Bathroom vanity

[Matt Evans]

I am building some bathroom cabinets out of lightly spalted, very wormy, mineral stained Beech. First thing to note: when working with wood that you know for a fact was on a barn floor in rough form for over 50 years, not stickered, and subject to being walked on, driven over and worse, expect to go through a LOT of it to get a small amount of usable wood!

The cabinets are simple. Three small drawers, three doors(including the in-wall unit), and a top. Finish will be a very dark walnut Watco oil.

I was originally going to do this all hand tools, traditional joinery and finishes, but I ended up in a time crunch. So, instead of dovetailed side panels we have pocket screws, rather than hand thickness, I used a 15" planer to thickness the boards, ripped everything on the tablesaw, etc.

I found that the jointer I have access to is out of tune. Badly. I have tuned up old machines before, but for some reason this one doesn't want to cooperate with me. (Anyone have an old Rockwell 6" jointer? how the heck do you get everything in a true plane on these? I haven't ripped the thing apart, yet, but I cannot seem to find the adjustors)

Since the jointer was out of the question, I straightlined the boards on the tablesaw. Cleaned up the edges for gluing with a stanley No. 5 (what I wouldnt do for an old Stanley Jointer). I then hand flattened one face of the boards, and thicknessed them on a Shop Fox 15" planer. (which, I have discovered, moves up and down with the vibration of the machine, so I had to clamp the height adjustor to the frame to get a consistent thickness. Which I tried fixing, to no avail. argh!)

I hand flattened the panels after glue up, and man was that ever a chore. This particular Beech stock is prone to more movement than I ever thought possible. I might have a few boards twist, warp, cup or what-have-you every now and then after thicknessing, but this stuff would sit for 15 minutes while I brewed another pot of coffee, and when I came back it had twisted horribly, rendering most of the wood unusable. I went through more board feet of this stuff than I thought I would for three or four small projects this size!

Since I had to redesign for a simpler build, I changed the drawers, and haven't figured out how I am going to do the slides yet. I have a day or two before I can get back to it, but I really want to avoid using any metal drawer slides if I can help it.

So far it is looking ok, just a few small mistakes caused by working to quickly in a cluttered space. I have the face frame on, the case of the vanity all glued up and assembled, and just have doors, drawers, top, the in-wall unit and finish to do.

Pictures. . .

1. poor mans rough jointer
2. two parts. . .
a. the clamp on the planer
b. the side panels being glued up
3. Flattening panels by hand
4. lumber

[Matt Evans]

. . .And the picture order is wrong. After spending 20 minutes trying to figure out why my pictures didn't appear the first time, and are now in a different order than I uploaded them, I am calling it a night. . .

[John Keeton]

Matt, looks like a huge undertaking! I am sure that the beech is going thru some uneven moisture release if it was on the floor of the barn, and that probably is a lot of the problem.

Also, looks like powder post beetles are in the wood.

On the pics, upload them and then type the text of your post. Then place your cursor in your text where you want a particular pic, then click the "down arrow" next to the paper clip at the top of the post window - you can click an individual pic and place it in the text. Might be easier for you as you progress with this project.

Looking forward to seeing the rest of this!

[Matt Evans]

Matt, looks like a huge undertaking! I am sure that the beech is going thru some uneven moisture release if it was on the floor of the barn, and that probably is a lot of the problem.

Also, looks like powder post beetles are in the wood.



John,

Thanks for the advice and comment.

The powder post beetles are long gone. The evidence that they were there will, unfortunately, remain forever.

I got the wood for free about a year and a half ago, from my father, who also got it for free several years ago, (5-6 I think). So, it has been stored in moderated climate for the past 5 years or so, stickered and weighted. I did check the wood a while back for moisture content, and it was definitely dry, but I cannot remember what the meter read.

What I didn't account for was the property of Beech to very rapidly adapt to moisture and climate changes, something I hadn't thought about until I looked it up later on. Clark and Williams has a great article on Beech and why it is used for hand planes, which explained a lot.

I will try out the picture posting technique when I have more pictures to post.

[John Thompson]

Hope to see the results one day soon, Matt. I have used wormy pecan in the past but have run out at this point. Know what you mean about the down-size it takes when you get a load of recover.

Off to the shop for finish..

Sarge..

[Matt Evans]

Well, I had hoped to get more done, but I am pretty much set for tomorrow.

I got all the pieces cut for the two cabinets, (except the drawer fronts) made a change to the top by adding an African Mahogany 3/8" edge band, sanded the top and got one coat of Dark Walnut Watco oil, Made the doors up, and sanded the doors.

The only things left are making cutting the drawer fronts, sanding and finishing the cabinets, installing hardware and making up the toekick and backsplash. I might get everything done except the final clear coats tomorrow if all goes well.

A few things I really wish I had had for this are a jointer plane and a set of cabinet scrapers. The cabinet scrapers are on order, but the jointer plane will have to wait a little while.

Anyone have an idea as to pulls? I could go with wood, but I am thinking an antique bronze pull will look better. Possibly a Victorian birdcage style.

[John Keeton]

Matt, there is a nice Veritas jointer for sale in classifieds right now - it is calling your name!!

[Matt Evans]

Matt, there is a nice Veritas jointer for sale in classifieds right now - it is calling your name!!


John,

If I could afford that I would jump on it in a heart beat. But, having recently struck out on my own full time, I watch the dollars and cents pretty closely.

I use a Stanley No 5 as a jointer for short boards, and, if I really need to do a longer board I use a jig on the shaper after straight lining on the tablesaw. not an ideal setup, and using a no 5 that way is a challenge, but it doesn't cost anything but time and patience.

I use my fathers workshop most days, and he has an old rockwell delta 37-220, but neither of us has been able to figure out how to tune it up to par, so it sits unused, taking up space.

I actually meant to make a post tonight about that and his Shop fox W1692, both of which need fixed or tuned. Something for tomorrow, maybe.

[Matt Evans]

As I mentioned before, I was originally planning to do this project with all hand tools, but I ran into a time issue. So, no hand cut dovetails for the drawers. BUT. . . I think I probably could have cut the dovetails by hand much faster than with the jig.

The Jig has a bit of a story behind it, the long and short of it is that my wife got it for me in October, and I had never used it. Until today. Leigh makes a nice jig, I will give them that. but, my impression is that, unless you are planning on doing a decent number of drawers, it is just as fast to cut the dovetails by hand.

This could be because I don't have the experience with using a machine for dovetails, or it could be that I was using an odd size board thickness for the drawers (29/32") (My philosophy being, if you have thick stock that is usable, and you can get all of your stock to the same thickness, why cut everything down to a measly 3/4"?)

Also, a comparison. My father has the leigh d4 24" jig. I have the leigh 24" superjig. His has a few more features. Mine is easier to use, and laid out in a more readily understood fashion. As long as you have the instruction manual, which I had to download. If I were shopping around for a jig and was planning on doing a lot of production drawers, I think I might actually go with the superjig, even lacking the pin size adjustment. I am not 100% sure about that, but my $.02 from today. Also, I would write myself a manual, since neither set of instructions gave a very good account of what you need to do if you are going to vary your board thickness from their example. For instance, I spent a good half hour looking for the right bits, because there was no list that said "If you are using boards 7/8" thick, use a #140, or whatever it was" There may be a better manual out there somewhere, but when I am in the shop, without internet or a decent manual, it gets frustrating.



I ran into a slight snag when I routed between the fingers on a wider spaced pin. I came up with a remedy pretty quick to avoid doing it again. Just a simple stop that slides over the finger bar, but it worked pretty well.

I have everything done except finishing and hardware. I should have this project installed either Wednesday or Thursday, and will post pictures then.

[Matt Evans]

So, everything is made, and everything has two coats of Watco Dark Walnut. The top even has the first coat of lacquer.

Finishing was a bit of a chore. As you can see in the last picture, the mineral stains take finish much differently, and none of the stains seem to take finish the same. I actually finished a drawer, stepped back, cussed and stripped it, refinished it, only to realize that the area I thought was a large glue smear was, in fact, the wood itself, and there was nothing I could do about it.

The most noticeable of all is the left door panel in the last picture.

I meant to take a picture of the drawer stops I made, but, after how today has gone, I am not all that disappointed in myself.

Got up yesterday to a flat tire on the truck. Made an appointment for first thing this morning to get that fixed, and also get an alignment, only to find 4 hours later that I need a Pittman arm and an Idler arm, and that the tire has a one inch jagged tear in it, so it need to be replaced. So, I rescheduled the job I was going to be doing today for tomorrow, and went to finish the cabinets. a few hours in I get another phone call saying they can't get the old parts off the truck, the guy that is working on it won't be in tomorrow, so I won't get my truck back until Thursday afternoon.

So I get to work out of my 93 Toyota Tercel tomorrow. What a joy.

[Matt Evans]

Almost. . .

I installed the cabinets Saturday, and when I was finished, I stepped back to look, leaned in to look at the sink and top, only to discover that the tops finish had blistered. So, scrape off the lacquer, sand down, put on a coat of Watco, went back today to put another coat of Watco on. On Wednesday I will go back and put a rub on Poly finish coat on to complete the job.

But, for all intents and purposes it is done.

[John Thompson]

That came out nice. I like the look of the re-claimed bard wood as it has a patina I could only hope to get.

Well done...

Sarge..