The crown

In an earlier blog I wrote that the carcass of the cabinet was mostly done, but there was one thing missing yet, an important one for looks, the crown moulding! Having made the moulding itself previously, I "only" needed to cut the pieces to length, adjust the miters and glue them to the case. Small job, but one of these nerve wracking operations. Bungling up the miters at this point would have set me back quite a bit.

I have an Ulmia miterbox, but it doesn't cut precisely enough to fit the mouldings straight of the saw. So I indulged for a moment and got myself a real miter jack.

It was only 15 euro (well, plus a full tank of gas because I borrowed my wifes car). It's a beast. I don't know why they thought they needed 32 cm work space in this thing, must have been some enormous crown mouldings. It is made of oak and in excellent condition. After planing the faces of the two jaws it is very precise again.

This machine allows me to plane the mitered corners with great precision and in comfort. I also could have made a 45 degree shooting board, but these miter jacks just work better.

And it all worked out. After cutting the mouldings on the Ulmia at 45 degrees I could adjust them to a nice gapless fit. Here's the dry fit of one corner.

And the other one to show that I succeeded on both sides.

For the glue up I used hide glue again. the nice thing about hide glue is that it tacks very quickly. So you can just push the parts into position and press them down with your hands for a while. Then they won't slip away anymore like normal pvac glue likes to do. For good meassure I improvised some clamps. The front moulding is glued, the two side pieces are only glued for a couple cm's at the front and has some nails in the back,because of the cross grain situation.

And after waiting for several hours until the glue dried and after sanding the corners a bit to remove any uneveness, this is how it turned out. I'm a happy man :-)