So here are the compound angled dovetails as promised last week:
To get both pieces to lean at 70 degrees and the dovetail surfaces to meet requires the end of each piece to be angled at not quite 70 degrees across its width (the miter angle) and to have a slight bevel across the depth. Have a look here and here for more details including some nice trig formulas for those readers who like a bit of mathematics.
Why would you want to make such a joint? Maybe a box or tray with sloping sides. Like this.
We had another school trip. This time to the veneer shop which in this case was in Barking, Essex. They have a lot of veneer:
Cross-grain molding is not something I’ve come across before. Here is the example piece:
Under the molding is a plane square section frame made with mortise and tenon joints or similar. The molding is the interesting bit because as the name suggests the pattern is cut across the grain so you get lots of joins as each piece is only as long as the width of a board. This was all the rage in the 1700’s apparently. I’m not a fan of its appearance.
Here are some shots of the molding being prepared by hand with some classic molding planes.
The molding planes take a bit of getting used to. They have no fences or other means of keeping them in a straight line and the blades are adjusted as for most wooden planes with the tap of a hammer. To cut the molding we glued a sequence of pieces to some ply with a layer of paper in between so it could be un-glued when the work was done. Then get to work with rebate plane, molding planes and bench planes until you get the shape you want. We did this in 2 sections but obviously the profiles need to match so you don’t get strange steps where the ends of each section meet on the frame.
The last picture is my frame all glued but with no finish. Maybe it will look OK with some finish.
Here is Alex’s chair almost done. I’m looking forward to chair making in the summer:
No progress on my garage project as it was freezing cold at the weekend and I had a sniffle. But we did make some cheese!
Baylis Handmade 
