Key Cabinet: Rabbeted Carcass

I've done a bit more work on the cabinet, the through and stopped rabbets for the frame and panel back are done. Now I'm just waiting on a McMaster order for some 1/4" delrin rods. These will be to dry fit the carcass together and work on it, whilst still being able to disassemble it easily. I had an issue using only 2 dowel pegs per side/end, three of the 8 peds broke during disassembly and I had to nervously drill out the waste... I don't want that to happen again and can't use a waxed peg because it's to be a glue joint.  

These dados, including the stopped ones were cut on the tablesaw with a 6" dado stack. The stopped dado required the use of stops and was pretty simple to do. A bit of chisel work finished the corners. The gap you see is the result ov some cupping in the top and bottom boards. I'll have to plane this little hollow out before much more can happen.

I'm still happy with it and cant wait to start on the back, I'm still not sure whether I should use walnut, QS white oak, or birch for the frame. Bamboo will still be the panel I think.

Key Cabinet: Carcass Dry Fit

The time has finally come, today I made the drilling jig needed to bore the holes for dowels and get the case together. I'm really excited.

Next up, rabbeting the back, cutting the back and door frame components and starting the fitting. I'm still debating about a shelf/drawer. Thoughts on that? 

Key Cabinet Progress

I spent some time in the shop today gluing up a shooting board for my new jointer, which works better than I could have expected on end grain. I also spent some time edge jointing and smoothing the inside faces of the walnut boards for the key cabinet. Here's the pictures from this morning.

I'm very happy with this jointer, I've planed a number of woods walnut, pine, cherry, Brazilian cherry, sapele, beech, red and white oak. The only problem I ran into was on the beech, it is some very tough stuff.   

Krenovian Jointer Plane

After browsing through every page of the Inside Passage School of Fine Woodworking website, I discovered several things...

-I love the Krenovian style and methodology
-Dowels don't seem as icky as I once believed
-I want to make some knife hinges and wall hangers
-Grain "graphics" as they call them, and rift sawn wood are incredible
-I'm building a small jointer plane, I must have this for shooting small long grain pieces and other trimming tasks.

That let me to browse some of my wood collection (don't worry I use it) located in my office. At the end of my workday Monday I snatched up a piece of beech I've had for some months and ripped it into a body and sides, I did the rest of the work at home. The iron is a Lee Valley replacement blade for a Stanley #60 1/2. in O1 steel. I have another identical iron, destined for a small smoother or gutter plane for coopered doors etc.

The pins, wedge and cross pin are made from East Indian Rosewood, turning stock from eBay. The pins are split and whittled to shape. The finish is orange wax, with High Gloss Formby's finish on the wedge. The mouth is super tight and even, I love the colors and contrast. I've gotten some great test shavings and surfaces, but I still need some time in the shop with it before another review. Enough yap, here's the proof.

   
The color is significantly more orange, and the rosewood is richer in person. I'll fiddle with the lighting during the workshop use photoshoot. All in all, I'm extremely excited about the first Krenov plane I've built.

Continuing Work on the Key Cabinet

The basement in my housemates shop is finally cleared a bit, I have some room to work now. I don't have all my tools in the new space, but I have enough for this small project. This post is mostly to keep me writing and working, as I've written very little in the last few months.

This first picture I'm almost embarrassed about, it's not fine furniture, nor really complicated. Just little 4mm X 14mm X 60mm strips, six of them, two each in mahoganies of different vintages. They are samples for an instrument maker to test harmonics/vibration durability of the different ages of mahogany. They were fun, and allowed me to practice working to tight tolerances, most of the measurements are within .02mm, for those of you like me who only work in inches, or to scribed components that equates to about .0008" or a little less than half the thickness of a sheet of common computer paper).    

Nextly, here is a shot of the lumber cut and resting for the key cabinet (Blk. Walnut) and a pair of Krenovian shop bents (sawhorses, Ash). The little junk on top of the left hand pile is an assortment of sticker stock I cut out of the scrap ash from the bents. More to come, today I resawed some pine to mock up the door and muntins when the time comes.  

Design Process: Part II

Krenov and others working in his style has had a huge impact on me recently. Both, in terms of aesthetic sensibilities, and in the mindset of the woodworker. Here follows the finished cardboard mock-up of the Walnut Key Cabinet. This photo shows the actual view a six foot tall individual will see of the hung cabinet.

The size is approximately 18" tall, 11 3/4" wide and 7 1/4" deep. The case will be of walnut shown below, the frame and panel back will be QS white oak, with mabye white pine or beech for the panel. I think there will also be another thin rail 2/3rds up the back panel with pegs in it. This is, after all, a key cabinet. I think. The case will also have a drawer, hidden by the door, I'm not sure what wood that will be yet, maybe white oak also.  

These next two pictures are of the mock-up building, very simple tools and materials. I love paper mock-ups. These are the same techniques I teach in the first project of my model making class. 

  I really love the grain in this board, it measures just over 7 1/4 inches wide and about 8 foot several inches long. I wasn't intending to buy walnut when I visited the lumberyard, but I couldn't resist. There were two other walnut boards
I could have gone for, and a gorgeous 8/4 spalted maple slab...I should have gotten it. It's probably gone now. Live and learn. 

Design Process: Part I

After reading through Tom Fidgen's book Made By Hand, again, I was inspired to start designing a wall cabinet around this one waney edged board I picked up a few months ago. I did a few thumbnails and then started to build the thing in SketchUp to see the proportions work out. Here's a look at a few of the drawings. The one on the left is the front face of the cabinet, I'm imagining the door is fumed beech with glass and mullions. I've also got thumbnails of the mullion arraignments there too, I like the asymmetric ones I guess... Six lights looks good to me, but not for the feel of this cabinet, it's too house-like in this instance. I also like the dramatic feeling in an irregular angular layout. I'll need to build some mock ups to solve that question.   

I'm pretty happy with the case at this point, but I'm still not sure on a few things, the location of the shelves/drawers/dividers and the arraignment of the lights. I'll make a mock up out of cardboard with interchangeable parts to live with the arraignments in real life. Stay tuned.