Jan 7, 2022

Step zero for the morning was to get the hot hide glue going. Figured I was going to need it today.

When I left off yesterday, the short drawer I was working on looked like the photo above. When I came back to the shop, I realized I have 3 VIX bits I need to have a home for, so I got another piece of pine and started carving.

I also wanted the drawer to be a bit shorter. There's no good reason for the trays to be a full ¾ thick, so I set the fence in the bandsaw to about ⅜ inch and resawed them.

I also took ⅜ inch off the top of the drawer box with one of my larger backsaws.

And then I set the two drawers in their cubby to make sure they'd fit with the runners in place, and got ready to glue the runners in. By this point, the glue was up to temperature. [brief break in the narrative while I run out to the shop and unplug the crock pot for the day, and put the glue back in the fridge]

I set the lower drawer in place with some spacers, then did a rub-joint with the runners until the glue grabbed.

That's that pair of drawer boxes complete. I looked through the bits I have remaining, and it looks like the rest are just getting tossed into various drawers for now.

And with the drawer boxes done, I started laying out the drawer fronts. I took my piece of resawed elm that's going to be the fronts, and decided which way it'll be oriented, then planed one of the edges square as a reference surface.

Then I cut both boards to width and cut off the last ¾ inch from the end so I'd have a square surface there to measure from.

Then I laid out the drawers on each of the boards, and called it a day. I'll double-check my work tomorrow before making any of these cuts, as once I start cutting, I'm committed to this plan. I think you'll be able to see the marks on the boards. The plan is that the drawer fronts will butt up against each other, leaving bookmatched grain on the two rows of drawers, and continuous grain from left to right along the row. The wood lost to kerfs should be just enough that the drawers won't rub against each other.

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Started on the next drawer of stuff. The spoon bits I have are about the toughest to make fit, so I started with them. Rather than using a gouge to carve a holder for them, I used auger bits to drill through two pieces of pine simultaneously, with them clamped in my face vise so the lead screw wouldn't push them apart.

Then with four holes drilled (for eight bits), I cut them apart on the bandsaw. Woohoo! They'll fit in a single layer in a small drawer!

So I measured how much height I needed and cut off the drawer.

And glued and clamped a bottom to the piece that didn't have a bottom any more.

For the other half of the drawer, I carved trays for my countersink bits,

Plug cutters,

And I'll fill the rest of the drawer with spare twist bits and the carbide-tipped spade bits I use for drilling through saw plates.

I think I can take another ¼-⅜ inch off the drawer with the spoon bits tomorrow in order to make room for a pair of runners, so that's going to be the first thing for tomorrow, I think. Almost out of bits to find a home for, finally!

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One more drawer mostly done today. These are both carved into a piece of ¾ inch pine.

First the batwing bits, because I won't use them very often. They're nice for making a clean hole it they're in good shape, but mine aren't yet, and they haven't been a priority to sharpen up yet.

Recesses for the larger bits, pieces of bamboo skewers to hold the smaller bits, and a couple ipe knobs I turned from a ¾ inch diameter stick I had laying around so I can lift the set out of the bottom of the drawer.

Next is a tray for my forstner bits. Again, carved using three different gouges.

Then I stuck a couple pieces of pine on the ends of that board so it can sit over the batwing bits in the same drawer. I may need to add a handle or I may not. Trying to decide if I'm going to make another tray to hold my plug cutters in this drawer too, but I got hungry for lunch and called it a day in the shop.

Once the glue has had a chance to dry, I'll cut off the top and bottom of the sides to get the tray of forstner bits fitting perfectly.

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Started out today by cutting down the drawer holding my Fisch auger bits. They only need a single level, and the added space will give me room for runners for the drawer above them.

Next up, the small drawer that will hold my long brad-point bits.

When I drilled the smaller holes for the brad points, I broke through the end of the box (intentionally). So today it was time to fix that up. I glued on (with hot hide glue) a spare bit of edge-banding to cover the holes and protect the brad points.

Since it was hot hide glue, I didn't really need to clamp at all, but the clamps made it easier to take the curl out of the edge-banding.

And now the small drawer is done. Time to give it some runners to ride on. I cut a couple pieces of oak, and tacked them into the till, spacing them the thickness of a scrap above the drawer below them.

And a little over a half hour later, I figured the glue was “set enough” to test the fit.

Yep. That'll do.

Time for the next drawer. This will hold my old set of (mostly) Russell Jennings auger bits. I made wooden holders for the largest bits.

And then reused one of the metal clips from the (broken) box I got the bits in to hold the smaller bits. Plus I added a small handle I had left over from something else so I could lift this tray of bits out.

Again, hot hide glue put the piece of plywood into the end and set up quickly enough that I could continue working, rather than having to wait for the glue to dry.

So that's two drawers fitted out.

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Jan 2, 2022

Today I started fitting out the drawers.

The biggest problem (the longest bits) I had were a set of long brad-point bits. They're almost exactly the same length as the drawer openings, which means they have to go into a box diagonally. Or the box needs holes drilled in the side walls. So I started by cutting about an inch off the top of one of the boxes and putting a bottom on it.

I also drilled holes into it from the two ends, but forgot to take a picture. Mañana.

In the bottom portion of that box, I put in holders for my set of Fisch augers with hardwood lead screws. They're very nice, but they're not a complete set, and Fisch is unlikely to ever make a complete set, so I didn't leave any spare room.

To make the rests for the sharp ends, I drilled holes in two pieces of board clamped together in my face vise. That worked pretty well.

The square ends of the bits just slide into half inch holes in another board. And then I made room for my “spare” tapered reamer bit in that case, as the Fisch bits will almost certainly get used in the same projects where I need a tapered hole (chair or staked furniture work).

I'll likely cut the box down a little farther tomorrow and make runners so these two partial drawers can sit one atop another.

That was it for today.

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Yesterday I was busy building and didn't stop to take pictures.

Had one drawer box all ready for glue-up when I walked into the shop, so that was the first task. Got it together and started cutting the next box, which went well, and the first box had spent a little over an hour in the clamps, so I could remove them and reuse them on the second box of the day.

And then I started on the third box, and was done and ready for glue in under an hour. Apparently practice still makes me better! So I found four longer clamps and a couple shorter ones to hold the box together, since I'm pretty sure the glue wants at least an hour to set before I remove the clamps. I had a brief thought that I should be using hot hide glue, since the cold at the shop floor near the door won't bother that as much, and I could almost go clamp-free, but I haven't been setting up my glue-pot in the mornings, so Titebond II use will probably continue.

In any case, that was enough for the day, and I'll knock out the last two drawer boxes today, and maybe get the previous batch of three sanded and fitted today, and can get started on designing storage for the bits tomorrow.

Here are the three drawer boxes in place, after cleaning them up on the belt sander.

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Dec 30, 2021

Took yesterday's drawer out of the clamps this morning and checked it for fit. As I expected, it was a bit tight, due to the bottom being a hair large.

So I scribbled on the sides with a pencil and hauled the belt-sander outside to clean things up. The belt started out as 60 grit, but I've been using it long enough that it's probably more like 120 now. Still plenty good for cleaning up drawer sides.

After a few minutes, the sides were cleaned up, and the drawer fits much better. Maybe a hair loose, but plenty good for my purposes.

And it looks pretty good, too.

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Dec 29, 2021

Another question I received was someone asking Why do you need so many drawers for your bits? Well, I have the following types of bits (and use them all for different tasks):

• spoon
• spade
• hardwood auger
• softwood auger (the lead screw is different for hardwood and softwood)
• brad-point ship-augers (longer)
• Forstner
• plug-cutters
• gimlets
• cheap twist-bits for drilling metal

And that's not even counting the reamers, spoke-pointers, hollow augers, hole saws, or expansive bits. I have a lot of boring tools. ;–)

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First a photo of how the till looked at this point.

That's yesterday's drawer-box in the lower right corner. I took it to the belt-sander to bring the dovetails down to level. I had cut them so the pins and tails protruded just a little, and it's a lot easier to fix that on the belt-sander than with a plane. Normally I cut dovetails so the flat surfaces are slightly proud of the end-grain, which is easier to plane flat. Maybe tomorrow's blog will cover that…

Todays update will fill in some blanks in yesterday's drawer construction. If I were a better person I'd go back and edit them into that blog.

As there are some variations in the carcasse, I'm measuring each drawer individually. No idea how many inches each is, but they should fit pretty good…

So that's how I measure them. I also noticed that yesterday's drawer has the dovetails the wrong way around for greatest strength, so I switched things up today and cut the tails on the sides (which are the shorter boards).

And here's a picture of using the combination plane to make the grooves. I clamp the board to my new small bench (because there's room) with the edge just over the edge of the bench so the combination plane can index off the edge of the board.

And here's a completed board (either the left or the right of the drawer, don't remember which)

To mark the size of the bottom, I set the (test-fit) drawer on the piece of ¼ inch plywood, with the outside of two edges on two edges of the plywood.

Then I mark along the inside of the box for the other two sides of the drawer-bottom.

Since I set the depth-stop of the combination plane to about half the thickness of the boards, this will work out to be about right.

And sure enough, it fits pretty well. The bottom was maybe tighter than ideal, but it's close enough that I won't worry about it unless I move the till to somewhere more humid. On future drawers, I'll plane a hair off the edges of the bottom to leave a little more slack.

It took about 90 minutes from cutting the first board to length to shutting off the lights with the next drawer-box in the clamps.

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Dec 28, 2021

Nineteen months ago I said I needed to get started on the drawers for my brace till soon.

I guess it was finally soon!

I had resawed a bunch of pine down to about ¼ inch. First up was cutting it to size and flattening it. When I'm flattening a board, I will often mark the high bits or areas that need work with a pencil, then plane away the pencil marks, and re-check the board.

Then I laid out the tails on a pair of boards. I do tails-first because I can gang-saw two boards worth of tails at once. When working in thin boards like this, that helps give me more area as a flat reference surface, plus cuts the sawing in half for the tails.

Cut the tails, sawing out the waste with a small bow-saw, then flattening the bottom of the tails with a rasp or float.

Laid out the pins on a single board. Note that I mark each of the tail boards first, then once the pin board fits, I mark the matching pin board. This has saved me from getting a joint backwards or mismatching the joints. If I were more uniform in sawing my dovetails, it might not matter as much, but there is enough variation where the boards will usually only fit one way.

I also transfer the thickness of each end of the tail board to the proper end of the pin board that will fit with it. Since the boards are hand-resawn and hand-planed, they are seldom all the same thickness, and sometimes even vary in thickness from one end to the other.

Cut the pins. And remember to mark the waste before cutting out the wrong bits.

Then remove the waste with a bow saw.

And remove the waste from the ends using a backsaw, which makes it easier to get a flat cut.

And then test-fit the corner.

Then I marked where the grooves for the bottom will go before I got something worng. Having the grooves on the bottom of the drawer on one side, and on the top on the other doesn't make for a terribly useful drawer.

And got a little groovy.

After cutting out a piece of ¼ inch plywood to fit in the bottom of the box, I test fit everything, and glued together the first box. This one will fit in the lower right drawer slot, and will contain my set of long brad-point auger bits (I think). The drawer fronts and handles go on after all seven boxes are done. I'll also put in runners on the sides of the cubbies to hold the drawers level. But next up, is building six more drawers and then fitting out something to hold the bits in place in each of them.

I'll try to remember to show the setup for the combination plane and how I mark the size of the drawer bottom when I'm doing one of the next drawers. I think I may also need to put some slips under the bottom in some of the drawers, as I can only cut about a ⅛ inch deep groove for the bottom, which may not hold great if I've got heavy stuff in the drawer.

Stay tuned!

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