Don Buck
03-28-2017, 12:13 PM
I just completed and installed a new bathroom vanity for our log cabin. Much of our cabin furniture is made from wormy chestnut and our existing vanity lacked storage and counter space. I purchased a half pickup load of chestnut barnwood 2 x 4's last year and decided to test my resawing ability and construct a chestnut vanity. Most of the 2 x 4's were 8' long and I wanted the longest resawn pieces so I could defect and select best portion for specific parts.
I found my best yield on the long pieces was to surface one edge and face on the jointer and mark a straight line at 15/16" from the jointed face for my saw line to provide pieces that would yield at least one board that would surface out to 3/4". Depending upon the rough thickness and volume removed to flatten the board the other piece ranged from 5/8" to 1". The thinner boards were needed for the drawer faces (s2s to 1/2") and the shaker style door panels (s2s 7/16"). After resawing several of the chestnut 2 x 4's I found that my chestnut yielded 3 distinct colors & textures - beige, dark brown and several reddish boards. I was hoping to use a light stain for the finish but discovered on some sample pieces that a natural tung oil finish highlighted the color variations. I ended up using the brown boards for the face frame and drawer fronts and the lighter beige boards for the vanity top. The few reddish boards that emerged from jointing went back into the lumber pile for another project. All boards were checked for metal using a newly purchased metal detecting wand and found 3 boards with embedded nails and one board with 2 jacketed rifle bullets.
By the time I got to resawing for the vanity top I decided to resaw the boards against the short width which yielded 4 slices, 2 pair of book matched straight grained boards. After glueing the top panel, cutting to size (23" x 49"), cutting the sink cutout, edge profile on 3 edges and sanding I filled the remaining 130 worm and nail holes with clear epoxy using a toothpick to direct the glue. I decided to fill the holes so any spill on the counter top wouldn't end up in another compartment! I only filled the holes on the counter top.
For the finish I used Watco dark walnut oil stain which did a great job of blending the color contrast of the chestnut and topped the finish with 4 coats of Waterlox Original High Gloss Finish, all applied by hand with pads.
The design placed the sink bowl off center so it would be centered when the door is open and to align with the existing drain pipe. The door panels were finished prior to assembly to avoid any reveal of raw wood in case of panel movement.
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I found my best yield on the long pieces was to surface one edge and face on the jointer and mark a straight line at 15/16" from the jointed face for my saw line to provide pieces that would yield at least one board that would surface out to 3/4". Depending upon the rough thickness and volume removed to flatten the board the other piece ranged from 5/8" to 1". The thinner boards were needed for the drawer faces (s2s to 1/2") and the shaker style door panels (s2s 7/16"). After resawing several of the chestnut 2 x 4's I found that my chestnut yielded 3 distinct colors & textures - beige, dark brown and several reddish boards. I was hoping to use a light stain for the finish but discovered on some sample pieces that a natural tung oil finish highlighted the color variations. I ended up using the brown boards for the face frame and drawer fronts and the lighter beige boards for the vanity top. The few reddish boards that emerged from jointing went back into the lumber pile for another project. All boards were checked for metal using a newly purchased metal detecting wand and found 3 boards with embedded nails and one board with 2 jacketed rifle bullets.
By the time I got to resawing for the vanity top I decided to resaw the boards against the short width which yielded 4 slices, 2 pair of book matched straight grained boards. After glueing the top panel, cutting to size (23" x 49"), cutting the sink cutout, edge profile on 3 edges and sanding I filled the remaining 130 worm and nail holes with clear epoxy using a toothpick to direct the glue. I decided to fill the holes so any spill on the counter top wouldn't end up in another compartment! I only filled the holes on the counter top.
For the finish I used Watco dark walnut oil stain which did a great job of blending the color contrast of the chestnut and topped the finish with 4 coats of Waterlox Original High Gloss Finish, all applied by hand with pads.
The design placed the sink bowl off center so it would be centered when the door is open and to align with the existing drain pipe. The door panels were finished prior to assembly to avoid any reveal of raw wood in case of panel movement.
357077 357078 357079 357080 357081
357082 357083 357084