5 Attachment(s)
Sat, 30 October 2004 Progress Update
A few important steps were completed on the armoire project today and I hope to continued that trend tomorrow. I'd like to get this piece completed in the next couple of weeks, but it will require some diligence in getting out to the shop at times other than the weekends as next weekend I'm helping to man the Mini Max booth at Woodworks 2004 in Ft Washington PA and the following weekend I have to fly for business on Sunday. I'll use the picture descriptions below to describe the doin's.
Pics
- Milling the back of the door panels so they fit into the grooves provided in the rails and stiles. I'm using a 22º Shaker style cutter which adds a nice shadow line on the interior of the doors.
- Dry fitting the doors. While the upper and lower panels came from different boards, I was able to get a reasonable grain match that approximates a continuous grain pattern top to bottom. The right way to do this is to use the same boards...but that wasn't possible this time around. I'm reasonably pleased with the results and once the dye is applied the minor variations will become less obvious than they are "bare".
- After cutting the dovetails for the drawers (with the Leigh this time...), I did a dry fit into the cabinet. "Just right" for my purposes. Notice that the fronts are one continuous board in keeping with that important design aspect.
- Testing the dye. The piece in the foreground has just the dye on the left and the dye topped with a coat of garnet shellac on the right. Nice. Just the hue I'm looking for to work will the wide pumpkin pine flooring in that guest bedroom.
- Since there are no false fronts on the drawers and I happen to like the look of the drawer face matching the casework and the rest of the drawer being natural, I need to plan for assembling the drawer boxes after dying the front. By carefully clamping the front and each side to the workbench in a dry-fit, I was able to pre-sand the dovetail joints prior to assembly and then dye just the front. This is a test example of how that will work out.
More tomorrow...
Good color, cool solution
The color is great. I look forward to seeing the piece in place. The floors must have a rich mellow color. Ingenious way to finish the drawer fronts and not the sides. I learn so much at the Creek and occasionally it is something useful like this :p . Really excellent. Do hurry along, this is a good book but I am ready for the happy ending... :cool:
By the way, alcohol or water based dye? :confused: