Hammer and Mallet Till

 

I got tired of pulling down hammers and mallets from the pegboard and having the peg hooks go all over. After two of my double prong hooks broke I decided to built something better.

Hammers and mallets currently live on pegboard to the left of and to the right of the saw till. The hammer till will extend ~48 inches high, from the French cleat to the bottom of the overhanging upper shelf.

The till will be 24 inches wide...the carcase will extend outward 7 1/2 inches. Target wood will be pre-milled radiata pines...1 x 8x and 1 x 6s. The rear boards are BORG milled v-tongue and groove.

 

Design Plan

Milling

Carcase

Sanding and Finish Work

Final product

 

Design Plan
This is the area where the new till will be built...


Early Sketchup model...

The top shelf is 3.5 inches down from the top, it has nine 3/4 inch slots ...

The lower shelf has seven 1 inch wide cutouts...

 

Hammer shelf...3/4 inch slots on 2 1/4 inch centers...
...these smaller hammers will occupy the upper shelf.
Mallet shelf...1 inch slots on 3 inch centers...
The larger mallets shown here will be the occupants of the lower shelf...with room for a Crucible Tools lump hammer if they ever actually make one...
The lower portion of the till will have a couple of drawers for storage...and a lower, open storage area.
All horizontal members will fit into 3/8 inch deep stopped grooves...the ends of all shelves will have 3/8 x 3/8 cutouts to help hide the stopped end of the grooves...

The back will have v-tongue and grooved boards...the lower portion of the back will be a French cleat (3/4 inch Baltic birch ply) for hanging the unit.

All horizontal shelves, the base and the top will have reinforcing 1/4 inch dowels.

Milling

The primary carcase wood selected for the project was radiata pine.

Pinus radiata is a natural product of California and is called Monterey pine. In its natural growth range the tree faces serious threats put it is cultivated extensively in many areas of the world.

These premium grade boardswere purchased at the local orange BORG.

The nominal 1x8 board will provide 7.25 inch width. The nominal 1x6 boards will provide 5.5 inch width.

The boards on the right are Vee-tongue and groove...they are secondary wood for the back...they will be painted.

Because the boards were already dimensioned and surfaced they only had to be crosscut to have them ready for joinery processes.

The boards were crosscut to rough lengths on the MFT table.

All of the wood for the till was processed.
The second phase of milling...dados, grooves and rebates...the first dados were through grooves that will hold the drawer divider board...this is a 3/4 x 3/8 inch deep groove.
In this Sketchup image the sides are placed back edge to back edge...the top and bottom will have through dados routed 3/4 inch x 3/8 inch deep...the four shelf locations will have stopped dados routed 3/4 inch x 3/8 inch deep...
These four stopped gooves and the two through rebates were laid out onto the boards.
The end of the stopped grooves was marked out from the front edges...it was made well short...

Two stops were placed on the Festool rail to control the run of the router...

The two pieces had a little bit of wonkiness...I used an angled Bowclamp caul to hold them in the same plane.
After a set of grooves was routed...the setup was moved to the next set...and a spacer was placed in the previous cut to keep everything coplanar...clamps were used to do the same in other planes.
...stopped dados were squared off with chisels and flattened to depth with a router plane...
...one of eight...
I used a dado stack and a sacrificial fence to hog out the rest of the 3/8 x 3/4+ rebate along the long edges of the side.
Racks
The two rack shelves for the hammers and mallets had the front edges chamfered at 45° to soften the edges.
Then the centers were all laid out...the mallet three inch on center lines were laid out with a 1-2-3 block...
The 2.25 on center lines for the hammers were laid out with a divider...and then marked with bird cage awl.
Holes were drilled at press...used FAMAG Forstner bits...these are exceptional.
Then the slot lines were laid out to connect with the holes...
One half of the lines could be cut at bandsaw referenced from the top...the others were registered off the bottom.
Mallet dry fit...
Hammer dry fit...
All ready except for the shoulder cutouts.
The cutout was done custom for each joint...
Shoulder cuts...
The cuts being dry fitted to the side grooves...
Carcase

This glue up had many steps and was going to be tricky. Cindy and I rehearsed the sequence well.

The drawer divider was glued into the grooves first and then this assembly, the cage, was glued into the sides.

Clamps for the shelves and the long run were placed onto the work surface first...then the carcase was built above the clamps.

The lower clamps were not overtightened...they were holding the carcase while we made sure that the rebate surfaces were coplanar.

Once all of the shelves were in, some pressure was provided across the top to start the squeeze.

Then the top and the bottom were put in place and clamped on the long run...

After all of the upper clamps were placed, all clamps were tightened.

Once again, it is true that you can never have too many clamps.

After pulling the carcase out of the clamps, holes were drilled for dowels......1/4 inch holes x 1 1/4 inch deep...oak dowels were glued in...
...these dowels were placed in the joints of every cross member...

A structural board was added beneath the drawer cage...this piece served to stiffen the carcase and to provide the surface for the joint between the tongue and groove boards and the French cleat.

This board also had dowels put in for support.

All show surfaces were planed to make them coplanar.

All dowels were flush cut...joints were filled and sanded...

the sides had been milled long to be proud of the top and bottom...these edges were routed with flush bit.

View of the carcase from the back...rebate clearly visible...

The lower back panel is 3/4 inch Baltic birch cabinet grade plywood.

Here is the crosscut at 45°. The miter joint will be the French cleat wall mount.

The cleat is installed with screws...the mitre edge overhanging to mate with cleat on wall.
Backboards chopped to length...attached with screws in the center of the tongue and groove boards to allow for expansion...
Sanding and Finish

The slots on the rack shelves were sanded, 1/2 and 3/4 inch sleeves at 80x, with a newly acquired spindle sander.

This is what the spindle sander was invented to do...

The rest of the rack shelves were hand sanded with rounded 100x along the slots and then the flat surfaces were hand sanded 150x, 220x, 400x.
The application of shellac on rack shelves was by brush due to difficulity of getting into the slots.

All of the other surfaces were sanded with Rotex sanders...150x, 220x, 400x.

All carcase surfaces had padded on applications of amber 2 lb. shellac...the back boards, which were secondary wood, were painted with two coats of dark brown exterior grade paint (lefover from the walls on the back porch)....

Drawers
The black walnut drawer fronts will be about 3 inches tall and 11 inches wide...made a template to get a look at best grain patterns...
The cutoffs bin provided a smorgasbord of wood options...drawer sides will be be mahogany...drawer slips will be poplar
...the poplar was a CTD test milled on both edges to be vee-tongue and groove but the profile will work well as slips...1/4 inch by 5/16 inch deep slots will work great with 1/4 inch MDF drawer bottoms.
End of the drawer slip profile...the slip wil end up being about x/x inches wide.
The drawer openings are pretty square...the height is less in the middle where the divider is...
After the walnut was surfaced and edged on the jointer, then ripped to a fat 3 inches...the front show surface was worked with the LN scraper plane...
This piece of black walnut (from the wood that Tom brought me from Virginia...see walnut/maple table) has a lot of figure and chatoyance...but the grain running in different directions makes working the piece quite a project...
After smoothing with the scraper plane, the show surface was worked with sander at 400x...got it smooth enough...
To get the front drawer pieces to fit, they were chopped fat...then worked with the LN51...
The top edge was planed with LV small smoother on a bias because the center of the drawer box is tighter...held it in the bird's mouth batten.
Satisfactory dry fit...to be worked later after drawer construction...

A look at how the figure runs...

 

On the back side of the drawer front the walnut was so wonky that it was really hard to plane...went to the LN 4 with a high angle frog...

Having never used drawer slips I was not sure as to what size to use...I took the vee-tongue and grooved poplar and cut off a piece at the bandsaw...
...and then worked the back edge with a plane till happy...
...the profile...
...dimensioned...
a mockup to see how the thing will work...
...with cross cut sled, roughed out 1/4 MDF blanks for the drawer bottoms...made them fat in both dimensions.
all drawer pieces cut out fat...walnut fronts, mahogany sides, poplar slips, maple backs, MDF bottoms...
Created a 1/16 inch rebate to help with dovetail joint lineup...
Cut these rebates with the tenon jig on P66...used 1/4 inch flat top Infinity blade.
...laid out the pins on the mahogany sides...cut the dovetails with Stiletto and a LN crosscut saw,
Finished the waste cuts with scroll saw...
Pins off the saw...ready for chisel cleanup...
Sockets sawn and chiseled...then routed a drawer groove in the back...
The drawer slips had to be cut to fit on the backside...
The drawer slip look at the back...
Glued and clamped the slips on to the sides...tacked with 23g pins to hold in position...
Drawer sides with slips...

Glued up the drawer...had some issues with depth on the first one...had to redo the backside...

 

Planed to fit...
Made a mixture of Timber Mate mahogany and xxx with some mahogany dust thrown in...wet it as necessary to make a filler for the joinery...
Sanded with Rotex 90 120x-220x-320x-400x and applied a couple coats of rubbed on amber shellac...
with knob...
Kaizen foam insert...left drawer...
Side view...half-blind dovetails...
Both drawers in...
Final Product
The French cleat was mated with cleat on the wall and screws went into the bottom 1/3 and the very top into studs...

The unit was filled up...

top shelf: L > R

Estwing dead blow, Lie-Nielsen cross peen, Stanley ball peen, True Temper ball peen, EE & Co. brass head, shop made hex brass head, Grace 8 oz brass, Ice Bear octagonal, Veritas plane hammer

second shelf: L > R

Estwing 24 oz, Estwing 12 oz, Blue Spruce joiner's mallet, Crucible lump hammer, Estwing maul, Veritas cabinetmaker's mallet, Grace 32 oz brass

horizontal shelf:

Shop Fox carving mallet, shop built hex mallet, Shenandoah carving mallet, Blue Spruce bench mallet

Side view...
While working on the till, I also put in a new window mounted chisel rack...longer that the original and made of some nice cherry...along with new section of blade edge protection in the French cleat...

The new till...alongside the remodeled chisel rack...

 

 

 

 

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