orepass

Cutting the grooves for the front panel in each side and in the top and bottom rails required a little engineering. Several months ago I added a guide to my Veritas plow plane. It really helped me guide the plane and improved performance. The only downside is that it is rather large. When I have a narrow board to groove, I am unable to use my bench dogs for support or my Moxon vise since the guide will not clear the vise. My solution which I have shown once before is to insert a bar clamp in a vise and use it to clamp the work. This provides the clearance I need.

Once the grooves are cut I begin making tenons on the rails that will slide into the grooves. I use a mortise gage to mark the end pieces and then use my dovetail saw to cut them out. The nice thing about having a two pin gage is that it is very easy to lay out mortises on several pieces once you have it set up. I cleaned up with a chisel and rails are complete.

The front panel for the piece is designed as a raised panel. This is all done with a hand plane, in this instance I used a Stanley number 3. Marking off the edges of the panel 3/8″ and the panel at 1″. I placed the panel in my vise and working the ends first began shaving off the material. The picture is very poor so let me describe the process. I angle the plane and begin shaving material from the edge of the board working back and forth until I have cut the reached the lines, I then repeat on the other edge and the sides. This order is important since It allows you to plane off any spelching when you plane the end grain.