- Originally published June 29, 2018.
This part is about the base of the urn. The project is getting close to being done.
I added a chamfer to the base pieces that isn’t at 45º. I am not sure what angle it is as I created it by eye. Here’s the side profile of the base pieces.
I think the chamfer looks good.
Next I have to cut the miters for the corners. If you haven’t heard of this tool, it’s called a bench hook. It’s really simple and easy to make. They’ve been in use for hundreds of years and most people have never heard of them. I’m using my crosscut carcass saw to cut the miter at roughly the right angle. Is it accurate? No, it doesn’t need to be.
After just sawing the miters they are not very good. The vertical angles don’t match and they are not precisely 45º. This is not a problem because we’re not done, we need another tool.
And here is the tool we need. This is a shimmable miter shooting board. It is used with a sharp plane and can be adjusted very accurately with paper shims. The plane cuts very thin shavings from the roughly mitered wood.
This is the how the miters look with the shooting board. The one on the bottom is after it was cut with the saw. The top one is from the shooting board. It’s a perfect miter.
If the angle from the saw is off a little, the plane trues it up. Here is one after a few passes with the plane. It is making the angle a perfect 45º.
The end result is a good miter joint. That’s much better.
After cutting and trimming all the miters the base is ready for its next step.
And here’s the final step all done. Making some clearance in the base makes it look less clunky. That was done with a saw, some chisels, a spokeshave, and scrapers.
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That was it for this session. I’m posting a lot because I have one week. With the upcoming holiday I need to be done sooner so I am getting out to the shop a lot now. I am retired, after all. 😎
Thanks for all the feedback on these long and many posts.
-Eric
Eric J. Knapp 