This is not green woodworking but I've included it anyway. Basically I wanted to try making something with kiln dried ash to replace a bathroom cabinet that had to fit a particular space in the shower room. This was about 60 cm tall, 35 cm wide and 20 cm deep with two shelves spaced for convenience. I decided to go with a standard box construction with the sides dovetailed to the top and bottom and a panelled door. The top dovetails were hidden (the first time I've done this since a built a bookcase at the Newark Technical college back in the 60's and in my Mum and Dad's front room for many years).
First I had to join the 10 cm ash panels (thickness 12 mm) for the sides, top and bottom. I checked the edges to be joined and then used a jointer plane to adjust before glueing with polyurethane glue. From past experience this glue makes a strong joint but it does entail some careful cleaning-up after it dries. For other joints I used standard interior wood glue. I then used a shooting board to square-up the end of the side panels and marked the dovetails. I allowed overlap when needed so that I could plane and adjust after glueing. The hidden dovetails were straight forward, The only thing I can say about dovetailing with ash is that it is more difficult than beech because, although ash is strong across the grain, it does splinter easily down the grain. The bottom dovetails were lap dovetails so they could not be seen from the side of the cabinet only from underneath. The back was also rebated to 12 mm to allow ash panels to be fitted later. Also before glueing, the housing joints (dados) were cut with a Dado plane to house the two shelves inside the cabinet. This is the first time I've used this plane (1/2 ") with a blade set at an angle and it worked perfectly. The method I'd used before was to chisel out the housing joint and use a router to get an even depth. After this I glued the box together and clamped to ensure that the sides were parallel and set at 90 degrees to the top and bottom. The back panels were rebated to allow movement and cut to size before pinning into the rebates.
I made the panelled door with two pieces of the 10 cm length ash for uprights (styles) and 8 cm pieces for the rails and centre panel of 10 mm thickness that was set in a groove (tongue and grooved). The frame was joined using mortice and tenon joints ( 4 mm tenons). The grooves were cut with a plough plane and mini plough plane (about 3 /16 inch) as they were stopped joints. Finally the panel was rebated to the size of the groove and also to allow it to insert a little in the frame with the back flat with the frame pieces. After glueing the styles were sawed to size but allowing some final adjustments with the plane after fitting the door to the cabinet.
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| Finished cabinet before finishing with Danish Oil. |
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| Details of the inside of the cabinet showing the shelves and brass piano hinge. |
The door was fixed to the front using a 25.4 brass piano hinge and number 4 brass screws. Pilot holes were drilled carefully with a egg-beater drill to the required depth. I had to remove about 2 mm depth of wood from the side panel to accommodate the hinge. In retrospect this would have been easier to do before glueing. Once the hinge was fitted, the door was marked and planed to the correct size. Final adjustments were made with the door attached. A magnetic closing strip was then attached to the top right-hand corner.
The knob to operate the door was then turned on the pole lathe from a log of locally sourced ash. The log had been around the workshop for a couple of months and so not expected to distort much. The stem of the knob was adjusted to 3/4 inch diameter on the lathe and the door front hand-drilled from both sides to avoid tear-out. The knob was fixed by cutting a line across grain and using an ash wedge to secure once glued.
The final job was to fit four wheels and finish with Danish Oil to bring out the colour of the ash and offer some protection to water ingress.
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