Armoire Progress

[John Miliunas]

Cookin' with gas there, Jim! Great progress! Got any K-Bodies left over after that glue-up? Also, do you use any biscuits or splines, T&G or such for your panels? I'm also glad to hear that the chip collector worked so well. I picked one up for my PC690 some time ago, but always forget to try it out when doing edge routing. You've inspired me! Keep us posted on progress!

[Jim Becker]

John, no biscuits...just glue and clamps. And that's about half of my 24" K-Bodies plus two 18" UniClamps. (I will likely pick up more of those as they are great for light duty clamping and are a lot less expensive than the 12" K-bodies) The case back for this project is T&G, but I cheated and bought the stuff...

[Michael Stafford]

Jim, it is looking great. I'm getting anxious to see the final product. Do you think you could fast forward a bit so that I can see the end of this here project? OH by the way, I will be out of town when you are moving it upstairs... Sorry...

[Kelly C. Hanna]

Great progress Jim...can't wait to see it finished and sorry, but I'm glad I'm not your neighbor...that thing looks HEAVY!!

[Jim Becker]

A few important steps were completed on the armoire project today and I hope to continued that trend tomorrow. I'd like to get this piece completed in the next couple of weeks, but it will require some diligence in getting out to the shop at times other than the weekends as next weekend I'm helping to man the Mini Max booth at Woodworks 2004 in Ft Washington PA and the following weekend I have to fly for business on Sunday. I'll use the picture descriptions below to describe the doin's.

Pics

1. Milling the back of the door panels so they fit into the grooves provided in the rails and stiles. I'm using a 22º Shaker style cutter which adds a nice shadow line on the interior of the doors.
2. Dry fitting the doors. While the upper and lower panels came from different boards, I was able to get a reasonable grain match that approximates a continuous grain pattern top to bottom. The right way to do this is to use the same boards...but that wasn't possible this time around. I'm reasonably pleased with the results and once the dye is applied the minor variations will become less obvious than they are "bare".
3. After cutting the dovetails for the drawers (with the Leigh this time...), I did a dry fit into the cabinet. "Just right" for my purposes. Notice that the fronts are one continuous board in keeping with that important design aspect.
4. Testing the dye. The piece in the foreground has just the dye on the left and the dye topped with a coat of garnet shellac on the right. Nice. Just the hue I'm looking for to work will the wide pumpkin pine flooring in that guest bedroom.
5. Since there are no false fronts on the drawers and I happen to like the look of the drawer face matching the casework and the rest of the drawer being natural, I need to plan for assembling the drawer boxes after dying the front. By carefully clamping the front and each side to the workbench in a dry-fit, I was able to pre-sand the dovetail joints prior to assembly and then dye just the front. This is a test example of how that will work out.

More tomorrow...

[Michael Stafford]

The color is great. I look forward to seeing the piece in place. The floors must have a rich mellow color. Ingenious way to finish the drawer fronts and not the sides. I learn so much at the Creek and occasionally it is something useful like this . Really excellent. Do hurry along, this is a good book but I am ready for the happy ending...

By the way, alcohol or water based dye?

[Frank Pellow]

It looks REALLY GOOD Jim. You say that you are reasonably happy with the results of the pattern matching. If it were me, I would be VERY HAPPY.

[Keith Christopher]

Jim,


Awesome matchups looking REAL good. BTW I didn't see it in here what wood are you using ? Also your avatar, it's wiggin me out !


Keith

[Jim Becker]

BTW I didn't see it in here what wood are you using ?

Somewhere early on I mentioned it's poplar off our property...getting to the end of it and this has enough knots to emulate pine quite nicely...without buying pine.

Also your avatar, it's wiggin me out !

Happy Halloween!! And if you look closely...the wig is quite missing...

[Christian Aufreiter]

Very, very nice, Jim. I really like the contrast of the dovetailed drawers.

[Mark Singer]

Jim,

It is really looking great! Excellent work, beautiful dovetails! The project is coming along beautiful!

[John Miliunas]

Cruising along quite nicely there, my friend! Really love the staining and detail on the dovetails. Very well done!

[Jim Becker]

By the way, alcohol or water based dye?

Water based. Alcohol-based dyes really need to be sprayed to get even coverage as the alcohol flashes off so fast. Water based dyes can be "worked" with the rag to insure things look right. Once the WB dye dries, a quick hit with 320 wet and dry to de-fuz and a coat of de-waxed shellac to seal it makes it ready for further finishing. The shellac also gives transparency to the finish and the color choice of the shellac can add tone...which is why I use garnet shellac for this kind of project as it gives a little more red-amber to the brown color.

[Kelly C. Hanna]

Absolutely beautiful Jim! I love the way you are dying the wood on the dovetails. It's gonna look superb.

[Jerry Olexa]

Jim, Great job ,as always, with you! Your WW skills are evident, I love (echo) the look of your dovetails and the contrast! Great craftmanship! You're a role model for the rest of us...