Building An Heirloom Bench In Walnut

how's it going everybody welcome into the shop for this video we are gonna be building the Burnham settee which is that product on my website it's in my catalogue I designed this based off of a old historic piece of Texas furniture a daybed it's got real traditional lines really cool curves to it and some very interesting joinery now this video is sponsored by X Carbon I'm going to show you how I use their CNC machine to make a jig to make a really cool house mortise and tenon now what I mean by that is you fits you've got a curved part which is the leg that goes right here on this bench and we're actually gonna fit a tenon into that curved part without curving the shoulder of the tenon it's all house and it fits inside the leg it's a really cool joint really great way to connect two parts together at a curve let's get started on this I want to thank X Carly for sponsoring the video and I will say that I use their CNC a whole lot in my furniture production it's a great machine for creating jigs for fine furniture there's a lot of other uses you can use for it but particularly I like to use it for jigs and we're gonna we're gonna learn how I make this super cool jig out of MDF and acrylic so let's get started welcome into the shop everybody it's great to have you out here as usual like I said we are gonna be building the Burnham settee which is a piece on my website on my catalog or we're making these out of walnuts making two in this video one is going to the community put worth with a table and one is staying here with me I'm going to keep it and put in my bedroom so with any projects we start by cutting board selling rough cutting boards to anything so when you do this you start at the end of the board and you check your drop off you see how that drop off broke we've got a cracking me in the board so you have to chase that crack out so you just keep stepping in an inch or two inches until you've basically your drop off it's the ground and doesn't break into pieces and the crack is gone if you've left that in there after you've built a piece of furniture that crack could begin to open again and you would have a lot of problems so you always want to chase that cracks there's always going to be pretty typical they're gonna be cracks on the end of a board that's just how wood works it dries faster out of the ink and user tracks in the English so good rule of thumb always chase up cracks I mean grain once I rough out all my parts I think here I'm working on the back rest to the settee I label everything and then start milling to the final dimensions now this is my s4 s I'm here I'm sitting the width of my cut to 3 and 1/8 and I'll run all my parts to the s4 s it mils everything really quick really fast it's a this is one of those machines that it's not glamorous it's not fun to have but it makes money it saves a ton of time so it's probably one of the most efficient machines I have in the shop with exception to my white belt sander which is the green machine right next to it on the right side of the screen so I'll run all these parts through right now I'm running the long rails that will hold the seat and then once we run these parts will move into starting to cut out the legs of the settee on the sides if you're hearing a noise in the background we've got a pretty heavy cold front blew in today at the shop and I have a loose soffit at the end of the building and it tends to shake around a little bit so I apologize for that so I've pre-made these jigs these are the profile for this for the arms of the set C and the first step to do is to trace them out on a board and fitted to the bandsaw and cut them out so a little bit about my dance all those who've watched my channel for a while know that I bought this things a couple years ago and it was a complete mess totally restored it it is in olive urn number thirty-five thirty-six inch bandsaw and it was built around 1925 so I've got a 3/8 blade on and it will handle most of my curve work [Music] one of the great things about this bandsaw is it has a 36 inch by 36 inch cast iron table it's really easy to work on really great surface you can fit a lot of material up on it and it's super supportive downside to this saw is it kicks up a ton of dust they didn't make dust collection in 1925 it also does need protection on that drive belt you guys have told me that many times and I need to get that done so this is the jig I pre made as well I just used these hold down clamps half-inch plywood and a bottom bearing that will ride on that jig and cut the profile of the of the post the key to doing something like this is not leaning not having to cut off too much material I'm only cutting 1/16 at the most if we get to cutting 1/8 or more it becomes a bit dangerous and the bit can catch and especially in areas where you're about to see where I go on the scoop that's a tricky little spot so you don't wanna be taking off a lot of material here you get a little bit of burn there as I slowed down but that will clean that off with the hand tools so with the profiles cut I'm gonna show you guys now how I make the jig in the ex-con the x-carve for this house mortise and tenon now I start by using their software called easel which is what makes x-carve so great to use because it's super easy you can see here the adjustments that can be made right now I'm looking at changing this type of cut you can do a fill cut you can cut inside the line you can cut outside the line you can change to cut all the way through the piece or just you know halfway through or whatever you need it's kind of an endless options you can change the size of what you're making obviously so there's a lot of control within this program and all I'm doing is pretty simply I mean making rectangular holes that I need to be exact for my bushing on my router to fit in so I'm gonna cut one of those in NDF that's oversized and then I'm gonna cut one in acrylic and it also has a great selection of tools it helps guide you through which ones to use and it sets up your tool paths and your speeds for you so it takes a lot of the challenge of seeing seeing out and makes it a lot easier for someone like me who doesn't really want to dive in and get into the fine details of CNC work like if I need to make this acrylic plate I can do it real easy on this X card without much knowledge of CNCs and the reason I'm using the acrylic is because if you use wood eventually that bushing is gonna wear it out and the holes gonna get oversized so the x-carve allows me to cut it out in acrylic and I really couldn't do this very easily without the CNC I mean it'd be really hard to make these jigs precise and repeatable so I I love how how useful the x-carve is at jigs and you can see it's finished here this is the bushing that goes in that will cut the hole and I use two different bushings in it to get two different size holes but you're gonna see here in a second so it mounts on the workpiece in order to get it adjusted right I use a framing square you saw I had a little bolt in there I could loosen and tighten which tilts the jig so I can dial the jig in so that it would be perpendicular to the floor so I start with my first guide bushing and 3/8 spiral up cut bit and this is going to cut a 3/4 housing 3/4 by I think three and a half so that will fit the part into the leg you can see it there that will chisel those corners out square and now I need to come back with a full size bushing that actually fits the oat the opening of the jig almost exactly it's a little bit smaller and I can get those tolerances because of the x-carve and so I'll put this bushing in and just cut a 3/8 mortise now directly centered inside that housing it's super super easy and I have struggled with this joint for a long time until I got the x-carve and I came up with this solution in the matter of a couple hours of work and it is repeatable and easy to do just a matter of changing out bushings I used to have to change them bits out of the router it was it was a total pain to cut this joint prior to having the X bar so you can see all the parts laid out that's the joint you'll see in here a little bit how we assemble it how it comes together like I said we're going to score off the corners with a chisel because that piece going into it is a squared off piece it's not round and I want it to be squared I don't want to round off the edges of the workpiece so i'll square off the corners of this housing okay so the next step is I have to dry a symbol all the side frames now I've cut all the mortises I've cut all the Tenon's so I'm gonna dry assembly and then what I'll do is I'll take a pencil and that top rail on that on that side piece is shaped you know it has this shape a curve across the top and underneath it's scooped out so I have to mark that out and then pre shape that part just slightly oversize before I glue up and assemble these frames so i'll take some waste off here on the on the table saw and then I set up a box core router bit on my table and hog out more waste I'm trying to do the least amount of handwork here you know ultimately I have to shape this by hand but if I can get a bulk the bulk of the waste out with machines that's what I'll do that's correct Smith mayor mayor does not get affected by machines he's passed out so I have a wooden plane here that I have actually custom shake the profile just for this part and the blade it's just slightly smaller radius than what I want and I can do pretty quick work with it it is rough it can tear out a trough straight grain so I do I do have to do some sanding but it does a great job of shaping that little cove in there this is one of my favorite parts of the process is shaping these it's it's a lot of fun cuz you get to do it by hand and I think it's a really cool feature when you get it all assembled you'll see here how how nice it is I move on to the top I start with a scrub plane this is going to take off a little less tear out a little less aggressive I don't need to be I don't need nice finished cuts here because we're not gonna finish shaping this until we assemble that frame so as I mentioned early in the video this piece is kind of inspired by an old Texas daybed or settee and I found this in a book I have a couple books called Texas furniture cabinet makers and their work from 1840 to 1880 there's two volumes and I'll link that in the description there's just a collection of really cool old antique furniture from Texas in these books and so I draw a lot of my inspiration in my designs from these pieces and this is one of those pieces that I just really liked I thought this is a a real classic style I want to bring a modern touch to it and I like to think that when I saw my furniture to clients it's all about longevity it's hey you're gonna buy this it's gonna last you a lifetime and you're gonna give it to your kids so if you're gonna build in that manner you have to design pieces that are timeless and classic not trendy which you know in 20 30 years we're gonna think why did we build why did we make an epoxy river table because it was a trend right with this furniture I like to think it's classic timeless in 30 or 40 years you're still gonna belief it in your home and it's still gonna have a good design so we get it out of the clamps and start shaping that top rail to its final shape just basically work it down to his level with that let those two legs the top section is pretty easy to do the bottom section the inside shows a little bit more difficult you can get in there with the wooden plane but like I said it's a pretty rough cut so I I worked it down really close and then I do quite a bit of sanding so I have this maple block that I turned on my lathe and it's just slightly smaller than the radius I'm going for and I use a sixty grit and I kind of sand in there and get it all nice and smooth I'm feeling good it doesn't have to be amazingly perfect there could be a little bit of tear out in there because it's the underside right you don't see it but your hand can go in there and feel it so there's no you don't want to feel a bunch of tool marks and bad spots okay so now I can glue up the entire settee you'll see here how this joint comes together how that shoulder buries into the leg it's a real nice tight snug fit and I do work that that rail down with a hand plane to dial in that fit it's a little tricky getting these all together especially with one person especially when you clamp these as well you have to be real careful not to over tighten the clamps you can flex that rail quite a bit and I'll usually once I seat and bring the joints together and have my measurements all right I'll usually back those clamps off a little bit because you don't need shouldn't need the clamping pressure once you have it all pulled together so while those dry I'll work on the back the back rails of the settee a little profile on the top and I just have a jig here and I use the bottom bearing bits to run on that jig and just put that that profile out now there is some shaping done to the top of that profile little round over I'll show it in the video but there's a little shape to it I glue these on so these provide quite a bit of structure for this bench but I don't want to glue the full width I glue about three or four inches on the top and then let the rest kind of float I'm going to nail that part so there is the ability for it to move because that's a 10 inch wide piece so what I'll do is I'll screw it at the very top where the glue is and kind of bring it together nice and tight and then use an old cut nail to nail it this is a real scary spot to be countersinking and using a countersunk screw so you got to be very careful you could split that wood out real easy here so I drilled a nice pilot hole and I take it real slow with the screw because if you if you just bear down on this and tighten it it'll just split that piece I just want to slightly tighten it bring it down and hold it in place and then the glues gonna do the rest for cut nails I pre-drill holes a little bit smaller than the nail and I actually will drill a little bit bigger hole into that into this backrest just a little bit down and then I nail the nail in if you I found that if you don't pre-drill holes it's really hard to use these nails and they can also split the wood really easily so if you're not familiar with cut nails there are a lot different than wire nails that have some shape to them they're traditional older nails you can google cut nails and learn more about those so it's all oiled looks great I love the look of the walnut I've got some seat slats going in that are made out of poplar and then a local company upholstered a really nice seat that just drops in nice and snug to the frame also you'll notice when I go through this the mortise and Tenon's on the front are pegged for a little bit more strength and a little bit of a nice aesthetic touch so I hope you guys enjoyed the build I hope you like this piece I'd love to hear your feedback and remember that it is available on the website to order if you're interested in putting one in your home thanks a lot for tuning in and we'll see you next time

Channel: Andy Rawls

Views: 89,375

Rating: 4.936367 out of 5

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Id: 9JJTyc7EuiY

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 11 2019