tearout fun and planning ahead
I spent this weekend trying to get to work on my hall table. The top has no officially been started. Before milling the boards I changed out the planer and jointer knives so they’d be as sharp as possible with the curly maple I’m using for the top. The boards are fantastically figured, but that just means a new guy like me is going to be spending a lot of time with tear out issues. Hopefully, my trip to the milling place today will get me a nice finished top I can cut to size and start prepping for finish.
I also started planning out what I want to work on next once this table is done. My wife’s going to kill me, but I want to put together a really nice chisel cabinet. Something that I can keep chisels in the main body and in the door I’ll make it a little deep to put things like marking guages, squares, etc. I changed a sketchup model of a chisel to match the dimensions of my octoganal sorby’s and got the rough dimensions for a case that holds two rows of 5 chisels. I’m still working out things like the joinery and such, but I think I’m going to use some of the cherry I’ve got sitting in the garage on it. Only a few wood types left in the garage that I’ve not used now.
Nothing gets your mind going though like trying to design something. I had a hard time sleeping thinking of all the ways to put this together. Should the racks the chisels sit on be a sliding dovetail, just a rabbet. Could I get away with using some cheap 1/4 ply for the back. What if I covered the cheap ply back with some nice velvet to provide a dark backdrop on gleaming sharp chisels? How to do the door and have room for the extra tools in there? It’s crazy for sure.