Ash Shoe Rack

We have an ash mirror by the front door that we purchased when we first moved here.  Now we need a shoe rack made to go under the mirror and aside of the door. Hence the measurements are well defined by the space that is available. I have used ash before to make a bathroom cabinet described on this Blog.

I purchased a kiln dried board 1 m long, 17 cm wide and 44 mm thick  and planned to cut this in half to about 20 mm thickness and then plane the sawn surface. This extra work saves on wood purchased costs. The wood was hard and took over an hour to saw down lengthwise and longer to plane because of the tear-out that I have experienced previously with dried ash. The planes need to be as sharp as possible and sometimes driven diagonally to the grain. If you want to learn planing techniques, then try ash and be persistent;  good for your arm muscles as well!!

Sawing the ash plank. This was firstly marked with the kerfing saw. 

The ash plank made into two ready for cutting and planing.

Having prepared all the wood, the next step was to make the dovetail joints to join the sides to the top. For this I made hidden dovetails (double lapped) so that they couldn't be seen from the top. For  dovetails I normally make the tails first and then use these to mark the pins. However for hidden dovetails this makes it difficult for marking the pins so this time I made the pins first so that I could use these to mark the tails on the tail board. However, I started by rebating the tail board i.e the top, using a wooden Fillister plane set to give a rebate 1/3 rd of the thickness of the board.

Rebating the tail board (top) ready for making the tails. This went very easily but it is necessary to chisel-out the end of the rebate to prevent tear-out when rebating.

The rest of the dovetail joint was straight forward being careful to saw the tails on the waste side of the lines and then adjust by chiselling as needed.

Hidden dovetail pins complete. These were then used to mark out the tails on the top board. The rebates for the poles are also shown. These were cut with a dovetail saw, chisel and plough plane.

The hidden dovetails completed and the rear cross rails are set in place using half-lap dovetails.

The legs on the sides were sawn out using a turning and coping saw and finely adjusted with wood files and sandpaper.  The two back rails were carefully marked out for tails for the half-lap dovetails and the pins sawn and chiselled out and finally adjusted by chiselling. An additional small rail was set near the bottom of the front.

This shows the oak support poles that can be removed for cleaning and also the lower front rail that adds to the stability. 

The finished shoe rack before treating with Danish oil

Finished rack in use. The danish oil brings out the colour and grain of the ash.