With apologies to James Krenov...

[Phil Thien]

Now that I've got this full-of-holes red oak, I've got to make something from the stuff.

I decided to bake some of it (170F for about 2.5 hours) to make sure any bugs are dead. I think it was really unnecessary but the look on my wife's face was priceless. The stock was only 1/2" thick when I did this. I took it out of the oven and we went to a party for a nephew. Got back about 1.5 hours later and the stock was still pretty warm. Look on wife's face was still that of concern.

Given the size of the pieces, I thought something like a mini Krenov cabinet would be kinda neat. And I'm trying to celebrate all the defects in the wood. There are holes, knots, a split, etc. I didn't work around any of it. And I'm showing end-grain, but it polishes up real nice.

I used the Jessem doweling jig (the newer one) with 1/4" bushings to connect the sides to the top/bottom. Love that Jessem jig. Piston fit on all of this.

I've never used knife hinges but I'm going to try. And I'm totally cheating. I'm going to order some of the 5/16" wide units and so I plowed a 5/16" wide (3/32" deep) grove both top and bottom to accept the hinges. I plowed it all the way across, and I'll fill the area between with a contrasting material.

I'll start fitting a back this week, but I won't be able to do doors until I get the hinges. And I'm not sure if I want the stainless from Lee Valley or just pickup the brass from Rockler. And I'm not even sure I want to spend that kind of money on hinges.

This only took about an hour, BTW. I had a bunch of other non-woodworking (albeit very entertaining) stuff to do the rest of the weekend.

[Edward Oleen]

I hope hope hope you told her you were planning on combining your existing wood working hobby with your new cooking hobby...

[Edward Oleen]

Just noticed your name. By any chance do you know something about dust collection??

[Jim Matthews]

Will you cut kerfs in the panels, with the grain and bend them some?

[Phil Thien]

Will you cut kerfs in the panels, with the grain and bend them some?

I think I should have cut a matching curve into the top/bottom to compliment such curved doors. And I wish I had thought of it. I'm afraid I'm not going to have curved doors.

Now that I've gotten a little further, I realize why Mr. Krenov used veneered panels so extensively: It solves a lot of stability issues, especially where seasonal movement may cause problems for the doors.

My exercise with this cabinet is actually an insult to a fine cabinetmaker. While I think someone that knows little about building a cabinet may go "oh that is kinda pretty," someone that knows about wood movement and how things go together would realize I'm taking the easy way out of every problem.

I'll give an example: The cabinet back. I used four pieces of 2-1/8" wide stock with 1/16" or so gaps between each, to form a back. The top and bottom back pieces are glued to the top and bottom of the cabinet, and the sides. The two middle pieces forming the back are glued onto to the sides (there is a rebate on the sides but not the bottom). This allows for some seasonal movement without cracks (maybe, hopefully?). It also allowed me to increase the rigidity of the top and bottom a bit. But this would have been unacceptable to an artist like Mr. Krenov, he would certainly have used a raised panel or at the very least floated a back into a recess in the sides, top, and bottom.

And of course there is the cheat in the way I'm mounting the knife hinges. Cutting a dado all the way across the top and bottom and filling the gap between the hinges with a complimentary wood may look pretty neat (at first) to a casual observer, a pro would call me out for not properly mortising the hinges.

The entire point of this exercise was to make something quickly, and to experiment with knife hinges. I think it also reinforces the complexity of a true Krenovian cabinet, and makes me appreciate the hand-work in those works.

Man I wish I had thought of kerfing the doors. Thanks a lot for bringing that up now, Jim!

[Phil Thien]

A pic being worth a thousand words, here is the back.

One interesting aspect of this buggy wood is that each person that has seen the box runs their hand across the stock. Something about that lumber that makes you want to touch the thing.

[Jim Matthews]

One interesting aspect of this buggy wood is that each person that has seen the box runs their hand across the stock. Something about that lumber...

Most of us have never seen a buggy that big before.
It evokes a natural sense of wonder.

That, and the smell.

[Chris Padilla]

I'm not a big fan of oak but I like the box and the somewhat rustic look.

[Phil Thien]

Well I picked up some Brusso ST-12 hinges last night, two pairs. I didn't realize until I was mounting the 2nd pair that the countersinks for the screws was significantly deeper (ugh). It just doesn't look right on such a small project.

I called Brusso and Kevin was EXTREMELY helpful and is swapping everything so I have two perfectly matching sets. Next time I'm picking up hinges locally, I'll be sure to eyeball things more closely. The funny thing is, one set had the steel starter screw, the other didn't. So that should have been my tip to look more closely.

I've never used knife hinges before but obviously got pretty far with these before discovering the difference. They're kinda neat. They do call attention to mistakes I've made in the design of the cabinet but nothing I can't work around. I think the biggest problem is that I needed to allow more clearance between the sides, and the doors. I've already figured out a way to do things better next time.

[Phil Thien]

I played around this morning with mounting some doors using the knife hinges. I don't own any of the Krenov books but have borrowed them from the library and recall the section when he got to hinges. To say he is a proponent of knife hinges is an understatement. I don't think I've seen anything he has made with anything BUT knife hinges. In fact, he mentions in one of his books that, upon arrival in the US, he couldn't find any, so he commissioned a machinist to make some.

Reading that section of whichever book it was, I just recall looking at the hinge mortises and knowing the degree of precision required in locating them. And I was looking at those pictures and drawings of cabinets thinking the cabinets were actually quite large, only to later realize some of them (not all) are quite small. And I found some of the diagrams confusing about things like how far out the pivot should extend.

So this was a great opportunity to learn by doing.

Some things I learned:

(1) Keeping the entire pivot point itself outside the door and cabinet sides will allow you to maintain tight lines between the door and the cabinet, and will maximize door swing.

(2) The heads of the tiny brass screws break very easily.

(3) The steel screw supplied by Brusso as a thread starter doesn't have threads that match the brass screws. I visited a local, well-stocked hardware store last night and found #2 x 1/2" flat-head brass screws with Phillips heads, and steel screws with matching threads. The threads on everything at the hardware store perfectly matched the brass screws supplied by Brusso. So the extra brass screws and the better-matched steel screw made things go more smoothly this morning.

(4) Knife hinges are expensive.

(5) I discovered that for these smallest knife hinges, I was able to use a cut-off portion of the inner plastic tube from a BIC ink pen to locate the drill bit in the hinge hole, making a very small self-centering hinge drill bit.

(6) The hinge leaves are small and like to move around. For the leaves on the cabinet, I clamped with little plastic ratcheting clamps. On the doors, I put a transfer punch through the pivot hole, and taped the punch to the side of the door.

Finally, the biggest thing I've learned, is that the hinges ARE pretty much fool-proof if you take care in mounting them. The alignment of the two doors to one another is assured. So all the effort pays off.

Here is a pic with some doors. Again, this cabinet is a compromise. I just wanted to futz with the material and see if I could make something worthwhile.

The doors are uneven widths because I was trying to take advantage of the grain of the boards. It was the best I could do.

I still have to figure out what I want to do for handle(s), I need some way to latch the doors, I need something inside the cabinet to hold something. I need to finish it somehow, too. And the holes make finishing a challenge.

One final note: I started a thread about planning rough-sawn lumber without face jointing it first, or using any sort of planer sled. All the wood for this project was made from rough-sawn lumber with bows and cups and planed but never jointed. And yet the boards came out remarkably flat.

[Andrew Hughes]

I do like the holes in oak makes all the difference for me,looks like most of the wood is quarerd I think that might have been in your favor.
I prefer the offset knife hinge for a inset door,The one leevalley sells have a steel pivot,but they can get galled so becareful with the brusso brass ones.Aj

[Phil Thien]

I do like the holes in oak makes all the difference for me,looks like most of the wood is quarerd I think that might have been in your favor.
I prefer the offset knife hinge for a inset door,The one leevalley sells have a steel pivot,but they can get galled so becareful with the brusso brass ones.Aj

My cabinet's top and bottom extend beyond the sides, so I could use either the straight or offset hinges, but I think the straight ones are more common in this application? I'm not sure. Next time I'll try the offset hinges and completely inset doors, although I expect that to be a greater challenge.