Rough Stock Preparation

This is the end goal: a stack of precisely-dimensioned parts.

Stock Preparation

This post and its companion post on fine dimensioning originally appeared as a two-part series in the Guild Of New Hampshire Woodworker's Journal, Fall 2013 and Winter 2014.

These are the skills required to turn raw lumber into precisely dimensioned parts using hand tools. When combined with hand-cut joinery, they allow you to turn any space into a workshop, no power required.

It's a two-stage process: rough cutting and fine dimensioning, where handsaws and hand planes work as a team. Full size handsaws quickly break a board down to manageable pieces, without worrying about accuracy. Hand planes and smaller handsaws then bring them to final, accurate dimensions.

You can pick the tolerance you work to based on your skill level. It doesn't take long to be working to the nearest 1/64 of an inch or tighter. People tend to assume hand tools are crude, but they work to a fantastic degree of precision. And adjusting the fit of a piece is very easy; you can reduce any dimension by 1/1000 of an inch at a time with a plane.

While I'm working with easy white pine here, the processes are the same for all woods, no matter how hard. Some just require more effort. No single step takes very long. Pace yourself and take breaks; slow and steady wins the race.

Here I'll cover the tools and the first stage, breaking boards down. Then I'll cover the second stage, fine dimensioning.

The Tools

The recommended tools:

• Full size crosscut handsaw (26"-28", 6-8 PPI)
• Full size ripsaw (26"-28", 6-8 PPI)
• Crosscut backsaw (10"-16", 12-14 PPI)
• Long flattening plane (#6 fore plane or #7 jointer)
• Medium jack plane (#5)
• Short smoothing plane (#3 or #4) 
• Sawbench or pair of sawhorses
• Pair of bench hooks
• Pair of winding sticks
• Shooting board
• Marking gauge
• Square
• Marking knife (chip carving knife or dedicated marking knife)

From top: full-size crosscut and rip saws, crosscut backsaw.


From top: #7 jointer plane, #5 jack plane, #4 smoothing plane.


From left: irons from the #7, #5, and #4 plane. The #5 is heavily cambered (curved) to allow taking deep chips for roughing. The #7 and #4 should either have their corners rounded off, or be very slightly cambered, to avoid digging plane tracks in the work when making overlapping passes.


Clockwise from top left: winding sticks, shooting board, wide bench hook, and narrow bench hook.


Sawbench. It's good to have two, so one can support the off-cut.

You don't have to match this list exactly; variations can certainly get the job done. For instance you might have shorter panel saws (18"-24"), or do all your crosscutting without a backsaw. You might have a #8 jointer, or a #2 smoother, or prefer to do everything with a low-angle jack.

There are two secrets to success. First and most obvious, the tools must be sharp. Learn how to sharpen your own saws and planes. Second, lubricate the bearing surfaces as you work. Apply a scribble of wax or a light wipe of oil periodically to the saw sides and plane beds.

For wax, use beeswax or paraffin blocks, paste wax on a rag, or even the edge of a candle. For oil, use a moistened rag or wipe the tools across an oil wick (a rolled up rag in a can or jar, the exposed end moistened with oil). Some people use boiled linseed oil, but that poses the risk of spontaneous combustion in used rags, so others prefer a light machine oil.

Sharp tools that move smoothly are a joy to use.

Rip vs. Crosscut Saws

Rip and crosscut saws are almost identical. The difference is in the way the teeth are filed and the resulting cutting action. They're measured in points per inch (ppi); small number means large teeth for faster cut, large number means small teeth for finer cut. Note that I'm talking about Western style push saws here; Japanese pull saws have similar concepts, but different details.

Rip teeth are filed straight across, with an almost vertical leading edge. They act like tiny chisels cutting with the grain, chiseling out tiny chunks between the fibers of the wood. Only the forward stroke cuts.
Crosscut teeth are filed at opposing angles on two faces, with a raked back leading edge. They act like tiny single-edge knives cutting across the grain, severing the fibers of the wood. Both the forward and back strokes cut.

Both types have set to the teeth, meaning alternating teeth are bent slightly outward. This adds enough width to the kerf to clear sawdust and keep the saw from binding.

Learn to recognize the difference by sight. It's instructive to deliberately use the wrong saw for the wrong cut to see how differently they behave. Using a full-size ripsaw to crosscut jams up almost immediately as the teeth catch across the fibers; forcing it just results in an ugly tearing cut. Using a crosscut saw to rip goes a little better, but soon binds in the cut.

If a saw suddenly seems to be doing a terrible job, you probably picked up the wrong one by mistake. As you get to really small teeth in joinery saws, 12ppi or finer, a ripsaw is able to crosscut more effectively, so may be able to do double duty.

Long vs. Medium vs. Short Planes

A plane's function is dictated by its length, and its order of use is dictated by its function.

The longer a plane is, the more it rides across the high spots and shaves them down to an even surface. The shorter it is, the more it follows the existing contours of the surface.

So longer planes are more suited to flattening, while shorter planes are more suited to fine smoothing without significantly changing the flatness. I use medium length planes for stock removal.

The order of operations is stock removal, followed by flattening, followed by smoothing to final surface, so the order of use is medium plane (jack), long plane (jointer), and short plane (smoother).

Stock removal means removing wood fast, without worrying about appearance. The medium plane with cambered iron is very effective for this. The cambering (curved profile) allows you to set it for an aggressive cut, taking thick chips that feather off on the sides. You can take an edge down by 1/4" or a surface down by 1/8" in seconds this way.

The resulting surface is rough and deeply scalloped. The long plane quickly flattens it. The first few passes just nip off the high spots, but subsequent passes begin to take off full shavings.

Once the surface is flat, the short plane set very fine gives it a final satiny surface. For both flattening and smoothing planes, round the corners of the irons so they don't dig in and leave plane tracks in the wood as you make overlapping passes, or camber them very slightly.

The depth of cut on each plane is like a manual gear shift on a car. Don't just set it once and forget it. Adjust it continuously to take heavier or lighter shavings as needed. Clean and oil the threaded adjuster so you can change it with a rolling flick of the thumb or finger.

The chips from the medium plane will be 5-20 times the thickness of the shavings of the long plane, which will be 2-5 times the thickness of the shavings from the short plane. For speed and efficiency, use whichever tools takes the biggest bite without going past the line you're working to, then switch to the finer tool to clean up.

Breaking Lumber Down


Rough-milled pine board marked out for rough parts, avoiding knots.

Break a board down to rough parts in two stages. First deal with the big pieces on the saw bench or sawhorses. Then deal with the smaller pieces at the workbench, using the bench hooks or the vise.

Lay out your cut lines on the board with chalk or a lumber crayon. Plan the rips and crosscuts to get the most out of your board, working around any defects like knots or splits.

Allow some extra margin in each dimension, since these are rough cuts that will need to be cleaned up with the planes. Reasonable total margins are 1/2" to 1" in length, 1/8" to 1/2" in width. The fine dimensioning steps will deal with these easily.

Smaller margin means less to remove in the finer stages of work, while larger margin gives you more leeway to deal with problems. Work to a margin appropriate to your skill level. As your skill improves, you can bring it in tighter.

I generally err on the larger side; you're going to be trimming off some excess in the fine dimensioning no matter what. The worst thing you can do is have to scrap a piece because you cut too tight and didn't leave enough margin to plane it smooth.

Sawing Body Mechanics

Controlling a saw of any size is a matter of maintaing alignment with your body. Your body position and the multiple joints of your arm all affect it.

Stand to the side of the cut to provide clearance for your arm to move back and forth. Your wrist and the toe of the saw (the far end) should move back and forth on a straight line with your shoulder, keeping your elbow in the same plane. Kicking your elbow out or hugging it in, or trying to hold the saw at some off angle, will throw the cut off.

Sight down across the back of the saw to line it up to the cut, plumb and aligned. This is similar to sighting down a rifle or bow and arrow to aim it. Use the full length of the saw in steady strokes and allow gravity and the teeth to do their work. You don't need a lot of down force on it.

Grip the saw with three fingers, extending your index finger along the handle. This "trigger finger" grip gives you better control, which will become more important when doing precision joinery sawing. You'll notice that your hand fits better, too; saw and plane handles are actually sized for this grip, not for a full hand.

Crosscutting


Hold the board down on the sawbench with your knee. Note the index finger extended along the saw.

Unless you need to rip down the entire length of a board, start out with crosscuts to break the big awkward piece down to manageable size, using the crosscut saw. Lay the board on the sawbench with the cut line just past the end and kneel on it with a leg to hold it down. If the offcut will be long, it helps to have another sawbench or pair of sawhorses to catch it.

Since I'm right handed, I kneel with my left leg. That provides clearance on my sawing side so I don't get in my own way.

With the saw plumb and aligned to the cut, pinch your fingers on the edge of the board at the line to act as a guide and use a nibbling action back and forth to start the kerf. Then clamp the board down to the bench with your hand and saw at about a 45 degree angle.

As you reach the end of the cut, grasp the offcut and raise the saw angle for a light, clean finish. The main thing to avoid is having the piece fall and tear a big splinter off.

Remember this is rough cutting, so perfection of cut is not your goal. You just want to separate the pieces. Ragged cuts, off alignment, out of plumb can all be corrected as long as you stay within your margin.

Ripping


When ripping, slide the board forward as you progress.

Ripping with a rip saw is much like crosscutting, except that you need to slide the board forward as you progress through the cut. I hold it down it with my right knee so I have clearance on my right side. Again, an additional support helps as more and more length hangs over the sawbench.

Hold the saw plumb and aligned to the cut. Pinch your thumb and finger over the edge at the end of the board to act as a guide, and use a nibbling action to start the cut. Saw steadily at about 45 degrees.

The two main differences from crosscutting are in maintaining the cut and completing it. Crosscuts are usually short enough that they don't get too far out of alignment, but long rips can start to wander.

The trick is to steer the saw like you steer a car. As you drive, you don't hold the steering wheel dead in one position, you constantly adjust it to the road and the tracking of the car. Even going straight, you steer a little left, a little right to maintain direction.

The spring steel of a good ripsaw lets you to do the same thing. This allows you to rip a 1" strip off an 8' long board. If the cut starts to wander, drop the angle of the saw and pull it to the side, flexing it back toward the line as you continue sawing. Once it's back on track, straighten it back out and resume sawing at the normal angle. If you overcorrect, just steer it back the other way.


Lower the angle of the saw and flex it to one side or the other to steer it back to the line.

This kind of correction leaves humps and dips in the cut edge, but they clean up quickly with the long plane (remember its function is to flatten, or in this case, straighten). This is why you leave yourself some margin commensurate with your skill. Need a lot of correction? Leave a lot of margin. Even the ugliest cut will clean up quickly with the medium plane set for an aggressive cut.

To finish, reverse the board to the other end and cut from there until the two cuts meet somewhere around the middle. If the first cut starts to go really bad, you can switch to the other end sooner as a major correction.

For thick stock, mark the cut line on both faces of the board, and repeatedly flip the board to the opposite face as you progress. This allows you to correct for the saw being out of plumb or the thickness taking the underside of the cut off course as the saw flexes.

Ripping Small Pieces


Hold small pieces upright in the vise for ripping.

Once you've broken the board down to pieces too small to work on the sawbench, do the rest of the sawing at the bench. To rip small pieces, hold the work upright in the vise. Saw as before, flip the piece over to cut from the other end, and meet in the middle. I like to drop to one knee to get a good angle, but you can also do it standing upright.

An alternate work-holding method is to clamp the piece along the front edge of the benchtop, then saw with a double-handed upright stance or from the side. This also works for long rips if you find leaning over the sawbench hurts your back. You can even do crosscutting this way.


Sawing along the edge of the bench with an upright stance.

Crosscutting Small Pieces


Crosscut small pieces on a pair of bench hooks.

To crosscut small pieces, hold the work on a pair of bench hooks. Spread them apart to give better support. The front of the hook catches the front of the workbench, and the back catches the workpiece. Lean into the piece with your free hand to hold it in place.

Use the backsaw, since this is smaller and lighter work. But don't worry about accuracy yet, because this is still rough cutting. 

Resawing


Resawing a piece for thin stock.

When you need thin parts, such as drawer sides or dividers, rather than wasting enormous amounts of material by planing down to the desired thickness, resaw your stock. Resawing is ripping across the width rather than across the thickness. It's the most laborious operation you'll do, so get the pieces down as small as possible first, to rough length and width. Then the work is manageable.

Allow plenty of margin, because you'll end up with rough surfaces that will need to be planed down. The saw can also bow inside the cut if you try to saw too aggressively, creating a thin spot in one side and a thick spot in the other, all requiring more planing down to flat. As you get good at it, you'll be able to resaw the resawn parts even thinner.

Scribe a line at the desired thickness (plus margin) all the way around the workpiece. Secure it in the vise with a corner sticking up. Start ripping at the this corner just like a normal rip. The key here is to align the saw to the cut on both the edge and end grain. Sight down over the back of the saw to the teeth and align them to the two scribed lines.

Alternately drop the angle of the saw to extend the cut along the top edge and then raise it to go down the end grain. Keep a close eye on it, especially where the far teeth exit the cut. If it's going well, you can keep doing this until the cut reaches all the way across the end grain to the adjacent corner, or you can flip the piece over to start anew from that corner, and have the two corner cuts meet.

From there, repeatedly flip the piece and cut a little more, flip and cut. This allows you to keep it under control and correct for any wander quickly. It also reduces the effort required to cut. Each time you flip the piece, you start cutting the tip of the triangle formed by the previous diagonal cut, so it's much easier than sawing the full length of the diagonal.

Once you get near the end, you can drop the saw down and go along the edge to connect the near corner, or simply start fresh from these corners. Either way, reverse the board to work on the other end, and everything meets somewhere roughly in the middle. Each of the four corners allows you to get a fresh start on the cut if it starts to go bad.

Light pressure and frequent flipping give the best results, as well as frequent lubrication.

For more photos and video of resawing, see resawing by hand.

None of the steps here are particularly difficult. Working one piece at a time, you can pace yourself to complete a whole stack of parts. Getting the fine control down is a matter of practice. It's worth investing in a couple boards just to practice breaking them down and dimensioning them, without worrying about a specific project.

Next: fine dimensioning.

Resawing By Hand

Resawing is the technique of ripping boards across their width to make thinner boards. It's useful for making things like drawer sides, box dividers, custom veneers, or slices for bent wood laminations. This is the alternative to planing thicker stock down, which wastes a lot of wood.

This past February I gave a demo on resawing by hand at WoodExpo in Boston, which Justin DiPalma recorded on video. I've edited the raw video down to the interesting parts for The Furniture Project website (recall that WoodExpo is now The Furniture Project).

Here it is on YouTube:



Below are photos from the video. There are three examples of resawing, with both soft and hard woods:

• resawing a 14" piece of construction-grade 2x6 with a full-size ripsaw;
• resawing a 5" piece of pine 1x4 into a very thin slice with a Japanese ryoba;
• resawing an 8" piece of oak 1x4 with the ripsaw.

These pieces took 10.5, 3.5, and 10.5 minutes to do.


First piece, 2x6 with ripsaw. From left: my 26", 6 TPI ripsaw; starting the resaw; progress after flipping the piece a couple times.


About halfway through; down the length to the far corner; opening it up to check the cut surface after doing the other end.

Resawing by hand is definitely work, probably the most laborious operation you can do, so pace yourself and take breaks. But the point is, it's not that hard, it's definitely doable, and it gives you a lot of freedom, because it allows you to work in any thickness. The technique isn't complex, just time-consuming (10 and half minutes to resaw a 14" length of 2x6). It's really just heavy ripping.

You should take 10 minutes to sharpen your saw before any major resawing, then wax it to minimize friction. You should also minimize the amount of wood you're resawing by cutting the stock down to close rough width and length first.

The resulting resawn surface may be pretty rough, but it cleans up quickly with planes. Just be sure to leave enough margin when you mark out the thickness you'll be cutting to allow for that.

As you get better, you'll be able to get multiple slices out of the same piece should you need to do so. That's why I demonstrated the ryoba; I can get 5 slices out of a 3/4" thickness of wood.

Just remember that the bigger piece, the more challenging, and the more chance of things going wrong (like when I tried to resaw a 12" wide piece of mahogany; the saw bowed inside the cut and eventually cut through the middle of the surface). Try some different sizes and different species to learn your limits.


Second piece, pine 1x4. Starting in with the ryoba; halfway after flipping a couple times; comparing the two thicknesses.


Third piece, oak 1x4. Making a starter kerf with a backsaw; working on the second corner; down the length; about halfway through.

To resaw a piece, mark the edge all around, leaving adequate margin in the thickness for cleanup. Start at an angle on a corner, like you're sawing out a tenon cheek; sometimes it helps to make a small starter cut with a backsaw. You can either saw this corner all the way down until you reach the adjacent corner, or just saw down halfway to it, depending on how heavy the going is. Then flip the board and work from that corner.

Once you've made good progress on the second corner, flip the board again and do more from the other side. Do this repeatedly until you pass the halfway point of the length. Then you can switch the board end for end and repeat the process on those corners. Eventually it all meets in the middle.

You'll notice a couple of things. First, every time you start in from an edge, you're cutting a small triangular corner that grows in size and difficulty as you reach the other edge. Second, the existing kerf where you've already cut guides the saw, helping keep it straight.

More frequent flipping makes it easier and keeps it more accurate. If you find it getting off track, flip it immediately and start from the other edge, but pay attention to the exit of the saw. If it's still getting off track, switch to the other end. This gives you a couple of chances to recover from mistakes.

You can also raise and lower the angle of the saw as you work to change how it's cutting. Experiment with it. Lower it all the way to extend the kerf along the length so you can reach the far end. That then creates a starter kerf for working on that end.

This isn't something you'll want to do a lot of, but it's a very valuable skill. You're no longer limited by the thickness of the available stock, and you don't need to waste large amounts of wood planing down for thin pieces.

CGSW Class: Rough Stock Preparation

Last night I taught a class on rough stock preparation at the Close Grain School of Woodworking. The student was Brian Simmons, a former coworker who has a beautiful small farm in nearby southern New Hampshire. The class is about how to make small wood out of big wood, breaking down boards into rough dimensions with handsaws and planes.

Brian has some experience as a carpenter, and had been planning on putting together a home power tool shop. However, he told me he has property where he wants to build a shop off the grid, so he decided to give hand tools a try.


Having crosscut a board into short lengths, Brian rips a section down in the vise.

I went over the tools and workspace options, then had him make a variety of cuts in a 4'-long board of rough milled pine. First I had him rip a 1" strip from the full-length board; I always start with this, because people think a long accurate rip is impossibly hard. In the process I had him deliberately go off course so he could see how to correct it. Since this leaves a rough and bumpy cut, the next thing I had him do was restore a straight reference edge with handplanes.

One of my main points here is to work to the tolerance you're currently comfortable with. If you need a 1/2" safety margin from your line to allow room for mistakes, take it. As you get better, you'll be able to get closer. At this stage of a project, speed is more important than accuracy. Rough, ugly cuts can be cleaned up quickly.

The other points are to use the tools that takes the biggest bite first (meaning your biggest, fastest saws), and to reduce the stock with easier cuts first before doing the more difficult cuts, as the cutting plan allows, so that you minimize the size of the pieces to be cut. Generally, that means crosscuts first, followed by rip cuts, followed by resaw cuts.

Crosscuts are easier than rips because they're typically shorter. Resawing is by far the most laborious, so you want the pieces to be as small as possible. With handplanes, cleaning up long-grain edges is easy, cleaning up end grain is harder.

I had him cut the board into progressively smaller pieces until they would no longer fit on the saw bench. Remaining cuts are done in the vise or on the bench hook. I also had him try the smaller panel saws, as well as hogging off excess width with a scrub plane.

The last exercise was resawing. I demonstrated with a scrap, then had him resaw one of his pieces into two equal thicknesses.


Brian resawing a piece into two thinner panels.

He was surprised at how easily the saws cut. Most people don't realize what a sharp, well-tuned saw can do. Of course, working in pine is easy, but people always assume that handsawing is horribly laborious. Sure, some cuts will work up a sweat, but in actuality, it's quite fun and satisfying.

After he had gone through the various cuts a couple times, we still had some time left, so I went over the basics of sharpening and setting saw teeth. A freshly sharpened and waxed saw is a high-performance instrument.

The next class in the series will be final stock preparation, using handplanes and finer saws to dimension the rough cut parts precisely (meaning to 1/64" tolerances). If you're interested in taking a class, you can sign up for one of the pre-scheduled group classes, or schedule a private class.

Portable Sharpening Station

Mocking up my portable sharpening station. I want my sharpening stones and strop to be laid out ready to use wherever I am. The folded-back cardboard is to figure out the articulated lid.

I bought my first 10-speed bike over 30 years ago, when I lived in Houston, TX. It was a cheap, basic Sears bike. The derailleur for shifting gears was a decades-old design, with frame-mounted levers. I rode it along the paved Braes Bayou trail, which over its 5-mile distance probably had at most a 10-foot rise.

Shifting gears on the bike was a nuisance, because there was no way to know other than the sound of the chain when I had the shift lever in the right position, plus I had to lean down to reach the levers. So I'd be leaning over off-balance hunting back and forth to find the gear. Because of this and the flat terrain, I basically treated it as a 3-speed: starting, accelerating, and cruising. Once up to speed, I didn't change gears.

Five years later, living in hillier Dallas, I upgraded to a much nicer bike, six times the price. This had 12 speeds, but was still the same basic shifter design. New indexed shifting systems were just coming on the market at the time, along with step-in pedals, but were expensive. The terrain required me to shift more, but I was still young enough that I could just power through a limited range of gears.

By the time I bought my third bike fifteen years after that, I was living in Massachusetts, with much more varied terrain. By now we were up to 21 speeds (7-speed hub by 3-speed chain ring), and 12 times the cost of my first bike. Indexed shifting was standard equipment, with the shifters built into the brake levers. That meant I never had to remove my hands from the handlebars. Tap a brake lever sideways, and click! it shifts, the gear falling smoothly into place. No messing about trying to find the gear.

This was a major mechanical innovation in shifting systems, and completely changed the way I rode. The terrain dictated frequent shifting, and because it was easy to do, I shifted frequently. Click! Click-click! Constantly adjusting to the road. Think of driving a manual transmission car in city traffic. You constantly have to down shift after stopping, shift through a couple gears as you speed up, down shift again after hitting the brakes. You don't stay in two gears the whole time. That would put a huge load on the engine and transmission, causing failure.

Cycling is much the same, except that your legs are the engine. Hard pedaling is, well, hard! Too much of it takes the fun out. But with a good variable speed transmission that's easy to shift, you can keep pedaling at the same cadence and load no matter what. That opens up a whole new world of cycling, making it more enjoyable (especially when you've gotten old enough for enjoyment to take priority over machismo).

The point is, when it's easy to do, you'll do it more often, and enjoy the benefits of that increased frequency. In hand tools, sharpening is like that. When it's inconvenient, you put it off, and suffer as a result. For me it was inconvenient because I had to pull my stones out of a drawer, set them out on the bench, open up the cases, then put them away after use, as well as deal with the mess (sharpening is messy any way you do it). Too much interruption to my work.

I wanted to have a way to keep my sharpening stones accessible at all times, so at any moment I could step away from my work to take 30 seconds and sharpen a tool. A dedicated sharpening station is the obvious solution, but I also wanted to be able to do the same thing if I was off doing a demo or class somewhere.

My solution is a portable sharpening station with a cover that allows me to open it up and go right to work, with the stones laid out and ready, yet secure in position. It also helps contain the mess. I use Norton 3" wide oilstones, but this will also work with their 3" waterstones. You can do the same thing with other brands of oil, water, or diamond stones. They don't even have to be the same size, though that makes layout easier (my Norton translucent Arkansas stone turned out to be 1/16" longer than my coarse India stone). I also made a matching strop to go in the set.

The design is roughly like a briefcase with fitted dividers and sections, and an articulated lid that folds back. The body is 1/2" and 1/4" baltic birch plywood panels with oak banding; the dividers are all oak. The banding is raised around the bottom to form a 1/4" basin. The stones sit in this, with 1/4" thick by 3/4" wide spacers separating them.

In addition to the fitted bench stone holders, it has a fitted box to hold a set of very nice Chris Pye carving slip stones that I got recently from Tools For Working Wood, and a larger box for holding oil, strop compound, file and burnisher for sharpening scrapers, and small clamps for clamping the station to a surface. The finish is heavy duty "spar varnish" outdoor grade polyurethane, to resist the sharpening residue.

The dividers and boxes start making for some tight tolerances. Because they are small and thin, you have to be careful forming them. One half-stroke extra on the saw can ruin the appearance of a joint (though it should still be fine structurally). Fortunately, a little sawdust and glue pressed into any little imperfections cleans them up, especially in the busy open-grained oak. But in general, I give credit to Paul Sellers' Working Wood series for the tight joints and hinge mortises I was able to get.

Crosscutting a piece of 1/2" plywood for the bottom panel. I scored the cut line with a knife to avoid tearing of the outer ply.

Ripping off the excess.

Once the plywood was cut to size, I worked on the oak banding and interior parts. The bottom banding is 3/4" square cross section, with a 1/2" x 1/4" rabbet for the plywood. The dividers that form the interior boxes are 1/4" and 3/8" thick oak, which I got by resawing 3/4" stock.

Ripping down a 3/4" width of oak for the banding.

Edge jointing a section of the banding to final dimension.

My fillister plane needed a minor repair first: gluing the boxing back in place.

Ripping a section of oak for the interior dividers.

Resawing the divider stock to get a 1/4" thickness.

With the glue on the plane boxing dry, molding the rabbet in the banding. I need to make a sticking board for this.

Precision tuning of the rabbet with a small shoulder plane. Any humps or crud in the corner will prevent a good fit around the plywood edge.

Using my Tite-Mark as a thickness gauge to check the rabbet.

Closeup of the joint at the rear corner. On the left is the back piece, rabbeted to be the rear edge of the banding over the plywood. On the right is a side piece, rabbeted and notched to fit into the back piece.

With back and banding dry fitted, marking the main divider to fit.

Shooting the divider for a precise fit.

Another piece of the same stock, showing how to test for a well-shot board: if it can stand on end and stay standing when you bang on the bench, the end is dead flat and square.

With a couple of oilstones in place, fitting the position of the divider. After taking this photo, I decided to add a flat spacer between the stones and the divider. You'll see the reason for that in part 2. This also threw off the measurements in my layout sketch a bit.

The divider is the long side of an interior box. Here's one of the short-side pieces in 3/8" stock, dadoed into the back without glue. Paul Sellers says a dado should fit snug enough that you can lift the board without the crosspiece coming out.

Ripping off a 1/4" thick piece of 3/4" stock. This will be a flat spacer between stones.

Planing the surface of the 1/4" stock. Holding this thin stuff is a bit of a challenge. I had to plane it in sections, moving the holdfast around.

A brief diversion. My wife had asked me to repair the support leg on the back of an antique picture frame for a friend. The backing board is heavy fiberboard covered with velvet on one side and some kind of liner paper on the other. The leg is the same construction, hinged at the top with cloth. At some point, the frame got knocked down flat, bending the leg so that it fractured in the middle, flopping about and no longer supporting the frame.

My vague plan for repair was to glue slips of wood into the leg. I needed some more 1/4" oak divider stock, so rather than planing the remainder from the first resaw down to thickness, I decided to see if I could resaw it again and save the thin cutoff layer for the picture frame. Time to pull out my ryoba (with hardwood tooth pattern).

This is ridiculously thin resawing, but the ryoba handled it well.

Success! That's a useful skill to have.

After trimming the ultra-thin oak to shape, I glued it in between the layers of fiberboard and lining paper. That should last a hundred years. You can see the picture frame back face down on the bench-on-bench, with its bent support leg.

Back to the project. I glued up the interior box corners in multiple subassembly stages. This all goes together as a bit of a puzzle, so it's impossible to do as a single glue-up. That also allowed me to plane the dovetails flush once they were dry.

Dry fit. Except for the leftmost dado here, all the small dado and dovetail joints on the interior box and dividers are snug enough to be self-supporting without glue.

Glue-up detail of the corner of the small box: using a tiny caul to pull the dovetail in tight. I made it by chiseling a small depression in a bit of scrap pine.

Glue-up of the banding and the box assembly. I installed the hinges before gluing up the box.

To ensure good bonding of the back to the plywood, I put a caul on the underside and clamped it in place. I added two more clamps to those shown here to apply even pressure.

While the glue was drying, I made the dividers for the Chris Pye slip stones. These stones are 3" squares in several thicknesses, in coarse India and hard Arkansas, with different curve profiles one each edge. The dividers are made up from thin resawn pine, covered with a continuous layer of felt in sort of an accordion fashion.

I told you thin resawing was a good skill to have! Here's a piece of 3/4" pine resawn into 5 layers. I planed them smooth by holding down one end at a time with a holdfast.

That thing next to the plane? From Jim Kingshott's books and videos, an oil wick, made of felt rolled into a small plastic spice jar fitted into a base with sandpaper on the bottom. Just put a dab of linseed oil on the wick, then pull the plane over it on the return stroke whenever you need to lubricate the bottom. This is faster than stopping to rub wax on it. Also good for passing a saw blade across on each side. I keep it in an old tea tin to limit its oxygen supply. Linseed oil-soaked rags are notorious for starting shop fires by spontaneous combustion.

The felt-covered dividers glued-up, with spacing custom-fitted to the stones. A layer of wax paper keeps the glue off the stones.

After the glue has dried. You can see how strips of felt have been glued to the wood in a continuous fashion. This drops into the small box, no need to glue the sides in place.

Once I removed the main base from the clamps, I fitted up the bench stone spacers. Using my long shooting board, I trimmed them in succession to width until everything dropped into the main base snugly.

Test fit of the bench stones and their spacers, and the slip stones in their dividers. I was a little too tight on clearances: I had to shave off the outer layers of felt with a chisel to make the slips move smoothly.

The photo above reveals another clearance problem. Remember I said I had thrown off the measurements in my layout sketch when I moved the long divider back? Notice how the hinge rests on the corner of the slip stones. That wasn't supposed to happen. My goal in all this was to have the hinge on the top side of the case, not the back, so that when the case was standing up on its back, it would sit flat on the floor, no hinge spines in the way.

How I had drawn it up: the hinge would attach to the outside of the edge banding for the lid, which would clear the slip stone box as it pivoted up. But now as you can see the box is in the way.

New plan: rather than having the hinge close down all the way, have it close down to the quarter-open position. It will attach to the underside of the banding, leaving plenty of clearance. That means there will be a ledge at the back when the lid is closed down. Not ideal, but I can live with it.

The lid rear banding molded and mortised for the hinges. Notice how it is not flush with the back: that's because it's mortised deeply...

... so that when the lid is down, it leaves a minimal gap at the hinge line. Note the ledge formed by the banding and the back.

There are various ways I could have dealt with the hinge, but with it already secured to the back, this was simple and effective, if not the prettiest. Design changes midway through construction are bound to cause problems later! That's why you do mockups and prototypes and stare at them for a while before making any decisions. However, since this is shop furniture, I just need it to be functional.

Next will be building the articulated lid.

(Continue to part 2)