Dadoes By Hand

Like everything in woodworking, there is always more than one way to tackle any step. For cutting dadoes, grooves, and rabbets*, you can cut them with a table saw, router, router table, or by hand. If you want to make them by hand, you have a few choices there as well.**

While cutting dadoes for my current project, I chose to use my Lee Valley router plane—an impressively engineered and well-designed tool that is a joy to use. Before plunging in with this tool, you have to first define the outside edges of the dado. I used an exacto knife, but you can also use a handsaw. To use an exacto blade, make several passes along the edge of a ruler and start with light cuts with the plane until you have defined the shoulders, otherwise the blade might tear out some wood running with the grain. As the plane reaches the depth of cut established by the exacto, deepen the shoulder cuts again with the exacto before proceeding with the plane. Continue to alternate these steps until you reach your final depth.

If you don't have a router plane, you can also remove the waste with a chisel and check the depth as you go to ensure a flat channel. I would chisel bevel down in this case to best control the amount of wood removal.

In the last photo, the rabbets were made with a table saw (the ones with burn marks) and the dadoes were made with the router plane. Two boards are laying side by side, so the rabbets look like a wide dado in the photo.

*Dadoes are channels cut into wood that run across the grain. Grooves are channels cut into wood that run with the grain. And rabbets are channels cut into wood that run along the outside edge of a board.

**There are more handtools you can use to cut dadoes, grooves, and rabbets that are not listed here. That's another post!

York Ag & Industrial Museum

Today, my partner and I toured the York Agricultural & Industrial Museum. The museum houses vast antique collections of various industries including farming, pottery, woodworking, machinery, dentistry, weight lifting, wire mesh, grist mills, as well as antique cars, a conestoga wagon, a trolley car, an early 2-passenger airplane, WWII items, and many other
things.

Here are a few shots of the woodworking section. Notice anything odd about these exhibits? In most cases, you can walk right up and touch things. The displays that were cordoned off had chains that were so close to the display items, you could still touch them if you wanted to. I of course did not, out of respect for these well-cared-for artifacts.



And what was my partner doing while I was keeping my hands off the precious collections?

(Hint: look inside the red truck's driver's seat.)

Cupboard Progress

Spent some more time in the shop tonight and worked on the Ephrata Cloister cupboard. Handplaned the boards, chopped the half lap joints and cut all the boards to size except for the rails (the pieces above and below the door) and the door itself. What a great way to spend a Friday evening!

Ephrata Cloister Cupboard

Work has been stressful lately, so I did myself a favor and went out to my shop last night to start a new project. I chose something simple, something that I can pick away at as I find a spare 30 minutes, and something which requires a lot of handtools. Using handtools is instant therapy.

I have visited the Ephrata Cloister 3 times, and each time, I can't take my eyes off this hanging cupboard*. I find it very charming with its rough joinery, wooden hinges, and unfinished wood. It looks a bit like something you might find in Bilbo Baggins' house. You aren't allowed to take pictures at the Cloister so I found an image of it, along with outside dimensions, in a book.

I've been saving some pieces of wormy chestnut for just the right project and this seemed like a perfect match. I milled all the lumber and started on rough dimensions for the door, which required the use of handplanes, spokeshave and pocket knife. I'm trying to be as authentic as possible to try to make it look like the original. What a fun project! I can feel the knots in my neck subsiding already.

*Hanging cupboard built c. 1750-1760.

Rosehead Dowel

You can easily replicate the look of a rosehead nail using a wood dowel, thereby adding another visual element to your project. Rosehead nail photo is top left.

Tap your dowel into a predrilled hole of matching diameter and leave about 1/8" protruding. Put a piece of paper next to the dowel (the paper serves to protect your work surface) and hold your chisel bevel down while starting at the base and chiseling upwards. It's sort of a scraping technique. Work your way around and don't try to remove an entire side with one swipe so you can make subtle changes in the size of each facet. The rosehead nails I've seen all have 3 facets but maybe you've seen others. At any rate, it's an easy technique and instantly gives an aged look to your piece.

Woodworking Carol

A friend emailed this to me:

(Sung to the tune of Joy to the World)

Joy in the shop
The dovetails fit
Was it luck
or this new saw?
Let every tool prepare some room
and I'll get on the net and I'll get on the net
and order and order some more new tools!

Merry Christmas!

May you find a new set of Lie Nielsen chisels in your stocking

and lots of time in the new year to use them!

3 Ways to Make Dowels

You can buy wood dowels in common species like walnut, cherry, and pine, but if you need a dowel in an uncommon species, or if you're making authentic reproductions, or you just like to try different techniques, here are three ways to make them.

One: Use a beading plane to round over both sides of a board, then snap off the dowel. Shave the rough, snapped-off edge with a block plane or chisel. Match the thickness of wood with the diameter of the bead so the dowel is perfectly round.

Two: Use a block plane to round over a square blank and eyeball it as you go. This works great if you like that imperfect, handmade look, like you find in PA German furniture. (If you take your time, though, you can make very precise dowels with this technique.)

















Three: Use a dowel plate (mine is from Lie-Nielsen). Make sure you cut your blank very close in size to the final dowel diameter, otherwise, it's likely to split as you tap it through. Use a chisel to taper the leading end. Dowel plates work best with short pieces of wood.