Hand tool cabinet in maple


SawDustB

Recommended Posts

6 hours ago, Chet said:

Looking forward to this Brian.  Are you following the guild build or just grabbing information from his free stuff?

 

I built my kitchen cabinets and more recently my dining table from red oak.  I like how they came out and pretty much don't care what anyone else thinks of the species. ;)

Amen!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, RichardA said:

I'm looking forward to this.  I just built mine a couple of years ago, and would like to see how you come to your conclusions.  I admit, I built mine out of the hated "Red Oak", but it works quite well.

I saw yours posted before Rick, it looked great. There were a few that showed up on the group that made me decide (a while ago) that I needed something better. Otherwise, I would have slapped something quick together.

7 hours ago, Chet said:

Looking forward to this Brian.  Are you following the guild build or just grabbing information from his free stuff?

 

I built my kitchen cabinets and more recently my dining table from red oak.  I like how they came out and pretty much don't care what anyone else thinks of the species. ;)

I'm following the guild build on this one, Chet. I bought the project on a whim last year, thinking I might have built my cabinet by now, but it works out perfectly.

I actually have some red oak I considered for this, but I would have had to go buy more anyway. Besides, I liked the idea of everything matching. Around here, the cheapest hardwoods are maple, birch, oak, and ash, so that's mostly what I build with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am follow the guild build as well. If i didn't have 2 other projects on my plate i'd be building one. Maybe i'll be able to jump in later this spring and try and play catch up. I have the wood i want to make mine out of picked out, but i need to do some planning, Though Cremona's layout is pretty universal and covers a LOT of tools.

 

I think red oak can look great. My only 2 knocks on it are it can be tricky to dry and gets splintery and has some internal tension at times. The other one is a knock on the main users of the wood. They have the whole world thinking everything wood needs to be stained but this isn't the woods fault for being a good base for stain and dye.

I quite enjoy the smell of the kiln dried stuff i have.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Straight-grained red oak is a pleasure to work with, looks nice, and as mentioned can be stained to produce a wide variety of looks. The prominent grain can become overwhelming, especially in figured pieces.

And I'm pretty certain that staring at a sheet of rotary-cut oak plywood can trigger a seizure.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

And I'm pretty certain that staring at a sheet of rotary-cut oak plywood can trigger a seizure.

This is something in my woodworking youth I didn't really pay attention to.  When I built the kitchen cabinets I used oak ply for the boxes.  I look at the end cabinets now and it drives me a little koo koo.  It is only two ends but in retrospect I wish I had used regular lumber on those ends.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/26/2019 at 7:58 AM, Johnny4 said:

I built this shelf out of off the rack red oak a few years ago. I saw all this curl in the back of the pile and bought the whole board. Used Marc’s recipe for popping the grain. I think it turned out well. I have no beef with red oak.

0D26178E-9C91-47A2-A443-D4E2AC63BAC9.jpeg

95635501-EFBB-480B-8FD7-D8ADB18679EE.jpeg

C9E96EFB-339D-4B4E-8CCD-32D4F600C113.jpeg

Not fair, that's a one in a thousand look for red oak. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/28/2019 at 9:24 AM, Chestnut said:

For some reason seems like DIY carpenters see it as a defect?

Even a professional cabinet shop doesn't take sticks with much figure unless they are taking it for a personal project.  There was a guy at my yard sorting through a stack and passed a really nice piece of walnut to the side.  I asked him and he said its to hard to work in to a regular project, they like the plain looking stuff so there is no thinking involved when it comes to grain in a big kitchen job.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Chet said:

Even a professional cabinet shop doesn't take sticks with much figure unless they are taking it for a personal project.  There was a guy at my yard sorting through a stack and passed a really nice piece of walnut to the side.  I asked him and he said its to hard to work in to a regular project, they like the plain looking stuff so there is no thinking involved when it comes to grain in a big kitchen job.

Makes perfect sense to me. One figured cabinet board among a wall of straight grain would look odd. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was hoping to get further on this over the weekend, but ended up working for a lot of it. I've got the pins sawn out, but need to clean up the baselines. I'm trying a technique that's new to me, where you run a router with a pattern bit around the pins to clean up the baselines.

I also got a bit distracted since I bought a super dust deputy over the weekend, and I'm looking at how to compactly install it. It looks like I can have it hitch a ride on the existing dust collector cart, but I need to make some small modifications. It came with a fiber barrel, which I was a little worried about holding up in my garage so I sprayed it with lacquer. Unfortunately, I did that yesterday morning but my shop still stinks of it...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/11/2019 at 4:05 AM, SawDustB said:

Unfortunately, I did that yesterday morning but my shop still stinks of it...

The smell of lacquer really has a tendency to hang around, even with windows and doors open.

You don't really need to glue the joints< I just use the aluminum duct tape.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Who's Online   2 Members, 0 Anonymous, 56 Guests (See full list)

  • Forum Statistics

    31.2k
    Total Topics
    421.6k
    Total Posts
  • Member Statistics

    23,748
    Total Members
    3,644
    Most Online
    luanaroly
    Newest Member
    luanaroly
    Joined