Krenov-style Shelves (page 1 of 3)
The following pages show how I built my Krenov-style shelves. Thanks to my wife Andrea for taking such good photos of me at work.
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I start this project by cutting the two sides from the
best wood I have. These are the pieces that will show the most,
so I want to get good figure and color. I also cut them about
1/16" oversized in all dimensions so I could plane the edges down,
making them very smooth.
Here I'm using my
Steve Knight jointer
to square up and smooth the sides of the shelves. I've got both
pieces lined up and clamped in my side vise. After hitting the sides
with the jointer, I make a couple passes with my smoother and they're
like glass. After getting both long edges to match, I square up
the end grain using the smoother (yep -- a Steve Knight smoother
set really fine will slice the end grain perfectly). Note that
when I say "square" I mean I'm making both sides match, rather
than that I'm making the corners exactly 90°.
Next, I use my marking gauge to mark the position of the mortises. This needs to be done on both sides, and on each side piece. I do each set on all the pieces and sides so I can leave the tool at the same position, insuring they are all in the same place.
Now the hard part -- cutting the mortises. This photograph shows
me starting the mortise by cutting the sides with a 1" bevel chisel.
I use three chisels for cutting the mortise:
a 3/8" and 1" bevel chisel for the initial cutting and to remove the
first layer of wood from the mortise, and a 3/8" mortising chisel to
chop out the bulk of the wood. On the mortises that run
perpendicular to the grain, I use a 1/2" mortising chisel to chop
out the wood. First I mark the edges of the mortise by laying
the 1" bevel chisel in the grooves cut by the marking tool and
lightly striking the handle with my small mallet (as shown above).
Then I use the 3/8" bevel chisel to remove the first 1/8" (give
or take) of the mortise. This gives me a nice straight edge to lay
my mortising chisel against for hogging out most of the wood.
Now I'm pounding out the wood using my mortising chisel. On the mortises that run parallel to the grain (like the one above), I orient the chisel perpendicular to the grain and chop along the long axis of the mortise. The other mortises (the four mortises in each side piece for the shelves) are cut with a 1/2" mortising chisel, but this time I have to make four smaller mortises, each one cut along the short axis of the mortise. This is necessary because the chisel has to be cutting across the grain to keep from splitting the wood.
Throughout this process it's really important to keep your chisels
sharp -- especially the mortising chisels. I use a Japanese water
stone with 1,000 and 6,000 grit sides. A couple passes on each side
(bevel and back) between each mortise and you'll get a much smoother
sidewall.
Here you can see a mortise on the left that I chopped with a relatively dull mortising chisel and one on the right chopped with a sharper one. Both could be cleaner, but I'm new at this! Check out the great heartwood pattern in this Alaskan birch!
After chopping all the way across the mortise with the chisel, it's
time to clear out the waste by turning the chisel over and using it
to cut and lever out the chunks that have been released. In this
step you have to be very careful to keep the edges of the chisel
away from the edges of the side walls of the mortise or you'll pop
out little pieces in the face of the piece of wood. This was
especially tricky in the heartwood of this birch because the grain is
so tight.
Not that I wouldn know anything about this (DAMHINT!), but if the
board you're pounding on isn't completely flat, it's possible to
crack it under the strain of the mortising. In my case, I gently
opened up the crack, squeezed in as much glue as I could get in
there, and then glued it up as shown above. After the glue
dried, I hit it with a plane and then a scraper, and now the crack
is invisible!
Once I've cut the mortise about half way through on one side, I repeat the process on the other side. When the two halves come close to meeting in the middle, chop carefully so the wood fibers are cut rather than pulled out.
After I've gotten
most of the material out, I used a small bevel chisel to lightly
pare the walls of the mortise, cleaning up any high or rough spots
left by the mortising chisel. I also used a file to smooth the
walls -- just be sure to apply force in a direction that will
break out the fibers on the inner sides of the shelves because
these surfaces will be behind the shelves themselves.
Now that the mortises have been cut, it's time to plane away the marks from the mortising gauge and the dings in the surfaces from mortising. In my case the side pieces were slightly cupped, so I planed away the high spots, making both sides flat. This is important because the ends of the shelves need to butt perfectly against the side walls. In these plans there's no dado to hide construction errors or warped wood. The photograph above shows my smoothing plane taking fluffy shavings from the edge of the board.
A little scraping with a hand held scraper removes all the remaining
plane marks, and really brings out the shine in the figure of the
wood. Although it's hard to tell in this photograph, the scraper
is sharp enough that it's cutting little tiny shavings.