• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

The Niff-Naff Cabinet; WIP

Woodbloke

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My wife likes to collect little odds n'sods when we're on a our travels; they have no special financial value but she 'requested' a smallish wall hung cabinet to display them, mentioning that It needed a door to keep the dust off. I hoiked out a few lumps of Bubinga, a couple of which were crown cut which makes for much easier planing:

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After some careful bandsaw cutting and machining on the pt, I was left with a pile of thicknessed Bubinga, yet to be machined to it's final width (though one door rail has developed a very slight bow, which is irritating)

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However, this isn't the timber that I intended to make this little cabinet out of, as a couple of weeks ago, a very recently joined member of this forum verbally promised me one these two boards of Georgian mahogany which he acquired for nothing from an old boy who was shutting down his workshop:

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In conversation on WotsAp with this person, I told him what I intended to make with it but whist I was away in Bromley seeing my son and grandson, this individual used his board and then part of the board promised to me for a turning project, leaving me with offcuts, some of which were of reasonable size, but offcuts none the less.

The mahogany, in and of itself isn't crucial (SWIMBO's very happy with Bubinga) but what really hurt was that he'd gone back on his word and as a consequence has left a very bitter taste in my mouth. When I think of the unstinting generosity of all members of WH2 (Mike G and AndyT to name two, just to embarrass them:ROFLMAO:) his actions make my blood boil and as such I've cut off all contact and will have nothing further to do with him as he simply can't be trusted - Rob
 
It's never good when anyone does that. :( Bubinga is much nicer not that it's much consolation.
Not the done thing in this close knit community.
Thanks chaps, for the support, much appreciated. The Bubinga is machining up nicely but as I've only got one bit of crown cut stuff, I'm having to be über careful. Luckily, the bow in the slightly warped door rail has been planed flat and it appears now (fingers crossed) to be behaving itself. I had a swift peek at the new LV hinges on the CHT page which are roughly half the price of the Brusso equivalents, so it's the 8mm wide ones that I'll be ordering when they arrive (after having 'phoned them) - Rob
 
Further progress on the Naff-Naff Cabinet today, but it's slooooooooow work as this Bubinga is a tad hard; the Wood Database (my go-to for most stuff on timber) gives it a density of 56 lbs/cu'. Fortunately, with a new set of cutters in the pt, it machines very well with little, if any, tear out. However, get a really sharp, high angle plane near it and with a bit of luck and a following wind, it'll plane well too, but more often than not, you'll hit a patch of awkward grain and it'll rip out!

The best thing I found to clean up the pt surface was:

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...my little diddy LN scraper plane, which is worth it's weight in gold (or bronze) for this sort of job. The lengths were easy enough to shoot in to size and squareness on the shooting board with a very sharp blade in the LN51. Shovetails were marked out but they were cut on the bandsaw:

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....and then the waste was sawn out:

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Finished tails look respectable:

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...but I can't say with unbridled joy that I'm looking forward to chopping out the waste to the line tomorrow. Could be a job for my new Japanese chisels from this establishment in Tokyo - Rob
 
Further progress on the Naff-Naff Cabinet today, but it's slooooooooow work as this Bubinga is a tad hard; the Wood Database (my go-to for most stuff on timber) gives it a density of 56 lbs/cu'. Fortunately, with a new set of cutters in the pt, it machines very well with little, if any, tear out. However, get a really sharp, high angle plane near it and with a bit of luck and a following wind, it'll plane well too, but more often than not, you'll hit a patch of awkward grain and it'll rip out!

The best thing I found to clean up the pt surface was:

View attachment 55039

...my little diddy LN scraper plane, which is worth it's weight in gold (or bronze) for this sort of job. The lengths were easy enough to shoot in to size and squareness on the shooting board with a very sharp blade in the LN51. Shovetails were marked out but they were cut on the bandsaw:

View attachment 55038

....and then the waste was sawn out:

View attachment 55040

Finished tails look respectable:

View attachment 55041

...but I can't say with unbridled joy that I'm looking forward to chopping out the waste to the line tomorrow. Could be a job for my new Japanese chisels from this establishment in Tokyo - Rob
Funny, that’s the bit I always enjoy- but I’ve never worked Bubinga, is it really that hard?
Will you be putting a cut line across where needed Rob?
 
Funny, that’s the bit I always enjoy- but I’ve never worked Bubinga, is it really that hard?
Will you be putting a cut line across where needed Rob?
It is Ian and crown cut surfaces are much easier than quarter sawn, which is a complete nightmare and the only safe way (imo) is to scrape it.
Now if only you had a drum sander, Rob! Save all that angst with tear-out ;)
Ah but I have Rog, only the drum loading is 80g which means that I'd have to spend interminable hours scraping out the scratch marks before sanding. I do this normally with softer woods (oak, walnut etc) and it doesn't take too long but Bubinga is in a class of it's own. I have one board of Bog Oak which is even harder; a mind boggling 63lbs/cu' - Rob
 
Tails weren't too onerous to cut on the bandsaw but needed careful work, taking very thin shavings to work the Bubinga to the shoulder lines. Cabinet pieces are then set out on the assembly table, with corners marked with spotty dots and edges taped with those facing outwards. Inside faces are also marked with tape:

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I've used the 'blue tape' method now for a few years to mark out the sockets:

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The transfer jig, for me, is foolproof and consists of a bit of 6mm mdf glued at exactly 90 degrees into a bit of oak; it's that simple. The adjustable square is set using gauge blocks which measure 0.5mm more than the height of the tails (18mm), which is then used to position the shoulder line exactly on the edge of the green mdf, so that when the joint is glued there'll be 0.5mm to pare away. Once marked, an exact cutting line is provided by the blue tape:

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I find it necessary to have a very bright light source exactly where I need to cut, so I've rigged up this system from an adjustable Ikea clip-on spot light and some old lab fittings (retort stand and test tube holder) from another life; similar fittings can be purchased on the Bay of Fleas. It's convenient and provides an infinitely variable position for the lamp:

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Once installed squarely in the Moxon, it takes about 50 mins to saw out each set of sockets. To ensure accuracy, I saw each of the eight cuts in three passes as you would normally do to saw a tenon. This stuff has absolutely no 'squishiness' of any sort, so I can't rely on faces compressing slightly as the joint is tapped together; they have to fit. This was yesterdays effort:

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...and this is today's:

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...with the horizontal being held steady after it's been tapped 2mm into the sockets. There's going to be a fair amount of tuning and 'adjustment' with a very sharp chisel before the tails will tap in smoothly to the bottom of the sockets, but it's reassuring to see the the tails will fit initially straight from the saw - Rob
 
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Most impressive Rob, I can see now from those very clear close up pics what the nature of the beast - beastly stuff is now, reminds me a bit of that timber they use for the beds on trucks Keruing. Very hard!
 
Most impressive Rob, I can see now from those very clear close up pics what the nature of the beast - beastly stuff is now, reminds me a bit of that timber they use for the beds on trucks Keruing. Very hard!
Thanks Ian. Got a problem with a door rail which I'm trying to sort out now, so I'd value your opinion tomorrow when I post some pics of my 'solution'. Or not:cry: - Rob
 
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