Entryway bench

[DynaGlide]

I posted in another thread about this bench I'm building for Mrs. DynaGlide. I'd like to start a topic as questions are coming up.

I don't do furniture that much mainly because it's an exercise in frustration. I don't have traditional woodworking machinery. My shop is mostly Festool with a sprinkle of DeWALT. I bought my first planer this week and shoe horned it into the corner on a mobile base.

Here's a picture of what she asked for, more or less:

I made a SketchUp of it to get me going:

I settled on S4S Cherry from my supplier because I thought it'd look nice:

Being the hack that I am I face glued several of the frame pieces together to get the parts I needed:

For the rails (aprons?) I ripped down glued up boards to make them:

After laying out the slats I made some 1/2" or so spacers out of MDF to aid in Domino placement and assembly:

By leaving the aprons/rails long I could trim each shelf to identical dimensions:

Then to get the spacing right I cut some 6.5" spacers out of MDF while I did my Domino layout lines:

That's where the frame sits now. I dry fit the aprons/shelves to the end frame pieces and it all sits flat on my MDF 'assembly table.' The plan is to pre-finish as much as I can prior to assembly. I'll be spraying since those slats are going to be a challenge otherwise. Topic for later.

I'm in the middle of working on the top. It's going to consist of about 5 3.5" wide boards glued up into a panel. Then they'll get breadboard ends to hide the end grain and help keep it flat. Everything is still oversized at this point. I'm playing around with different options for jointing the edges of the boards. I've tried using the TS55 and it works, and I'll probably do that in the end. What I don't like about that is the boards are much narrower than the track so I have to double them up side by side to give support. It makes clamping tricky. My plan was to rip both mating boards at the same time as has been discussed on the FOG and shown on YouTube videos. It's just kind of hard to do so without the boards moving on me with how narrow they are. I tried using a flush trim bit and a straight piece of MDF as a guide to do the jointing but it isn't giving me perfect results, either:

It's close, but not perfect. I'll probably go back to the TS55 at this point and figure out a better way to secure everything. When I tried screwing the ends of the boards down to hold them in place it was splitting the wood even with pre-drilling. Maybe some sandpaper and double stick tape is in order.

Anyway thanks for reading.

Matt

 

[rmwarren]

Project looks great Matt.

I used the TS55 jointing technique and it work well. Straightens the edges and self corrects if the blade isn't perfectly 90 degrees.

Given you can adjust the distance between tops on the track tubes, how about dogs at the end of each piece and double sided tape to secure them?

RMW

 

[DynaGlide]

Project looks great Matt.

I used the TS55 jointing technique and it work well. Straightens the edges and self corrects if the blade isn't perfectly 90 degrees.

Given you can adjust the distance between tops on the track tubes, how about dogs at the end of each piece and double sided tape to secure them?

RMW

Dang it that's a great idea. Thanks Richard.

 

[Mike Goetzke]

[member=8712]Richard/RMW[/member] can you give more info on TS55 jointing technique?

Thanks

 

[Mike Goetzke]

Matt - I like the design too. Nice and clean and somewhat rustic. Looks like you had time to polish up your Domino joining skills on this project. Can't wait to see the final result!

Mike

 

[rmwarren]

Mike you just butt the two pieces to be joined edge to edge, position the guide rail so the saw kerf straddles the joined edges, and the cut is basically mirrored on each piece. If the blade is tilted slightly the tilt cancels itself out.

The edges have to be pretty close to start with since the material removed for each edge is only half the kerf. IIRC I first cut each board so then followed up by recutting at each joint. Not my idea, but I forget where I stole it from.

RMW

[member=8712]Richard/RMW[/member] can you give more info on TS55 jointing technique?

Thanks

 

[Michael Kellough]

Mike you just butt the two pieces to be joined edge to edge, position the guide rail so the saw kerf straddles the joined edges, and the cut is basically mirrored on each piece. If the blade is tilted slightly the tilt cancels itself out.

The edges have to be pretty close to start with since the material removed for each edge is only half the kerf. IIRC I first cut each board so then followed up by recutting at each joint. Not my idea, but I forget where I stole it from.

RMW

[member=8712]Richard/RMW[/member] can you give more info on TS55 jointing technique?

Thanks

Bob Marino told us about this trick way back in the early days. Maybe back when FOG was still a Yahoo user group.

 

[Sparktrician]

Nice-looking project, Matt!  How are you going to finish the cherry?  [smile]

 

[rmwarren]

Project looks great Matt.

I used the TS55 jointing technique and it work well. Straightens the edges and self corrects if the blade isn't perfectly 90 degrees.

Given you can adjust the distance between tops on the track tubes, how about dogs at the end of each piece and double sided tape to secure them?

RMW

Dang it that's a great idea. Thanks Richard.

Dunno, after reviewing your photos again I see a disturbing lack of saw kerfs in the MFT tops... Reminded me of the last time we both shared photos on the same thread and I ended up polishing my filthy routers afterwards out of embarrassment.

I'm playing around with some new MFT tops to replace the monster cart I disassembled and your setup gave me some ideas. I've toyed with buying track tubes but have been limping along with chunks of 80/20. Any overriding benefits to the tubes?

RMW

 

[mino]

...
What I don't like about that is the boards are much narrower than the track so I have to double them up side by side to give support. It makes clamping tricky.
...

Try adding an adhesive strip closer to the antisplinter strip. You can buy the adhesive strip in a roll from Festool - they sell a 10m roll at a reasonable price.

The only trick is to not put the additional strip too close to the anti-splinter one. As that would "bleed" pressure from the anti-splinter strip which needs it for its function. I have put mine about 1.5" distance from the end of the white strip and it works a sharm. It allows the anti-slip strip to sit on a piece that is about 6cm (2.5") and wider which covers most of "thin rip" cases for me. With wide material, it helps the same, so is only a benefit for me.

Was a gradual "upgrade" for me. Now I have 4 anti-slip strips on my rails. Heh. Initially was afraid to put the added one too close to anti-splinter, so put like 3.5" away. Then realized there is now space for one more and for thin rips I needded it even closer. LOL

Other way to achieve this effect temporarily, is to have some rubber strips from e.g. bicycle tube put below the rail where that 3rd strip would go to allow fixating it against the stock. The usual bike tube is about 0.8mm which works out well when 2x for the  1.5 mm gap that is there normally.

After the anti-slip setup is in place, I would use a "backing" board which I will clamp the rail to, then push the stock against that firm backing and then put down pressure on the rail by hand, so the stock cannot move during the cut once it was placed. Sounds complicated, but with the 4-strip rails, I usually do not need to use clamps as these strips are absolutely fantastic in their role.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Looks great so far! How do you plan to attach the Xes to the ends?

 

[rmwarren]

Matt, if you haven't already seen this method, it's another option.


RMW

 

[Bob D.]

I believe the technique is known as 'kerfing-in', not to be confused with kerf bending.

The method was used with hand saws long before power tools existed.

 

[sancho57]

very nice , well done

 

[4nthony]

Matt, if you haven't already seen this method, it's another option.

RMW

Interesting method for using the table saw. I've edge jointed on the router table with the bit inline with an offset on the outfeed side of the fence, but only with smaller stock (

 

[DynaGlide]

Matt - I like the design too. Nice and clean and somewhat rustic. Looks like you had time to polish up your Domino joining skills on this project. Can't wait to see the final result!

Mike

Thanks Mike. Yes the Domino got a real workout on this one for sure.

Nice-looking project, Matt!  How are you going to finish the cherry?  [smile]

Hey Willy - still playing around with options. It'll get Dewaxed Shellac as a first layer regardless. Then probably a dye followed by several layers of GF High Performance.

Dunno, after reviewing your photos again I see a disturbing lack of saw kerfs in the MFT tops... Reminded me of the last time we both shared photos on the same thread and I ended up polishing my filthy routers afterwards out of embarrassment.

I'm playing around with some new MFT tops to replace the monster cart I disassembled and your setup gave me some ideas. I've toyed with buying track tubes but have been limping along with chunks of 80/20. Any overriding benefits to the tubes?

RMW

[member=8712]Richard/RMW[/member] That's because I don't want to cut into my TrackTubes tops. I always put something down first like so:

I just like the flexibility of the Track Tubes. I can throw a top on, it registers on their dogs and slides around and locks when I want it to. It's great for all sorts of things.

Looks great so far! How do you plan to attach the Xes to the ends?

Thank you. The X's got nixed in the final design. Had I went ahead with them I'd probably have just glued them into place.

What ended up working was a stop block at the end to keep the board from sliding forward and a couple clamps. Once I had the setup and flow going it went smooth without a hitch.

Matt

 

[mike_aa]

[member=65062]DynaGlide[/member]  Looking really good so far!  Thank you for all the pictures.  They really help illustrate and inform.  I was able to easily visualize how you used the TSO stop in creating those mdf
spacers you cut.

Mike A.

 

[DynaGlide]

I ended up using 11 5x30 Dominos per board to aid in alignment. I don't have an after picture but the panel came together mostly flat I'll probably have to clean it up a bit.

I was also able to take some scraps from the bench to do some cooking today:

I was out of smoking wood and figured the cherry would do nicely.

Matt

 

[DynaGlide]

As I mentioned earlier I wanted to do breadboard ends on this top. I watched a few YT videos to get an education but settled on this one from a fellow FOG member:

I'm not one for big roundovers so I settled on 1/8" and am pleased with the outcome:

I probably skipped some steps but with young kids and spring break this week I don't have the luxury to take pictures of everything. Very happy with how it is shaping up to this point and I'll do some final tweaking before working on finishing.

Matt

 

[mino]

I probably skipped some steps but with young kids and spring break this week I don't have the luxury to take pictures of everything. Very happy with how it is shaping up to this point and I'll do some final tweaking before working on finishing.

Matt

Looks great. I would reconsider dropping the dfecorative X parts. The sides look a bit baren without it, now it is complete.

Or think up some other decorative fill, not have to be X ... maybe even simple vertical "poles" would work out well. The decorative X in the original also "hides" the shoes placed in there when looked from side, makinge the whole think a bit more "woody". Having something "woody" in that area just seems right, me thinks.