Pew Box Project - Part 5

Now that most of the heavy-duty millwork was complete all I needed to do was drill a few holes and cut out all of the panels.

I started by drilling the holes in the side pieces that will hold the screws to attach the boxes to the back of the pews. Since I don't yet own a drill press I came up with a jig that would allow me to drill the angled holes. Below is a picture of the jig which was pretty simple to come up with. If I remember correctly I drilled the holes at a 30 degree angle.

The bottom panels were next. I simply ripped them at a 12 degree angle on the table saw, cut them to length on the miter saw, and then drilled pocket holes for 1 1/4 inch screws. I have a Kreg pocket hole jig that I bought on Amazon that really came in handy here.

The oak face panels were last and I kept the same setup as I did for the bottom panels on the table saw. After the panels were ripped and beveled they were cut to length on the miter saw.

Once I had finished cutting all of the pieces I sanded them with 150 grit sand paper and made preparations for the assembly.
 

Pew Box Project - Part 4

The next thing I had to do was probably the toughest thing for me to figure out initially. I had to create a stopped dado at the bottom of each piece, being mindful of left and right pieces, and it had to be at a 12 degree angle no less. After much trial and error I came up with the jig pictured below that would allow me to do matching pieces at the same time. I'm very happy to say that it worked out even better that I had hoped and it made the work go a lot quicker.


The real lifesaver of this entire portion of the project was the toggle clamps that helped keep the work pieces in one place.

Pew Box Project - Part 3

After the cove cutting and the routing on the back side was done it was time to cut the longer pieces down to the finished size of 5 3/4. Before cutting them down however I did some sanding to eliminate most of the sanding would need to be done on the smaller pieces later. I used a 1 1/8 diameter poplar dowel with 80 grit sandpaper wrapped around it to sand the cove. The rest of the surfaces were sanded with a random orbit sander. The miter saw was set up at a 12 degree bevel with a stop block that would allow me to make all the cuts consistently without stopping to measure each cut. Since each set of side pieces is a mirror image I had to flip the longer boards halfway through cutting to get the same number of right and left pieces out of each long board.

Pew Box Project - Part 2

Once the coves were cut I had to cut the dado on the backside of the side pieces to hold the back panels. Instead of routing the dados on each individual piece I left the material at its original length of 60 inches. The dados were cut in two passes of 1/8 of an inch each to reach the final depth of 1/4 inch. After the dados were cut I switched out the 1/4 inch router bit with a 1/8 inch round over bit to round over the outward facing outside edges to give the pieces a cleaner look.

Click the thumbnails below to see the full size images.

Pew Box Project - Part 1

Work has finally begun on getting the actual boxes produced. To start with I created a cut list detailing dimensions and number of pieces needed to build 28 boxes. The first order of business was getting the cove cut on the end pieces. After scratching my head trying to come up with an efficient and cost effective way to cut the coves I decided to use my table saw. This beats the expense of buying a new router bit and the time of searching for said bit since there seems to be a lack of them locally. The cove is approximately 1 inch wide by 1/4 deep. Two passes of 1/8 inch each were made to achieve the final depth. A third pass was run as a cleanup pass to minimize sanding later. To set up the jig on the table saw I used two strips of Poplar as a guide clamped at the appropriate angle and width.

Click on the photos below to see how the saw was set up for the cove cut.

Pew Box Project - Prototype

Here are some photos of the prototype box I built last spring out of white oak. I've also included a comparison of one of the original boxes. 

Pew Box Project - Intro

This is the first project I've decided to keep track of from beginning to end so I'll start with a little background.

I was asked to construct new pew boxes for our church which are attached to the back of the pews and hold the hymnals. The exisiting boxes are too small to contain all of the hymnals so I was asked to construct new ones that are similar in style but wider. I'm using white oak as the material to match the existing boxes and pews.

So I started by building a prototype earlier this year before purchasing all the material online. Once the prototype was finished I received the go ahead to buy the rest of the wood. Unfortunately time slipped away and I became busy with summer projects and work. Now that things have settled down and the weather has forced me inside I've made the completion of the pew box project a high priority. I also have a backlog, more like a wish list, of projects I want to start.

Click on the thumbnails below to see some prototyping images I created with Google Sketchup. These will make more sense once I upload photos of the completed boxes.