How To Make Firewood - Summer Night Light Pt.2

I started enthusiastic into the new project.

And it went well - first.....

But find out for yourself.






Last time I already described that I will develop the lantern while building it.
I've got something in my mind but I don't have a concrete plan nor a drawing.
After dimensioning the stock I started with the build.

Top and Bottom

After laying out all the mortices I deepened my knife lines with a chisel. That's my registration mark for chopping the wholes.

Deepen the knife lines

That done I grabbed my brace and bored out most of the waste.

Boring out the waste

This went pretty well. I've got some nice holes and just to chop out the rest.

All holes bored

Preparing the Stiles

I've chopped out all the mortices with a fitting chisel. Next the stile have to be prepared.
Therefore I had to saw down the tenon cheeks and to pare it down a little bit.

Cross cutting the tenons first

 

Sawing the cheeks

First cut

Second one

 After sawing I have pared the cheeks to size so that they could be inserted into the bottom.

Jointing The Stiles and The Bottom

From here the disasters starts.
Jointing the stiles to the bottom went first somehow well, but then I heard a light noise of cracking.
The end grain fibre started to break out. At the first time I thought I could fix it somehow.
But after I started to insert the rails it would be worse.

First crack

Crack in detail

And the next one

And one more

Damn F@#$%& S!§# !!!

I'm pretty frustrated about it. Everything went somehow wrong. And I can't explain why.

So, what can I do?

At first I thought that I could fix it somehow. Maybe gluing on some moldings.

But thinking twice about it brought me to the realization, that everything I would do is somehow a workaround.

What now?

That said I made a decision before I started to clean the shop.

I've got some boards of Red Meranti in the shop. And my decision is to start from the scratch with this wood. It is already machine planed so that I've just to remove some surface marks.

And man, it's shining nicely after smoothing it.

I have cut two new boards for the top and bottom and gave a bit more material, supporting the chopping process. This time I will cut the boards to final length after chopping the holes.

The material for stiles and rails I have to glue up. Otherwise I wouldn't have enough material thickness.

So, a new start. And the already used material will go into the firewood basket.


Stay tuned if you would like to see the second try.

Stefan