Tapered the legs...

I got up early this morning to taper the legs. I wanted to have them kind of curve and taper, but they're a little to small for that. I ended up just going with a straight taper. I tried to make a simple table saw tapering jig, but that was going to turn out to be a bunch of work. So, I did a quick band-saw tuneup and cut the taper. The first cut didn't go as expected. At first I thought I had hit a really hard knot. Turns out the drill press was in the way. Mistake #221. After moving the drill press, the tapers went fairly quick.

Unfortunately, at this point I got pretty into what I was doing and forgot to take pics. Basically, I cleaned up the horrible bandsaw job I did to get the tapers. I used my No. 7 plane and got it down nice and flat, then I took my cabinet scraper and cleaned up the transition. They're by no means perfect, but they'll do.

Once I finished the cleanup, it was time for quick sanding and a glue up. Again, I was on a roll so the only picture of the entire leg & apron glue-up that I have is the one you see here.

While I was letting the glue dry I did a final sanding on the cabinet. I progressed from 100 up to 220 grit and put a 2lb cut of shellac on the cabinet, then set it outside to sun dry. Worked pretty well.

Here's the pic...

Here's a couple of pics of the legs. Notice that my mortises are so sloppy I had to use a band clamp to keep everything together. I'm still learning, though. I hate the legs. I don't know why. I'm hoping I'll like them more after I get the taper on them, but right now I just hate them.

Got the apron done...

I got the apron done today. Didn't have too much time in the garage this week. I'll post pics tomorrow maybe.

No updates this weekend...

Wifey and I are out of town this weekend. So there probably won't be any cabinet updates for this weekend. There is, however, a Woodcraft store and a bunch of lumber yards in Nashville. Oh, yeah.

Legs...

In earlier posts you saw the legs were quite wide. At first I was
going to make them 1 3/4" x 2 1/2" x 36". Then I got to looking at them and that was just ugly. So, I decided to make them smaller & square. They're still 36" long but now they're 1 1/2" inches square. I spent most of the day making these legs. I was able to dimension them fairly quick. Then came time to make the apron. This is my first attempt at mortise and tenon joints. I'm actually quite proud of them. I did the first one entirely by hand with a small backsaw and some chisels. After the first I used the table-saw to cut the tenons, and the drill press to hog out material for the mortises. There's a pic in the list where you can see the comparison between the handcut tenon, on the left, and the tenon cut with the table saw.

I have a tenoning jig for my table-saw. Unfortunately, the cheek cut on the tenon was so small I couldn't use the jig. So I made the tenon the way I've seen Norm and David do it. I nibbled it away a little at a time. I always thought this would take forever, but it's actually very quick. Especially when the alternative is hand cutting the tenon.

Clamped up!

Glue-up first thing in the morning is awesome. I needed to get to work on the legs for this cabinet and gluing up the carcase was a good way to ease into the day. The clamps went on easy enough. I wish I had larger F-Style clamps, or smaller pipe clamps. 3/4" x3' pipe clamps are heavy. I used Titebond III for gluing up the carcase because I wanted a long open time. I thought I may need the extra time to get the carcase square.

Stain part 2...

It was a gorgeous day today. Unfortunately, all I had time to do today was put another coat of stain on the inside pieces. It didn't really darken the piece any. So, I figure one of three things has happened.

1. Between the seal coat and the first coat of gel stain all of the wood pores are filled and there's just no place for the stain to go.

2. I didn't leave the second coat of stain on long enough.

3. Gel stain is a one shot deal.

I'll probably post in some of the wood forums soon and try to figure out why the second coat failed. It's not big deal, though. It didn't hurt the color of the cabinet.