Psst, wanna see a topless cabinet?

Posted on April 14, 2014 by woodworksbyjohn

Topless HDTV Cabinet

The excitement continues as the cabinet is really starting to take shape and I must admit I’m very pleased with the outcome. This has been quite a challenge and I continue to learn from this project. To me, the motivation and interest in building things is as much about the process as it is with the final results. I’ve kept track of my time on this project since that’s something that usually comes up when someone sees work like this. Not counting the design time and “mental pondering” there are somewhere around 75 hours of actual work time on this so far.

Time required to make furniture (or anything for that matter) is hard to explain to those not familiar with the process. For example, my wife is an outstanding seamstress and artist. If I thought of making something like a skirt, I’d think just take two pieces of material, sew them together, add a waistband and a button and you’re done — right!! The steps needed to create things from scratch are numerous. With the mindset of consumers keyed in to Ikea, Macy’s or Target level of goods what we do as custom makers is hard to comprehend.

Top Mounting Blocks

To illustrate that, here are the pieces needed to attach the top to the cabinet. The top will be anchored to the front to maintain that reveal but since it’s solid wood a way for it to move seasonally is needed to prevent it from splitting. Although this photo is kind of distorted I think you can see what I’m talking about. The mounting blocks are attached with screws to the cabinets sides and back. Note the slot in each one, they run from front to back since any wood movement will be across the the face of the top. I suppose a kerf could have been made in the sides to use metal clips similar to those in this LINK but I decided to stay more traditional.

Top Mounting Blocks

Here are the blocks, they take a good amount of time to fabricate. First of all a recess is drilled to accommodate the head of the attaching screw. I’m using drawer front screws which have a large, washer style head. Then, an oversized slot needed to be centered in that recess so the screw can move freely. Next up is drilling the hole for mounting — actually two holes; the pilot and the counterbore to recess the screw into the block. Finally, all surfaces were block planed smooth before attaching them to the cabinet. Time consuming — yes; but so worthwhile in my opinion!

The design concept of this piece was the use of dovetails through-out. That’s the unifying detail. The pulls were based on that design element and here you can see how it all works together. Obviously the pull is shaped like a dovetail, then the drawer dividers is dovetailed into the shelf and bottom stretcher. That stretcher is joined to the side with twin dovetails. I think one of the more challenging aspects was hand cutting these joints into the Sapele! It’s beautiful in my opinion but the interlocked grain was difficult to work with chisels but that’s okay, just adds to the challenge.

The entire case and drawers are finished with shellac which was padded on; somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-8 coats. Once that was cured, mineral oil and 800 grit wet/dry paper was used to rub everything out and a final coat of Liberon Black Bison wax was applied with a white abrasive pad. My wife keeps wanting to know when this can be brought in and put to use, soon as I finish the top. This promises to be a good arm and shoulder work out! As luck would have it, it has twisted ever so slightly so will require a bit of work with the scrub plane followed with jointer and smooth. At 17″ wide it won’t fit in my 15″ planer so I’ll be doing the entire piece by hand. Guess I better quit pushing keys on the laptop and go to planing!

Posted in HDTV Stand | Tagged Birdseye Maple, Design Process, hand cut dovetails, HDTV stand, Sapele, shellac, tabletop fasteners | 3 Comments

Hardware = Jewelry for the Cabinet

Posted on April 9, 2014 by woodworksbyjohn

A few posts ago (here’s a LINK), I allowed myself to get off track and worked on what I thought would be a good pull for this project. Well, the pull was good but just didn’t fit into the over-all character and design I wanted for this piece. At the suggestion of my wife I began playing around with a design that would incorporate the dovetail joinery and here’s what developed:

Dovetail inspired, Birdseye Maple Drawer Pulls

I thought I’d taken a picture of the beginning stages but if I did they’re floating somewhere out in the electronic world! I think it’s easy enough to understand if I explain the process. The pull will be mortised into the drawer front so the over-all thickness needed to be about an inch to begin with. I had a 1/4″ thick piece of Birdseye Maple that was about an inch wide and 10″ long. This was first laminated onto a piece of Sapele to give a total thickness of an inch. Once that was thoroughly dry a dado head was used on the tablesaw to remove most of the Sapele leaving a 1/4″+ wide section centered in the Maple — this is a T-shape. You can see that piece in the upper left-hand corner of this picture:

Template for Pulls

The template is a piece of 1/4″ MDF and the pulls were cut out on the bandsaw, then filed and sanded to final shape. Here are the four, I know there’s only 3 drawers but just in case! Ever notice when you make an extra piece for a project you seldom need it but if you don’t have it you will?

Four pulls, One coat of Shellac

Final fitting of Pull

I chose three of them for the project and fitted them to the drawer front. A slight dilemma here was the finishing process. It would be difficult to finish with the pull in place as I’m doing combination brush and padding with the shellac. My concern was getting shellac in the mortise and on the tenon. To solve that dilemma I will wait until the shellacking process is done, then trim the mortise/tenon to fit and glue them together before the finish is rubbed out. After fitting the pull it was marked for the drawer and an arrow to show which direction faces down. Here I’m using setting the distance from the top of the drawer to the top of the pull (2″).

The tenon was wrapped with tape to keep the shellac off and they are now being finished. Right now they look like the top photo and I’m liking it!

Posted in HDTV Stand | Tagged Birdseye Maple, drawer pulls, mortise & tenon, shellac, shop made hardware | Leave a comment

Fitting Drawers and Such

Posted on April 6, 2014 by woodworksbyjohn

In my last post you noticed I took a break from the cabinet and played around with carving an egg! That was a fun break but I knew the drawers weren’t going to assemble and install themselves so that is now almost complete. It’s really no wonder that most contemporary furniture pieces have metal slides for the drawer systems. By comparison, they’re a snap to install with their slotted screw holes for easy adjustment. Make it a box with a separate face to adjust your reveal and you can understand why wooden drawers and guides are so much more expensive unless, of course, it’s found at places like Cost Plus where the drawers barely open!

Drawer Assembly

After the struggle I had with flattening out the drawer sides I knew I needed to pay careful attention to how these go together. The middle drawer is about 1/4″ wider than the two on the side so that was assembled first. A piece of 1/4″ plywood was temporarily slid into the drawer during assembly to maintain squareness. The front corners were mitered off and a cut out at the junction of the sides and back prevented any glue from permanently attaching that plywood piece. After assembling the middle drawer, that plywood piece was cut to fit the two outer ones. Once assembled they were planed to size.

: Caul used at dovetails to maintain pressure on bowed sides!

: Fully assembled, half blind dovetails in front and sliding dovetail for back

: Trimming joint flush

: Fine tuning drawer fit and reveal

Fitting Drawers

Aligning drawer guide

This was made a bit more difficult due to the nature of the sides, I’ve lamented about them enough so I have to leave it at “it is what it is”! This was my first attempt at these large sized drawers. In the past the traditional drawers I’ve done were single ones in a table and much smaller than these 6″ tall by 13″ wide ones. Rather than using separate runners and kickers for them, this cabinet has a drawer web that is dadoed into the sides. To separate the inner drawers I screwed a piece of Alder to it. This turned out to be a good decision as I was able to loosen the screws and tap them perfectly square.

Smoothing out the drawer web

Where the panel and frame pieces had a little bit of a discrepancy, a rabbet block plane smoothed out that transition. Just a side note here, many times my students will ask for tool recommendations and my usual response is to wait until you have the need for a specific tool and then buy the very best quality you can afford. A quality tool won’t necessarily make you a better woodworker but they do make your work more enjoyable and a bit easier to attain.

Installing drawer stop

It’s been quite a process getting the drawers to what I considered being acceptable. Are they perfect? — not quite but I know I’ve given it all that I can to get them as close as possible. Seasonal changes will affect their look too. The final step to the installation was making a drawer stop. What I came up with was a plywood strip, attached with screws through oversized holes. The drawer was installed and the strip aligned with the back of it. After marking the holes with a gimlet the holes were pre-drilled. Sometimes an “old fashioned” method is the best! The strip was then screwed down snug but loose enough to put the drawer in and move to the desired position. Once there, the screws were tightened. Love the gleam on the wood and the backs of the Big Leaf Maple doors!

Drawer fitting complete

Here’s a shot of all the drawer stops in place. The back of the cabinet is panel and frame and will be attached with screws. That way, if needed it can be removed for access to the drawers. Never know, once the piece is in the house humidity changes may make that something I’ll need to do but I hope not! Plan to begin the finishing process on the drawers and mortising in the pulls. Using platinum shellac, rubbed out with mineral oil, then waxed.

Posted in Hand Cut Dovetails, HDTV Stand | Tagged assembling dovetails, cauls, hand planing, Old Brown Glue, Sapele | 1 Comment

Not Quite Easter but here’s my Egg!

Posted on April 3, 2014 by woodworksbyjohn

So, pretty sure you can tell which is mine and which is China’s finest!

A new woodworking group has started that will meet the fourth Saturday of every month at Woodworkers Emporium here in Las Vegas. It’s the same place where I teach one day seminars on usage and set up of hand planes and also dovetails. This group, as if you can’t tell by the picture, will deal with wood carving. I’ve done some relief carving in the past but this is my first attempt at “in the round” work since my Boy Scout days! I still recall Mr. Hinkle telling us to just cut away everything that doesn’t look like a fish. We were using bars of soap then.

This group met on the 22nd. of March and there were 12-15 people there so we’re off to a good start. Some were very experienced and a few, like myself, were rank beginners. The group is headed by two friends of mine from the Sin City Woodworkers group (Dennis & Randy) and Randy especially urged me to try it out. Well, he may have to become my mentor whether he wants to or not but I must give him credit for egging me on to come to this meeting. Some of the guys with more experience showed off their work and we discussed several different styles of carving. Dennis had brought his sharpening set up to demonstrate that so there was something for everyone. The two of them had prepared some blocks of Basswood prior to the meeting. The challenge was to take one of them and turn it into an egg for the next meeting. NO sandpaper can be used to accomplish it either. I took two pieces not knowing what I was getting myself into!

Actually, I let them sit on my workbench while working on the TV cabinet as if they’d magically turn into eggs on their own. After a few days, I called Randy to see if he had a pattern I was interested. He did so I asked if I could get it from him and secretly hoped he’d give me a few one on one pointers for getting this square chunk of wood to look like an egg. Thankfully not only did I get a good cup of coffee, he also gave me quite a few pointers. He has quite an impressive collection of things he’s carved so he knows what he’s talking about for sure. Here’s a little montage of how the square block of wood became the egg (more of less) that you see in the top picture.

Starting point was to locate centers

Next, a circle was drawn to begin the carve.

One way to carve is to hold the knife as shown…

Which means you’re cutting towards your thumb and you could get cut!

Randy showed a better way to “fulcrum” the knife

Also tried to hold with a bench hook.

Lower half complete

Using the knife in the fulcrum method took some getting used to but once I got the hang of it there was more control. Even though I use my hands all day this used muscles I wasn’t aware I had that were sore the next couple of days. Using a plastic Easter egg as my model it seemed that the lower, fatter part of the egg takes up about one third so a line was drawn there. The lower half was completed first.

Not having any hard directions to completing the egg what worked for me was to draw a circle on the end to use as a guide to carve to. A bench hook was used to hold the egg at first so I could hog off the bulk of the material without too much risk of cutting myself.

Bench hook to “hog out” wood

Circles drawn on end as guide

By using a template from my drafting tools it was easier to draw the circle guide on the end of the egg. Probably drew 3-4 circles of diminishing diameters and used them as guides to carve down to. The hard part is knowing when to stop, it’d be real easy to turn this into a Robin’s egg by trying to smooth out all of the facets — remember: NO SANDPAPER!

I have my friend and neighbor, Richard, almost talked into giving the other block of wood a try and joining the carving group. He painted an unflattering picture of the two of us sitting on the porch in rocking chairs making chips and spitting into the wind!

I don’t think so !!

Posted in Carving | 1 Comment

Lesson Learned —- Drawer Woes!

Posted on April 1, 2014 by woodworksbyjohn

WoodworksbyJohn-LessonLearned-DovetailedDrawers-1

See the light?

I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only woodworker that re-saws 6/4 or 5/4 stock to get materials for making 1/2″ thick drawer sides —- am I right? I’ve done it in the past and had good results but now that I’m working on my challenge project the results are dismal!

When I was in Arizona I was able to find a 6/4 piece of Maple that was almost 7″ wide. Great, or so I thought; I would be able to resaw it and get all of the drawer sides and backs from it. The same goes for the drawer bottoms. I had some 5/4 Alder that I used in a planing seminar at Woodworkers Emporium. I cut these long enough so that I could use them for the bottoms after my students used them for practicing their plane set up and use on. Seemed like such a good plan, that is until the wood did what it wanted to do and cupped like you see in that picture.

Surfacing with my bronze smoother

So, you know what that means? If this was a project for a paying client I’m pretty sure I would have scrapped these pieces and started anew. But, since I’m living on a retired teacher’s pension decided to do the best work I possibly can with them. That means lots of planing to try and flatten them which, by no means, guarantees they’ll remain flat once glued up. For my insurance I’m using liquid hide glue which is my preferred glue for dovetails and box joints anyway. Should worse come to worse at least it’s reversible so I’ll be able to save the drawer fronts. I assembled the middle drawer this evening so we’ll see how things look in the morning.

RR = right side of right drawer

There are numerous ways to mark the parts of a piece of furniture during construction. I’ve done chalk and pencil but find that the best markings are made with a set of machinists stamps. I’ll put them on either the bottom of parts like this drawer or else directly on a tenon and them mark the corresponding mortise in such a way that the assembled joint covers over it. That takes care of the drawer sides.

As for the bottoms, as I mentioned they were made from a piece of resawn Alder. I had a 1/4″ blade in my bandsaw so rather than changing to a wider blade these pieces were initially cut on the tablesaw, about 1/2″ deep to make it easier for the narrow blade to track through the full, 7″+ width of the board.

Resawing Alder

Glued & clamped

Cleaning off glue with Stanley#80

Ready to run through the planer

So what’s the lesson learned from all of this? I think that it may be false economy to resaw my own lumber for drawer sides, especially ones this large that are 6+” x 15″. I know that quarter sawn lumber is preferred for drawer sides but it’s darn near impossible to find. Resawing to make sides for smaller drawers or boxes should be just fine but next time I have drawers of this size I’ll buy 4/4 stock and it through the planer, alternating sides for each pass. Then, after they sit in the shop for a week or more they should be stabilized. I honestly didn’t think I’d have this much trouble with the Maple. Figured it came from Phoenix which is almost as dry as Las Vegas so the differences wouldn’t be big deal, guess I was wrong!

Posted in HDTV Stand | Tagged Maple, Re-sawed lumber, Stanley # 80, warping | Leave a comment

Half-Blind Dovetails in Sapele: The Challenge Continues!

Posted on March 28, 2014 by woodworksbyjohn

Not being one to complain too much but these dovetails in this paticular chunk of Sapele are proving to be quite the challenge! The hall table I made last year was of Sapele as well and the dovetailing on those drawers went much easier.

Does not cut Cleanly

After doing one drawer side the chisels had a very noticeable burr on the backs of them. These are Lie-Nielsen bench chisels which I sharpen at a 30 degree angle — I mean there’s only 4 sockets to cut. I have a fine waterstone and water ready to remove that burr after several cuts. As you can see in the picture above, the grain doesn’t cut cleanly at all. I tried the method of cutting down to the bottom of the web with a smaller chisel but the grain seems to be somewhat brittle and will split beyond the line. This seems to be the best way to remove the socket material other than a router bit and borrowing someone’s Leigh jig! I’ll cut the back side with a wide chisel then remove the material with a smaller one that’s angled. Keeping the cuts shallow without trying to hog out too much wood a t a time is helpful too. When cleaning the socket out, the grain doesn’t cut cleanly so it’s very difficult getting a smooth surface. Glad this is a personal project because I’m not satisfied with the quality so far but am committed to it.

A technique that helps is the one I use to locate the bottom of the web. It begins by setting the marking gauge to the thickness of 1/4″ piece of polyethylene I use for glue ups. This is then used to guide the chisel when paring to the line. Even with this as an aid, the grain of the wood will allow the wood to split below the scribed line.

Setting marking gauge with 1/4″ polyethylene

Using polyethylene to guide chisel

Speaking of techniques, unfortunately the Maple I resawed for the drawer sides cupped on a few of the pieces. I cut dovetails first and clamp them together. By placing them on the tablesaw they are even. I had an auxiliary fence which kept them square as well. At this point the pieces were still identified with green tape but I have a set of machinists metal stamps that are used to permanently mark each piece. Too easy to get them confused!

Ready to cut the tails

I will keep the clamp on the two drawer sides and put them into the vise on my carving bench to lay out and cut the tails. This has been slow going to say the least. At times I wish I had a shop that had racks of lumber just waiting to be used. Sort of like the pictures of James Krenov’s shop. That way if I have a difficult board I can just go and find another! Well, my Dad used to say that you can wish in one hand and spit (or something else) in the other and see which one fills up first — better be satisfied with what I have and make it work the best I can.

Posted in HDTV Stand | Tagged dovetail tricks, half-blind dovetails, interlocking wood grain, Lie-Nielsen Chisels, Sapele | Leave a comment

Sapele + Half-Blind Dovetails = Sharpening Time

Posted on March 25, 2014 by woodworksbyjohn

Sapele Half-Blind Dovetail

In one of my past posts on the construction of the TV stand I’m currently working on I discussed how the Sapele is a difficult wood to work with. Saying that though, I’ve made other pieces from it so maybe it’s just these particular pieces. In any case, challenging projects will either improve your skills or frustrate you to take up knitting or something!!

Notice that the wood doesn’t split cleanly or evenly. It seems to be more successful to use a smaller chisel (3/8″ or so) and cut down on the end grain stopping just shy of the scribed line. This is the end of the piece of wood I have chosen to use for the drawer fronts. In any case, I’ll need to bring my A-game to the bench when I start to work on them. As you know, when making drawer fronts it’s best to have the grain continue all the way across the front of the cabinet so that leaves no room for error. Once the three drawer fronts are cut from the board you just can’t start over. Other than being extremely careful when working the tools should be as sharp so it’s time to hone my chisels.

I use the Veritas Mk. II honing guide and water stones for sharpening my tools. After trying other systems I really like this and the only problems I encounter is that sometimes a narrow chisel will move in the guide. If you have that problem it’s usually caused by not having the bar that locks the chisel tightened up evenly. In the background you can see the dovetail lay-out I chose. The drawer is 6″ high so I think that’s too wide for only two tails. Three tails looked too uniform and machine-cut but after all of the difficulties I may change the lay-out. I do like how this looks though — any opinions?

In the meantime I’ve been working on a small series of boxes. During the last month, a consignment gallery that’s located in Container Park has accepted my work for their store. They specialize in glass jewelry so I approached them on making some boxes for them. It was great to bring in four and have two of them sell within 2 weeks! The replacement ones I brought in were a little large so the owner suggested making some smaller boxes instead. I’m looking at this as an opportunity to utilize left-over materials from other work, with a 60/40 split on the sale there isn’t a lot of profit but it’s still fun to make some money on these:

The ones in the back are quarter sawn White Oak, the ones in front are left over pieces of Sapele from the TV stand. This has given me a chance to experiment with colored shellac (tinted with Mixol) and it’s given them an aged look very similar to milk paint. They’re almost ready to take to them so hopefully they will accept them into the shop.

Posted in HDTV Stand | Tagged ArtBox, half-blind dovetails, Sapele, sharpening, Veritas MkII, water stones | 3 Comments

Back to Work, Don’t get the pull before the drawer!

Posted on March 17, 2014 by woodworksbyjohn

In my latest post I mentioned how I allowed myself to get side-tracked and began to design a pull for the drawers. I think I needed a artistic break after all of the technical work of the joinery. The pull I made was very functional but as Diane suggested, it was too predictable. Her thought (which I respect) was that this piece needed some type of “wow factor” to set it apart from the crowd. She suggested making pulls that mimic the dovetail joinery of the drawer dividers so that’s what I did.

Facebook is a wonderful tool to use when you’re looking for feedback or suggestions for your work. I posted the picture above and asked for opinions. I’d say that 85% were positive which is good. The negatives I received echoed some of my concerns about the size and practicality of the design. My neighbor Mike, came over to get a first hand look at it and suggested making the pull a little bit thicker so that it’s easier to grip. He specializes in kitchen and bathroom designs and installations so his comment made sense from a practical point of view. That was one of my concerns too so I plan to make a thicker version and form it so that it’s easier to grip. If this were a kitchen or bath cabinet it would make sense to install the drawers with metal slides and easily gripped pulls since the drawers would be used many times a day. For this application I’m doing traditional drawers. Time to put it to rest and get on with building the drawers — does the phrase “putting the cart before the horse” make sense here?

Now that the cabinet was completely assembled it was time to tackle the sliding doors. You may recall that one was made of MDF which functioned as it should. The basic design has a rabbet cut on the bottom that allows the door to set into the groove without making contact with the bottom of the groove. The only place of contact is a narrow section at the top of the groove. The upper rabbet is larger and the front of the door is chamfered so you can install the door from the rear of the cabinet. This set of pictures shows the process but you can get full details from this previous POST.

Penciling in rabbets

Fine tuning tablesaw cut rabbet and testing the fit

Working the doors with smooth plane

Doors installed in cabinet

Once the fit and action of these doors was what I wanted 3/4″ finger holes were drilled at the outer edge of each one. In the meantime work has started to finish the base and the cabinet. The finish is platinum blonde shellac which is padded on. After two coats, the surface was lightly sanded with 400 grit paper and another coat padded on. This will probably be the drill for the next week or so — pad on a fresh coat of shellac, allow it to dry, and then cover the project while working on dovetailing the drawers and building those. There will be 5-7 coats of shellac at least and then after curing for a week they will be rubbed out and finished.

Rabbeted back for cabinet

One other part of the cabinet that is now done is a panel and frame section for the back. The frame is tongue and groove, made of Sapele with plywood panels. The panels are 1/4″ Cherry plywood from another project that was backed by either Sapele or ribbon grained Mahogany. Using the back as the show side blends in with the rest of the cabinet. The Cherry side is inside of it and won’t be visible. This will be screwed into rabbets cut on the edge of the cabinet sides.

Finishing Room?

I’m saving the grunt work for last which is planing the top. That promises to be a lot of work! It is 1 1/4″ thick now with a very slight wind to it. At 17″ wide it is too large for my planer (15″) so it will be entirely finished with hand planes beginning with the scrub plane to remove that wind.

Posted in HDTV Stand | Tagged Big Leaf Maple, drawer pull, Padding Shellac, Sapele, Seth Janofsky, shellac, Sliding Doors for cabinets | Leave a comment

Whoops, Got Ahead of Myself!

Posted on March 13, 2014 by woodworksbyjohn

Drawer Pull, Big Leaf Maple

I just couldn’t help myself, as I began preparing the Big Leaf Maple board for the sliding doors I tried to envision what and how the pulls could look like. The board was one of the Extra Special Boards from Woodworkers Source in Arizona. These are unique and beautiful boards they feature on their mail order site. As far as the completed cabinet and base go I’ve begun the shellac process which means 10 minutes or so of padding it on and then hours of drying time. That’s why work starts on the sliding doors.

There was this one piece at the end of the board with some really wild grain. As I studied this area I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if it was cut at an angle. The picture doesn’t begin to capture the grain. First, I cut a small section at 45 degrees on the chop saw to play with. Since I was able to plane it the next step was laying out these lines to go across the grain diagonally.

After the first cut, the edge was planed square. Then each piece was cut parallel on the bandsaw, planed square, and repeated until I had 3 sections of the wood. They are 3/4″ in thickness so a 3/8″ tongue was cut on one of the edges. I will mortise the drawer fronts and the drawer pulls will be glued into it.

Next up was giving it some shape and design. This was accomplished with a block plane. After penciling in guide lines, chamfers were cut on the outside edge. If you look closely at the shavings that came off the plane you may notice that they are “crinkled”. I think that has to do with the grain structure of the Maple. Once that shape was finished I just had to see what the piece would look like so proceeded to mortise a scrap of Sapele and stick it in. Since I was this far off track I might as well run a coat of shellac and see what that would look like as well! Looked pretty good but I felt it needed something else, the grip wasn’t quite right. That was remedied by cutting a shallow groove with a core box router bit. Here you can see the difference but the real difference comes in the feel.

First design, no finger groove but shellacked

Second design, now you can “get a grip”!

Now that this is done it’s time to go back to the real work. The drawers need to be built, there are three of them approximately 6″ high by 13″ wide and 12″ deep. They will have half blind dovetails and to be honest, I suspect the stringy Sapele will want to give me some problems on that step. The back will be a panel and frame section, attached with screws into a rabbet. Then finally will be the planing and sizing of the top. I can probably skip my gym workout for a day or so after that’s done!

Posted in HDTV Stand | Tagged Big Leaf Maple, Padding Shellac, Sapele, WoodworkersSource | 5 Comments

Cabinet is Taking Shape

Posted on March 8, 2014 by woodworksbyjohn

All but the top!

Cabinet and full sized mock up

So this is one of those moments you wait for to see the results of all of your work. So far there are 30+ hours into this project. I was very anxious to get the base assembled so that I could put it together and here it is! If you click on the pictures they will become full sized and you can see how the cabinet is pretty close to the cardboard mockup. Can’t wait to replace that high quality MDF sliding door with the Big Leaf Maple though.

To get to this point I needed to assemble the base. Essentially it’s all mortise and tenon joinery for connecting the sides to the front and then a glued/screwed support mortised into the back leg for the rear stretcher. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, I consider myself to be a hybrid woodworker. What I mean by that is machines are used to perform most of the grunt work and then hand tools do the final work. For example, tenons are first cut with the table saw. I begin by setting up a stop block on a sled to cut the shoulders. That is followed with a tenoning jig to cut them ever so slightly over-sized and then the using chisels, back saws, and a rabbet block plane to achieve that final fit.

Tenoning jig, notice sled with stop block used to cut shoulders

Set up for finish work and final fitting

After the joinery work was complete I turned my attention to the curve at the bottom. The first step was to lay out the design on a piece of graph paper and then transfer that to a piece of masonite. Once that was cut out it needed to be drawn onto the wood. By using a piece of green masking tape I was able to see the lines making it easier to cut on the bandsaw. The blade I used for this is 1/4″ wide with 6 tpi. Spokeshaves and a block plane were used to smooth the bandsaws cut.

Transferring pattern onto the green tape for visibility

Spokeshaves to refine and smooth out cuts

One side, ready to be assembled

It is very easy to get your parts mixed up, especially during the stress of glue up. Standard advice is always to do a dry fit with your clamps, cauls, etc. but I find it’s helpful to mark the pieces with a more permanent marking system than a pencil. I use a set of metal working alphabet stamps and mark corresponding pieces where they won’t show but are obvious during assembly. The strategy was to first assemble the two sides allowing them to dry overnight. Next the back stretcher was fitted while the front piece was clamped between the sides.

Finish without a flash

Finish with a flash

So, what’s next? I need to build the panel and frame section for the back, dovetail the drawers, create the sliding doors, and of course, finish the top. Before I start any other phase of this project I decided it would be wise to begin some of the finishing. If I wait until all of the work, finishing all of those parts will seem overwhelming to me. As much as I prefer my Danish Oil, hand rubbed finish I really want to preserve the natural coloration of this wood. The ribbon stripe grain is beautiful! The best choice for that will be using a super platinum or blonde shellac. With most of the cabinet being flat panels the technique to use will be padding on the finish. These pictures show my sample board with about 4 coats of shellac padded on. I’ve never attempted doing so much surface area at one time with shellac so this will add to the challenge of the piece! I get my shellac on line from a place called Shellac.Net and have always been pleased with their products and customer service. They’re located near Napa, California.

I taught a plane class today at Woodworker’s Emporium which showed me my smoothing plane needed to be sharpened. That’s now done so it’s on to the wood.

Posted in HDTV Stand | Tagged mortise & tenon, Sapele, shellac, TV stand | 1 Comment

Woodworks by John