many LPs, CDs & amps; DVDs and as muchother technology as we can creatively fit within the space available.

I am currently working on the lower section of the cabinet. The longer section is quite deep, and the return is very shallow in depth. In this shallow section, behind the pair of doors, will be two storage bins for good old-fashioned vinyls - LP Records. In an effort to maximise the space available, I have been making another pair of bins to hold as many audio CDs as possible. The space left over will be divided into small shelves to hold more CDs. The bins will be hinged to fold outward in order to access their contents, and these bins will be held together by dovetail joints, with Half-blind Dovetails at the front and Through Dovetails at the back.

Marking out and cutting the dovetail joints.
With the sides, ends and faces of the boxes a consistent thickness, marking out the Through dovetail joints requires the use of only one marking gauge setting - approx 1.0mm wider than the thickness of the material. This leaves a tiny bit to clean off after the glue has dried. I am one of those "tails first" woodworkers.
Marking out the Half-blind dovetail joints, two marking gauge settings are required. One will be as above, about 1.0mm wider than the thickness of the material. The other will be the length of the tails - in this case 3.0mm less than the material thickness of 14mm. These tails will be 11mm long.

The tails are always cut in the sides of drawers and containers. With use of marking gauge, sliding bevel, rule and marking knife, the tails are marked out. In this case, there is a difference in the marking out on each side piece, as the front joints will be half-blind dovetails and the back joints will be through dovetails. Regardless, all the tails are cut first. When doing the marking out, the only pencil lines needed are on the ends and one one face. Note on the pic below that the pencil lines off the sliding bevel are marking the tails deliberately longer than required, extending well below the scribe line which marks the base line of the tails. These long pencil lines make it easier to make sure the saw follows the correct angle. No lines re needed on the other side of the piece.  The bevel was set at 1:6.

A side piece held in the vice ready to do the first set of cuts.

It is always easier for the hand to make cuts vertically than on on an odd angle, so the piece is held in the vice for sawing such that one line of pencil lines is vertical. Once these are cut, the piece is turned in the vice so that next set of lines are vertical, enabling more accurate and consistent cuts to be made.



A nice little dovetail saw makes the cuts with ease and makes a very tiny kerf.

A note for the tool junkies amongst you - that beautiful little saw is English, a Marples dovetail saw. Accurate sawing involves carefully cutting down the waste side of the sharp line, to the base line. It is better to over-shoot this line than to come up short of the line. These are hand cut dovetails, and a good look at old furniture/drawers shows that it was common for these lines to go a little beyond the base line. I have no problem with the odd overshoot with this stage of the joint cutting!

Main cuts for the tails completed, down to the scribed base line.

Once these cuts are made, the waste on the corners is cut off as the piece is turned in the vice. Then the waste between the tails is then cut out using a coping saw.

Use a coping saw to remove the waste down close to the scribed base line.

Once the waste has been removed from between the tails, it's time to chop down accurately towards the base line.

Sneak up to the base line with the chisel. The last vertical cut is done with the chisel sitting right in the scribe line.

I tend to chop out a bit of waste from each gap between the tails on one side, then turn the piece over and do the same from the other side. This reduces the chance of a blow-out on the bottom side to where you are working. It is important to sneak up on the scribed base line, with the last vertical cuts done with the chisel sitting right in the scribe line. If you don't sneak up on it, and you chop into the base line with too much waste still there, the chisel's bevel pushing against the waste will force the chisel back against the base line. The result will be a base deeper in than the base line you can still see across the tails. We are looking for a beautifully straight line for the housings and the base of the tails, defined by the scribed base line. You also need to make sure that there is no high-spot between the two opposite sides. Ideally, we want it to be dead flat - though slightly hollow is OK too. When you do this enough, you develop an eye for it. Meanwhile, if you need to, lay a straightedge or the edge of your chisel across the bottom of the cut-out, to check there is no high spot between the opposing base lines.


All tails cut and ready for the next stage - to transfer the lines over to mark and cut the pins. 

You may notice that the tails are a different length in the pic above. This is because we are cutting Through dovetails at the back of the box and Half-blind dovetails at the front of the box.

Transferring the tails to mark the pin positions - half blind dovetails.

By cramping the side piece to the bench front, or putting it in a vice, I line up the base line with the inside edge of the box front. This should also mean that the scribed base of the housing for the tails, between the pins, are lined up as well. It's easy if I have accurately used the two marking gauge setting in the preparation and marking out of the stock. Like most joinery, it's all in the marking out!

Extending the pin marking lines downwards to assist accurate cutting.

Once again, by extending the scribed pin lines down the adjacent face with pencil lines, this enables accurate sawing of the pin sides. This a helpful technique for both Through dovetails and Half-blind dovetails.

Cutting the pins for the half-blind dovetails means cutting down to the two base lines.

Remember to always cut on the waste side of the line with these joints. With careful marking out, accurate cutting with a nice fine saw with minimal set and narrow kerf, and good waste removal with sharp chisels, the joints should be able to come together firmly without having to do any paring or modification. That's the aim, anyway!


First stage of the waste removal, sneaking up until you can chop right on the scribed base line.

Second stage: Waste between the pins best removed with the piece held vertically with support behind.

Half-blind dovetails are much trickier to cut than Through dovetails - but are more satisfying when they come together nicely!  You do have to be careful not to split the timber around the pins when chopping out the waste between the pins.

Sneaking up on the other scribe line of the half-blind dovetail joints.

Job done. Waste removed between the pins for the Half-blind dovetail joints.

The moment of truth! Hammering the two components together for the first time.

Not bad. You can see where a small amount of paring to the top shoulder, to the tail base line, will bring a tight fit on the end of the adjacent tail end.

With all of the half-blind dovetail joints cut, fitted and pulled apart again, it was then time to cut the tails for the Through dovetail joints. 

Line up the tail base line with the inner face of the other piece, and mark the pin positions with a marking knife. 

Marking knife marks show pin positions for the Through dovetail joints.

Extend the lines down and cut the pins, on the waste side of the lines.

Using a coping saw to remove most of the waste between the pins.

Most of the waste removed, ready for the chisels to do their work.

Waste chopped out. Torn out fibres are not unusual where the chopping meets from each side. 

Another moment of truth. Hammering the joint together for the test fit.

Nice fit! No paring or trimming required. Tight, clean and accurate. Yippee!

Prepare purpose built clamping blocks will help pull up the joint during gluing.

There's nothing like a bit of squeeze-out from nice tight-fitting joints. Beaudy.

Only one of the four half-blind joints (pictured earlier) required any paring to improve the fit. All four of the through cut joints required no paring. It is very satisfying when the joints come together firmly first time straight off the saw and chisel.

With vertical space within the cabinet at a premium, I opted to fit the bases in a way that took up the least amount of space. I rebated the base of each box after assembly, with a router, cleaning out and squaring the corners with a sharp chisel. Ply bottoms 1/4" thick were glued and screwed into the bottoms of the 4 boxes.


Fitting the storage bins into the cabinet.
The storage bins for vinyl LP records, the storage bins for CDs and the little CD shelves taking up the remaining space, will all be housed behind a pair of doors.
The two LP bins I have opted to hinge from the front, using "Florentine Bronze" flavoured piano hinge. I only needed just under 900mm (3 ft) of it, but had to buy in in a 3.6m (12 ft) length. The other option was to buy it in a 35m (115 ft ) roll!! ...I settled for a 12 foot length. To prevent the bins from emptying their contents onto the floor, a stop was fitted for each bin.
Fitting the CD bins above these was tricky, due to the limited space. After some planning and experimentation, I have fitted sliding pins which I made specifically for the purpose.


LP bins and CD Bins will be behind doors. The plinth is sitting on top of the cabinet.

When the bins are slid forward, they pivot downwards on the pins, giving access to the CDs while cleaning the LPs below. A bit of creative thinking gave me some stops which bring the bins to a final open position. Lifting the bin enables it to be slid back on its pins to the closed and elevated position. A good solution, and worth losing sleep over it, this remedy came to me in the wee hours of one morning as I cogitated over the dilemma.

One of the two CD bins in the dropped-down open position.

The pins I made from an M10 threaded bolt, cut 4 into pieces each about 25mm long. Grinding the thread off half of each section, I then cut a screwdriver slot in the end of the threaded part. Having calculated the right location for the pivot point in the CD bins, I drilled a hole and tapped an M10 thread inside the hole with a conventional metal tap. The ground down pin end is just small enough to insert through the threaded hole, and then the pin is turned from inside with a screwdriver, winding the threaded end into the box side until it protrudes into the sliding track the appropriate distance. This method enables the CD bins to be fitted on installation/delivery and be removed at any time as required. It is also the hinging/pivoting method which takes up the least amount of room.


One of the four pins I made from a piece of M10 threaded rod.

One of the two LP bins in open position. It's hinged on piano hinge at the bottom.

The plinth.
The whole cabinet will be sitting on a 4" (100mm) plinth. When making up the plinth, I opted to do half-blind dovetails on the two external corners. Not what I would normally do, it looks pretty good I reckon. I have seen it before in some antiques furniture, and given this cabinet is being made to fit in alongside other antiques, it is a small detail which will work well - if anybody notices!

Gluing up the plinth. You can never have too many cramps - or straightedges...

One of two dovetailed corners on the plinth.

More on dovetail joints.
There is a lot written and said about dovetail joints. These days we give them an importance and mystique which would have seemed very strange in days gone by. In the past these joints were just a practical way of creating a strong joint between two pieces of wood at right angles to each other, without the use of metal fixings. That's just what I did for the joints in the plinth, really. It is also a good way to build strong corners in the 4 bins/boxes referred to in this post.

Sure, you can make pretty flash dovetail joints with screaming routers, fancy jigs, and all that. For me, though, the real satisfaction comes from confidently making these joints by hand - and using no filler. It's just good honest old-fashioned hand tool woodworking. Sensual and satisfying.

The other thing I really enjoy is feeling a sense of connection to past generations of craftspeople who have come before me. In fact, that beautiful little dovetail saw I used has the name of a previous owner stamped in the handle. His perspiration and mine mingle in the patina of the handle. I wonder what he made all those years ago as he toiled at his bench with that saw. I share in the legacy of those who came before me. I am but a custodian, of both tools and knowledge - but also of the simple joy to be found working wood by hand. As a custodian, I also have a responsability to pass all this richness to the coming generations of woodworkers. My hope is that you found the info in this story helpful.