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Milling wood for furniture tutorial


ElgaKoster

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Bill - do you tram your (mini) mill every time you use it?  I know I have to do that on the Bridgeport (probably because it's a shared asset and gets heavy use).

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 If I was going to need the precision I had to tram it other wise I let it go for a while.  I sold that mill.  I only have my Sherline because of limited bench space. The Sherline's head stock can be tilted like the Unimat but I leave it alone.  

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My big mill is a Aciera F-3, the table tilts on two axis and the head and vise rotate. While these features are really nice the one in million times I need them it makes the machine a major PITA to tram. Therefor I almost always come up with a different way to do something before resetting anything.

I am planning on making a micro mill out of a Servo drill press, it is the large base version so I have plenty of room for a X - Y table, rotary table and index heads. The big problem is there is no quill lock so I have to design and make one. I figure I will only use this for very tiny milling jobs, those using mills smaller than a 1/32".

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A bit more on the drawers, I finished all the milling on both the drawer fronts and back, actually the piece you saw in my previous post wasn't for a single drawer, after I did the dovetails on either side I milled a groove in it for the base of the drawer and then cut them into three pieces and milled the dovetails into all the other edges. I used a wheel bur for the groove because the drawers are curved.

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Because I didn't want to bother with a new setup for the straight drawer backs I just used the same setup for the backs supporting the wood against a scrap piece of wood.

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All the pieces cut to size and all the dovetails milled, now these are ready for the sides to have the tails cut into them and then assembled, the drawer backs will be cut shorter where the grooves are so that the base can slide over it, in the back you can see the mirror base where the drawers will fit in, I leave the top off until I am sure the drawers will fit properly.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The drawers are nearing completion, the last part I needed to do milling work on was the base of the drawer, I used a 45 degree hart burr on the edges to mill it down to fit into the grooves of the drawer front and sides. In the first photo the milling is done on the bigger drawer, I take the wood off in a few passes going a dit deeper from the edge with every pass, otherwise the wood burns, I also make the bases a bit longer than necessary, if the wood tears out at the back edge it isn't a problem then...and it is easy enough to cut to size afterwards.

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This afternoon I did the last step on the drawers, pinrouting them together with the mirror base to curve the fronts.

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Showing the drawers upside down so that you can see the drawer bottoms glued in place.

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I am looking forward to seeing how it is going to look after final sanding and finishing, the base still need feet and the uprights for the mirror.

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  • 2 months later...

Yesterday I milled the angled tenons on the side rails of Chippendale chairs that I am working on, I am very happy with the results it fits perfectly, the back tenon goes right through the back leg as in the real chair. I made a simple angle to get the side rails at the correct angle in my mill, I had to concentrate very hard to make mirrored side rails as I had already cut the rebate for the chair seat and the top edge molding.

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Perfect mirrored side rails :D

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The seat cushion will sit nicely in those rails.  It looks great!

 

Tamra

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  • 4 months later...

I was always interested  in what others did scale wise.  You can only go so far to take full sized jigs and make them work in miniature.  

 

This is a nice tutorial Elga thank you. 

 

Mario 

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  • 6 months later...

Tamra asked in another thread whether Missy and I move the wood on the milling machine or whether we move the XY table. 

For me it is both depending on what I am making. For moldings and other long pieces of wood I generally slide the wood under the cutter, depending on the hardness of the wood and the profile I am cutting I will start by taking off small bits of wood and lowering the cutter after each cut in certain increments until I have reached the depth that I wanted. Figuring this out is usually trail and error.

For very small pieces of wood and mortise cuts I use the XY table to move the wood within specific measurements, when making multiple pieces like mortises in legs I will complete each step on each leg before moving on to the next cut if another cut is needed on that piece that has different measurements.

I will be teaching both these techniques in my Guild Show class.

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  • 2 months later...

I am building a few butler trays that will have decorative brass corners, so I decided to use box (finger) joints for joining the wooden corners. I used a vise in my mill with a mdf jig to make it a repeatable process to mill the joints. To save time I clamped two sides together at a time in the jig and milled both at the same time.

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