About : standard furniture dimensions inches
Title : standard furniture dimensions inches
standard furniture dimensions inches
- on today's show we're gonnatake a little time for some personal reflection as we buildthis simple, elegant mirror. (groovy music) the design of our mirror frameis pretty straightforward but let me show you a coupleof details i really like. first off, the side piece. itgoes all the way to the top. now we've got that nice,graceful curve in the top rail but it continues right onthrough that side piece, through the end grain,and gives it a nice,
smooth, continuous look. if you look between each piece you'll see there's alittle v groove there. now that v groove isjust a optional detail. if you don't like it youdon't have to put it there. but i think it gives thepiece a little bit more visual interest, it makes eachindividual part of the frame pop a little bit more. and we're gonna do afinishing process later
with a glaze that's gonnaenhance that even more. the other thing is we'vegot half-lap joints here. this particular design i thinkreally calls for half-laps. you can certainly do amortise and tenon joint if you wanted to, buthalf-laps are pretty darn easy and they're very strong. certainly adequate for a frame like this. the wood itself here is a figured maple. we're gonna do a staining process on it,
and normally i don't stainmy projects, especially for ones that are madefrom really expensive wood. but this is going into mybathroom, and it has to match the cabinets, orat least come close to matching the cabinetsthat are already there. so, stained it is. we've got a nice lacquer finish, i'll show you how i applied that. and at this point we need togo back in time a little bit,
jump into the bathroom andsee if we can't figure out the proper measurements usingthe wall itself in the space so we know exactly what we'redoing with the project parts. all right, so, let's head to the bathroom. i never thought i'd say that on the show. so welcome to the spagnuolo bathroom, and this is the wall wherethe mirror needs to go. previously the mirror that was there was one of those frameless mirrors,
and it spanned from wall to wall. so what we want to do nowis make it a little bit more elegant by providinga nice wooden frame that fits the space fairly well. so, the way i'm gonna dothis is using blue tape and a tape measure to mark thelocations, get the overall size, and figure out what thesize of parts will be. blue tape is nice becauseyou can put it on the wall and then rip it right offand not affect the paint.
i'm gonna try and keep inmind the center line here and make sure thateverything is equally distant from that center point, buti'm just gonna start putting pieces of tape in to representwhat i think looks good. (bright music) so as you can see there's alot of back and forth there, and yes, we're wasting some tape, but it's certainlycheaper than wasting wood. so as the layout is on thewall we can kind of get a feel
for if i'm hitting my target or not. i really just want somethingthat's nicely balanced between the lights at the top and thetop of the surface down here. and i think i've hit that. so we can use what we havehere to take measurements, and if we're close to awhole number, let's just use the whole number, we havesome wiggle room here. so, my bottom here, ifi take a look at that. it's about four inches,little less than four.
and the side is three. and i'll tell you what,even though that's at four i think i'd be perfectlyhappy making that three so that it's consistent,and the bottom will be three inches wide, and theside will be three inches wide. at the top remember we've gotthis peak for the curve there so i'm thinking maybe at itstallest point it would be four inches, and as ittapers down, curves down we can bring it down to three inches,
and whatever that curve happensto be to connect those lines is whatever it is. now for the actual mirrordimensions we'll just take a measurement and see how closewe are to a round number. i've got about 26 there,which is pretty good. and here i've got about30, 34 to the peak. we'll just write all these numbers down and now we can head into the shop and actually start to draw thisout in a full size drawing.
all i need now is my trustydrywall square, a pencil, and a piece of quarter inchplywood to do the drawing on. i'm really pleased withthe way that this looks. it's got a nice simple elegance to it. the proportions look good to my eye and i think it's gonna lookreally nice in the bathroom. speaking of proportions, alot of time when you design a piece like this youshould be thinking about either whole number proportions,or the golden ratio,
if you've heard of that, to help you decide onyour relative lengths. in this case i'm kind of abandoning that because i want this to fitin a very specific location for a very specific purpose. so if i don't have sometheoretical standard achieved with this piece,i don't really care. i just want to make sureit's wide enough and tall enough to look good inthe space that it's going in.
so in this case, functionality for me trumps a traditionaltheoretical design number. the other thing we shouldprobably think about now, which you might think is alittle early to talk about, and that's the mirror. we need to know what sizethe mirror should be cut to. if you cut the stuffyourself, good on you. i don't really mess with glass too much, so i'm gonna have a localplace cut it for me.
i'm going with quarter inch thick glass, so it's not really gonnawarp or distort or anything. and we want to cut itan inch wider and taller than the dimensions of this interior space because we're gonna cut a nicerabbet around the perimeter and that's gonna give usthe size that we need. so for me that's 31 and aquarter tall, and 27 wide. so i just called a localglass company and said, "hey, here's the measurements."
the key is i wanna make surei have that glass in the shop before i finalize thisinternal cut on the frame. so i've got a little work todo before we get to that point and it's a good time to place that order. if you've ever done a projectwith half-laps you know that it's a real pain in the buttto glue those things together, but we can make some choices now that will actually make the glueup a whole lot easier. so, cut your parts a 16th of an inch wider
than the plans callfor, and you'll see why a little bit later when itcomes time for clamping. all right, so, let's startrough cutting some wood. i like to use the bandsawfor ripping rough stock. it's much safer than the table saw, and i'm not worried about thecut quality at this point. the chop saw is an excellent tool for rough cutting to length. now everything is milledto final dimension
according to the plans. with regard to thickness theplans call for 3/4 of an inch but if you can keep yourstock thicker, go for it. heavily figured maple isprone to tearout but the segmented head in the planerreally does a nice job. remember to cut these piecesa 16th of an inch oversize. so that's three and a 16thfor the sides and bottom, and four and a 16th for the top. at the chop saw i use astop block to make sure
that the sides, and thetop and bottom pieces are cut to their respective lengths. (drumming) now once everything is milled up it's a good idea to lay out your parts and get a feel for how thesehalf-laps are gonna lay out. i've got my sides here,the top and the bottom, and we'll do one topjoint and one bottom joint just to explain what's happening.
here's my top left joint, andlet's look at the half-laps. the half-lap is gonna takeaway half of the material on the underside of the sidepiece, somewhere like this. and then we're gonna remove this material from the top side of the top piece. something like that, sowhen they nest together the side piece just runsall the way through. our bottom half-lap ispretty much the same thing. the side is gonna travel all the way down
and it's gonna overlap the bottom piece. i like to dummy proof theprocess by making pencil marks that indicate where my cuts will be. i then use a cuttinggauge to slice the grain and firmly establish my shoulder lines. this cut line not only helpsme with setting up the tools but it ensures a tearout-free cut. there are a lot of differentways that you can cut half-laps but one of my favorite is to use
the table saw with the dado stack. i've got my stack set to3/4 of an inch in width and i'm just gonna use themiter gauge with the fence to line everything upand batch out these cuts. so the blade is set tojust under 3/8 of an inch. we're gonna dial that in second. the first thing i wanna dialin is the fence position. we'll start with our threeinch shoulder cuts here. let's put the work piece down
and try to get everything lined up. i really just wanna getthat cut line lined up pretty close with the outertooth of the dado stack. you can see how close wegot, so i'm just gonna nudge the fence until weare right on that cut line. that's about as good as it's gonna get, so now i can remove therest of this half-lap and we can address the blade height to get the perfect-fitting half-lap.
now if we take our two test half-laps and put them togetheron a nice flat surface we can really see what's going on here. all right, there's a nice lip, so i definitely undercutit, that was intentional, and now i can just sneak up on the fit. keep in mind though wehave to be extra careful about high we raise that blade, because the effect is timestwo, because we're gonna
remove stock from thispiece and from this piece, so be very, very cautiouswith your adjustments. and after a couple rounds of adjustments, should have something like this. mine are just a little bit proud. i'm okay with that because i have ways to finesse the face of this joint. but boy, that is-- that's darn close. now we can cut the rest ofthe three inch half-laps.
now we can adjust the fencefor the four inch half-lap and for this one we're gonnaleave the blade exactly where it is in terms ofheight, it's already dialed in. all we need to do is move this fence. now you want to examineall four of your joints and just make sureeverything fits together the way you want it to. you should have a prettygap-free joint up here. the underside is a littlebit less important because
you're not gonna see it, butit should be nice and flush. now, feel with your fingers. if you followed myinstructions you'll notice a little bit of a discrepancy here. the side piece sits proud, i feel a little bit of a lip here. and the same thing with the top piece, it's a little bit proud of this end grain. that is absolutely intentionaland the reason is when
we clamp this together, you'llsee this in a little bit, we need some pressurethat's gonna bring it in and close up these twoshoulder areas here. so a built-in way to do thatis to leave a little bit of extra stock that we can plane away later, and that's gonna help us with clamping. the other thing to look at is to make sure everything is nice and flush. if you find that the piecesare just a little bit proud of
one another because there's alittle too much material here at this point, if it's atiny amount, you're probably better off at the workbenchthan at the table saw. a surface like this rightoff of the dado blade can actually be a little bit rough. you're gonna have somehigh spots, some low spots. so just using a blockplane, or in this case i've got a rabbeting blockplane where the blade goes all the way to theoutside of the body.
you can take a couple of passes and just remove those high points. watch out towards the end,you don't want to tear out so you might kind of, give yourself a little bit of reliefthere, just in case. try to take even passesacross the surface. now if it takes anything morethan just a couple of passes you probably do wanna goback to the table saw. this is only for the purposesof finessing the fit.
so a couple of passes, you cansee we're nice and smooth now and this should fit perfectly. the next thing i wanna do isadd a little design detail. this is something that'scompletely optional so you don't have to do it if youdon't like the way it looks but i do like the way itlooks, so what i'm gonna do is put a little chamfer on the inside edge so when these two piecesmeet, there's actually gonna be a slight gapcreated between there.
when we do the finishing later, and you'll see when westart to use the glaze, you'll see how that will actually help us. but you may not likeit, you may just want a totally flush fit here, soignore it if you don't like it, but let me show you how ido it with a block plane. what i'll do is just put a lightchamfer on this inside edge and this is one of my side pieces here. and i'm basically justgonna count the strokes.
if i keep that numberconsistent i should have the same chamfer on all of my pieces. so that's about what i'm going for, just a nice, light chamfer. and at this point theseare sort of sharp edges. i just wanna knock them down a little bit with some 220 paper and soften it up. our top and bottom pieces alsoneed their inside edge done but before we do that we'regonna do the shoulder.
the easiest way i know to do this is to just approach it from each side. if i go all the way i'lldefinitely get some tearout there so let's just try to avoid it. even with a sharp blade thoseend grain cuts can be a little bit rough, so i like to havea little stick, basically. this is just a little piece of mdf something or other schmutzthat i have in my shop, and i put a little pieceof sandpaper on it,
and it works as a little, flatsanding implement like this that's perfect for small details. and i can use this tosmooth everything out. only after both of these ends are done will i go and do the long grain. if i do have any tearoutthis should take care of it. you might be wondering, why not just use a router to do an operation like this? well, first of all, gettingthe end grain parts done,
that's gonna be a littletricky with a router bit because the bit and thelittle screw that holds the bearing in place isgonna wanna make contact, so you don't have much room to play there. and if i'm gonna use myblock plane to do that i may as well just quickly get it done, and now i don't haveto set up a router bit. and frankly with one frame it's just as easy and quick to doit with a block plane.
sometimes it's just fun to use hand tools and to incorporate them into your work when you can, when it makes sense. it's very gratifying, andit puts a little extra love into the project, there'snothing wrong with that. all right now for the funpart, we can do the assembly. this glue up is gonna takea little bit of strategy and some forethought, so we'regonna have four big clamps. i'm gonna use my parallel clamps,
but there are other types of clamps-- pipe clamps would work for this to-- to apply pressure from all directions to close everything up. but we also need pressure at each and every one ofthose half-lap joints, kind of pinching it andsandwiching it together, so i'm gonna use three clamps per joint and i've got all theselittle small clamps for that.
and because we don't wanna dent the wood and it's nice to have somethingto spread out the pressure, i've got a couple pieces of scrap cut that we'll use as cauls to apply pressure. and i'm gonna use a long set glue, basically it's a titebondextend, just gives me a little more working timefor something like this. all right, let's get to it. each joint gets a generous amount of glue.
and look at how muchlong grain glue surface we have to work with. no wonder these joints are so strong. now i'll add a little bit of pressure, and then bring in thesecond set of clamps. if you look closely you can see that the 16th of an inch overageensures a nice, tight shoulder. now i'll loosen andretighten all the clamps just to make sure thateverything is hitting home.
at each corner i'll drop in a caul and add the small clamps. now you might thinkthat the joint is tight, but what what happenswhen we apply pressure. that squeeze out tells us thatwe're making good contact. of course you want tocheck for square as always, but if your half-lapshoulders are nice and square there really shouldn'tbe much to worry about. after a few hours i can removethe frame from the clamps.
i've definitely got somecleanup to do on the frame but before i do the fine stuff i'm just gonna start with a sanding block and remove any of the bigoffending glue squeeze out that might be dried on the surface. now let's talk about thecurve on the top of the frame. if you're just making oneof these you're probably better off taking your measurements, kind of like we did on the drawing,
and using a bent pieceof wood or drawing bow to make the curve righton the frame, cut it, and then finesse it soit's nice and smooth. if it's a one-off projectthat's all you need to do but if you're buildingmultiples like i am, i'm actually building two of these, and if you think you might bebuilding one in the future, it's a good idea to get atemplate, finesse that template and then use the templateto transfer the marks
to the other pieces. what i'm gonna do is cutout of this actual drawing, we're gonna cut thistop piece out, and then i'll have a template to storein the shop for future use. i use the bandsaw to cut the rough curve. and then use a block planeto work down to my line. of course, a flexible sandingstrip finishes it off nicely. now with my template i can just drop it on while my frame's here.make sure it's centered.
you pretty much line it up by eye if it doesn't reach allthe way to the ends. now to cut the curve i'mgonna use the bandsaw but because i've gota full size frame here it just gets a little unwieldy, so i've got two roller stands set up and a piece of plywoodsitting on top of it. it's not super stable, butit's gonna get the job done just giving me a little bitof extra outfeed support
so i can focus my attention on making sure i don't go over my line. now i'm just gonna attach the template to the work piece withsome double sided tape. you might find it as turner's tape, but it's a nice pressure sensitive, really sticky double-sided tape. once the template is where you want it, put down the pressure.
i'm just gonna flip this guy upside down and we'll pinch it between the dogs here. and my router is outfittedwith a flush trim spiral bit. i like the spiral action onthis because the sheer cut gives me a nice clear cut, evenon this really figured wood. i've got a little double bearing down here that's gonna ride up against the template, and this should giveme nice, clean results. anything the router wasn't able to get,
i can just use my rasp tocontinue on, and i just have this little piece at theend that needs to be done. and for the rest of it i'll just use my flexible sanding strip. now of course you'llremember we left these parts a little bit extra wide tohelp us with the clamping. well, now it's time to fix that. it should just be a littlebit proud of the end grain on both sides so what weneed to do is make some
clean up passes on boththe sides and the bottom, just to make sure it's nice and flush. i've got my jack plane here setup and i specifically havemy 50 degree bevel. this is a bevel-up plane, so if the bevel is a littlebit more severe like that it's actually going tobe a little kinder to us on a figured wood like this. if you have a real low bevel angle,
you might actually end upwith quite a bit of tearout. so you do need to be careful. other things you coulddo, you could probably set your jointer for areally, really light pass but you have to be careful, because once you get to the end ofthe pass you're gonna hit the end grain of the other partof the half-lap and you can snap that right out of there,that can be problematic. so if you do that, bevery careful about it.
but i think a hand plane isprobably the safest bet here. once you're able to geta nice clean shaving all the way across andyou're even at both ends, then you should be good to go. and i'll do the same treatment for the bottom and the other side. all right, that's looking pretty good. now i'm not quite ready to cut the rabbet because i'd like to do a littlebit of preliminary sanding,
and plus my glass isn't here yet. the sanding we're gonna do is just gonna smooth everything out,and if you think about it, we still have to do a routing operation, and whenever you run thatrouter on the surface you have a chance of dentingor scratching the material so if you sand it downto 320 grit at this point and then you have arouter operation to do, you might have to windup sanding again later.
so, at this point we'll dosome preliminary sanding but we won't go all theway to our final grit.