McIntosh and Co. Cabinetmakers Day 3 and 4

For my third and forth days working for McIntosh and Co. Cabinetmakers I was assigned tasks such as drum sanding 4 sides of maple sticks for cabinet nosings. After that task I had to fine sand both sides with a 150 grit using their down-draft sanding table. Below the table is a funnel that draws air with a mechanical dust collector down through the slats in the table top.

At this stage we were gluing nosings onto shelves that were to be painted, this step is time consuming but important never the less. That maple that I "time saved" or drum sanded earlier were then cut to a very precise lengths and glued to an MDO shelf. Medium Density Overlay is an engineered product that is manufactured from the wood fiber residuals of softwood and hardwoods. Then glued and placed under high heat and pressure. Its a perfect surface for paint with a flawless finish surface. It is also the same material stop signs are composed of.

In this photo, its hard to see whats what but the clamps are holding what was glued together but so you get adequate pressure and no marks on the finish nosing you use a clamping caul. A Caul is a piece of wood sometimes with an intentional crown in it that is used as a clamping buffer. Having a caul with a camber or crown provides additional pressure squeezing your glue up together.    

Before and After pictures of dato'ed shelf nosings

Now we are onto Thurday.....

Lastly, I did some shaping. This take was simple. We ran some test pieces through and then once we had the look and profile we ran it all through. Then broke the edges by hand.

With the chisel in that photo I was assigned the task of cleaning door panels that had glue squeeze out in the areas that couldn't be sanded. As well as remove and wood that was not removed during the shaping process that obstructed the uniformity in the thumbnail profile of the doors. I also broke all the edges very lightly to make for better painted surface. Paint does not stand up well to a sharp surface so is always good to lightly break edges when painting