Hey Folks,

I haven’t talked much about my latest project; a trifold privacy screen, made of cherry and CVG (clear, vertical grain) douglas fir.  It’s a combination that has worked well for me in the past, and hopefully will again.

The screen is a frame and panel construct with Greene and Greene styled details.  Some of these include, heavier stiles (vertical component) than rails (horizontal component), a cloud-lift motif in the rails, rounded corners and arrises, and square ebony plugs at the mortise and tenon joints.  The cloud-lift in the rails translates to a more complicated shape for the doug fir infill.  The relatively broad expanse of the panel would also be sensitive to ambient moisture changes, and the resulting movement might be too much for the designed shape.  So instead of gluing the panel up (as I had planned to do today) instead I unplugged the glue pot and took down last year’s Christmas present, my left handed plough plan.

By planing an intersecting half lap on each edge of the panel boards (and not gluing them), there are multiple reliefs for movement.  Since the panels are only 1/4″ thick, I decided to do the job by hand.  There is a slight chamfer on each side of the joint, making a narrow “V” between the boards.

I’ll have more pictures later, as things progress.

Cheers,
Tom

Ps.  The heron images are for study only.