I thought I would post a few pictures of my shop. I have recently moved and have redone my shop. My new location is much more permanent than before so I finally was able to do more permanent things such as ducted dust collection with homebuilt cyclone separator and 220v power!
Design
All posts tagged Design
The last part was the installation of the dividers and the upholstery work. I used faux suede and covered over 1/4 ply to create bottoms. The dividers were constructed with soft maple and finished with a paste wax. The ring divider was constructed with 1/4 foam rolled to make tubes and then glued to a base of plywood. The fabric was then pushed and glued into the gaps. Here are the final pictures.
The final step in construction was to create the drawers. For this I utilized solid walnut faces veneered with quilted sapele and soft maple drawer sides. I machine cut the dovetails as I wanted to speed along the project and simply did not have the time to handcut all 6 drawers. I made sure to keep the veneer as close to matched as possible between drawer parts so that it appeared to be one continuous piece of wood.
I cut the drawer fronts to match the opening precisely and used veneers as shims to maintain exact spacing. I then cut the rest of the drawers and dovetailed them together. I routed grooves in the side of the drawers to accept a solid walnut piece. On the solid walnut piece I routed a groove that would accept a metal rod to act as a drawer stop. I had to manufacture these in the shop using metal rods and tapping it to fit a brass knurled knob I found at the hardware store. To fit the drawers in the cabinet, I used my favorite method of using double stick carpet tape on the outside of the slide. When the drawer is in the correct position, I simply apply pressure and the tape holds the drawer in place. Because the cabinet already was finished with danish oil and shellac, I used gorilla glue to glue the drawer slides and pinned with a pin nailer.
I then drilled the holes for the knob pulls. Because I didn’t want to see the screw on the inside, I used hanger bolts with loctite to secure the threads and then screwed in the pulls. The walnut should have no problem with pullout. I mounted the top with SOSS hinges so that they would be hidden when the box was closed. I used one door stop to hold the top open and prevent breaking the hinges. I then glued in the beveled edge mirror with mirror mastic.
The final step was to finish the cabinet. I went with a french polish for the fine furniture result it gives and because it needed to sit over a danish oil grain popping treatment.
The next thing I did was to veneer and glue up the opening cabinet sides. This required veneering up panels with birdseye maple and quilted maple solid wood edgings. I mitered the edges and fortified the joint with biscuits and walnut splines. I made my own spline jig from scraps, it was extremely easy to do in about 30 min of time. After everything was glued up, I finished the inside of the outside compartments and the doors with a french polish. I mortised in the knife hinges and assembled the doors to the sides. I then drilled in holes for a bullet catch. The catch came with a strike plate but the tolerances were very tight and I didn’t like the look. So I employed a simple trick to find out the exact point where the bullet stopped at close. I put a piece of masking tape on the receiving side of the cabinet and closed the door. The tape showed this point by being more firmly affixed to the receiving end versus the lightly applied rest of the tape. I drilled a very shallow hole with a large drill bit for a bullet stop rest. I finished it by adding dye to match the walnut veneer.
After the door was mounted, I then went about the task of adding the hardware inside to hold the necklaces.
The next step is to create the top box portion. This was with solid curly maple with mitered and biscuited construction. It utilizes the top of the cabinet for the bottom. I fixed it to the top utilizing pocket screws. I created the top of the box with 1/2 plywood veneered with quilted sapele and backer curly maple. I then framed with solid curly maple.
At this point, the cabinet was basically complete.
Continuing from the first post, I went about constructing this design. the first step was to make the solid wood base. I did so with curly maple lumber. I glued up stock thick enough for the legs to curve and taper them. Before cutting the legs, I cut the mortises. Post mortising, the legs were rough cut on the bandsaw. I cleaned up the sawmarks with a simple drum sander. I applied a dye mixture to add some color to the base. The base was then finished with pad applied shellac and a wax topcoat.
The next step was to begin veneering the panels to be used for the cabinet pieces. I used a good quality 3/4 plywood and veneered both sides and with multiple different veneers. To make doing a profile on the edges possible, I framed each component on visible areas with solid wood walnut.
Assembling the cabinet components was the next step but not prior to rabetting out grooves for a plywood back. I used pocket screws and glue to join the cabinet components.
My latest project has been to design and build a jewelry armoire for a client. The idea was to create something very functional, elegant, and with sophistication while balancing the fine line between modern, craftsman, and art deco. For the critical design considerations, this box should be approximately chest height so as to meet face level with the mirror, hold 100 necklaces, and have room for about 150 individual pieces and have a ring roll.
I set upon this task utilizing sketchup to play around with the design.
I included in the design 6 drawers with solid wood separators. I wanted to highlight various natural woods and used curly maple for the legs and top. The sides of the box utilize knife hinges for strength with the bonus of them being more or less hidden.
I chose to use various veneers for the project – walnut burl and straight walnut, quilted sapele, curly maple, etimoe, and birdseye maple. part of the design was to use the contrast from these woods to make statements. Looking from the top down, you should basically seed the dark woods of the walnut burl and in the center the quilted sapele framed by the very light curly maple. From the front, you see the contrast of light on top, bottom, and sides with a dark center chest of drawers.
The table is now completely constructed and ready for finishing. I had done a pretty good job to this point keeping things finish sanded as I constructed them so my sanding work was quick and consisted of scraping off and residual glue that was visible. I applied a semi-gloss polyurethane to the base of the table. I wanted to put a varnish on top for increased durability but the rosewood oils reacted with the finsh and it never dried so i had to scrape off that finish. I gave up after a while and just decided to go for a high gloss finish with shellac and the french polish technique. After several days and hours of hand rubbing the result turned out extremely well. Here are the pre and post images.