Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Stickley sideboard, carcase glued-up.

The carcase is glued-up so you can now see some of the construction details that are interesting:



The only major hiccup was that I cut the curve in the front stretcher upside down.  The reason is quite complex:  when a board has an arrow on it pointing up and you turn it over, it points down.  :-(   In this case I got lucky and it still fit.

I deviated from the plans in a major respect.  They call for the legs to be 2 1/4" by 1 3/4", the wider dimension to the sides.  This is because the outside of the legs are supposed to taper to 2" at the top and to 1 5/8" at the bottom.  I don't like the idea of a 1/4" taper on the top at all and I decided not to do it.  I also don't see why the bottom has to be that wide.  Therefore, I decided to make my legs 2" square and taper the bottom to 1 1/4", a slightly more pronounced taper on the bottom.  This is a matter of taste and I like my choice.
 
As I mentioned previously, the sides are somewhat unusual in that the grain is vertical, therefore parallel to the legs and flush to their insides.  Simply glued in place, they are flush to the inside so the drawers can slide against them.  This has a lot of advantages as the top and sides will move together.  As I wrote before, I am not that concerned that the stretcher is perpendicular because, as you can see, there is plenty of room between the sides and stretcher for the legs to flex.

Before the top can be put in place, the support structure for the drawers has to be put in place.  The plans call for a "web frame," something new to me.  Basically a rectangular figure eight attached to the carcase, the drawers run on it and it supports a center divider.  The center divider is screwed to the top stretcher as well.  To make things easier, the top, dovetailed stretcher isn't installed until the web frame and the divider are in place.


1 comment:

  1. Andy,

    How could you do such a fool thing? I've never miss cut a curve on a stretcher, oh no not me. :-)
    BTW, I feel your pain.

    The sideboard is looking good, very nice work. Like you I have a hard time working from plans but it looks like this time it is working for you.

    ken

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