Fred Voorhees
01-25-2006, 11:42 AM
Well, after what turned out to be a few weeks more than I anticipated (and not due to my end), the twin corner hutches that I have been putting together for my brother are finally done and will be out of my shop tonight. Seven feet tall and almost two and a half feet wide out from the back corner, they are massive.
Constructed from vintage poplar from Jim Becker's stock of lumber, it also included 3/4" birch ply for 90% of the backs. It has three adjustable shelves for the upper portion of the hutches and the drilling of the holes for same was dead on thanks to the Rockler shelf pin jig. I have used this jig for two or three projects now and I can swear by its accuracy.
One of the more challenging aspects of the job was fabricating the arched topped doors for each. I had never done this and looked forward to the challenge. I went with one of David Marks' methods and used a 3/4" MDF template to route each of the eight identical sections of the top once I figured out the correct proportions to fit the dimensions of the openings. routed a profile and a rabbit into each one and managed to squeeze a face frame biscuit into the ends of each segment and once glued up, they were solid.
I went ahead and painted the raised panel portion of the doors for the lower section of the cabinets. I always prefer to do such a thing with raised panels with the expansion and contraction deal in mind. Trim for the bottoms of the hutches will be applied by my brother since he wants to more or less, tie them in with the rest of the room by using the same trim as the floor trim in the room that he is doing over. He wants them to look as "built-in" as possible.
It was another nice project and one that moved me into some uncharted territory, but I sure am glad that they will be out of the shop since they take up so much room. Now I can get going with some projects that I have had on the back burner for a while.
Constructed from vintage poplar from Jim Becker's stock of lumber, it also included 3/4" birch ply for 90% of the backs. It has three adjustable shelves for the upper portion of the hutches and the drilling of the holes for same was dead on thanks to the Rockler shelf pin jig. I have used this jig for two or three projects now and I can swear by its accuracy.
One of the more challenging aspects of the job was fabricating the arched topped doors for each. I had never done this and looked forward to the challenge. I went with one of David Marks' methods and used a 3/4" MDF template to route each of the eight identical sections of the top once I figured out the correct proportions to fit the dimensions of the openings. routed a profile and a rabbit into each one and managed to squeeze a face frame biscuit into the ends of each segment and once glued up, they were solid.
I went ahead and painted the raised panel portion of the doors for the lower section of the cabinets. I always prefer to do such a thing with raised panels with the expansion and contraction deal in mind. Trim for the bottoms of the hutches will be applied by my brother since he wants to more or less, tie them in with the rest of the room by using the same trim as the floor trim in the room that he is doing over. He wants them to look as "built-in" as possible.
It was another nice project and one that moved me into some uncharted territory, but I sure am glad that they will be out of the shop since they take up so much room. Now I can get going with some projects that I have had on the back burner for a while.