Display case for comic book statues

[Cliff]

As many of you are dimly aware of.. I like collecting comic book statues. I don't have a lot, maybe 13ish. But I tend to buy 2-4 per year so they are going to be taking up more and more room as time goes on. This has been my solution thusfar - (pics are 2-4 years old so missing quite a few statues)

Four shelves from IKEA, and some led strips, also from IKEA. 

Closer look

 

This is fine, but I don't like the lighting solution. I don't want to see the cords or lights at all. 

I've been through 6 total design phases, and this is what I settled on.

Keep in mind this is the basic version because I'm not good enough in sketchup. 

-Sides will be glass, held in rabbets with strips of wood pin nailed into the legs. 
-Front will be 2 glass doors approximately 24" wide by 46 1/2" tall. I plan to use european style hinges. I've planned for up to 3/8" thick depending on what the glass place recommends
-Shelf pin holes in the legs
-3 1" thick shelves total including the bottom
-Dimensions: about 50" wide, 10-12" deep, 66" tall. This leaves me around 16" per shelf and I can adjust them up or door depending on statue height (super expensive ones can get up to 21" tall, but most clock in around 15ish)

I had planned to curve the front but can't figure out how to make that work with glass doors. So I've decided to steal liberally from Marc. I'll be copying these legs:

They start at 2" and curve, down to around 3 3/4" at the bottom. I think I'm going to try for 2 1/4" at the top as I wanted lots of strength for the glass. I'll also probably curve the rails at the bottom, but not the top due to the glass. I'm not sure how this will look just being curved at the bottom. 

After sifting through the wood in my collection I was unable to find anything that was flat and straight enough to make 4 legs without laminating 3-4 pieces. I'm ok with laminating 2 pieces per leg, but 3-4 is amateur hour, which I'm trying to get past. 

So I went shopping, and ended up with wood for the shelves. Oops. There was an entire tree worth of figured 10/4 walnut. I found a piece that should allow me to get between 10-11" deep shelves at at least an inch thick. Although, since my top is supposed to be 14", I'm still not sure what to do on that, I may go back and buy another board, but each one is about $300. But whatever, I cut the 110" board in half and shoved it in my Prius. 

Along with a lot of empty monster boxes.

 

A few days later I picked up some VERY rough common walnut at the cheapest mill in my area @$4.95/bdft. I picked through boards for an hour to find 6 pieces that were at least 4.5" wide, 8/4 and 70+ inches long - and relatively straight. The fourth leg I can make from stock I have at home. Even at that price point the 6 pieces cost me another $300. 

Today I did the first round of milling, just getting the rough stuff off so I can try to mix and match since I'll be pairing these up. Right off the bat I'm reminded how much better I like air dried walnut. Some of these pieces are uglier than usual too, which doesn't help. I'm hoping to minimize the ugliest parts and knots. 

After a few deeeeeeeeeep passes

So this was day one, I anticipate this taking me up to 4 months because I'm going to go out of my way to take my time so I don't have a repeat of my last journal which is still unfinished. 

[Chestnut]

Looks like you've been planning this one for a while. I hope this does work out better than your previous journal as well. Some times slow and steady wins the race.

[gee-dub]

Off to a good start.  A suitable home for your super heroes.

[Cliff]

On 10/25/2018 at 9:30 PM, Cliff said:

I'm going to go out of my way to take my time so I don't have a repeat of my last journal which is still unfinished. 

I don't want to brag, but I might just finish this project. 

I'm setting records for the most and dumbest mistakes and yet still have a functioning project. Since this is my first ever actual furniture project, I find most of these errors somewhat ok. It's just a learning curve. 

I made a template for my legs, and set up my new sawstop router wing. I made 5 legs. Glad I did, I destroyed the first one and my template almost immediately. Next four went much better. 

Overall my experience went pretty ok. There were some major inconsistencies. So I clamped them together and sanded those inconsistencies out. 

Then I started on the rails. I have to admit, I should have thrown these away and restarted them, but I'd have had to go buy more material because the only 8/4 walnut I have is still drying. 

Here are the mistakes I made, in no particular order:

1. I cut a curve into them, which ruined my inset glass door idea. 

2. I cut a curve into them BEFORE trying to cut dados for the glass and back

3. I cut my material too thin and had to glue on extra stock after the curves were cut - which btw, was a terrible grain and color match. 

4. This may be a leg issue too, but I completely screwed up my placement of the glass and left no easy way to put in shelf pins. 

And here are the pics

Then fixing the rail thickness

This seems like  a lot of clamps

[Cliff]

Popped the rails out of the clamps and did some clean up, not terrible. The color mismatch is very noticeable, but thats how it goes. 

Laid out my dados

And threw in a test clamp 

Made the dados on the router table

Started domino-ing my way through the project. It was a lot harder than I expected. First I had an issue with my domino.. it wouldn't plunge all the way in to 25 mm. So I had to trim the dominos (turned out to be a plastic piece stuck that was causing this.) Second there were something like 16 joints to make and I managed to not label them all. 

And or some reason, my dominos were not snug. It could be because I cut the mortises then worked about 6 80 hour weeks in a row before coming back to the project so humidity changes screwed it up. 

Also, here I pluged from wrong reference side

While I was at it I chiseled my stuff, conveniently forgetting to do the back dados, which is fine since I forgot to cut dados in the back leg pieces anyway. 

Since my dominos were so loose, I put some more in.

Then did the sub glue-ups. I did the sides first, actually a few days apart. 

Then the rest. This was easily the most frustrating and stressful glue-up I've ever done. I used titebond 3 because I knew it would be bad, and it still almost set up with things not together right. I thought I planned well, but it turned out that I really didn't. 

This rail tried to twist, so I had to run a 12 inch clamp on it to get it to stay straight. 

[Cliff]

So that part where I forgot to cut grooves into the legs for the back.. gave me an opportunity to buy a rabbiting bit. I'll still need to do some chisel work with this to get the plywood in. 

I sanded the main case up and put 4 coats of ARS on it. 

I went and picked up maple plywood, which I have rough cut to size. I also ordered the glass sides. Came to 9 5/8 wide by 57 1/2" tall. 

Started on the shelves. I had to resaw 10/4 or 12/4 walnut. Can't remember exact thickness. It broke my bandsaw blade so I had to buy a resaw king. I skip planed because they were pretty flat to start with. This is where I learned that even though I had put a new helical head in my 735, it did not have what it takes to plane 12" wide 3" thick walnut. This has got me looking at maybe picking up a 15" grizzly soon.

Some looks at the boards with mineral spirits

Bottom shelf was cut first. Mostly to length. I got half inch pieces of glass coming so I'll wait until I get those in to make my final cuts. I'm also waiting on getting them in to figure out how to put the shelves in because I ... just have no idea. I'll take recommendations. 

I did leave the bottom shelf protruding up from the rails. I like it like this. 

Today I glued the top

[wtnhighlander]

Cliff, I know mistakes can be discouraging, but perserverance is what its all about. You are doing great!

[Chet]

Cliff, there are three settings on the Domino that dictate how wide the slot is.  Its a knob on top of the machine that you can adjust the width with, BUT make sure that when you change the setting that the Domino is turned on.  I believe it mentions this in the manual.

3 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

Cliff, I know mistakes can be discouraging, but perserverance is what its all about. You are doing great!

This is true. Fixing mistakes is part of the journey.  Things are looking good.

[Cliff]

8 minutes ago, Chet said:

Cliff, there are three settings on the Domino that dictate how wide the slot is.  Its a knob on top of the machine that you can adjust the width with, BUT make sure that when you change the setting that the Domino is turned on.  I believe it mentions this in the manual.

This is true. Fixing mistakes is part of the journey.  Things are looking good.

I meant loose in thickness.

I made them wide because I'm not confident in my ability to perfectly line up my mortises. 

[Chet]

5 minutes ago, Cliff said:

I meant loose in thickness.

Oh, okay, I misunderstood.

[Chestnut]

Learning pains. If you included the pictures and never mentioned the issues I'd never have guessed. It looks good seriously.

All you need is more projects under your belt for some confidence and you'll be constructing like a pro. I think you have a good eye for design. I had quite a few spectacular failures in the beginning.

 

[Cliff]

Started finishing the Top and bottom shelf. Still haven't finalized how I'm attaching the other 2 shelves so I won't cut to absolute final size until I do. 

Siliconed the glass into the sides. I used these points to hold it in place while the silicone sets. I intend to remove them and put in some sort of walnut trim or something. Depends on how it looks. 

Cut the back.

Unfortunately, in my haste a couple of weeks ago to get the plywood in the garage with impending rain - I cut it to 57 inches, which it is - on the edges. But the curve screws that up pretty well, so this is the result-

It's VERY small, somewhere just a hair over 1/16th. So I cut a piece

And finally found a use for my bandy clamps I bought 2 years ago.

[Cliff]

Popped in the glass sides.

Lights.

Rigged up the power. Nothing fancy. Plugged into a wemo outlet so I can turn it on and off with my phone.

A look at he empty shelves

Final finished shots. I think I'm skipping doors on this. I think it will only detract from the statues. Also, I'm not pointing out anymore flaws. Though there were plenty :D

 

Thanks all for taking a look at my first true furniture build.

 

 

 

[Chestnut]

Not gonna lie those statues are awesome, totally didn't even notice the beautiful curly walnut till the last picture. I think you did an excellent job. Just try and forget the mistakes and after a year or 2 you won't know any better either.

[Mark J]

Nice job Cliff.  Remember, woodworking is a superpower.  

[gee-dub]

 Very well done. The lighting looks great as does the cabinet.

[wtnhighlander]

Sweet! Very nice display for your collectables. Well done, Cliff!

[treeslayer]

Very nice work Cliff, the lights really set off the figures. The only reason I would add doors is for dust and then I would go frameless sliders as I think any frame would block the view of the contents. I wish my first real project looked anywhere near that good, well done sir!

[JohnG]

Looks great! And looking at the finished piece, the only way someone would notice your mistakes would be from reading this thread or if you told them.

[pkinneb]

Very nice!

[Chet]

Really nice choice of wood for the shelves and the lighting does a nice job.  Great results on the project Cliff.

[Cliff]

Thanks all for the kind words. 

@treeslayer I love the idea of sliders but since I curved the bottom of the top rail it makes it hard or impossible. I didn't think it out very well!

Also I don't know if anyone noticed by I had like 7 statues when I first started this project. Now I have 19. And 6 more on order. I might have a problem.

[Mick S]

Great job, Cliff. As others have said, learning to repair/recover from mistakes is a big part of woodworking. We all make them. Almost is if it had been planned, fully half the students in the class I'm teaching this semester spent the last class repairing mistakes - dominos that din't align, making a frame a ½" short because he wrote the length down wrong, hinges that didn't line up, etc. We all make them and coming back from 6 80 hour weeks doesn't make it any easier! 

Nice recovery and beautiful project. That's some gorgeous walnut!

[Chestnut]

21 hours ago, Cliff said:

Also I don't know if anyone noticed by I had like 7 statues when I first started this project. Now I have 19. And 6 more on order. I might have a problem.

Ahhh time for case #2? It doesn't look like you have much space left.

[Cliff]

On 10/13/2019 at 7:36 PM, Chestnut said:

Ahhh time for case #2? It doesn't look like you have much space left.

Might be time for a new house to hold more cases!