Milling and joinery

Still undecided on the size for the legs, I milled one leg to 2-1/2" square and laid it out with the rails and stiles to see if the the proportions looked OK.   I liked it so, I milled up the remaining leg stock to match.

Shavings and planer chips from milling the leg stock

I proceeded to do the layout for the joinery on one pair of legs and the mating rails and stiles.  Ended up having every marking and mortising gauge I own set to some dimension for the layout.

Harbor Freight, antique, and home made gauges

 I made a couple of fixtures to guide the chisel and keep the mortises parallel to the face of the work piece.  One is for a 3/8" offset and the other is 1/2".   I planed down a piece of birch and glued it to scraps of plywood.

Mortising guides

Guide in use

Clamping these to the work piece also helps support the weak side of the part when mortising near the edge.  I also discovered that I only needed to mark the length of each mortise since the guide determined one side of the mortise and the width of the chisel determined the other.  They work very well and make the work easy.

My Buck Brothers chisel from Home Depot turned out to be a pleasant surprise.  It held an edge as well as any of my other chisels.  The back was easy to flatten and it honed up quickly.  My only complaint is the plastic handle is round, when your hands get a little sweaty, it can be difficult to keep it from twisting in the mortise as you drive it in.  Not a deal breaker though, I was able to make it work.  I suppose if it becomes a problem, I could reshape the handle for a better grip.

Legs with all mortises complete

I cut tenons on the stiles and rails for one end of the cabinet to see how it looked assembled, minus the panels.

Dry fit with rails and stile

I then cut tenons on the drawer rails.  These will be the attachment points for the drawer slides and I want them to be solid since the slides are rated for 100 pounds.  The drawers will be large and heavy, even when empty.  I will make them out of 1/2" thick birch with 1/2" Baltic birch plywood for the bottoms.  They will have an applied frame and panel front to match my kitchen cabinets.

End assembly shown from the outside

Still need to make the grooves for the panels in the legs and the stile.

End assembly shown from the inside

When the drawer rails are planed to final thickness they will be flush with the inside of the legs.

Next I'll be cutting the rest of the tenons for all these mortises.

To be continued...

Kitchen island is underway

With my cut list in hand, I visited my local hardwood dealer and started selecting boards for the project.  I like using chalk to mark out which parts will be cut from each board and mark them off of my cut list as I go.  This works well to ensure that I make it home with enough lumber to actually build the project.  It's also handy when I get ready to break down the boards into components as the chalk map is still there to guide me.  I usually double check to see if rearranging things will lead to a more efficient use of material, in this case I couldn't really improve on my initial layout.

  I let the lumber sit in my shop for a little over a week before starting to break it down this week.  I sticker it so air can flow through the stack

Letting the lumber breath

I couldn't get 12/4 stock so I glued up 8/4 and 4/4 boards to get the thickness I needed for the leg blanks.

Three legs finished and one in clamps

I broke down all the boards into oversize parts and sticker staked them to continue to acclimate for a couple of days before additional milling.  I moved the long stock to the floor the next day so I could use my bench again.

Short parts

Long parts

I spent the afternoon laying out, cutting, and sanding corbels.  At the end of the day I had some respectable looking parts.  The small ones will hold a towel bar at the end of the island near the sink.

Pretty corbels all in a row

I'm having second thoughts about the size of the legs.  In my drawing, I made them 2-1/4" square to match the width of the stiles which looks pretty good on paper.  I'm considering upping them to 2-1/2" since this island will need to support quite a bit of weight in it's six large drawers.  If I had considered this a little sooner, I could have cut the long boards for the web frame a little wider to allow for the change.  Now I'll have to glue a piece onto them to add 1/4" of width.  The rails and panels will need to change too but they will end up being smaller.

to be continued ...