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Ben Arnott

My Shakashima Media Cabinet Part 6

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Once I had the legs, top rails and bottom rails dry fitted, I began working on the panels. There are, all told, ten panels on this piece. Six of them I bookmatched in Curly Maple. This was my first experience with bookmatching, and I'll share what I learned.

First off, its a wicked good time! The process of essentially cutting a board open and discovering what the grain looks like is thrilling. I chose Curly Maple for my bookmatched panels. My panels needed to be roughly 7 in by 19 1/8. I took a 7 1/2 in wide board 45 or so in long and resawed it with the bandsaw. I wanted a finished panel thickness of at least 1/2 (to house adjustable shelve pins) so I chose 5/4 Curly Maple to resaw. Because I had to take more material off than I anticipated to flatten the board before resawing, I ended up with 3/8 thick panels. Not good. Next time, I'll be more careful choosing stock.

Once the board was flat, I resawed it with the band saw. I used my widest saw blade with the lowest tooth count I had (3/4 in 2 pi). This reduced drift as much as possible.

After the blade passed through the entire board, I reverently carried the two halves over to my bench and opened them (like a book). This is the fun part. The grain appears as a mirror image of itself. I found 4 usable panels for the two sides from the 45 in board and set out to surfacing the panels.

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Now that I knew my panel dimensions, I could set out to making the stiles for the sides. Building this piece again, I would have made the stiles for all four sides all at once, but because I had no plan, and many of the measurements could potentially change, I instead worked the sides together and then the back.

I milled up Cherry stiles to be centered on the sides and to be wide enough to catch the panels in their groves (a bit backwards, yes). I wanted these to be flush with the top and bottom rails, and they would have grooves to catch the panels. After hand planing the stiles smooth, I routed grooves in the stiles and top and bottom rails. After routing the grooves, I made my tenons and fit them into the mortises in the top and bottom rails. The top rails were chopped by hand because it was easier for me than setting up the router table. I dry fitted the stiles and rails to the legs and marked with a knife the location of where I would carry the grove into the legs. With a marking gauge, I made grove cut lines on the legs and routed those as well. I waited to cut the leg groves until after dry fitting in case I made a mistake along the way. It would have been easier to mill up new side members if I had to. But to remake the legs would have been a major disappointment.

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Now that I had grooves all around, I went back to the panels to make the tongues. Taking a marking gauge with the finished thickness of the tongue, I scribed a knife mark all around. Then I adjusted the wheel on the gauge to represent the length of the tongue. I added some length to accommodate expansion and contraction. I didn't want either the tongue or the shoulder to bottom out on the groove, or the shoulder of the groove.

Because I wanted the panels to sit flat inside the rails and stiles, not raised, I only cut the rabbit on the inside. In order to avoid any gaps in the groove on the outside, I wanted my fit to be snug. So after removing the lion share of material with a dado stack, I snuck up on my line with a rabbit plane. This work well, and allowed control of the fit.

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Comments

  1. Pat Barry's Avatar
    Ben this is really really nice. Love the style and the wood selection. Thanks for the details and excellent documentation.
  2. Pat Barry's Avatar
    One question though Ben, what does the term Shakashima refer to? Am not aware of that. Is it referring to the style?
  3. Ben Arnott's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pat Barry
    One question though Ben, what does the term Shakashima refer to? Am not aware of that. Is it referring to the style?
    Hi Pat, Thanks for the kind words. Shakashima was what I named it. The name is derivative of the influences tried to incorporate while I designed the piece. For better or worse, I wanted the piece to have elements of Shaker style furniture, but I was also trying to express my wonderment of Japanese artists like furniture maker George Nakashima. Hence Shakashima.

    You've alerted me to an omission on my part I think. I probably could have given a little history.

    Thanks for taking a peek at the blog.
  4. Dave MacArthur's Avatar
    Great blog, thoroughly enjoyed the read.

    I wondered on the cove cut, if you could have just cut a normal full cove on a board and sliced it in two? You wouldn't have had that flat rise then blending into a cove top, mirroring the legs then, I suppose.

    Great work again!
  5. Ben Arnott's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dave MacArthur
    Great blog, thoroughly enjoyed the read.

    I wondered on the cove cut, if you could have just cut a normal full cove on a board and sliced it in two? You wouldn't have had that flat rise then blending into a cove top, mirroring the legs then, I suppose.

    Great work again!
    Thanks Dave! I thought about cutting two coves out of one board and then ripping the board in two, but I couldn't think of a way to get the profile right without using a 10 in wide board. To get the proper profile, the blade raises, and the angle of attack on the blade increases, making the circumference too great to work with the whole blade.

    I'm glad you like reading the blog. I haven't gotten a whole lot of feedback, so I was questioning whether I should finish the story.
  6. Pat Barry's Avatar
    Definitely would like to see you finish this. Very interesting to me to see your process.
  7. Jeff Hallam's Avatar
    Please continue your story, it's really looking fantastic.
  8. Ben Arnott's Avatar
    Thanks guys! Cool, I'll keep writing then.
  9. bill schmoott's Avatar
    Ben, I have looked at this literally a hundred times. It would sadden me greatly to not be able to see this finished. I am in awe at the lines and the dimensional stability you have been able to produce. I showed this to my girlfriend. She asked me what it would take for her to get something like that made. I just looked at her and said you will have to talk to Ben about that. She looked at me and said "I am sure he would be able to get what he wants for it". and she walked away. I will say no more. We both really like the piece. Look forward to your next post.
  10. Ben Arnott's Avatar
    Thank you Bill! That's a wonderful thing to say. I've finished the blog, and you can see the finished project in conclusion. I appreciate your's and your girlfriend's kind words. My fiance was so cute the other day. She came home the other night, and told me she showed the piece to her girlfriends at work. They told her they were envious that she was going to have a house full of beautiful, hand made furniture. I was humbled and grateful to hear that. That's praise I think we all can appreciate, the validation is part of why we do it, I think. Looks like I have a lot of building to do!

    Sharing our hard work and love of woodworking with others is the best feeling. I joined this forum to not only share my work, but to see other's work, and appreciate what everyone else is doing. This is a great tool for learning our art.