JKM Woodworking

Shop furniture. I call it a tire table as I plan to put tires on the bottom shelf. Although I'm not sure it counts as table. Maybe it's a bench or a shelf.

There are lots of options for storing tires. I've seen zip-up baggies and mobile storage towers and brackets that mount on the walls. I'll be happy just to get them off the floor.

this is my current tire storage situation. yes, there are four tires in there.

I measured the tires and drew up plans, and there was enough room to add drawers. The pieces are cut from 2x10 and 2x12 southern yellow pine construction lumber. I made a similar storage shelf recently. I tell myself that I'm practicing for a future project in nicer wood with nicer techniques.

front sides drawer front ratios

The top is made from three 2x10 boards. They were resawn to about 1" thickness. The thin offcuts were used for bottom shelf slats. Since they were wide and cupped I ripped them into narrower pieces.

jointing long edge on side glued up top. not flat as can be seen by uneven space under clamps. offcuts from top will be used for bottom shelf

The upper section has a frame and panel on the sides and back. I plowed a 3/8" groove in the rails. The legs required a stopped groove. I tried a few methods and settled on plowing as much as possible and finishing with a chisel.

deepen as much as possible with plow plane then finish up the shallow end with chisel

The panels were thinned at the edges with a #5 plane. I am leaving the raised section on the inside of the case, so it doesn't have to look pretty.

I can chamfer three sides like this before repositioning holdfasts. Grooved offcut for testing fit.

The middle and bottom rails on the front have curves. I created these one at a time by bending a thin strip of wood. The holdfasts hold down the ends and I push up in the middle. It doesn't seem reliable or consistent, but it worked for two pieces.

staged picture demonstrating curve layout

Joinery was mostly dominos. I glued up the short sides first. Adding the 56 1/4" rails between the sides created a case almost 60" wide. I did not have any clamps that long, so I used couplings to join my shorter pipe clamps. I also found some ratcheting strap clamps. They don't seem as strong as bar or pipe clamps, but they helped.

pipe couplers. cheaper than buying more clamps. glued, clamped, with top tried on for size

The drawer faces and the rails above and below them were cut from a single board so have consistent grain patterns.

with uncut drawer fronts in place

There are many front-back support pieces to add. So far I have added supports under the bottom shelf. They are pocket screwed to the front and back rails. The front rail has a rabbet which the shelf slat will sit in. The side and back rails are not rabbeted, they are just 3/8" shorter. The slats are the thinner resawn sections from the top. They will be butted against each other with a small gap and nailed in place.

bottom shelf showing rails and supports bottom shelf slat notched to fit and sitting in rabbet

Next I have to make the drawers and the drawer guides/supports. I also have to decide how to fasten the top and if/how I will finish it.

This is a large piece of shop furniture, it's as wide as my workbench and deeper. I'll have to rearrange things to give it a home.

I completed the little tasks until there was nothing left to do but wrap it up.

I added guides on the sides of the drawers to keep them inline. They are only glued in place. The edges facing the drawers were planed smooth. Later I waxed these surfaces and the mating edges of the drawers.

gluing in guides on the side

The drawer pulls glued in without wedges. My flush cut saw is a cheap one from harbor freight. I rubbed the teeth on a diamond stone to remove the set. It has so many teeth-per-inch that it's slow, but it works.

cutting off drawer pull stub just needs a little scraping

Most of the drawers needed planing on the sides to insert fully. Only one was seriously off on the face. Notice the gap between it and the next drawer up is tight on the left and wide on the right.

uneven gap above drawer

Likely the whole drawer box was twisted but I didn't try to untwist it. I planed the underside on the left to drop it down a little, then I shimmed the underside on the right to raise it a little. It didn't end up perfect but it got better.

glued on shim, before sanding

To finish I sprayed the walnut and butternut with three coats of garnet shellac. After I used that up I switched to blonde shellac and sprayed 2-3 more coats. The blonde shellac also went on the sides and interior of the drawers. After drying half a day I rubbed everything with a brown paper bag, waxed the drawer slides, and screwed on the top and back.

Printer Stand

full view

The stand is 27.5" tall, 27.5" wide, and 20.5" deep. The carved drawer fronts put together make a canvas of 21.5" square.

front view

The carcase and top are walnut, with the side panels being resawn. The drawerfronts are butternut with walnut pulls. Secondary wood is poplar, basswood, and plywood.

side view 1 side view 2 with back

My goals were to have a stand for the printer and for the drawers to be wide enough for stacks of paper. Having a carving continue across multiple drawer fronts was a side goal.

I dusted my printer for this picture wide enough for two stacks of paper carving detail

Other posts in this series:

• Printer Stand 1: Plans & Rough Cuts
• Printer Stand 2: Carcase and Pre-oiling panels
• Printer Stand 3: Drawer Construction & Homemade Pulls
• Printer Stand 4: Carved Fronts & Little Things

When dovetailing the sides the only thing I did different this time was to stack them.

sides stacked to chisel all at once

This saved some time as I didn't have to reposition the holdfasts so often.

I planned a carving across all of the drawer fronts. This is not something I've seen a lot of, so I wonder if there's a good reason for that. I settled on some flowers, which is the reason I've been practicing carving flowers into butternut lately.

First I clamped all five fronts to make one large canvas. I made thin spacers to account for the gap between drawers. I didn't want to clamp pennies in between the boards as I thought Honest Abe would leave an impression.

thin butternut strips to account for space between fronts

I printed some clipart, resized it, and laid it out on the drawer fronts. The flowers I faithfully traced, the rest I was more relaxed about.

drawer fronts clamped together with flower clip art my graphite paper worked so poorly I threw it all away

Then I went through the steps of carving. Lining in and lowering the background is relatively fast and satisfying. But the leveling the background and setting in took multiple sessions over more than a week. By contrast the modeling step I completed in one day.

lining in with v tool lowering with #7 gouge leveling and setting in modeled, wet with alcohol

After this I unclamped the boards and applied refined linseed oil. Normally for a flat surface I would use a cotton rag, but that doesn't play well with my carvings. Neither does foam. So I used a large paint brush normally used for household painting.

I just apply the oil to wet the piece and deepen the color and contrast. I wipe off the excess after a few minutes. I later oiled the walnut carcase as well.

With the carving done I thought I could knock out all the rest quickly. Put the drawers together, attach a back and top--how hard could it be? Then I had to accept reality. Each of those tasks has many little details to keep track of. And there's only so much time, so many clamps, and so much free space to stack all the parts.

For the top I made a crude chamfer on the underside. There was a defect on one edge that I thought would disappear with chamfering. But the geometry in my head didn't agree with the geometry in reality.

I thought that defect would disappear. It didn't.

The top will be attached with tabletop fasteners. The slots are made with the domino, with some wider to allow movement.

5mm slots centered 13mm from top edge

The back I made from scrap plywood that was the right thickness and almost the right size. A fancy solid wood back will have to wait for another project. I wanted it colored dark to be less noticeable, so used india ink.

applying india ink to old plywood back fitted with holes for screws

Now the fitting of the drawers has slowed me down. I've been fitting the drawer backs and gluing the boxes together one at a time. Then I usually have to plane the sides to get them to slide all the way in.

x marks where to plane

Since I know the fronts fit the opening (and they have been oiled) I try to only plane the basswood. I use a piece of plywood overhanging the bench to drape the drawer over while planing.

Setup for planing drawer sides. It helps to not have the bottom in.

Once they can be inserted all the way I mark the back end of the sides to cut off the excess.

The drawers have side-to-side play inside the carcase. I will have to add strips to all of the existing guides to keep them in line.

too much play side-to-side

So compared to carving it feels like the home stretch. But it's still a lot of small little things to do one at a time. I still haven't got to the point of seeing if all the drawer fronts and their carvings line up well.

The case has been together and it's time to work on the drawers. As a reminder here is a pic from the previous post:

Carcase waiting for drawers

First I resawed a wide piece of basswood to provide material for the drawer sides. After planing and jointing the bottom edge I plowed a groove for the drawer bottom. This time I remembered to plow the groove before crosscutting it into smaller pieces. That's less hassle than crosscutting first and then plowing five grooves in five pieces.

making groove in long piece of basswood

Then these pieces are individually planed to fit their spaces, and marked. They are all overly long and will be cut to length later.

planed to fit

Next I fit the drawer fronts. First they have to fit between the legs side-side before adjusting the up-down dimension. I crosscut them on the bandsaw and fine tune the ends with a shooting board. Then the top edge is planed to fit.

too tall fits but tight fits with penny gap

When planing the top of the drawers to fit I tried to keep a penny gap from the top edge of the drawer to the top edge of the rail.

pennies for spacing five drawer fronts fitted

Before joining the sides to the fronts I made drawer pulls. I have two previous projects in my house with similar pulls:

homemade drawer pull, about three inches long

I made them one at a time with a saw, chisel, and plane. Now that I need five I tried to shape a longer stick all at once and then cut them free. I used an old offcut as reference.

old offcut with walnut stock

I figured the underside was the most complicated part so started with that. I plowed a narrow groove and then used a shoulder plane to make a ramp. The outside curves were made with the shoulder plane, although any plane would work. The inside curve on the bottom was made with whatever worked - shoulder plane, chisels, gouges.

1/8" wide groove shoulder plane for angled cut roundover

The drawer pulls needed a tenon to match the mortises in the drawer fronts. I made those mortises with the domino and an 8mm bit.

overlapping domino mortises in drawer front

I made a shallow rabbet (a penny's thickness) on the top edge and then rabbeted the bottom edge until the tenon was 8mm thick.

my wood battens were too flexible drawer pull stock with 8mm tenon

Finally this long strip was marked to cut into five pieces. The ends of the pulls are angled with a 1:6 dovetail marker. After cutting free and cleaning up, the rectangular tenons had their ends filed to fit into the rounded mortises. Four out of five were a tight fit. I think glue alone will hold them as it's a long-grain to long-grain joint. The loose one I will probably wedge.

drawer pulls cut free and in progress rounding ends of tenon fit into mortise front view

For joining the sides to the fronts I anticipated using rabbets and nails. Then I realized that since the drawer sides were 3/4" shorter than the fronts, there would be an exposed rabbet at the top.

drawer front is taller than drawer side

So I am going with dovetails. It's a lot more work. I cut the dovetails with a dozuki and fretsaw out the waste. The laying out and transferring can use some work. Maybe by the time I'm making the last few I'll be more comfortable.

dovetails before cleaning up. basswood is fuzzy.

I have basswood set aside for the drawer backs. They will not be dovetailed as I like the idea of leaving the sides extending past the back. There is about 19" of depth in the case. If I set the back at 16" deep then the sides can extend 2-3" further. And 16" is a good number for cutting plywood. But I'm not making any commitments yet.

potential dimensions with back at 16"

For now I have to dovetail four more drawers.

I'll pick up partway through the carving.

Set in with gouge if it fits well

For setting in I will use a gouge if the curves match, but mostly I've been using a carving chisel. I hold the leading corner above the wood and the trailing corner slices down to the desired depth.

setting in with chisel

For the modeling step I worked on the leaves first. Since they are in the background they are cut a little lower than the flowers. I try to define which go under and behind others, and round over the edges. I try to touch all surfaces so no original flat wood is left. These carvings are so shallow there's not a lot of depth to work with.

wet with alcohol so can see surfaces

There's not much of a detailing step, but I did use a nailset to add some little circles.

nailset

After finishing the carvings I made rabbets on three sides.

mark to crosscut top top edge sawn and rabbeted

I lined up the carving next to it's box and marked a top edge. I cut this with a fine tooth saw, and then made a rabbet with the saw and a shoulder plane.

with top rabbet made, mark for side rabbets

The side rabbets were made with a shoulder plane and batten. With rabbets on three sides I could fine tune the lid to fit into the grooves. Finally I crosscut the bottom edge.

trace the overhanging bottom edge to crosscut

I experimented by applying refined linseed oil to only one of the boxes. I used a rag for the box (outside only) and a brush for the carved lid and then wiped them dry after a few minutes.

note the difference between the oiled outside of the box and un-oiled inside

I intended to finish the boxes with garnet shellac. The purpose of the experiment was to determine if linseed oil provided any depth or improvement over shellac alone. I tried that with walnut and decided it wasn't worth the extra step and assumed the same would be true again.

After allowing the linseed oil to dry overnight everything got several coats of garnet shellac. It was frustrating to apply as rags didn't work for the carving, and the cheap paintbrushes I used kept losing bristles.

4-5 coats of shellac on the outer surfaces.

Now we're finished. The sapele box with the daffodil lid is the one I used linseed oil on before the shellac. The sapele is darker and the carving is darker and more defined than the irises. So for butternut carvings and sapele it appears that linseed oil + shellac makes a difference over shellac alone.

Sapele boxes, butternut lids, bamboo nails, cherry plywood bottoms, hide glue. Finished with garnet shellac +/- linseed oil. Width x Length x Depth approximately 8 x 11.5 x 3 or 4.5 inches.

daffodil carving iris carving

Here is a family picture with my last box. That lid was finished the same as the iris lid. It must have just gotten darker with time.

bulbs from another mother

I planted daffodil and tulip bulbs last fall. No irises. I've been watching the tulips emerge and waiting for them to bloom. Deer ate them last night.

I guess deer don't like daffodils

I have this offcut of sapele I've been carrying around for a long time. It is about 8" wide and 22" long. I resawed it by hand before I had a bandsaw. Since then I've been carrying the pieces around.

took a long time

I decided to make small sliding lid boxes. The purpose was to practice carving butternut. I thought I was just going to knock out a quick project—that was two months ago.

thickness planed

Construction is much the same as my previous box made out of sycamore. I thought that box was too tall, so I ripped these sapele pieces to make two shallower boxes rather than one deep one.

sawing rabbets after plowing grooves

Grooves are made before crosscutting. The long ends have rabbets to hold the short ends. One of the short ends has it's top cut off for the sliding lid. Rip and cross cuts were made on the bandsaw with a coarse blade. The rabbets were made with a japanese saw and shoulder plane. Sawing with the blade parallel to the bench isn't the easiest but it's a short cut and allows not readjusting the holdfasts.

The bottoms are cherry plywood. I cut two pieces too narrow before I stopped measuring and just held the plywood up to the short ends to make marks.

mark, don't measure

I glued up the boxes with the bottom in place and later added bamboo skewers as nails. I would have liked to make sapele nails but they did not split straight.

bamboo skewer nails with hide glue butternut tops may not be wide enough

The widest piece of butternut I have is barely wide enough to work. I may have to glue some more on the edges. I should have checked that sooner. This 4/4 piece was resawn and planed to just under 3/8" thickness.

daffodils, tulips, irises

I found three potential carvings in Paul Hasluck's "Manual of Traditional Wood Carving". This is the type of book that is so old it's available for free. I got it from the library and took pictures. I stretched the dimensions to fit and printed them out. I transfer the image by putting graphite paper underneath and tracing the outline with a ball point pen.

the shiny black side goes down it's quick when it works

The boards are oversized which allows the holdfasts to be placed out of the way. I position it at the corner of the bench so I can approach from different angles.

I've heard different terminology for the stages of carving. I will borrow from Chris Pye as I just watched some of his beginner tutorials. He lists them as:

• Lining In
• Lowering
• Leveling
• Setting In
• Modeling
• Details

Lining in is done with a v-tool, outside the lines. I think most of my carvings are not deep enough so I went over the lines at least twice. Lowering is done with a #7 gouge against the grain up to the v-tool lines.

v tool outside the lines lowering leaves ridges

For me the leveling and setting in steps blend together. I mostly set in by slicing along the lines with a chisel, but sometimes use a gouge that matches the curve. Leveling is done with chisels or a #3 gouge up to the new set-in lines. I got some new old carving tools from an old tool fool, including my first bent gouges and a carving knife. They should help in tight spaces.

The left side is set in and leveled, the right side is not. We're in a tight spot!

Now I've got the daffodils to the modeling step and have yet to start the irises.

two box lids in progress