I've decided that a piece of furniture is going to emerge from my workshop this fall or winter. Here's what it should resemble when completed:




And here's the start (this is the inner case that all the pretty wood gets wrapped around). I started this last Saturday, and so far have only used scraps that were lying around my shop.



Next up is to face the front of the case with cherry, surround the drawer openings with bead molding, and build the frame/panel sides and back. I'll be resawing and thickness planing some cherry scraps that I have in the shop to get the 1/4" thick cherry that I need for that.

 

 

Interesting. Can't wait to see the final product.

 

Cool. I like building stuff.

 

Looks like a fun project.. progress pics along the way please

 

looking good... yes more pics...

 

Appreciate the encouragement! I found some cherry that I'd already resawn, so it just needed planing down to 1/4" thick for the banding on the front of the case. I did that and then glued some of the front cherry banding onto the case -- you can see the clamps holding on the top piece in this incredible panorama of my workshop. I was checking out my new panorama software while the glue set.



I should get the rest of the banding glued on tomorrow night, then I'm going to start on the end panels while I wait for a few new router bits to arrive so I can do the various moldings.

 

Looking good.

And I've never see so many planers on one persons workbench before

 

I have a thing for handplanes.

 

I have finished the inner case. The bead moldings around the drawer openings are in, and the maple drawer runners are sanded to 320 grit and installed.



Here's a close-up of one of the bead moldings. The molding (and the facing on the cabinet) are 1/4" cherry, resawn down from 4/4 stock on the bandsaw and then surface planed flat. The bead molding contour is made on the router table, and then the finished molding is ripped off of the board on the table saw. The miters are made nice and tight by sneaking up on the final fit with a miter saw equipped with a really good blade.



Next up are the end frames and back frame to completely enclose the cabinet and start making the piece look like it's made entirely of cherry. I've got the pieces mostly done except for tenoning the ends of the top and bottom rails and the center stile. The nasty looking saw burn marks (cherry does this very easily, as does maple) will be easily cured by a few passes with a handplane set to take a very fine shaving.



If I get time tomorrow evening, I'll probably get both of these glued up and ready to install.

 

Looks great! Great talent

 

Looking good.

Besides the satisfaction of building it yourself, what is the cost savings (building vs. buying), if any?

 

Well in this case, I've spent $32 on lumber (poplar for the drawers) and will spend another $75 on a sheet of 3/4" cherry plywood for the top.

I also dropped $120 on four router bits, and another $120 on the drawer pulls.

All other materials were bought for previous projects, as were the tools.

So from a marginal expense perspective, this piece will cost me about $350.

When you add in the capital that I've got sunk into the tools, there is probably no savings. For me it's the satisfaction of working with my hands to build something that I can't buy, and in seeing how much better I get at this hobby with every project.

 

Here are the end frames all built up. They're already sanded and the edges broken so that I don't have to do a huge sanding job at the end. Over the next two nights I'll glue them up to the case.

 

End frames are glued on, back frame built, fitted, and glued on as well. I'm not real keen on the construction methods because the frame ends and back frame are just glued to the inner case; no mechanical joinery at all. It works, but it's not a technique I expect to duplicate in any design of my own.





The back frame had to be fitted between the end frames; fine adjustments to the width were made with a couple of my favorite planes, seen here along with the shavings they took off the ends.



Next up:

Buy cherry plywood for the top, build it up, and then do the baseboards and moldings (cove moldings under the top and on the baseboards, quarter-rounds in the panes of the frame).

 

Coming along nicely!

I have to share this funny story real quick. I was looking at this thread yesterday and my wife says "what are you looking at". i explain everything and she goes "that guy is weird looking". SHE THOUGHT THE AVATAR WAS ACTUALLY YOU.

 

to the progress looks great

 

That is me.

 

Quarter round molding has been mitered into the panels in the end and back frames, softening the look considerably. Baseboards are also on all around.





I've cut and routed all the pieces of the tabletop. There are two breadboard ends with tongues that fit into slots routed on the ends of the plywood top, and solid cherry banding on the sides of the top to hide the plywood layers.

Once that's done, all that's left of the case is to glue on the top, and then add the small cove molding that goes under the top and on top of the baseboards.

Then since I want to finish the drawer fronts before assembling the drawers, I have to take some time away from making dust and experiment with finishing techniques and materials.

 

Well the main case is all assembled and ready for final surface prep / finishing. Here are front quarter and rear quarter views.





This is the finish sample board I'm working on. The left two are a reddish brown dye (to even out the heartwood and sapwood) and the right two have a red mahogany dye, which is allegedly redder than the left.

The dye is covered with a thin coat of shellac, and then on the top two squares I covered the shellac with a coat of Georgian Cherry gel stain. Then all are covered with a coat of satin gel varnish.

I'm not sure I like any of them enough to do the entire piece yet.

 

Update 9/29/09:

I've selected a final finish. Here's my second test board (actually the flip side of the first):



The entire board was covered with a spit coat of shellac to reduce blotching. The quadrants have three different dyes applied, with the lower right quadrant left undyed. Then another coat of shellac is applied to lock the dye in. The halves of the quadrants toward the center were then covered with a coat of stain, and everything covered with satin varnish.

The board has both heartwood (light colored, stays that way) and sapwood (darker and darkens further with age), plus some gnarly grain changes that would splotch like crazy when stained without countermeasures in the finishing process. The dye evens out the shades of the sapwood and heartwood, and the shellac prevents splotching.

My favorite of the 8 shades shown is the bottom second from left:



The favorite of the ladies of the house is the top second from right:



Since the only difference is the color of the dye, I will be committed to a color tomorrow since I did the spit coat of shellac on the case tonight. You can see how much clearer the gain on the case looks with the thin coat of shellac clearing off all of the sanding dust. You can also see the many different shades of cherry that will be made nice and uniform by the dye.

 

That's really cool. Nice work

 

Just in case anyone's really paying attention, I have corrected the bold words of the quote above; I had them swapped in my original post.

 

That's cool stuff Mike. It looks like its coming along very nicely. I can't imagine how good that feels, to have your house decorated with stuff you built from scratch, by yourself

Now I know what you do. This whole time I thought you just rode bikes for a living

 

It's coming along very nicely. I like it! My dad can do stuff like that, but unfortunately it's not a trait I inherited. I wish I could!

 

That looks great!

 

Just got a chance to see the pics since I'm at home. Amazing job!

 

Thanks guys!

Quick update -- last week I put a thin coat of shellac on it and then dyed it. It didn't turn out nearly as nice as the test piece because the shellac went on thicker where there were complex contours to follow -- like around all the frames and molding. The dye was much lighter along these and really doesn't look good that way. Soooooo... I have to sand the whole thing back down by hand and then re-dye. This is my first time using this particular finishing method so I'm not surprised that I have a bit of a complication with it.

I did that on the back, and it's much darker than the test board because I had to sand the washcoat of shellac off to get the even coverage. But I think it'll look cool when I'm done. But I have a good 4 more days of work to do (one for each surface) just to get to that point.

I'm out of town this week so it won't be ready for another pic update until next week some time.

 

wow , that is great work . How many hours do you have in it so far?

 

MOAR!

 

I haven't worked on it except for 20 minutes the past two weeks. I'll get back to it this week.

dallison -- Maybe 30 hours so far? I don't really keep track.

 

Pics of the finishing detour -- I spent about 2 hours tonight just sanding by hand. I need to spend a bit more time with it before it's ready.



Here's the backside with the good enough finish -- it looks better in person without the harsh light of the flash.

 

Lookin good

 

Looks very very nice.

 

Awesome job! So much respect for woodworking skills. I wish I could do that.

 

That is turning out really nice

 

WOW - that looks incredible! Is this a hobby or you do this for a living? That looks really fantastic - of course now I feel like I have even less talent than I did before I started looking at the pictures...

 

Hobby. I get noticably better with every piece I do.

 

Wow Mike. Great work!!

 

Damn Mike. That is some impressive work. Bummer about the setback on the finishing, but I'm sure you'll get it exactly how you want it.

BTW - where are you WRT the drawers?