Bombe Secretary (picture heavy)

[Artie]

Beautiful. Like everyone else I enjoy the pics . Very nice work.

[Peter Tremblay]

brnhornt said:

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Any further progress Peter?

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Well, this is what distracted me from my bombe...



Not perfect... but I've finally got an infill

There are more pics here.

I have another project to do (for our parish school charity auction) before I can get back to the bombe

[jonzz]

Nice work Peter!!

[EightFingers]

Peter Tremblay said:

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[blockquote]brnhornt said:

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Any further progress Peter?

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Well, this is what distracted me from my bombe...



Not perfect... but I've finally got an infill

There are more pics here.

I have another project to do (for our parish school charity auction) before I can get back to the bombe

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[/blockquote]


Down to 8 microns yet?

[rwhite]

You certainly have choosen an ambitious project. I will be interested in your progress.

[MattSwid]

Here's hoping for an update. Hopefully you didn't give up woodworking for lent.
Matt

[Peter Tremblay]

I know it's been a while.

The chest is sitting in the shop looking lonely.

These last two months I've been frantically working on two cabinets for an auction to benefit our parish school... it's on Saturday.

I'll post pictures when I'm done with it... on Saturday morning.

[Peter Tremblay]

Well, the wait is over.

I recently went away for some vacation/woodworking and I spent a lot of time working on my bombe secretary.

This past year I did not spend much time on it for a lot of reasons. Mainly I was barely in the shop and when I was I was busy building two cabinets for a charity auction for our parish school. After that I rarely got into the shop.

Well that changed last week.

I was able to get a fair bit done but I did not take too many process pictures.

I laid out the drawer dividers.

Cut the sliding dovetails for the drawer dividers and the writing surface.

Fit the writing surface and the drawer dividers.

Constructed the drawer runners and backs.

Constructed the entire writing surface.

Cut the 3/16" beads in the drawer dividers and bottom of the writing surface

Cleaned out the waste between the beads.

The middle drawer divider had to be done by hand (it's on an angle to match the curve of the carcass front) and it took a few hours to cut the beads and then remove the waste with a chisel and scrapers.

I then dry fit it all together... then disassembled.

At this point I then cut the angle for the writing desk and then glued it up.

Finally I cut the blanks for the bottom molding but I have not gotten around to cutting the profile.

Lastly I was fiddling with making templates for the curved and serpentine drawer fronts. These drawer fronts will be very slow and difficult.
I think I'm going to get (or glue up) some 12/4 popular and make one or two test drawers before I cut into my matching 12/4 walnut slabs.

Here are my few pics from the weeks.

The sliding dovetails of the drawer fronts were done and dry fit. No beads yet.



Another shot. You can see that the sliding dovetails are proud in the carcass sides. That is to allow for the relief to match the bead work.


Filling the gaps on my worst sliding dovetail. This is the top left of the writing surface.


I did the sliding dovetails backwards. I started doing the top ones and then by the time I got to the bottom ones they were perfect and tight right off of my saw.

The middle drawer divider. The was done completely by hand because of it being on a matching angle to the the front of the case.


The final glue up. The top is glued in last after the gallery is completed.


Thanks for your patience I hope you enjoyed the progress update.

[brnhornt]

Glad to see you're back at it

[jteneyck]

Nice work. Thanks for posting the pics. Why is it you can't make templates and route the bead details on the dividers? Even if you had to have a custom router bit made it would save a lot of work. I know that wouldn't be true to how it was done originally, but I personally would be OK with that.

John