Mike's ext'n & renovation (solar panels)

[AndyP]

I

Is that box hedging in the plan? Hardly low maintenance

 

[Mike G]

Yes, it is. It's only a quick clip now and then, and not for 4 or 5 years anyway.

 

[AndyP]

That’s what I thought. I’ve clipped mine 3 times this year already and they look untidy again and being low down is back breaking. Maybe I have a fast growing variety.
Make sure never to clip on a bright sunny day as the cut leaves will scorch and look dreadful.

 

[RogerS]

If you do go down the box route, be very careful where you buy your box from as box blight is a fairly prevalent disease. There are alternatives :

(taken from the RHS site)

Berberis darwinii 'Compacta'
Berberis thunbergii ‘Atropurpurea Nana' AGM
Elaeagnus × submacrophylla 'Compacta'
Euonymus fortunei (various cultivars)
Ilex crenata
Lonicera nitida 'Maigrün'
L. nitida 'Baggesen's Gold' AGM
Luma apiculata 'Glanleam Gold'
Osmanthus delavayi AGM
Pittosporum 'Arundel Green' AGM
P. 'Collaig Silver'
P. 'Oliver Twist'
P. tenuifolium 'Golf Ball' (PBR)
Podocarpus 'Chocolate Box'
P. 'Young Rusty'
Rhododendron Bloombux ('Microhirs3'PBR)
Taxus baccata 'Repandens' AGM
Ugni molinae,U. molinae 'Butterball'

Roger

 

[Mike G]

Thanks Roger. We'll have a look at those.

 

[Mike G]

That’s what I thought. I’ve clipped mine 3 times this year already and they look untidy again and being low down is back breaking. Maybe I have a fast growing variety.
Make sure never to clip on a bright sunny day as the cut leaves will scorch and look dreadful.

Good tip! Ta muchly.....

 

[Phil]

Mike, that wall really looks good. Not what I had visioned.

Any reason for going the formal garden route? Or is that out of your hands?

 

[Mike G]

Thanks Phil. Firstly, it is about low maintenance. We've got a big garden already, and don't want a high-upkeep addition at the front. Secondly, with the porch bang in the middle of the facade, it is hard to avoid symmetry, and there is nothing worse than near symmetry. So that pushed us in the direction of a formal garden, which has long roots in Britain anyway, and is something we haven't tried before. We'll see how it works out. Anyway, here are a few more photos:







The other side needs a little digging tomorrow, but the steel is in:

 

[Malc2098]

Nice.

 

[RogerS]

OK, Mike. Here's the 'skinny' from my missus (who has exceptionally green fingers and does a huge amount of research constantly before committing her time, money and emotion).

www.hedgenursery.co.uk are the only RHS endorsed nursery in England and based in Herefordshire. She has bought various types of hedging from them for a number of years - oak/maple/hornbeam etc. All excellent quality and she recommends them unreservedly. However, at the moment they only have one type of buxus but that is only because now is not the time to be planting - which, as I'm sure you know, is autumn. So the chances are that more varieties will become available closer to the time.

They grow their own hedging and trees which is vital ...see later.

She knows of one specialist nursery www.boxtrees.com but has never bought anything from them. However, their website has a lot of information on buxus. Growing height etc.

She says on no account (not that you would!) buy from DIY sheds/garden sheds or perhaps even smaller nurseries because they import from Holland and Italy. Along with a wide range of diseases and pathogens and unwanted livestock. Hence the importance of Hedgenursery growing their own.

Hope this helps.

Roger

 

[Mike G]

Thanks Roger.

 

[Mike G]

I've had a really bad back for a few weeks, so the various jobs that I've wanted to do have been on hold, and I have tottered out to the workshop now and then to plod on with an easy filler of a job..making a new dresser for the kitchen. This will be a 6 foot long dresser with upper and lower doors, some open shelves, and some drawers. It will be a mixture of oak and painted timber, and all of the structure is pine and ply Here's the drawing on my workshop tool cabinet door:



You can see that the two outer parts of the upper part of the dresser sit directly on the worktop.

I didn't take many photos to start with as it is just cutting to length, putting in a groove, and making some little tongues. Standard paneling. Here's about the earliest:



There's a little rail at the back to set the panels the right distance apart:



I had some 40mm oak planks, which I ripped to width:



They took a bit of flattening as they were quite twisted, and too wide for my thicknesser. Hand planing wasn't great for my back, but they glued up nicely:



This is my door-holding jig pressed into service to hold the piece whilst I planed the end grain:



So far, it's had a couple of coats of oil/ thinner/ varnish mix, wiped off quickly:





Back to the cabinets. After gluing them up, I inserted a ply floor:







Here are a couple of the joints which will hold the whole thing together:



I cut a moulding on the top of some 95 x 18, and then mitred them to form the skirting:



I cut lots of bits of 18mm stock (all sawing is by hand, BTW, as I can't get to my RAS, and it makes a mess anyway):



Then glued them together to form some shelves:



I had drilled lots of holes in the frames before assembly, so now I cut lots of bits of dowel to 30mm lengths to act as shelf supports:







Sometime back in the process I had made some drawer boxes. These will have some fronts planted on, and being a kitchen, they'll have runners:



Finally, I cut out some 70 x 20 for the lower doors:



That brings us about up to date. I'll update more regularly now that I've caught up.

 

[Malc2098]

Nice.

 

[Mike G]

Nice.

Normal service resumed. All's well with the world. :lol:

 

[StevieB]

You make it look so easy Mike...... so easy! :text-bravo:

 

[Mike G]

Well, frankly, it is, Steve. It's only flat panels. The hardest part so far has been hand cutting the mitres in the skirting boards. I can see a donkey's ear in my near future.

 

[AndyP]

You make it look so easy Mike...... so easy! :text-bravo:

It's the

an easy filler of a job..making a new dresser for the kitchen

That tickled me.

Excellent an informative as always Mike.

 

[Mike G]

Thanks Andy.

 

[MattS]

an easy filler of a job..making a new dresser for the kitchen

That tickled me.

That tickled me too, most people have a bad back they do nothing, Mike builds a dresser :lol:

Looks like another interesting build

 

[Mike G]

Last night I managed to glue up the lower doors, so this is what greeted me this afternoon when I got out to the workshop for a couple of hours:



I had also glued up some inch oak boards to make 3 shelves. This was one solid board, but seriously cupped, so I ripped it at the high/ low point, flattened everything, and glued it all back together again:





So, today I spent a few minutes with a number 6 sorting out the doors for a reasonable fit:





I know some of you like this stuff. This is an end grain shaving from the door, so my plane is working OK:



After cleaning up the oak shelves (can you see the join?). I was fairly pleased with this for a cut-'n-shut job:





....I sneaked the lower one down to the line to fit:



Then quick bit of skirting/ kickboard, to support it:



All of this is just sitting there loose, because if I assemble it in the workshop it will be a massive piece of furniture and I'd have to call up some help to get it in the house. So, the two cupboards will go into the house fully made up, and these shelves and infill bits will follow separately, to be glued in place in situ.

The upper shelf is going here:



We can't have that! It has to be butting up against a frame member, or at least, what looks like one. So I did some re-sawing, some planing, and some shooting:



Again, that's sitting loose, because there's a bit of fancy work to do to it to hold the shelf. That'll be tomorrow. Meanwhile......cutting the shelf to length:



And then planing it. This is why you make the drawers early in the process!



Propped in place. The middle one is a little high. I'll drop it 20 or 25mm tomorrow:

 

[Malc2098]

I've never seen so much shooting porn!

 

[Mike G]

Warning......lots of photos.

My next task was to make the shelf supports for the floating middle oak shelf. I'm not great at working with small bits of wood, and workholding is one of the reason. This time, it was workholding-by-pins:



Then I ploughed as much of a stopped groove as I could before I reverted to chisels. Fortuitously, the imperial width of my plane cutter was just a smidgeon less than the metric width of a winged cutter for my router:







Apologies for the camera. It has a droopy eyelid. My wife has purloined the better one.

I planed up some narrow stuff for a tight fit in the ploughed groove, glued them up, and moved on to other things:



I quickly edge joined a pair of 145x20s to form the lower shelf of the small middle upper cupboard:



Randomly, I got distracted by the coving for a few minutes. I couldn't quite decide on whether to make it ex 3" or ex 4". In the end, I plumped for the bigger one.......but that's for another day:



MDF......my favourite. It does have its uses, though:









That will be a backing board for the open shelf sections of the dresser.

Right......two minute dovetails. No marking whatsoever for the tails, other than the shoulders. A quick saw cut, then a bash with a mallet on a randomly sloped chisel, and I have a pair of tails:



Offer those up to the board edge, mark with a knife, saw, chisel, glue.....



Once that dried it was screwed under the bottom oak shelf because I needed it to sit in place whilst I located the shelf supports for the shelf above it:





I needed to glue up the face side pieces of the upper cupboards overnight, otherwise I'd be struggling for something to do the following day. So late in the evening I cut them out, and made twice as many of the short pieces as I needed. Ooops:



These were going to be joined by a bridle joint. I didn't have time for the whole joint, but needed the female side doing. Now, I reckon the bridle joint is the most demanding joint of the lot. Dovetails have a reputation, but they're a doddle in reality. Bridle joints, though, are a proper test of your skills. The first job, setting out, is relatively straightforward:



As is drilling through the bottom of the joint:



Cutting out the female joint, though, is a good test. I have an 11 TPI rip-filed tenon saw which is just ideal for the job.......and I always slope the workpiece in the vice as shown so that I can see both lines at once. Turn it over in the middle of each cut:





There's no cleaning up with a chisel. If you get the sawing right it is so much easier than faffing around inside a narrow slot where you can't really see what you are doing. A quick chisel out of the bottom of the joint (I don't aim for level here, I dip in the middle deliberately):





Done! Just time to drill out the knots for filling tomorrow:



.....then time for a glue up. That was Saturday done and dusted. I'd hoped to have achieved a bit more, but I had to go to the woodyard for some bits and pieces, and my back forced me to go for a sit-down every hour or so. If Saturday was a day of under achievement, Sunday was even more disappointing.

It started off nicely, though, with the shelf supports working really well once they were de-clamped:



I cleaned up the glue joints to the cheek pieces of the upper cabinets, and set them in place on the worktop:



The main reason for this was to mark up the bottoms for cleaning up, and to do any adjustments necessary to make sure everything lined up properly. There was lots of sighting along the line of the front edges:



Then a straight-edge across the top for a final truing, which I abandoned in favour of doing it when the boxes were complete:



I then turned to the male parts of the bridle joints:



Accuracy is critical. I cut the shoulders first:



Then chisel off the waste. A good reason to choose nice straight grained material:





It fits. Three of the 4 were OK, one..........hmmm...........shall we say "adequate"?



On to the back edge of the top of each box. Again, a really quick un-marked tail, with the line of the shoulders being the only critical issue:









Veritas probably sell a kerf-extender for £50. I cut the end off an old knife.

Having made the top back piece, I transferred the shoulder locations to the piece for the bottom:



...then after making random tails again, marked up the cheek pieces and hacked away the stuff I didn't need:



It all hangs together OK, but there is a mystery twist in the left hand unit which I'll have to look at next time I get out to the workshop:

 

[Malc2098]

Still nice.

Agreed, the big one. You going to use the oblique table saw blade method?

 

[Mike G]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Hmm.....given I don't own a table saw (and I rather value my fingers), I'm going to do it with hand tools. :lol:

 

[AndyP]

Very nice.

Dare I say that those shelf supports are just a tad over engineered. Excellently executed of course.

 

[Mike G]

Well I didn't want to just whack a nail in from the other side, Andy!

One of the considerations is that this can't be permanently assembled in the workshop. Everything between the two outer cupboards top and bottom has to be finished and fitted, but removable, for final assembly in the house. Otherwise I'll never shift it and will have to adapt it into workshop storage. Hence some of the connections being a little more complex than otherwise.

 

[Mike G]

I had 4 or 5 hours at this during the week, and then a good solid weekend in the workshop, so I've made reasonable progress. We left it at a dry fit of the two upper cupboards.......



Having the upper cupboards in place enabled me to work out the locations and shapes of the shelves and frame members which will join them. I started with the bottom shelf:







I took everything apart and started preparing for the glue up. There are subtle differences between the two cupboards, in that the right hand one will have a shallow shelf unit/ rack thingy mounted on the door, so the shelves in the cupboard can't be full depth. This has structural implications. No such issues with the left hand cupboard, where the solid bottom shelf squares everything up and stiffens it, so I glued that one up easily:











Note the clamping square.



Right, ready for a stupid little cock up? The half-depth bottom shelf of the right hand cupboard still need to stiffen the carcass up, so I came up with the idea of some strong shelf supports firmly jointed and glued to the shelf, extending out to the front of the cupboard:















Unfortunately, I marked them up the wrong way around:







Doh!!!



I adjusted, but that left a little hole to be dealt with later. Using one of the top frame members to check that the "legs" of the arrangement were parallel, I glued it up:























I'm making this piece of furniture up as I go, and I hadn't really thought the next junction through. This is the top back corner where the left hand unit meets the infill piece. If I build in "boxes", like pros do, and most here, this detail wouldn't arise. Anyway, it's getting a bit crowded:











But it's strong:







This is all the marking up I did for the dovetails:







The front and back pieces dovetailed into place. The front dovetail is 70mm deep:







Next, I glued up the awkward right hand cupboard with its odd bottom shelf:















The following day it was time for a dry fit:







This enabled me to measure for the open oak shelf which is below the central upper cupboards, and then to run the grooves in the shelf ends as per the previous lower shelf:







I then did a whole lot of chiseling for the fixed shelves in the right hand cupboard:











Shelf positions were marked on a rod (I guess you'd call it that), and transferred all around the cabinet:







With thin ply panels, and the shelves not reaching the frame at the front, I needed a shelf support to hold them. This, Baldrick, was my cunning plan:



















I think that's both of the main upper cupboards finished for the time being. Time to move on to other things. I made some little shelf supports:







Back to the lower units, and the drawers needed fitting. I made up some pieces which will hold the drawer runners:











Then I hung the doors:







Finally, for the time being, I did a little moulding for the door panels. I had this left over from when I built the kitchen:















I could then bring the lower half of the dresser inside, in individual pieces:















Back in the workshop, where I was left with a bit more space and only the upper units. Remember the stupid little balls up? Well, time to fix that:















Time to make the upper doors. Here is my smaller router table, which just clamps in the vice.....set up for grooving out for the ply paneling:















I cut the tongues/ tenons by hand:



















After they were dry, this is my set up for planing them to fit:







And here they are hung:







Same process for the little upper doors:











Just a little diversion. When I house out for butt hinges, I usually slope back the leaf which is on the fixed surface (ie the frame). This allows plenty of room for protruding screw heads:







And when I fit the door to the frame, I only use a tiny screw initially, in case I have to move things around at all. It's far easier dealing with a tiny hole in the wrong place than with a big one:











I've just got the door moulding to do, and then make and fit the coving, then these units can go into the house for assembly and painting. Don't forget, the two main cupboards are glued, but the smaller middle cupboards are only just dry fitted, meaning I can carry stuff into the house in manageable chunks. Lots of damn mitre-ing in my immediate future, and lots of painting in my wife's!

 

[TrimTheKing]

Lovely stuff Mike, I'm enjoying this very much.

 

[Malc2098]

Still nice.

 

[Mike G]

I mitred the little panel trim mouldings and glued them into place:







The rest of this post is about something I've not done before. I wanted a cornice for the top of the unit, and not having a spindle moulder my only option (other than phone a friend) was to hand plane the pieces. A friend had given me a hollowing plane (I guess a boat builder might call it a backing out plane, maybe) last year, but I'd never used it:







This is a rough idea of what I was aiming at (the one on the right):







Sharpening it was easy (blade seemed a little soft), but a few experiments on scraps quickly showed me that it isn't easily "steerable". You can hack off quite a lot of wood in the wrong place in something of a hurry. I soon worked out that running it in grooves was the best way. So, this is what I did on the router table:







So that's a couple of chamfers, not quite meeting, along the edges, and a series of straight grooves run along the length of the face.



Workholding, without a tail vice, involved a wedge and a screwed down back stop:







It took quite a while to get to grips with the plane settings. It went from not cutting at all to gouging out chunks with the tiniest of taps, but in the end, I got the hang of it:







I found it useful to smooth off the worst of the edge marks with 40 grit paper on a quick sanding block:







Then back to the plane for a final shaping, check with a little ply template, and sand with 100 grit, before finishing the chamfers on the planer.



















There's a way to while away a couple of hours. What, 10 minutes on a spindle moulder, maybe? And I fully expect to have to do some adjustments when I start mitre-ing (how do you spell that?) these bits together sometime in the next few days. That was sweaty work today, but despite a couple of bashed knuckles I am fairly pleased to have acquired a new technique.

 

[Malc2098]

Nice cornicing.

 

[Rod]

Well done that man

Rod

 

[RogerS]

" What, 10 minutes on a spindle moulder, maybe? "

Well, perhaps a bit longer, what with all the setting up etc but I take your point. Trouble is, you'd need rather a large block and spindle moulder with enough power to take the size of cutter needed to do that in one go. Mine couldn't do it.

 

[AndyP]

I’m guessng that any slight inconsistencies with that cornice will be magnified when you make your beloved mitres.
Hope it goes well. Looks great so far

 

[9fingers]

One of the easiest ways for a simple moulding like that is on the tablesaw but without one as in Mikes case then by hand is possibly the ways to go.
I don't fancy doing it on a radial arm although theoretically feasible.

Bob

 

[Mike G]

I’m guessng that any slight inconsistencies with that cornice will be magnified when you make your beloved mitres......

Yeah, I'm expecting lots of offering-up-and-adjusting. The little ply template means I have got things reasonably consistent, but mitres are great for showing up irregularities.

 

[Woodbloke]

Very 'Alan Peters' to use a woodie with a convex sole. I have a traditional jack that I modified to do the same sort of job - Rob

 

[Mike G]

That would be much better. My plane is too tall and narrow (and short) to be properly controllable.

 

[Mike G]

Sorry I've not been back to this thread for a while. I've had lots of work to do, and not enough workshop time, nor time to post a write-up here. Anyway where were we? Ah yes......coving......



I'd made these:







I'd anticipated using this thing for doing the mitres, which I've never yet used:











Unfortunately, the maximum size it fits is about half an inch smaller than the coving I'd made. Right, so I needed to make my own mitre guide:







That involved cutting an accurate 45 degree piece first, but if I can remember I've got it, that will make a useful chisel guide for mitred dovetailing. I then just cut the mitres in the orthodox way:











Time to take everything in, and glue it all together. I brought some horses in and put the oak worktop on top of them with some newspaper over it, then put everything together on top of that:











Note the little kick in the coving, where the middle cupboard is set back. That was something of a giggle to get right. The best one of the four I cut for the left hand infill piece had a crack running through it, so it broke in half.



Here's my answer to the problem of fixing the top half of the dresser to the base unit worktop:















Yep, I'm just going to screw it in place and slip a cover piece over the batten.



-



Remember this drawing?







Well, there's a second piece of furniture in there, on the left. It's job is to hide the underfloor heating manifold and the flow and return pipes. Whilst my wife started the painting of the dresser I thought I may as well carry on and build that thing, as I had all the wood. I started with a simple side panel, and glued it up:







I also sliced up the wood for the shelves, just to get it out of the way:











I had also started on the face frame:















Whilst that was in clamps, I grabbed the piece of oak I'd set aside for the worktop:







Not only was it in wind:







......but it was also badly cupped:







So I ripped it lengthways, planed up the separate boards, then glued it back together again:







I used the PT, and my normal chip extraction system:







Whilst that was drying I started on the tailboard for the bookshelves that sit on the top:







That was Saturday.



I de-clamped everything on Sunday morning. I always love that job first thing in the morning. The I chiseled the dovetails:







After finishing the preparation of the oak board, which had re-joined nicely, I ripped two relief cuts along most of its length. This unit is going to suffer from being over the manifold. It will get hot and dry, and I expect shrinkage. To help mitigate any cupping, relief cuts like this do an excellent job:







I slapped on the first coat of wiping varnish/ oil mixture, and left it outside to dry:







Ooooh, I made some doors on Saturday, too. I must have forgotten to take any photos. Anyway, here I am able to set out the hinge locations prior to fitting them into the door edges, because everything is still flat:







But look at this monumental cock-up! Clearly something had gone wrong with my back-of-an-off-cut measurement, calcs, and cutting list:







Having chopped out for the hinges I could now glue the unit together:







Whilst it was still in clamps I offered it up in its location so as to check for clearances, and to scribe to the 300 year old (and decidedly wonky) wall:











I ripped a strip 6 or 7mm wide and glued it to the leading edge of each of the doors:







Whilst was waiting for glue to go off, I carried on with the shelves:











Time for a bike ride, and that was Sunday in the workshop done........



This afternoon I grabbed a couple of hours on this. I started by cleaning up the widened doors, and planing them to fit:







I made them really tight fitting because I expect substantial shrinkage:







I cut up some 95 x 19 for skirting boards:







After running the moulding on the router table, I scribed it to the stone floor, which was surprisingly un-flat:











I screwed the unit to the wall, and pinned and glued the skirting. I also mitred in the little bead on the door panels:











The first coat of paint took 3 hours on each half of the dresser. I claim no credit for that:











Finally, I marked up the top and sides of the bookshelves to avoid the pipes:







I scribed the RHS vertical to the wall. This is how much the wall is out of vertical:











Twenty mm over 1050. Oh well, that's what you get with old timber framed houses.



I marked up for the shelf locations (cook-book sized spacings), and made a quick template for a sliding dovetail:







That's it for now. I shan't get back to this until the weekend.

 

[Malc2098]

Nice.