Mounting the chisel holders

Here’s how I fitted the chisel holders – I mark the length directly off of the box by putting a small nick on the corner, like so:

I then slide my knife along the edge until it “clicks” into the nick, move my square to the knife and strike a line. I then create a knife wall, and I make sure to reference off of the same two faces and strike the line all around the piece. This way, I won’t get any tearout when sawing. Teak is a very splintery wood!

After cutting the piece, I shoot the ends on the shooting boards to clean them up and to create just a gnat’s nadger of a gap between the rails and the sides of the box – 2-3 swipes with the plane is plenty. This allows for some movement; the rails won’t bind on the sides, creating stress on the glue joint. We can use very tight tolerances, since wood does not expand in length through the seasons. Not in any significant amount, at least.

I then cut two pieces of wool felt; they will be glued to the inside of the box using contact cement, in order to protect the edges of the chisel. One strip will be glued where the handles rests, to prevent them from rattling around. Perhaps overkill, but it will look nice. Which is important in an of itself. It wouldn’t really make any sense to “protect” the ends of the handles: After all, I do smack them senseless with a hammer!

A quick test to check if I am on track:

I placed the handle rail on top of the blade rail and marked the edges of the circular cutouts, then marked the center using calipers, like so:

I then measured each chisel, divided by two and marked the width using the centerline as my starting point for each chisel. After sawing down each side (giving me a bit of wiggle room – no sense in making these dead tight!), I chopped out the waste using the chisels. I placed the edge half way down from the top towards my mark, aimed skywards and gave the chisel a good thump. Rinse and repeat with the chisel in the actual depth mark, then rinse and repeat from the opposite side. Then pare the bottom about flush.

This method ensures that the wood is removed in a controlled manner. In the next image, you can see that the leftmost slot has been chopped from one side only

I then used my router plane to get to depth in the slots sans the two slots that is too narrow for the router plane blade, where I just used the chisels.

I roughed up the underside of the rails using #80 grit sand paper, going across the grain. This is to give the glue a bit more “bite” in the oily teak wood. I also cleaned the wood using acetone; this removes any oil from the wood and ensures a good glue bond. You should not wait too long after cleaning, though – as soon as the acetone had flashed off, I proceeded with the glue.

A line of Titebond III, place the rails together and rub them back and forth until the glue is evenly spread out, like so (no need for fancy glue spreaders, folks!):

Then, using pencil marks and a square, I placed each rail in the case and pressed it down until the glue “grabbed”. An ever so slight squeeze out told me that I had plenty of glue.

Same procedure for the other rail, and then two pieces of gash and six clamps. I wiped excess glue off with the acetone rags, and left the box for a couple of hours so that the glue would hold.

Let’s move to a new page so that the pages won’t be excessive in length, shall we?