Sideboard

[Chestnut]

I thought that I'd share a picture of the dovetails as I forgot to to that. They are ok not perfect but they are good enough for me. Mind you the drawers aren't glued or sanded and they always look way better after that. I'm working on the book matched continuous grain bottoms now.

On 8/30/2020 at 10:22 PM, Coop said:

Sorry if you have already indicated but what type of glides will you be using or am I getting ahead of you? Gotta be wood tongue and groove as mechanical glides don’t support a non square application but don’t see a groove yet. 

So the drawers are going to sit on these runners. There will be a divider in the middle that will keep the drawers in the spots and on the outside is another runner that is built into the side.

[pkinneb]

I think you are being a little hard on yourself re the DT's if they look that good from 3" away think how nice they will look from 3' away  

Now coming through the the back of the drawer side with the rabbit come on Drew your a professional 

[Chestnut]

58 minutes ago, pkinneb said:

Now coming through the the back of the drawer side with the rabbit come on Drew your a professional 

I welcome that judgement. If you want to remove the drawers and take a look at that by all means go for it. That's just one of those details that is a lot of effort. For the record the front is the same thing but they'll be covered by an 1/8" veneer.

I am going to plug the holes with off cuts from the drawer bottoms.

[Chestnut]

I've been working on the doors. I needed to get trimmed to exact size and also mount the hinges. I went with Horton Brass for hinges and pulls. I think i left a link earlier in the thread. The hinges are high quality and they come with a LOT of extra screws. Which is nice.

I won't be installing knobs on the doors. Instead i'll use these push latch things to open the doors.

Here it is with the drawers installed and the doors hung.

Next up is to work on the shop veneer for the drawer fronts. The stock I'm using is the remainder of the crotch figure i used for the dresser i made for Megan. I have just enough for this one project.

Because of the dimensions I'm going to join 2 pieces on the center drawer and have there be continuous grain across the front with a book match across the center. To make sure I got a perfect joint i cut out the veneer and then used a shooting board to get a perfect joint.

This is the first time that I've used this shooting plane as a shooting plane. It's low angle and designed for end grain so i use it a lot for trimming boards ends but not in a shooting board.

As you can see the seam disappears. More to come, i'll have the drawers finished tomorrow hopefully.

 

[pkinneb]

Looks great Drew!!

[wtnhighlander]

Beautiful work on that grain match!

[drzaius]

This is going to be beautiful. Can't wait for the finished product.

Sidebar: what happened to your white balance? Looks like it's made of purple heart (or as my grandson used to call it, "ham wood").

[Chestnut]

1 minute ago, drzaius said:

Sidebar: what happened to your white balance? Looks like it's made of purple heart (or as my grandson used to call it, "ham wood").

LOL, umm not entirely sure. I've gotten lazy and haven't been fine tuning it and have just been letting auto white balance do it's thing.

[Chestnut]

Over the weekend I've been working on the fine tuning details of the project. These are the details that seem to take up a ton of time but can make a huge difference in how a piece looks. First up was to make the internal shelf system. I didn't want to do pins for no other reason than to try something new. I'm going to follow what Cremona does in the guild build and go with wooden standards with an adjustable ledger. If this is new to you i'll somewhat explain it below ask if you'd like more details.

The system works by placing a ledger between 2 standards, the standards can either be a saw tooth design or a rounded design. I went with a rounded design as it's very easy to make. To create the standards, i took a 6/4 board that was roughly 20" long and 3.5" wide. To get perfect spacing I decided to bore the holes into a single piece and then rip the standards off. I figured out the spacing I'd like for the shelves and used a 3/8" forstner bit to bore holes into the side of the board. I then ripped 1/2" wide pieces on the band saw and cut them in half.

Making the ledger was easy. I just milled material to 3/8" which is the diameter of the forstner bit i used. I cut them to length and rounded the end with a 3/16" radius round over bit. I'm not worried about the 3/8" ledgers because the shelf won't put a bending moment on the ledger. The shelf will span between the 2 standards on top of the ledger and will only exert a sheer force at each standard. The shelf will hold at most 100 lbs so each corner only needs to hold 25lbs.

I attached the standards to the legs with 3 screws. Just in case i want to modify the spacing in the future to add more options.

One of the major issues i had to deal with was warped doors. I've never had an issue with warped doors before but for some reason 2 of the doors i made just ended up wonky. During glue up i set the doors on the concrete floor and I wonder If i set them in an uneven spot that ended up gluing a twist into the doors. Either way a fix was needed. The below picture shows how much the bottom of the door protrudes when the top is flush. it's almost 1/4".

I tried using over correcting force and letting the doors sit like that for a week but it didn't work. At first they held strait but after a day they reverted back.

My mental battle was between planing the face of the door down, but with 1/4" of material needing to be removed it'd mess with the reveal of the door panels. The other option would be to use a cleat behind the door to induce a reverse twist.

I ended up going with the cleat. I made the cleat from walnut so it'll blend in well when the doors are open. I milled the material from scraps to 3/4" x 3/4" and put a good heavy 1/8" radius round over.

To provide the tension the cleat could either be bowed, or a wedge could be used. Because i have the center divider on my doors I opted for the wedge. A bowed cleat would take some trial and error to figure out perfectly and the wedge is adjustable. Not ideal but it works, below is a picture of the door adjusted.

After those small details it was on to finish prep. I sanded the veneer that I applied to the drawer and went over the entire project with 220 grit knocking down corners. I don't want a full round over I just want to knock the edges down a bit until they are soft to the touch. The picture below is before i adjusted the right door. So you can see the shadow line it creates and why i wanted to fix it. I also did a cleat on the center door, the lower right corner was twisted inward.

The final work is to cut a shelf for the inside and to make a top. Then it's finish coats and put it into service.

[Chet]

23 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

During glue up i set the doors on the concrete floor and I wonder If i set them in an uneven spot that ended up gluing a twist into the doors

I had something similar a while back.  Generally concrete and wood don't play nice together.  Aways back, a knowledgeable member here told me you can get a weird air and moister interaction between the wood and concrete.

[curlyoak]

The face is absolutely stunning!

[Coop]

Great recovery on the doors and the drawer fronts look fantastic.

[Bmac]

Excellent job with those drawer fronts, looking great.

[Chestnut]

I should note for the sharp observer. The grain on the drawer fronts is intentionally shifted down slightly. Because of the overhang of the top and the fact that most people will observe the drawer fronts standing next to the side board I left a bit more space above the crazy figure on the top.

 

1 hour ago, Chet said:

I had something similar a while back.  Generally concrete and wood don't play nice together.  Aways back, a knowledgeable member here told me you can get a weird air and moister interaction between the wood and concrete.

The parallel clamp heads were separating the wood from the concrete floor so there wasn't any direct contact for moisture. I think the floor was just uneven in opposite directions where the clamp heads were. This caused a twist that ended up getting glued into the door. Like the below images but just imagine my doors instead.

[drzaius]

On fine furniture, I way prefer wooden shelf supports. No school like old school.

[Chestnut]

Finished!

I did my usual finish of Minwax Wipe On Poly. The walnut was a bit more wild with it's grain direction than the cherry i'm used to working to so i relied more on sanding then i usually do. The boards i ended up finding for the top had a few hints of figure that matched the rest of the piece. The final result is awesome and I can't wait to have the doors signed by my friends and family.

And here is some context and where it fits in the room.

[wtnhighlander]

Looks great, Drew!

[Coop]

WOW! Totally awesome! Is that a mirror above it? 

[pkinneb]

Very nice Drew! Excellent use of the figured wood.

[Mark J]

Really came out great!  So what does the boss say?

[Chestnut]

8 hours ago, Coop said:

WOW! Totally awesome! Is that a mirror above it? 

Yes it is.

7 hours ago, Mark J said:

Really came out great!  So what does the boss say?

She really likes it. Enough so that she even said something more than once!

[RichardA]

Absolutely beautiful work Drew.  Ya done good.  Fluff those feathers.

[treeslayer]

Absolutely beautiful Drew and an instant heirloom, from April 27 to now it's been a great ride, take a day or two off, you earned it. well done sir !!

[Bmac]

Looking good, and don't listen to @treeslayer, no days off allowed.

[curlyoak]

A legacy heirloom piece. Be proud!