Kwila Stand

The stand has been started now and was going relatively quick. As soon as I started to sense some real progress happening, I came down with a nasty cold and haven't been able to work on it for three weeks. Here it is so far:

The very first rough mock up, just to get the height and proportions right.

 

The cabinet will be seated into the tops of the legs and be attached with brackets to two stretchers from underneath.

Had to spend a bit of time straightening the grain in the Kwila.

Before:

 

After:

 Marking out the cuts to get rift-sawn material for the legs.

I managed to get all the straight-grained pieces needed but can't help feeling guilty for all the cut-offs. If I can drag them around with me I guess they can be accessory material one day.

Aprons cut to length and ready for mortises. The Kwila has been great to work with so far, it cuts really clean.

  

Tracing the leg shape from a template to be roughed out on the band saw.

The mortises in the legs had to be different lengths and depths to prevent the tenons from running into eachother from either side of the leg. Steve showed me a little trick using wood stops the thickness of the difference between the two mortises to prevent having to do additional set ups on the XY.

The secondary aprons were doweled as the joinery would only allow for really small tenons anyway. Using a dowel centre to locate where the hole is to be drilled.

Tenons fit.

Earned a gold star!

Next will be faring the legs before taking the thickness down on all the aprons to create a mild step between them. Then I will be milling up the centre aprons and laying out where the cabinet will be set into the legs. After that will be finishing, glue up, attaching the cabinet and done!

Mini Tool

My Dad loves having an excuse to go to Lee Valley and shop for tools he would never use himself, being a mechanic. This little guy was a Christmas gift.

One of my doors ended up with a little bit of wind. To fix it, the front style had to be planed down to match the other door which took away the small step that was between the style and the rail.

 

The little rabbet-plane worked great for getting that step back right into the corner. Just had to touch up and even out the surface lightly with a scraper and it was like it never happened.

Thanks Dad.

View From My Bench

I have a great view from my bench that changes every so often.

From this:

 

To this:

 

I wonder what I will see when the Gilmer's order arrives?

Glass, Brass and Silver

It is getting down to the final details left on the cabinet itself and I have been fighting that lagging feeling that comes from working on a project too long. Something I am starting to learn is that the longer one takes to finish a piece the more dents one puts in it.

All that negativeness aside, there are a few things that are keeping my motivation up enough to get this finished. I met with a local woman that works with silver to help me with the pulls for the doors. Should be installing them next week! She has been so great to work with and her stuff is amazing www.erindolman.com.

The stand is also underway and going relatively quick, will post photos of that next time.

 

 Doors being fit to cabinet.

 

Placing the mullions between the two panes of glass in the doors.

 

The glass is held into the frame with wooden "pins" fastened with brass nails.

 

  

  

Same method is used for the glass in the side panels.

  

When mocking up the cabinet I didn't put the mullions in the doors. As per Robert's suggestion and seeing how well they worked in my bench-mate, Steve's, glass-font cabinet, I threw some strips of wood in there to see how they would look. I am happy with the result, they really help the spacing around the cabinet flow.

Some More Slow Progress

I had some trouble getting momentum back after Christmas break, but I am reaching the point where the finished piece doesn't seem too far off. After a few days of planing and flattening the back-panel it was glued in and work began on the frames for the glass doors.

Cutting the rabbet on the shaper, I didn't set up stops to prevent going all the way through the ends of the styles, thought I'd be careful enough not to need them. A one-second daydream later, I had some patching to do.

Frame members fixed and ready for glue.

Poor unfinished cabinet collecting dust and feeling neglected.

Taking the glass shelves for a test run, realized that my measurements were a little off and I will have to reorder them. This time I will use templates to be sure that they will fit as the cabinet is more out of square than I thought. The glass cutter did such a beautiful job on the edges, will have to find another use for them.

Junior (a classmate) was working on a new counter for the Gumboot Cafe that is next to the school. He asked me to do a boot in marquetry to compliment the parquetry he did with Maple veneers. The boot was done in Rosewood and the Edges in Walnut. The counter top looks great in place but I think they will have to do something with the rest of the counter to do it some justice.

Does anybody else find formatting posts in blogger crazy frustrating? Just me?

Some progress photos of the last few weeks. Not as far as I would like to be of course, but the goal is to be wrapping up by the end of January. I was happy to have at least had it to the point where it somewhat resembled a cabinet for the open house.

Gluing the frame members together around the panel. The open part will be glass.

 

The frame around the glass was joined with mortise and tenon. The piece framing in the rear of the panel was doweled.

 

Panels finally glued together and doweled to the top and bottom.

 

The applied edges around the edges of the top and bottom were very thin to stay consistent with the slight steps between the frame members and panels and sides to the top and bottom. The doweling position had to be very precise as just 1/32" would have thrown the steps all off and/or exposed the Sycamore from the interior.

 

Had to be careful positioning the hinges for the same reason.

 

 Roughing out the flipper-floppers.

 

 The big glue-up, Jason taking pictures and asking me to pose.

 

With Steve's help, and despite Jason's distractions, it went very smoothly.

Went to take a photo and found this surprise on my camera...