[Seth Ruffin]

My wife and I recently move so my shop area has changed a lot. I’m now working in just a spare bedroom and decided that some wall storage would be nice. I looked up some examples and like the look of Joshua Farnsworth’s saw till. So I made mine roughly like his. I wanted it to use traditional joinery so I went with dovetails. This was my first project to cut dovetails at all. I think I went a bit overboard. But I got lots of practice. The till has no glue or fasteners and is ultra stout. If an earthquake ever somehow shakes this thing off the wall I’ll be more worried about my tools than the shape of the till. I was careful how I planned my tails and pins to make sure things pulled together the way I wanted. I thought it came out pretty good.

Topic

[Mike in TN]

#2029215

Hi Seth,

A very interesting approach, using the dovetails in opposing directions to hold pieces together.  One issue I have is that there are dovetails/pins cut so that there is short grain across the pins and tails which creates a very weak joint. There are enough individual pins and tails that they probably won’t let go except under extreme conditions but a lot to go through just to avoid using glue, dowels (pins), or fasteners which, by the way, would be the traditional techniques. The other issue is that the upper back piece and the sides have grain that run in different directions through the joint so that expansion and contraction run against each other. There may be enough looseness in an unglued joint so that it won’t cause the back board to split or rip up the joint but it isn’t in keeping with traditional practice. One way to correct the short grain issue would be to reinforce them with dowel pins. I normally don’t like dowels because of the end grain glue failure issue with them but this might be an acceptable use for them. Really good effort though. I really like the overall look of the piece.

Have fun

[Seth Ruffin]

#2029219

Hey Mike, Good advice and comments. Sorry I seemed to convey that I was trying to build my till in a traditional style, I wasn’t. I just wanted to build it with traditional joinery so that I could practice joints for other projects that I may actually want to build in a traditional style. I also broke from traditional style in that I built it with some bamboo plywood that I had lying around, which is also why I went ahead and did the joints the way I did since the different plies have the grain running in opposite directions. You’re right the the tails with short grain in the center are weaker than the others but since it is plywood and the ply is glued well it really is very insignificant in difference.

I mostly just wanted to practice cutting joints, build something that looked nice but was practical, and get my tools more organized. I enjoyed thinking through how the joints actually would pull or grasp the wood and to use those ideas to build a sturdier till for the type of wood I was using (as you point out my joints would actually be pretty weak if I was using solid wood rather than plywood). I’m pretty pleased with how it looks and how it came together. I thought I did really well for my first dovetails ever (didn’t even practice before just diving into this project).

 

[Mike in TN]

#2029221

Seth,

I didn’t notice that you had used bamboo ply. I thought that I was looking at a rough sawing texture and was focused on the face grain. Actually, plywood goes back a long way but it took relatively modern glues and manufacturing process to make them more practical. I think many of the modern materials are superior for some applications and it was very inventive of you to combine one of those with a traditional joint to achieve your project. Traditionalists may frown at the choices but I see nothing wrong with thinking “outside the box”. The look just isn’t what those of us used to traditional materials and methods expect to see. Thanks for shaking us up. Still a nice and practical project.

Have fun

[Author]

Replies