Cutting Rabbets Without a Rabbet Plane

Like any task in woodworking, cutting rabbets by hand can be done a number of ways. It's all about stock removal. How you get there is a matter of choice and the tools you have in your shop.

I'm building simple storage boxes for the house which will be nailed and glued at rabbeted corners.  I tried a few different ways to cut them and settled on the following because it was relatively fast, accurate, and allowed me to play with a variety of hand tools.

First, I scored deep lines with my slicing gauge, outlining the section of wood that needed to be removed. The deep line created a crisp starting point for the shoulders on the inside and outside of the rabbet.

Next, I chamfered a relief at the far end of the rabbet to prevent tearout for the next step.

I shaved a shallow trench along the scored lines with my plow plane. This channel provided a guide for my crosscut saw. 

I sawed the near and far corners of the rabbet to final depth and then, tipping the handle up a bit, I used the front few teeth of the saw to cut the inside shoulder of the rabbet. I leveled the saw for the last few passes until I reached the final depth. 

I found that, rather than taking full passes with the saw from the very beginning, angling the handle up made it easier to steer the saw and keep the teeth close to the shoulder. 

The saw kerf provided a nice stop cut for the next move. Working from the edge of the board toward the stop cut, I used a chisel and mallet to remove most of the waste. 

When I was very close to the scored line on the edge of the board, I cleaned up the rabbet with a shoulder plane.

This method worked very well, but if you don't have a plow plane to cut the channel for your handsaw, you can clamp a board to your workpiece to use as a saw guide, or you can remove a sliver of wood by sliding a chisel along the scored line.

If you don't have a shoulder plane for the final passes, you can finish the entire cut with a chisel if you're careful. 

As another alternative, you just might happen to remember—after you've cut all the joinery—that you own a really nice moving fillester plane with skewed blade and nicker which would make quick work of the same task.

Antiquing Nails

Vinegar-treated on left; zinc on right.

I ordered some box nails from the Tremont Nail Company for another storage project. The nails were zinc-coated and shinier than I liked so I used a tip from Bob Rozaieski to antique them.

Two vinegar-treated nails. The one on
the left was buffed with steel wool.

Following his suggestion, I put a bunch of nails in a sealed jar filled with vinegar for about a day and a half. Through the glass I could see that the nails had darkened to a light charcoal color. The shiny zinc was gone.

The extra half day did not darken the nails, so one day would have been long enough.

Zinc/Vinegar/Vinegar & Steel Wool

I poured the vinegar out and laid the nails on a towel to dry. After about half an hour I checked them and found that they were coated in rust. If you rinse your nails with water right after the vinegar you will not encounter as much rust, according to Bob.

However, you may find that you like the rust color.  And the surface rust won't hurt the nails, so you can leave them as is.

For comparison, I buffed one of the vinegar-treated nails with steel wool to remove the rust and reestablish the dull, light charcoal color. Bob says the nails will continue to darken with age.

Zinc/Vinegar/Vinegar & Steel Wool

So you have a choice: bright & shiny, dull and gray (which will darken), or rust.

Depending on your taste or the look you're trying to achieve, you may prefer one over the others.

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Bob made a short video about the aging process it here.
You can buy nails in smaller quantities from Tools For Working Wood.

French Woodworking Video from 1912

Here is a link to a French woodworking video from 1912 that shows students building period chairs.

The actual woodworking starts at 2:50, but the things leading up to it are worth a look. There is an interesting vise at 5:30, an unusual router/shaper at 6:50, and carving a 8:57.

Simple T&G Bookshelf

Don't ask what possessed me to suddenly get organized, but I got it in my head one day that I wanted all my woodworking books and magazines in the shop and grouped into categories.

Sometimes even right-brained people like a little orderliness.

If you're like me, you have books and magazines all over your house tucked away in various nooks and crannies.  So, when I gathered them all together I realized I needed another bookshelf.

Because I had moved some machinery that I rarely use into the basement—full-size lathe, router table, hollow chisel mortiser, and belt/disc sanding center—I was able to move a utility bench away from a crowded corner to use as a work surface and to house some books.

In the spirit of simple boarded furniture, I decided to use nails for fasteners, rabbets and dados for the carcase, and tongue & groove joinery for the back boards.

This meant that I had the opportunity to use the new Lie-Nielsen tongue & groove plane* that I bought at a recent hand tool event.  What a fun handplane!  It's an ingenious design and works perfectly.

The bookshelf fits beneath the utility bench. It isn't fancy, but it is functional and practical, and was able to be built in a weekend due to the simple joinery.

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*I do not work for Lie-Nielsen nor do I benefit in any way from the sale of their tools. 

Workbench Inspiration

We can't help it.  Workbenches turn our heads, and quite a few got my attention at WIA.

Shannon Rogers brought his newly-built bench to his Hand Tool School booth.  Its height was determined by the measurement beneath the elbows of the vertically enhanced Shannon, who found this to be perfect for joinery work.

Chris Wong, of Time Warp Tool Works, added a handy planing attachment to Shannon's bench during the conference.

Across the aisle was Mark Harrell who must have some timberframing expertise on his list of skills given the design and joinery of both of his mammoth, knock-down benches.

Jameel Abraham brought two benches as well.  One was a sawbuck joinery bench that enabled conference-goers to take a spin with his smooth-as-silk Benchcrafted vises.  He told me that my sawbuck table inspired him. Cool.

Kevin Glen Drake brought an as efficient as it was handsome benchtop bench with leather-lined face vise.

Ron Brese's Shaker Workbench which he built with Jameel Abraham is a real beauty. He debuted it at last year's conference. Looks like he was able to remove the drool marks fairly well.

At the Hand Tool Olympics' booth, Mike Siemsen had made some quick and effective workholding devices for the handcut dovetail challenge.

Not at the conference but showcased at a Lie-Nielsen hand tool event at Hearne Hardwoods last weekend was a SAPFM member's portable bench. William Duffield had come up with some clever workholding solutions for the period projects he makes.

Cut Nail Sample Boards

Based on the comments (here, on other blogs, and on social networking sites) that followed Adam Cherubini's presentation on nailed furniture, it sounds like many of us are interested in working with period fasteners.

If you're looking for cut nails but are confused by all the varieties, Tremont Nail Company offers two sample boards* (one is card stock and the other is wood) which can be hung on the wall in your shop.

Each board comes with an actual sample of each the 20 different kinds of cut nails that the company sells. So you'll be able to decide exactly what you need for your projects.

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 *I do not benefit in any way from the sale of these sample boards. I ordered one today and thought you guys might be interested. 

For Your Viewing Pleasure

For two years in a row, John Sindelar has packed up and transported a portion of his vast collection of rare and unusual tools for us to view at WIA. These are pieces that we might never see otherwise and I'm grateful for the chance to see them in person.  This year, John brought with him a number of highly decorated tool chests.  The detail and craftsmanship were jaw-dropping.  And drop my jaw did.

Repeat After Me

There is no shame in building nailed furniture.

It's been with us a long time. In fact, nailed furniture goes all the way back to the Egyptians.

But, according to Adam Cherubini in his presentation at WIA on nailed furniture, it was in 1632 when the Worshipful Company of Joyners of London managed to have standards for joinery passed into law.  These standards gave them exclusive rights to certain types of joinery, to the exclusion of carpenters.

Only joyners were allowed to use complex methods such as dovetails, mortise and tenon, and frame and panel construction.

This left carpenters with few joinery options for the furniture they built—mechanical fasteners, tongue and groove, lap joints, dados, grooves, and rabbets.

Adam explained that it's common to find centuries-old 6-board pieces such as chests, stools, and trays that are joined with nails. You can also find examples of writing slopes, hanging cupboards, bedsteads, tables, and large hutches that are held together with nails.

Carpenters had to think outside the box. They nailed thin strips onto a flat panel to simulate frame and panel construction.  They dressed up their pieces with simple moulding, corner and quirk beads, and roundovers.

"This is serious woodwork," Adam tells us. And it is. You need solid skills such as sawing, planing, drilling, and hammering nails without kinking them. There is also the challenge to make the piece look appealing without using all the bells and whistles found on high end pieces.

Do all our pieces have to be equally difficult to build? Who are we trying to impress? When was the last time a non-woodworker (who isn't a loved one who's been trained to notice) remarked on your fine English dovetails? More often than not, they comment on the shape of the piece, the appearance of the wood, and the finish.

Sure, we love the challenges and pride that come from cutting tricky joinery. And many pieces require complex joinery to be period-correct, to match their fancy design, or to be bomb-proof.

But building with nails is a blast.

When I got home from the conference, I remembered a couple pieces I had made that were completely assembled with nails. They were fast and fun to build and they have an honest charm. I built a sweater cupboard in a few hours and it's held up for over 15 years. The dogs' toy box is beaten up but the joinery is solid.

Adam showed us how to properly install nails without splitting the wood. It's a genuine skill, and one that we should pass along to the next generation.  Moreover, rose head, clincher and cut nails are just plain cool-looking. And shell bits, nose bits and brad awls are extremely fun to use.

Adam suspects that there will be a trend in nailed furniture because the reproduction market isn't very good right now.

He believes you can make a living at building nailed furniture. And even if you're a hobbyist like me, you might find that the nailed pieces that you built in an afternoon get more attention than those finely dovetailed keepsake boxes you spent days making.

Maybe—sometimes—we work harder than necessary and focus on the joinery rather than joy of the craft.