bucked and riven with hammer and wedge.
Not so straight a grain.
Froe and riving brake.
Side axe treatment.
Scrub plane and shooting plane. We have a stile.
Riven billets for panels. Lots of scrub planing to do.
A few shavings later.
Testing for wind.
Drilling panel with spoon bit, to mount for carving.
Panel with centrelines and diagonals marked. Design lined out with gouges and background partially removed.
Close-up of panel with design outlined with gouges.
Rail
with guilloches marked out with compasses. Flowers and pinwheels are
all carved apart from those which sit astride the joints of rails and
stiles, or rails and muntins. These will be carved when the chest has
been assembled.
S-scrolls
marked out using gouges. There is no need to draw the design, to some
extent the sweep and size of the gouge defines the pattern. A rough
symmetry is aimed for and is all that is necessary.
Mortices chopped out with mortice chisel. No need to drill first. A beautiful tool to use!
To
form tenons, a cut across each shoulder with tenon saw. Then place
upright in a bench screw and split off the waste with an inch chisel.
Trial fitting of front frame.
Plough grooves in stiles, rails and muntins to accept panels.
Panels chamfered on back surface to go into grooves cut in framing parts.
Trial fit.
Note
that the backs of panels and framing members are finished only with
scrub plane or even side axe. This could be considered rough by today's
standards, but was common practice in the seventeenth century. Also
tenon shoulders on the back of joints do not always fit flush with the
framing member containing the mortice. Another common seventeenth
century feature.
Wooden pegs.
Floorboards in place.
Carving the flowers and pinwheels where framing members meet.
And in the end there was a joined oak chest.
