ROLL-YOUR-OWN 9: COMING UNHINGED

[Guest Warren]

That is just looking beautiful Al , I wish I had known you we're attempting such a brave act with a router . I have a small one you could have borrowed. :-D

Well I'm off now, I'm going to step outside and incinerate an R Y J short chirchill .

Cheers Mate

[Fishhound]

Absolutely beautiful, I admire your skills as a woodworker and this project has been a blast to follow.:-D

[smokum]

Unreal...just beautiful.

[Leftridge]

An amazing series Al, that you are to be commended to contributing to this forum.

May Ala (whomever that is) bless you with 60 virgins (the customary 40 plus an extra 20 for your consistancy with posting) and may Rob bless you with a box of your favorite vitola free of charge! :-D

[CIGARHead]

Looks amazing Al. Great job and thank you for taking the time to post the tutorial.

[Colt45]

Really nice Al! A little hint for the power tools - the round pegs go in the round holes.

And nice of you to throw in some cigars as well

[Dr.G]

Fantastic stuff Alain! :-) :-)

Thanks again for sharing your mastery with us.

Do the dividers float and lock in to the tray like a comb?

Cheers,

George

[Fuzz]

Un-freakin'-believable! Thanks for all your work on this tutorial, it has been a real pleasure reading. I only wish I had one tenth of your woodworking skill.

Whoever gets their hands on this humi will be one lucky S.O.B.

[El Presidente]

Alain....time for another Hamlet and bottle of wine on the deck of Czar house this week ;-)

Remarkable work mate....remarkable.

[SmokinAl]

G'day Wazza, appreciated mate. Once is enough. I just don't have the courage to run a router on nearly finished work ever again. Just way too dangerous.

Dr.G, I'm flabbergasted. I've been building these for years and I only just came up with that design 18 months ago. You're in the wrong line of work.

Prez, you don't have to twist my arm too hard. I'm overdue for a drink.

Thanks to you all once again for your kind words and to Colt for the good advice.

I'm getting seriously tempted to make another of these for myself, just to see how long it takes...I'm thinking about 3 weekends would do it! ;-)

[Dr.G]

» Dr.G, I'm flabbergasted. I've been building these for years and I only

» just came up with that design 18 months ago. You're in the wrong line of

» work.

Thanks Alain! And at least humidors don't turn up drunk to ED at 6am on a Sunday morning after drinking all night and tell you that their 15th drink was spiked and that's why they're so shi*faced!

» I'm getting seriously tempted to make another of these for myself, just to

» see how long it takes...I'm thinking about 3 weekends would do it! ;-)

Maybe you should just keep this one for yourself; I mean your smokes are already in it! :-D

Cheers,

George

[SmokinAl]

Hello again and for the last time folks in this overly wordy and convoluted diatribe that is “Roll your own – making the hang ten humidor”.

Today’s job is not such a big deal. We’re going to fit some Quadrant Hinges to the humidor which will involve cutting some little mortises for them to slip into. Simple, right...

Normally when I do this, I scribe a line around the outside of the hinge marking where I want it to sit and using a few dovetailed chisels hog out most of the waste. Because most quadrant hinges come without square corners I also use a carving chisel with a diameter the same as the round bits on the hinge to make a nice clean cut.

You know, cabinet hardware never used to be round. It was square with 90 degree angles so cabinet makers could cut the shape out with a chisel and a minimum of fuss. Why has some bright spark decided to make these round bits of a 5/16” diameter? The answer is the carbide cutting bit.

You will find in modern factories something called an overhead router which is a very clever machine that can track a cutting head to virtually any pattern. These cutters are like a drill with a flat bottom so when they cut a straight line they naturally end in a semi-circle, rather than a nice, crisp, easy to do by hand, 90 degree face.

Some manufacturers of hardware have taken pity on the home handyman and small cabinet shop and have produced templates that can be used to cut very precisely the exact shape of their hinge. I thought for this part of the tutorial I might fit these hinges with template and router because it seems much more likely that anyone following along will fit their hinges this way.

The template for the hinges I’m using is machined out of brass to very high tolerances. The plan is to line up the top and bottom of the box, clamp it all into place and route both the lid and base at the same time. It’s a clever idea as this will save a lot of time aligning top to bottom. It’s designed to be used with a half inch pattern following guide in a hand held router.

Here’s the only router I own which is way too big and powerful for this job. It has what was meant to be a half inch pattern follower screwed to the bottom. Imagine my delight when I found this thing was out of tolerance by more than +0.05”. All the scratch marks you see around the outside are from the file I used to very imprecisely make the blasted thing fit. Poking through the centre of that is the router bit.

Here you see it all jigged up and ready to go. Finally those woodworking magazines have paid off! Well them and a strategically placed phone book to lift the lid into plane with the box.

So this is what we end up with. A 2.5 horsepower router (about as big as you can get) delicately balanced on a tiny brass plate. When I switch this thing on, it actually jumps hard to right. There’s a reason this has always been mounted in a router table. It was at this point I started to think I was out of my cotton pickin’ mind but other people do this and live to tell the tale, hell, what could possibly go wrong?

...and the monkey flips the switch...

I’m balancing the router on its back edge. I’ll drop the front forward when it gets up to full speed and slide this neatly and effortlessly around the template. Vrrrooooommmm: the router roars into life. I grab on tightly to resist the kick, scared that it will run off and start chomping up the Hang-ten. I start lowering down into the guide and start tracing it around. Three seconds in and I’m feeling pretty cocky. This thing really works! Cool!

Twang! Clunk! The clamps across the front of the box must have decided that I was too smug ‘cause they both let go at same time and drop onto my feet. Horrors! The sheer volume of stuff that goes through your head when a power tool goes wonky is amazing. Whilst reaching for the power switch I was honestly thinking “Screw it, I’ll just start again from scratch.” I had actually planned out the required time frame to rebuild the carcase from scratch before the router stopped spinning.

The damage done, thankfully, was minimal. The router tore out the side of the box and cut out about an inch from the corner. This was easily fixable fortunately. A little Spanish Cedar, some glue and a bit more veneering and we’re back on track.

I stood and looked at the other side of the box with the finely machined and now heavily scratched template in my hand and thought: “Nahhh, not twice in one day, not for this little black duck”. (Anacostiakat. Respect.) “Time to get out the chisels.”

The end result? Router: nil, chisels: 1. I dare say it’s simply a matter of what you’re used to and if you’re less inclined to acts of random stupidity then routing in hinges with a template is probably a good way to go. Personally, I’ll never know.

Looking at the finished result it’s hard to tell which side was cut by hand and which by machine, both are a perfect fit and both are structurally very strong.

Whilst we now have our finished tutorial humidor, I still have a lot of polishing to do to get this up to par. I was going to skimp and cheat a little and just use normal dividers in the trays. I will make some of my proper ones for you though. It seems unlikely anyone will try making this design commercially.

So there you have it folks. I’m going to start conditioning this box now and throw in a few sticks so I don’t have to walk upstairs to get another one whilst I’m polishing it.

Hopefully, these will see me through the next week or so whilst the French Polish is applied, dries, is re-applied, re-dries and is applied again. I’ll make a small plastic tray to house the RH Beads from those erudite raconteurs and snappily dressed guys at Cigarmony that will fit into the tray at the bottom and then we’ll mount a brass plaque in the lid, inscribed with something nice for the new owner.

I’m planning to do a (very) brief wrap-up of this project which will detail costs, materials and sources of supply for those of you who are brave enough to give it a go. To the rest of you, I thank you humbly for your indulgence and kind words over the past few weeks. I have taken great delight in being able to bring you this series and I look forward to seeing you ‘round the forum.

Cheers,

Al.