New Yankee Workshop - S09E03 - Nantucket Settle

[Music] hi I'm norm Abram welcome to the new Yankee Workshop today we continue our look back at projects we've done in the past once we think you'll like the challenge the woodworker can result in a useful piece of furniture that evokes the historical past today we look back at a project called the Nantucket settled Nantucket because that's where we found the original and settled a seldom used word for bench where two or three people could sit together in some comfort the one we found was made out of old English pine and it featured nine flat panels the legs were turned on a lathe there was a storage compartment under the seat and the finish was that wonderful old pine color simply glowing with multiple coats of beeswax when I built our version I decided to make it out of cherry but I could have used oak or pine as well the cherry is a handsome wood takes finishes beautifully and is strong enough to take some abuse for years ever since I built mine it's been in my front hallway near the front door where it gets constant use yet it gets more beautiful with age so next it's off to Nantucket to find us a settle then we'll come back here and build one out of cherry that's next right here in the new Yankee Workshop here in the home of a good friend there are several pieces of furniture that you may recognize remember when I built a hutch like this in the new Yankee Workshop and over here one of the harvest tables that I built out of cherry over in the dining area is a table made out of heart pine they came right out of the workshop and I understand that this gets a lot of use from five grandchildren now among the new pieces there are several antiques and this is the one I wanted to show you today it's a settle and it sits just beyond this low kitchen wall and I suppose you could slide this up to the table and use it as a dining bench but here it works perfectly as a place to put on your shoes and because it has storage below it's a good place for the jigsaw puzzles and the games now there's all types of woodworking in here a little bit of turning some curved pieces even some panel work this would be a fun project now the only change that I'm gonna make to the settle is the wood I'm gonna use cherry that'll give it a little bit more of a formal look and instead of depending on measurements I might take in the field I've actually brought the settle to the workshop now as I build it I will develop a plan with the materials list and you'll hear more about that before the program ends the piece that I'm working on right now is this front leg and arm rest support it's turned align the top section the best way to take square stock and turn it into a cylinder is to use a gouge a concave woodturning tool now before I go back to turning let's remember shop safety be sure to read understand and follow all the safety rules that come with your power tools knowing how to use your power tools properly will greatly reduce the risk of personal injury and remember this there is no more important safety rule than to wear these safety glasses and also what I'm doing woodturning I like to wear a full face shield okay that's good now we'll lay out the various features now using a caliper I can measure the diameter of the turning I bring it over to where the layout of the actual area that I want to remove material is and I'll use my parting tool to turn it down to the correct diameter now I'm going to switch to a smaller gouge to cut in the details [Music] the next piece to make is the back leg backrest and from the seat up it tips to the back slightly now I've laid out on a piece of inch and three-quarter cherry the pattern and I'm going to rough it out using the bandsaw leaving the line and then some now to smooth up the cuts on the outer edges I'm gonna use the jointer which I've set at a 64th of an inch I'll make light passes until I just remove that line all right now a few minutes at the drum sander to smooth out the inside edge now in the past you've seen me use drums over at the drill press this is an oscillating spindle sander which means that not only does the drum turn but it goes up and down that gives us better use of the sandpaper drum and it gives you a much smoother finish now I'll just trim it to length at the miter box the rails are joined to the legs with mortise and tenon joints you can see the peg that pins the tenant in place I've laid out the location of the mortises on my leg blanks and I'm gonna use my mortiser to take out the material it has a hollow chisel with a drill bit down through the center the drill bit removes most of the material the chisel squares it up the panels on the backrest of the settle and along the bottom sit in grooves that are milled in the Stiles in the rails now the width of the groove needs to be 5/16 of an inch wide so I've set up my dado head cutter for 1/4 inch width and adjusted the RIP fence so that it's 9/32 from the blade first I'll run one face against the RIP fence then I'll turn it around and run the other face against the RIP fence and that assures me that the groove is perfectly centered and the correct width with my regular saw blade now in the saw I can start milling the Tenon's on the end of each rail I've set up a gauge block and adjusted the fence the right distance from the blade the first cut to make is called the shoulder cut to make the next cut I want to raise the saw blade to 3/8 of an inch and that's easy to do with a depth adjustment gauge like this one with the saw set I want to make a shoulder cut opposite the groove edge and then remove the rest of the material by nibbling it away this accessory is a tenoning jig and it's the perfect tool for holding the rails and stiles in a vertical position to make the cheek cuts safely well before I quit tonight I'm gonna finish a few more mortises tomorrow morning we'll drive fit the pieces together oh good morning I started today by assembling some of the parts of our saddle no glue yet this is the back assembly the joint seemed to be nice and tight and flush the next detail I want to turn my attention to is a chamfer detail it's on the rails and Stiles and the legs where they surround the pianos now the chamfer stopped short of this corner by about an inch and also allowing this backrest piece I want to stop the chamfer as it approaches the arm otherwise I'll have a groove right through there now I bet these originals were cut with a chisel I'm gonna use a router with a chamfering bit it has a ball bearing guide [Applause] that's pretty good now where I've already machined the grooves in these other parts I have a little bit of a problem the bearing has no place to rest an easy solution for that is to make some fillers that fit into the groove and now I can just proceed [Applause] hey that's good there are a couple chamfers that I can't complete without breaking part of the assembly apart this one right here and this one right here and the same thing on the other end the problem is that the backrest projects beyond the rail not allowing the router to go by far enough once the leg is removed we'll be able to complete it now I've just completed making all the chamfers on the front panel assembly and the next thing I want to do is make a groove in the legs to receive the panels I'll do that at the router table the groove that I need to machine will run from mortise to mortise so I've transferred around from indicator marks which show me the end of the mortise I'll use the split in the fence to drop it over the router pit slide it through until I reach the second mark and then pull it away now I'm using a 5/16 inch diameter router bit which matches the grooves in the Stiles and rails because it's a small bit and this is hard wood I'll achieve the depth I want with two passes first run it through raised a bit do it again the last groove that I have to make is from this mortise to this one but look what happens when I put the leg against the fence because of the curve it's too far away now if I turn it around so that the curve is away from the fence that helps but I'm going to have to slide the fence back to get the bit centered in the mortise [Music] [Music] okay that takes care of the last of the chamfering details here's the first arm complete except for sanding let me show you how I made it I started out by cutting a cardboard template of the original arm I have a piece of blank stock that I laid it out on leaving an inch extra on this end for a tenon that's going to fit in to the back leg back recipe [Music] to start forming the tenon on the end of the arm I'm using the same procedures I used earlier on the Stiles and rails with a stop block in my miter gauge but because the end of the armrest is angled I have to turn the miter gauge to 10 degrees as I make each pass [Music] once again I use my tenoning jig to make the cheek cuts [Music] the rest of the cuts can be made at the bandsaw that takes care of the tenon now before I finish shaping the top of the arm I want to keep the nice flat surface so they have something solid to rest on my drill press table which has been tilted to five degrees first hole I want to drill is a inch and 3/4 counter boy and that's the received part of the turning of the front leg [Laughter] well now I'm gonna switch to a one inch Forstner bit now this will be the hole to receive the tenon from the front leg [Music] well now I'm just gonna sand them and round over the corners a little bit now I'm going to tilt the table of my spindle sander to about 8 degrees so they can bevel back the top and bottom edges I want to show you the bottom on our antique settle it's made up of boards they're just nailed into the rail then a band of wood was added to cover the end grain I think it would look better without this band so I'm going to rabbet the bottom edge of the rails receive the boards for the bottom [Music] now I want to round over the top of each backrest piece to do that I'm going to use my sanding Center and finally some assembly glue in the mortises and on the Tenon's now slip everything together and clamp it in place and now for the panels some pieces of cherry that I've planed down to 5/16 of an inch thick no glue here now the arm on the antique original all the tenants were locked into the mortises with dowel pins and we'll do the same now I'm using a 3/8 inch diameter bit and the holes are about an inch deep now I was able to get some cherry dowels just hammer them in place I'll sand them flush after the glue dries now one of the things that we really liked about this piece is its lightness there's not a lot of structure to weigh it down but there is a price to pay for that and in the case of this project it seems like the seat is a little too flexible and the back may have been too flexible so these quarter round moldings were added both in the front in the back to stiffen it up now we're using cherry which is a little bit stiffer so I'd like to avoid this detail but in any case I'm going to have to form the bottom of this rail to conform to the angle between the seat and the backrest and that's six and a half degrees I don't want to make any mistakes so I've tipped my table saw to six and a half degrees and I want to make sure the face of the rail is down [Music] well it's getting a little late but before I leave I'm gonna glue up this backrest tomorrow we'll finish up the saddle oh good morning here at last we see our settle coming together now before I could start the assembly I had to chamfer the top edge of the backrest piano once that was done I applied glue to all the mortises and the Tenon's will slip it all together and clamp it up glue alone would be enough to hold these joints together but I'm going to add a doll pin for more strength and the original head pins so we're gonna use them too let's look at the seat on the antique settle it's made up of several boards one on each end that's not around the legs and a piece that joins the two end pieces with a decorative bead that goes all the way around the opening for the lid now I've laid out some 7/8 inch thick stock for the notch around the leg and I've got one of them clamped in my vise and the back saw is the perfect tool to make that notch all those fit good now I can remove the piece and run that decorative bead along the edge to make that bead I'm going to be using a 3/8 radius router bit which I've set up in my router table the next operation is to actually remove part of this bead to create a shelf that goes between the two end pieces now I'm gonna use my router with the set up with a 3/8 inch rabbeting bit now I'm just gonna use a utility knife first to undercut the remaining lip here I want to clean it right back to where my bead cutter left off I also want to clean up this miter area using a sharp chisel now here's a couple boards that I glued up to make that back piece to connect the ends I'm not going to need the whole width right now but I'll keep it that way I'm gonna run a bead right along this edge [Music] and there it is cut to length is the corresponding rabbit on the underside of the back piece I'm adjusting my miter saw to 45 degrees so that I can miter the bead to meet the end pieces well let's see how it fits not bad now here's a blank that I'm going to use for the lid on the seat I'm just marking the location of the mortises for the hinges now here along the back of the bench I want to mark the intersection of the ends and this piece so that I can rip it to the correct width [Applause] I'm using a sharp utility knife to give me the outline of the hinge now you'll notice that I've clamped both the back piece in the lid together measures me a broader surface onto which I can rest my router now I'm using a half inch mortising bit to remove the material a sharp chisel is all I need to remove the rest of the material now to secure the various elements of the seat to the base I'm going to use some dolls installed with a little bit of glue now the original was just nailed I think the dolls will look a lot nicer [Applause] [Music] now a couple more dolls back here will secure the back piece to the base the next thing to do is to make a molding that wraps around the seat and if you look at it in cross-section you can see that it's a bull nose at the top and a scotia at the bottom all one piece now here's a strip of cherry that I'll form the molding from I'm gonna make the bull nose first so I'm using my largest feeding bit which is a three quarter inch diameter I've also installed a feather board to keep the stock tight to the table now because it's hardwood and we're removing a lot of material it'll take two passes now if it just a defense to give me the full profile of the fit and we'll make the second test [Music] to form the cove portion of the molding I have to run the stock through on the flat to support it I've added a cleat on each side of my fence once again the feather board and I'm using a half inch ko fit now here it's just a matter of cutting the pieces to fit mitering the corners and attaching them with one and a half inch Brad's now would be a good time to install the hinges these cleats will support the lid and they're installed with some glue and Brad's now for the bottom of the saddle I'm just using some pine there's no sense in wasting good cherry on the bottom it's only going to be seen when the lid is open all right well I think it's a pretty good facsimile of our antique a lot of sanding and more sanding and then it'll be ready for some finish well I think the best way to show off the beauty of this cherry is to finish it with oil and what I have in my bucket is an antique oil finish now I just flood it on with a foam brush give it a nice generous coat and after it sets for about 15 or 20 minutes I'll wipe off any excess now the wood is dry so I think it's gonna take at least two coats to seal it up after it dries for about three or four days I think to give it a little extra protection and a slight gloss I'm going to wipe on some polyurethane well I think I have just about the perfect place for this settle at my house and you know this cherry is just going to get richer and finer looking with age now next time we're gonna build a Tiger maple washstand we found the antique original in a private collection down in Savannah Georgia and we think that this will make a great night stand I'll show you how to build one next time right here in the new Yankee Workshop [Music] to order a home video or a measured drawing of the project you've just seen please call eight six six five four five nine seven zero eight additional information is available at new Yankee comm [Music]

Channel: Alex Alex

Views: 4,029

Rating: 4.7894735 out of 5

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Id: Mci_5VUmKQM

Length: 25min 34sec (1534 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020