Townsend Kneehole Bureau Kneehole Door & Shell Step 9

Time to start on the kneehole door.  This is one of the more challenging steps in the construction of the Townsend Bureau.
The concave shell and the large recess that is in the door makes it a lot of work to remove all that material.

I took a portion of the plans and cut out the shell and door pattern. 

I milled a piece of mahogany 1 inch thick and fitted it to the opening.  Then I traced the pattern on to the door with carbon paper.

The bottom pattern shows how much material that I have to remove to make th recess.

I carved a practise shell in a scrap piece of mahogany.  A little practise never hurt anyone.

The first thing I needed to do was remove a large portion of the recess with my dado set mounted in my radial arm saw.  I moved it over 3/4 inch each pass.

Now I need to remove the steps created by the dado set and carve the cove on the sides.  I am using a #5 1 inch carving gouge. 

I picked this piece of mahogany because of the straight grain, only to find out that the grain changes direction right in the middle. Oh well have to carve in a different direction

I have the recess carved out now and lightly sanded. Now I have to carve a dish at the top for the shell.

Carving the dish 1/4 inch deep for the shell.

Now that the dish is created, I copied the shell pattern on using carbon paper.  I marked out which of the shell rays are to be lower and which would be upper.

I carved the shell rays by lowering the two from each side of a raised one and then rounding it over.
Here I am carving the lower one next to the raised ray.

After carving the shell, I cleaned up the tool marks using a little ultra flexible sand paper from 3M.  This is the first time that I have used it and I think it is great.

All cleaned up ready for the lock.

I marked out where I wanted it positioned and then traced around it for the pattern.

Then using a chisel and hand router plane I created the lock mortise

 I placed the escutcheon over the hole for the key and traced the keyhole shape on to the door

I used a jig saw to cut out the material in the shape of a key hole.

I temporally mounted the escutcheon and made sure the lock was working smoothly.

I mounted the hinges on the door in mortises created with the router plane. The hinges are 2 inch brass.

Putting the hinge mortises in the kneehole with the router plane was a real pain because of the narrow opening. I cut a mortise for the lock in the left side of the knee hole with a short chisel.  The kneehole is only 10 inches wide. There is not a lot of room to work.

The door closes and locks correctly, so that step is complete.. 

Now I think I'll go back to working on the drawers.

Here is today's video: