Green & Green Settee Part XVI

The last element for the settee are the rail brackets.  The joinery part has already been done and they now consist of rectangular pieces of cherry:

All that is left is the shaping and installation.  A trip to the bandsaw quickly gives them a recognizable form.

 

I use rasps, files, sandpaper to smooth the surface.  There's no right or wrong - just go with what looks good.  I also round over the lip.  I install a small dowel and it is now ready for installation:

The settee is ready for finish!  Although freshly sanded and prepared cherry is rather light and brownish and can be somewhat blotchy immediately after finishing, I sincerely believe no stain can match the natural patina of quality cherry over time.  I explained this to the clients and they agreed.  I knew of one fellow who wiped ammonia directly onto a cherry table.   Afterwords it was a toxic and somewhat scary thing that had to be neutralized.  It actually did accelerate the patina process but I had to wonder if all the ammonia actually got neutralized.  Not sure if I would want babies hanging around the table.  Fuming may work but I've read that this process takes quite a bit longer.  I'll defer to the natural process of light.

I don't have a photo of it, but I made a drop-in seat out of 12mm baltic birch plywood.

For finishing I use a tung oil / varnish wipe-on finish made by Old Masters.  I've used this product before and I'm quite pleased with the results.  There seems to be a bit more varnish in the blend and they use real tung oil.  I wipe on 4 coats and call it quits.  The customer wants a more natural look so I do not use too many coats.  Then off to the upholsterer.  The last blog will have a photo of the final result.

Green & Green Settee Part XV

After glue-up I went ahead and sanded the whole piece with 180 grit.  I'll spare you the gory details of sanding.  I had either handplaned or pre-sanded (120 and 150) most of the parts before glue-up, so this sanding phase wasn't too bad.  For a few spots I had to dip down to 150 to touch up a dinged area here and there.

Next I cut the groove for the crest rail ebony spline.  There is a bit of trepidation taking a router hand held to a nearly finished piece:

I have only a 1/8th inch wide groove cutter (it may actually be a biscuit cutter, not sure).  As you see in the photo, I had to make two passes to get the width I wanted.  Unfortunately, I had some tearout, so I had to widen the groove a bit to clear that out.  I went very slow and removed very little to remove the tearout, which produced only fuzz but no tearout at the problematic area the second time around.  Unfortunately, the groove is a bit wider than I wanted, but it still looks fine.  The problem I think is that I went the entire depth with the first cut.  Next time I will take multiple passes, with the first pass shallow to avoid tear out.

I used my bandsaw and small Jet 10-20 drum sander to make ebony splines.

It is not an exact 90 degree angle where the top spline meets the vertical spline so I had to fuss with the top of the vertical spline on a makeshift shooting board using shims of paper to change the angle:

After using a coping saw to remove most of the ebony, I use a small coarse sanding drum on a dremel to level the ebony to where I can finish with hand tools and sandpaper.  The small sanding drum is very aggressive and the process goes quite fast.   I have a vacuum hose underneath (not shown for some reason) in an attempt to capture most of that gnarly ebony dust.

I also tackle the plugs, using the same process as I did for the arms in an earlier post.  Before installing the plugs I wet the entire piece to raise the grain then sand with 220.  Sanding around plugs is not a lot of fun so better to do so before hand.

I install corner glue blocks inside the seat area.  Glue blocks add a tremendous amount of strength to the piece:

 

I see the light at the end of the tunnel!