Tag Archives: glue-up

Nightstand: Frame Glueup, Drawer Started

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With the shelf made, the front and back frames glued and set for a few days, there was nothing left to do but to glue up the whole frame.

I never have many pictures of the glueup process, because it’s really the only time when time matters a lot. When you’re under pressure to get all of the parts into the right places and into the frame before the glue starts to set, there really isn’t any chance to take photos. In addition, all of my shots are done on a tripod and involve long exposures because the lighting is really bad in the shop, and I can’t hold the camera steady anyway. Finally, my hands tend to get a little sticky with the liquid hide glue, so I don’t want to get any of that on my camera.

I can, however, take pictures of the piece when I’m finished and it’s in the clamps. Thanks to Jasen for lending me the pipe clamps and K-clamp:

This will be ready for varnish in a few days.

The two other remaining components of the project are the top and the drawer. I’ve got the boards for the drawer down to size and cut the half-blind dovetails for the front:

I’m a little concerned about the clearance in the front, it’s possible that this may be too tight of a fit. Depending on how it works out, I may knock off 1/32″ or less off of the faces of each side, because I don’t want this thing getting stuck inside the frame if the boards expand a little.

Though half of the joints are made for the drawer, I’m almost done, because the rear joints will be through dovetails, which are much faster to make. In addition, it’s likely that I will cut only two tails back there to keep it simple. Then there’s fitting the drawer bottom and finally, the drawer pull.

I may be finished cutting wood on the project this weekend.

Bar Clamp Appreciation Week

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I’m in the process of gluing up various components of the nightstand. I started with the rear panel, and actually did this with a rubbed joint (because I trust my rubbed joints enough to put them in a place where no one will see them).

The shelf on the bottom is made of two thicker pieces. I got out the clamps for this job, and it went about as well as it usually goes. My old bar clamps went underneath and I put a couple of F-clamps on the top. The bar clamps constantly fell over as I was working, as usual, and they’re really heavy, but eventually, I got the thing together.

Then it was time for the top, and a little voice in my head told me that if the bar clamps weren’t always falling over when I was trying to get stuff glued up, they might be a lot more pleasant to use. So I cut off a few sections of a 2×4 and made some stands. What a difference this made!

This took very little time to get set up and in place; because the screws to tighten the clamp are at the ends of the bars and free of obstruction, it was a piece of cake to swing the handles around. I also began to appreciate the impressive clamping power that these things have. The additional F-clamps I started with were the smaller, light-duty ones. Then I noticed that the bars on those were bowing a bit, so I switched to a heavier-duty clamp that was a little bit better (see above), but nothing like the bar clamps. It did not occur to me to use a couple of pipe clamps that I’m currently borrowing, sigh.

Let’s take a closer look at those clamp stands, made from a typical douglas-fir 2×4. You can tell that I really went all-out with the details on these. It’s funny how something so simple and cheap can make so much difference.

After going through all of this, I started wondering to myself how much it would cost to get a few more bar clamps, because I’ll be needing something to help out with other glue-ups in the future. Yikes, they sure do cost more than the $2 that these cost me. I guess I’ll be either borrowing clamps more or trawling more estate sales to get my fix.

Stool: Glue-up

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While waiting for the glue to dry on my botched-mortise fixes, I broke the edges on the leg frame with sandpaper. I did this moderately, not taking off too much, but more than just a light touch.

Then I chamfered the edges of the top. The more I use the chamfer attachment to my Veritas low-angle block plane, the more I like it. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to control at first, but by taking light strokes (and starting at 1/4 to the end of the cut and working your way back as you would a moulding plane), it does a nice job. Not to mention that it has an adjustable mouth.

With no excuses left, I had to face the dreaded glue-up task. This part is always a little intimidating to me because you actually have to make sure that you get it done reasonably fast, and I normally like to work slowly. In addition, I’m even more clamp-challenged than most woodworkers.

One thing in particular that worried me was that my joints were very tight; it was difficult to insert and remove the parts without any glue. So how hard would it be to jam these things in?

So, from the preceding photo, you can not only see that I managed to get the joints together, but I needed only two clamps! The frame pieces went together like butter; it seems that the hide glue acted as a little bit of lubricant instead of being an impediment. The only time I really had to use some force was driving one of the legs all the way into the top. I called upon my mallet to do that.

I’m not even sure that these two clamps were necessary. The joints were really holding together tightly, perhaps because of the overall structure.

Will I dare try stepping on this thing tomorrow?