The wife and I have recently gotten into playing darts as a hobby. We’ve been playing in our basement on an old dart board that I inherited from my dad housed in a ratty cabinet that looks aweful.
Im currently in a lul for projects as it is now cold outside and my garage/workshop is unheated and uninsulated and its too cold to work in at this time of year most of the time as any project of size requires having the garage door open to wheel out the table saw to have enough room to work.
Anyways, thought this would be a good chance to practice my hand planing skills while working on a small project that i could do with the garage door closed and the heater on.
Started off with some nice cherry boards that I picked up from my local mill Century Mill Lumber Not as cheap as I was hoping but never the less, started off by planing the boards down with my new Wood River #6 (See Review here)
Once i got the boards nice and flat and smoothed down, i took them to the table saw using the new rip sled i made a few months back (I will post more about that later) and then cut them down to size
After routing out the back to insert the backing board, I assembled the frame using end joints with biscuits. I was tempted to do dovetails but i thought that a stray dart might end up splitting a chunk off the corner.
I put together the doors with maple veneered plywood and Cherry frame, biscuit joined and glue. I’ve never done a door before, so this was a new task to me. Turned out pretty well so far, feel like i’ve learned quite alot.
As for the backing board, i used construction grade plywood scrap that i had lying around. Since I was in a hand plane kind of mood, i figured I would see how the plywood took to planing. For the job, i took out a Stanley #4 that i bought at a trade show in rough shape for $5. After about 8 hours of work on it, the sole is flat and it works great. With the investment of a Lee Valley/Veritas replacement blade (I will write a review on this later), it turned out to be an aweome plane.
As you can see, the plywood took very well to planing.
So far this has been a great project. I feel much more confident with my hand planing skills. It has certainly given me lots of practice. I really enjoyed taking down the rough milled lumber to fine smooth boards.
More to come as i continue to work on this project.