A 21st-Century Kas, Part 2: New Use for a Classic Design

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY KERRY PIERCE
DRAWINGS BY KEVIN PIERCE

If wood were better behaved, we could just glue up wide panels and hold them in place with glued and screwed cross-grain cleats. But wood is not well behaved. It does what it wants to do no matter how much we struggle to impose our will. After we have ripped it to the perfect width, it shrinks in dry winter air and expands in the humid summer. In fact, if the 20″ end panels of this kas were simply glued-up solid boards, that expansion and contraction could amount to 1/2″ or more.

     Experienced furnituremakers know they can't impose their will on wood. They know that they must compromise, and the frame-and-panel concept is one such compromise. Yes, that wide central panel will expand and contract across its width, but if we conceal the edges of the panel in deep grooves, the dimensional changes will be unnoticed and the stability of the frame will keep the piece intact.

     This concept is one of the oldest engineering principles in furnituremaking history and it is one still widely employed today by makers who eschew the dimensional stability of manufactured wood products like plywood and particle board in favor of the rich beauty of solid wood construction.

FRAME-AND-PANEL OPTIONS

     There's more than one way to utilize the frame-and-panel concept.

     Perhaps the simplest of these employs grooves along the inside edges of rails and stiles. The edges of the central panel are simply fit unglued into these grooves and the frame is glued and assembled around the panel. This is an approach that—in most settings—would be appropriate only for a piece of utilitarian furniture having little in the way of aesthetic aspirations because it presents such a plain appearance. The exception to this rule, of course, would be a Shaker setting. This type of frame-and-panel construction is often seen in Shaker work because its plainness is an appropriate expression of the Shaker aesthetic.

PLANS AND PATTERNS

DRAWERS AND INTERIOR

FRAME CONSTRUCTION AND DETAILS

     Another approach involves a deep rabbet cut along one edge of the interior faces of the stiles and rails that surround the central panel. After the frame is assembled, the central panel is cut and laid into place (the cut panel is sized to allow for cross-grain expansion and contraction), and a small molding is tacked into place on the inside of the rabbet, holding the panel in place.

     I used a third variation, one that allowed me to surround the panels with a large molding with a bold profile that lapped the edges of the rabbet. This molding, called a bolection molding, is rabbeted on its back side so that it rests on two surfaces at different levels, and is glued only on the outside of the rabbet where it contacts the frame. Applying the glue here, at a distance from the edges of the raised panel, allows the panel to expand and contract while still being held in place.

CONSTRUCTING THE FRAMES

     Because the kas's two end panels are too large to lay flat on any of my workbenches, the first thing I did was construct a larger top for one of those benches. I knew that in order to produce frame-and-panel units that would be truly flat, I had to have a flat surface on which to assemble them. If I glued them together while they were—for example—leaning against the wall, they would almost certainly end up with some deviation from flatness. While I might have overcome this deviation in the case of the end panels—which are glued and screwed into position—the doors would never have closed properly if not laid out flat during glue-up.

     After carefully milling the frame components, I cut the deep rabbets on the front side of each rail and stile. If you use a wood like cherry, which is notorious for the presence of cosmetic defects like tarry patches and streaks, it's important to establish a “best” side for each of these components before you cut the rabbets. After cutting the rabbets on my tablesaw with a stack of dado cutters, I cleaned up each one with a shoulder plane.

     Then, using the same stack of dado cutters with which I cut the rabbets, I thicknessed each of the many tenons the kas requires (1).

     The top and bottom rails of the two end panels are so wide that I broke each tenon up into two parts in order to reduce the likelihood of problems with cross-grain shrinkage.

     I then cut each of these narrow, deep mortises by hand. It's a slow process, but I enjoy the work and the quiet that accompanies the work. (I keep the hand-held fluorescent tube on my bench to better see inside the mortises when I'm chopping them.)

     It's necessary to cut away the tab of material adjacent to the mortises in order to bring the rails up tight against the stiles. In the photograph (2) you can see that I've already done this at the rear of the stile I'm working on, but not yet at the other two mortises of that stile.

     After all the mortises have been cut and fit to each tenon, I glue up the frames. Where the tenons had been divided into two parts, I glued only the inside tenon, allowing the other tenon to float (3). Also, I undercut the inside edge of the outside tenon so that there is a little space that will allow the rail to shrink a bit across its width.

     As soon as I had washed away the glue squeeze-out, I clamped the assembly and checked each frame to see that it was square. I then pegged each of the tenons, using pegs I rived and shaved from a bit of scrap cherry (4). Each one is slightly tapered so that when they're tapped into place they fill the hole to a slight excess, eliminating gaps around the peg. After I had glued and driven home each peg, I sawed off the excess length and planed the end-grain of the peg flush with the surrounding material using a block plane.

MAKING PANELS

     When I glue up panels, I'm careful to select a truly flat surface like the ground steel top of my tablesaw as a foundation for the process. I spread newspapers across that surface to catch any glue squeeze-out. I then place a pair of 1-1/2″ × 1-1/2″ wood cleats on the flat surface, laying strips of torn newspaper atop these cleats to keep them from becoming glued fast to the bottom of the panel. Then I arrange the edge-jointed parts on the cleats, which raises them above the pipes and puts them in line with the force of the pipe clamps’ heads. This way the panel I'm creating isn't distorted by having the pressure applied only to the top surface rather than to the entire thickness of the panel.

     Next, I clamp cauls at each end of the panel for yet another level of flatness insurance. I know this seems like a lot of work just to glue up a panel, but I go through the entire process every time (this kas involved the gluing up of 14 separate panels—eight raised panels, three drawer bottoms, and a bottom, middle and top for the interior of the cabinet) because I know that if I shirk any step, I run the risk of ending up with something too twisted or cupped to fix.

     After removing the panel from the clamps, I level it with crossing diagonal strokes of a jack plane, followed by a smoothing plane pushed in the direction of the grain while skewed at a slight angle. In fact, my current procedure is to smooth the panel twice, each time using a different smoother. I perform the first smoothing pass with a Spiers coffin smoother equipped with an iron ground to a very slight arc across its width. This plane removes the worst of the plane tracks left by my jack. I then smooth the panel a second time, this time with a parallel-sided Shepherd smoother equipped with an iron ground dead straight all the way across. This extra attention results in a truly flat and smooth surface.

     Once the panels have been smoothed and leveled, I rip them to width and cut them to length. Because they are a bit wider than the capacity of my radial arm saw, I cut them to length using a cutoff box on my tablesaw (5).

RAISING PANELS

     A raised panel consists of a central reservation surrounded by four angled fields that lead up to low shoulders which define the edges of the reservation. Often the narrow outside edges of those angled fields are fit into the grooves of the rails and stiles. Sometimes, however, another shadow line can be created by using narrow rabbets to surround the angled fields, rabbets which are then fit into the grooves of rails and stiles. I decided to go for broke here and add these extra rabbets.

     Traditionally raised panels were created with hand planes, and I briefly considered using that method for the panels on this piece. However, the lack of good panel raising planes—as well as some cautionary words from knowledgeable friends—discouraged me from attempting this historically accurate approach.

     Modern commercial shops typically raise panels with shapers (or routers) large and powerful enough to handle the heavy long-winged cutters the process requires, but I don't have such a machine. Fortunately, there is a third method that can be used by anyone who owns a tablesaw.

     The first step is to define the shoulders that surround the raised panel's central field. To do this, I simply laid the panel face down on the tablesaw and ran all four edges along the fence (6).

     To create the angled fields, I use a raised-panel jig and the blade guard I created to go with it. The jig itself is quite simple, consisting of a large adjustable fence that can be titled back to create the angle of the field. The adjustments are made using a bolt tightened by a wing nut (7).

     You could achieve a similar effect by tilting the blade instead of the panel, but tilting the blade causes you to lose depth of cut on your tablesaw which would make these wide fields impossible. Plus, the low fence on a tablesaw doesn't provide a very secure surface for supporting big panels when you're running them past the blade.

     The safety guard will protect your hand from contacting the blade if your hand should slip as you're feeding the work past the nearly 3″ exposure of tablesaw blade. I've never had that happen, but the guard is reassuring.

     Although the fields produced will be generally correct, there will be some faint blade marks if your hands wobbled the slightest bit when moving the panel past the blade. These need to be cleaned up with a hand plane. The area immediately adjacent to the shoulder, and the shoulder itself, must be addressed with a rabbet or shoulder plane (8).

     As you work these fields with your plane, you will find that the diagonals connecting the corners of the reservation and the corners of the panel itself will begin to wander. Don't worry; this can be easily corrected by simply taking extra shavings from a field when you want the diagonal at the end of that field to advance (9).

     I adjusted the fence of my panel-raising jig to 90° and cut the rabbets that surround each panel (10). I took the guard off for this photo to better illustrate how the work meets the blade in the two operations that involve this jig. Also, I wanted to show the little plywood throat plate I used to replace the factory throat plate which had a gap on the fence side of the blade almost wide enough to catch the thin rabbeted edge I'm forming here.

INSTALLING RAISED PANELS

     The bolection molding is rabbeted on its underside, creating a stepped profile. This notched section sits on the rails and stiles of the frame and is glued to them; the lower (un-notched) section projects over the panel, holding it in place, and is glue-free (11). It is important that no glue be spread there in order to allow the panel freedom to expand and contract across its width.

     Before you glue any moldings in place, it's critical to establish that there is clearance between the raised panel and the underside of that portion of the molding that will hold the panel in place. With the bolection molding held in its correct position, I judged the fit as follows: if I could slide a sheet of paper between the bottom of the molding and the raised panel, I had sufficient clearance to keep the glued portion of the molding tight against the rails and stiles surrounding the panel. If I couldn't get a sheet of paper between them, I planed a shaving or two from that portion of the molding until I got a proper clearance. When I was satisfied with the fit all around, I applied glue to that portion of the moldings that will contact the rails and stiles and pressed them in place. I used a make-shift (but effective) combination of cauls and weights to apply sufficient pressure while the glue dried. Of course, to be effective there has to be clearance between the central reservation of the raised panel and the undersides of the cauls.

HANGING THE DOORS

     I work alone. That means it's almost impossible for me to hang large doors on vertical surfaces; I just can't hold them and mark hinge locations accurately and safely. I chose instead to hang them on the door frame before that frame was installed on the cabinet. I then removed the doors, installed the frame, and re-hung the doors.

     Working on the floor of my shop, I fit the doors to the frame with a clearance just a shade over 1/16″ all the way around. I then decided where along the vertical outside door stiles I would mount the hinges (12).

     One of the secrets to success in the shop that, I believe, gets insufficient attention in woodworking literature is the business of securely holding parts while we work on them. It's a complex problem with as many different solutions as there are shop operations. To mortise my hinges, I've mounted the door in a side vise with one end supported on a little block I've mounted on the side of my bench to catch the ends of long boards while I plane them. I then added a plywood triangle which is clamped to both the door and the bench top. This presents the edge of the door on which I'm mortising and mounting hinges at a comfortable working height while at the same time holding the door securely (13).

     I use a marking knife to layout the vertical limits of a hinge mortise, then delineate the back side of the mortise with a marking gauge (14). These scorings will give me places to register the tip of my chisel as I create the mortises.

     Then, with a 3/4″ chisel, I cut the shallow mortises for the three hinges that would be mounted on the edge of this door. Since the antique brass hinges measured 1/8″ in thickness, I cut the mortises on both the door and the frame to a depth of 3/32″ which would leave a 1/16″ gap between the closed door and the frame.

     I also mounted the frame in my vise before chopping the hinge mortises, this time working while seated on a stool (15). I should point out the strip of masking tape with the word “Top” written on it. That may seem unnecessary, but it's easy to get confused and mistakenly hinge one of the doors upside down.

     I then located the holes for the hinge screws by holding a hinge in the mortise while I tapped on the end of a center punch that I'd positioned in the hinge holes. This little tool looks like a nail set, but it has a steeply tapered end that allows it to find exact dead center in a hinge hole and then punch a depression into the wood below which will then guide the tip of your drill bit.

     The screws that Horton Brasses provides for these hinges are antique brass, which are handsome and acceptably strong as long as you treat them with care. When you're working with a hardwood like cherry, it takes surprisingly little force to snap a brass screw shank. You must first predrill pilot holes with the largest bit that still allows the screw threads to cut into the wood. Ideally, you would then turn a steel screw with exactly the same thread geometry into each hole before you use the brass. Unfortunately, I never seem to have such a steel screw on hand, so I select one of the hinge's brass screws to use as a tapper, and I very carefully turn it into each of the holes with its threads lathered up with paraffin. Then, when I'm done tapping all the holes, I throw the tapper screw away because by that time, I've probably buggered up the slot with repeated turnings. (But first count your screws. Hardware vendors usually throw in a few extras but not always.)

     After the mortises had been cut in both the outside edges of the doors and the inside edges of the door frame, after the screw holes had all been located, drilled and tapped, and the doors test fit, I removed the doors and set them aside.

MAKING THE KAS WHOLE

     The last step before beginning the assembly process is gluing and screwing the cleats onto the backside of the two end panels (16). These will later be used to glue and screw the door frame into place, as well as the ship-lapped back boards.

     I then turned my attention to assembling the three poplar decks that would give the kas its shape. The bottom deck on which the door frame, end panels, and back boards would all rest was glued up from poplar boards milled thicker than the rest because this deck would be shouldering all the weight of the completed kas and whatever it might eventually contain. The tenons atop the four feet were glued into mortises drilled into the deck.

     I then attached both end panels and the door frame, after which I hung the doors. I attached the drawer guides and runners.

     The middle deck which is supported by a hardwood frame was given a molded front edge before being slid into place (17). The thickness on this deck was reduced to 3/4″ in order to give its front edge a lighter appearance. I attached the deck with heavy brass screws passing through the deck into the hardwood framework underneath. Also, I probably should mention the vertical support that rises from the bottom deck and attaches to the back frame member under the middle deck. I think it's unnecessary. Although the 3/4″ poplar shelf is not, by itself, enough to carry whatever might be stacked on this shelf, the framework underneath this deck is. Nevertheless, I added the vertical support in back simply because there was space.

     I did a little prep work before I attempted to fit and attach the cornice moldings. First I added the clamped cleats (18) just above the door opening. These would support the heavy cornice molding while it was being fit and then screwed in place. The two strips you see clamped on either end of the cabinet reaching out over the front were installed to make it possible for me to get an accurate measurement for the front cornice molding length. These were necessary because the bead at each of the cabinet's front corners made it difficult to precisely locate the corners of the cabinet.

     I installed the cornice molding in two layers. The first layer included everything but the cap. I first cut the miters on the front section of this first layer, using a hollow-ground planer blade on my tablesaw with the saw's miter gauge establishing the 45° angles. I then screwed this section into place from the rear, using 2″ #8 drywall screws, driving them through the top rail of the door frame and into the fat section at the base of the ogee. I used a lot of screws because this molding sandwich is heavy. I then fit the two end pieces to the corner. I finished off the cornice by attaching the cap molding to the top of the bottom section of the cornice.

     Shop-made moldings don't exhibit the same consistency of size and profile that typify moldings made on commercial molding machines, so if, like me, you made your own moldings, they probably won't match up perfectly at the mitered corners. Fortunately, a little profile disagreement at a mitered corner is easy to fix. If part of one profile extends a bit beyond the mating profile, remove material from the extending profile with a shoulder plane, carving tools and sandpaper. As long as the joint itself is tight, you can rectify any profile disagreement with a bit of patient handwork.

KAS MATERIALS LIST
Top	1 @ ¾″ × 20″ × 44⅞″
Top Front Rail	1 @ ¾″ × 6⅛″ × 43⅜″
Bottom Front Rail	1 @ ¾″ × 3¼″ × 43⅜″
Outer Front Stiles	2 @ ¾″ × 2″ × 59⅞″
Bottom	1 @ ⅞″ × 20¼″ × 45¾″
Back	7 @ ¾″ × 7″ × 59⅞″
Vertical Cleats	2 @ 1″ × 1″ × 59⅞″
Vertical Cleats Top	2 @ 1″ × 1″ × 26¾″
Vertical Cleats Bottom	2 @ 1″ × 1″ × 30 5/16″
Horizontal Cleat Top	1 @ 1″ × 1″ × 42⅛″
Horizontal Cleat Bottom Left	1 @ 1″ × 1″ × 19⅝″
Horizontal Cleat Bottom Right	1 @ 1″ × 1″ × 17⅞″
Horizontal Cleat Bottom	1 @ 1″ × 1″ × 40″
Side Top Rails	2 @ 13/16″ × 8⅞″ × 18¾″
Side Bottom Rails	2 @ 13/16″ × 7 1/16″ × 18¾″
Side Stiles	4 @ 13/16″ × 2¾″ × 59⅞″
Top Panels	4 @ ¾″ × 15½″ × 19¼″
Bottom Panels	4 @ ¾″ × 15½″ × 23½″
Top Vertical Bolection Molding	8 @ ¾″ × ¾″ × 19⅞″
Bottom Vertical Bolection Molding	8 @ ¾″ × ¾″ × 24⅛″
Horizontal Bolection Molding	8 @ ¾″ × ¾″ × 16⅛″
Front Crown Molding	1 @ 2⅜″ × 5″ × 50½″
Front Crown Molding Top Bead	1 @ ¾″ × 3″ × 51″
Side Crown Molding	1 @ 2⅜″ × 5″ × 22⅝″
Side Crown Molding Top Bead	1 @ ¾″ × 3″ × 22⅞″
Front Base Molding	1 @ 1⅝″ × 2 3/16″ × 49″
Side Base Molding	2 @ 1⅝″ × 2 3/16″ × 22″
Door Latch	2 @ 5/16″ × 1⅛″ × 2″
Door Stop	1 @ ⅝″ × 2″ × 3¾″
Shelf Front Rail #1	1 @ ¾″ × 1 3/16″ × 42⅛″
Shelf Front Rail #2	1 @ ¾″ × 1¾″ × 44⅛″
Shelf	1 @ ¾″ × 18⅜″ × 44⅛″
Back Molding Top of Shelf	1 @ ¾″ × ¾″ × 42⅛″
Vertical Support Below Rear of Shelf	1 @ ¾″ × 1⅝″ × 31 5/16″
Vertical Cleats Supporting Shelf	4 @ ¾″ × 1½″ × 30 5/16″
Front and Back Shelf Support Rails	2 @ ¾″ × 1¾″ × 44 1/16″
Center Shelf Support Rail	1 @ ¾″ × 1¾″ × 42 9/16″
Strips Across Shelf Supports	3 @ 5/16″ × 13/16″ × 15″
Drawer Runners	12 @ ¾″ × 1¾″ × 16 9/16″
Drawer Guides	6 @ ¾″ × 1″ × 16 9/16″
Support Stiles	2 @ ¾″ × 1¾″ × 13½″
DOORS
Stiles	4 @ 13/16″ × 2 11/16″ × 50⅜″
Top Rail	2 @ 13/16″ × 2 11/16″ × 18⅝″
Center Rail	2 @ 13/16″ × 2 11/16″ × 18⅝″
Bottom Rail	2 @ 13/16″ × 3¾″ × 18⅝″
Top Door Panels	2 @ 13/16″ × 3¾″ × 18⅝″
Bottom Door Panels	2 @ 13/16″ × 3¾″ × 18⅝″
Horizontal Bolection Molding	8 @ ¾″ × ¾″ × 16″
Pegs	¼″ diameter × 13/16″
DRAWERS
Front	3 @ ¾″ × 8⅞″ × 38″
Sides	6 @ ¾″ × 8″ × 16¼″
Back	3 @ ¾″ × 6¾″ × 38″
Bottom	3 @ ¾″ × 15¾″ × 37″

These measurements represent the finalized dimensions of all parts. Please use these if there is any contradiction with measurements on the drawings.

     I then cut, rabbetted and fit the ship-lapped back boards, but I didn't install them because I thought I might need access as I worked on fitting the drawers.

FITTING DRAWERS

     The three big drawers are through-dovetailed together from 3/4″ poplar. This is heavier material than I would normally use for drawer components, but these are unusually large drawers that might be asked to carry a lot of weight.

     After cutting the dovetails by hand and assembling the four sides of each drawer, I planed the excess length from the pins and tails using a low-angle Lie-Nielsen plane designed for such an application.

     I then fit each drawer frame to its opening before I made and installed drawer bottoms. The absence of the bottom not only makes the drawer lighter to handle; it also and more importantly makes it possible for me to see exactly what's happening when the bottom edge of each drawer side traverses the drawer runner (19). In a perfect world, those bottom edges would make consistent contact with their drawer runners along the full length of the drawer's passage from open to closed when I first test the drawer in its opening, but I don't think it's ever happened to any drawer I've built. Typically, the bottom edges of the drawer will need the light touch of a good plane to get this consistent contact. Notice that the bottom edge of the drawer side when it's properly fit makes contact with the drawer runner along its full length (20). Notice also the consistent 3/32″ clearance between the top edge of the drawer side and the bottom of the runner for the drawer above, a runner which serves as the kicker strip for the drawer below.

     The drawer is stopped when the top of the drawer back contacts the runner from the drawer above. I added a filler strip above the top drawer to create the stop at that location.

     The drawer bottoms were made from 3/4″ material. The top surface was planed smooth and the bottom surface was raised so the tapered edges could fit in grooves on the back face of the drawer front and the inside faces of the drawer sides. I raised the panels by connecting with a plane one line drawn 5/16″ from the top surface of the drawer bottom and a second line drawn on the bottom side of the drawer bottom 2″ from the edge. The bevel created in this way allowed the drawer bottoms to slide into place. I then installed the drawer bottoms by sliding them into their grooves and holding them in place with a pair of screws turned through notches in the drawer bottoms and into the bottom edge of the drawer back (21). These screws and the notches in which they're housed will allow the drawer bottom to be re-fit if cross-grain shrinkage pulls the drawer bottom from its groove on the inside face of the drawer front.

Kerry Pierce is a contributing editor for
Woodwork magazine.

Tags: construction, dresser, furniture

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under October 08 Issue, Woodwork Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.