3 Attachment(s)
small cabinet/plant stand
A number of years ago my wife was invited to do a floral interpretation of Japanese print of a koi rising through water at the MFA in Boston. She asked me to build a container that would capture both Japanese influences and the color/texture of the water. I built a box with some really nice quilted bigleaf maple that gave me both the ripples in the water and the scales of the fish. That container has since moved around the house with various flower arrangements and never had a home.
When DW asks for something to be built, one feels compelled to justify a significant investment in a workshop, plus of course the pleasure of doing something for your mate. So the task was to build a dedicated stand for the flower container. The resulting cabinet is shown below. For kicks and to exercise a new-found skill (to wit, sharpening planes) I decided to finish the piece without the use of sandpaper, only hand planed surfaces. I probably shouldn't have started with curly maple!
The piece is curly maple with birdseye maple door panels, and has a bloodwood door handle that refers to the bloodwood base and trim on the container and ebony pegs in the M&T joints on the doors. Finish is Arm-r-Seal.
I started the piece the week before Christmas, working on it most days except for 9 days of travel around the holiday. I don't track my hours, so I can't give you a precise count. The last 5 days have been one coat of finish a day.
We'll have to see how the busyness of the maple stands up over time. I expect the piece to change color to me more like the box on time. I regret a little that the spectacular piece of wood I put on the top is mostly hidden-- I bought it nearly 40 years ago, carrying it from New Haven to Palo Alto, to St. Louis, and now Boston waiting for the right application. Another piece from that lot went into my son's bass guitar. I based some of the design after a picture I found in a woodworking magazine; while I'm happy with the raised top I'm not very happy with the design of the case joinery. I think it was supposed to be easy to do, but didn't have the structural integrity that I would have preferred-- various parts are held together only with glue and I even had to use a couple of nails to attach the sub-top because the plan made no provision for anchoring it in front without a cross-grain glue joint. Next time I'll use more traditional joinery; I thought I'd experiment with a more "modern" method this time. Oh well. It won't see very heavy use, so I expect it will be up to the task.
Attachment 401283 Attachment 401284 Attachment 401285
