Media Cabinet - Plugging along

It's been a while since I have given an update on progress. Mostly, the progress hasn't been anything too exciting, or exciting enough to write about, but I figured I should anyways. So last time I left off I had made the doors and and had begun to scrape all the glue lines for the top. I have since then finished all the scraping; I had to scrape the bottom platform and all the side pieces...basically anything that I had joined. Next I turned my attention to the two swing out doors. These are for holding games and DVD's. To keep things simple, and looking good, I decided to go with half-blind dovetails to joint the sides to the bottom (there is not top). So I set it all up in my Leigh jig, made a couple test cuts and knocked them out.

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I had a little tear out on the first one because I forgot to use a backer board. This joint is on the bottom anyways so it will never be seen.

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Next, I figured I would start on the top. It takes a while to glue the boards up so I figured now was a good time to do it because while the glue dries I can work on other items. So, the top is to be about 65" long by 22" deep. I started with a long 12/4 piece of wood. This I will resaw three times to get my three pieces need to make the top. I have an 8" jointer and this board was wider than that so I had to initially flatten it by hand. For those not familiar with doing this, a good way to get started is to use chalk and mark up your board.

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This allows you to know the areas that you have, and have not, planed. Then, you use something like a #4 and begin to work up and down the board at a pretty big angle, somewhere between 45 and 60 degrees.

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This is a shot of about half way though. You can see the center of the board still has chalk, this tells me that I have not yet gotten the whole thing flat. If you look at the part of the board closest to you, you can also see the plane marks and the angle of approach I am using. As you get it more and more flat, you begin to decrease the angle and then eventually switch to another plane to finish it off.
Here are the three, book matched, boards after being resawn and planed to thickness. By the way, resawing a 12/4 piece of wood 70" long is a real treat!

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It's not the greatest picture in the world, but I think you can get an idea for the triple book match. This is something that sets one piece of work apart from others so take note when looking at "antique" furniture and the quality of work.

Next, I needed to layout and begin routing the dado's for the vertical panels. I'm starting with the two outer most panels, these only come in just over half way as they are part of the swing out door assembly. I always turn into a nervous wreck when I have to do things like this because if you mess it up, all that wood and work are ruined. Anyways, I made the first two with no problem.

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So next I need to rout the dado's in the swing out doors that house the shelves for the storage. This will be two dado's on each side. Once I have those in, I will then glue up the swing out doors and use those to aid me in laying out where the next dado's go for the middle, full length, vertical panels. More on that later though!

Be safe!

Media Cabinet - Progress on the doors

So with starting back to work on my normal job, I haven't spent a ton of time this last week on the media cabinet, just a little bit here and there. I was able to do some work on it today. During the week I was able to work on getting the base glued up. Below you can see where I am gluing up the long stretchers. As you can see, I don't have any clamps long enough for this so I had to improvise.

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So today I decided to do some more work on the doors; specifically the two outer doors. These doors are 26" tall by 13" wide. As I mentioned in my last post, the center panel is one solid piece of wood. What I worked on today was to mill up the rails and stiles. I am using 2" rails and stiles so once I got them cut and planed I used my matched rail and stile bit to rout the pieces. Here are the individual pieces.

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And here they are loosely put together.

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Here is one door dry fit, without the center panel obviously.

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Next, I took the two center panels and used one of my new vertical raised panel bits and routed the panel profile. Here is a glimpse at the profile.

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Here is one door dry fit. Note the chalk marks, this is how I keep track of where each piece goes and how they should be oriented.

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Straight on look.

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Also note that the I kept the stiles about 1" longer; this is on purpose so I can lay the door flat, make sure the panel is centered for glue up and then trim it to exact length. Here are both doors together.

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Well, that is all I was able to get done today really. Next I need to finish gluing the bottom together and then I need to do a little trick to them to re-enforce the mortise and tenon joint. Next, I am also going to turn my attention to the bottom panel and take my card scraper to it to get all the glue off from the glue up and work on flattening any unevenness. Hopefully more on that tomorrow!

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Media Cabinet - Starting the doors

So for the last couple of days I have been gluing pieces together for the four main partitions, as well as the bottom. As I explained last time, I only glue up two boards at a time to keep it more manageable so it takes a little longer. I'm nearly complete with the bottom glue up, just one more piece and I will be ready to do final dimensioning on it; my router bits showed up as well so I will be ready to add the profile on it as well. So, while doing all of that I thought I would get started on the doors. There are four doors total, two swing out doors that house DVD storage and two center doors the are pocket doors. I'm starting with the two outside doors for now. The design call for doors that are 13" wide by 26" tall, I am using 2" rails and stiles, so my center panel needs to be a small 9 3/4" wide by 22 3/4" tall. You get to these numbers by taking the overall size of the door, subtracting your rail/stile width...twice and then adding back the depth of the cut the router bit makes, in my case 3/8" times two (one for each side). So, with that I wanted to get to making the center panels. I have some 8/4 pieces and one in particular that is over 10" wide so I am going to resaw that in half and have two matching doors, one on the left and one on the right. Before I can do that, I have to flatten the board on one side so I can plane it and and resaw it. So here is the board that I am using and in this picture you can see I have marked it up with chalk. This tell me where I need to remove material in order to ensure it is flat.

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So, after just a few minutes with my hand planes I had one side flat and then was able to run it through the planer and get it ready to be sliced in half.

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Here are the two pieces after being resawn; notice the grain in the center, it's the same on both boards, which is called book matched. When you cut the pieces in half, you then lay them open like a book and have matching pieces. Here they are after both being planed down to final thickness.

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Next I will be cutting the rail and stile material and using the router table to make the door frame. Then, I will be using a raised panel cutter for the doors and then I will be able to dry assemble the doors; so that is my goal for the first part of this week.

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Media Cabinet Progress - Working upward

So I am continuing to make progress on the base; I know it seems like it is taking forever to finish the base, but if it is not done right, the whole piece will be off. So, in order to begin the glue up, I wanted to add some shape to the legs/feet of the base. I've always done a straight taper in the past so I wanted something a bit different this time, nothing to dramatic so I came up with a simple little bend.

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So with that, I went off to the band saw and cut all four feet.

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I then used my oscillating spindle sander to smooth them out. After that was done, I began to glue up the rails to the legs, starting with the short rails on the ends. After those dry overnight, I will then glue the main rails as well as the mid stretchers.

Now I am turning my attention to the four main upright partitions. There are on the outside that don't extend the whole depth of the cabinet and then two in the middle that do. I will start with the outside partitions first. Again, all solid wood, no plywood so I have to start milling up the pieces I need.

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Once I mill it up, I start to glue it together piece by piece.

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Now, some of these glue ups will require 4 or 5 pieces of wood. It takes a lot longer, but I only glue two pieces together at a time and not all 4 or 5. The reason I do this is it makes it more manageable. Instead of having to align 2 or 3 glue joints, I can focus on one and make sure it is nice and smooth. Plus, having several clamps (you can never have too many!) I can actually do several glue ups at one time. So, for a panel that requires 4 pieces, I do two glue ups, two boards each, and when they are done I come back and glue those two together for my full panel. I just think it makes the process way more manageable...but that's just me. So, while this is all drying, I'm going to start to layout and process for the two outside doors...

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Media Cabinet Progress

So another, semi-productive, day on the media cabinet. I didn't get as much time today as I hoped, but made some more progress. Today I wanted to continue working on the base and get the cross stretchers done. These are going to provide more support and rigidity for the base and also give me some more point in which to secure the bottom. So, first I laid out where the stretchers would go; about 1/3 of the way in from each side.

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Then I cut the stretchers to their final size, which is 3/4" longer than the internal length as I am going to use a height of 3/8" on each end. For this joint, I decided to use a sliding dovetail joint. I did this because it will help protect against the piece pulling apart better than just a standard dado. So, first order of business was to cut the through dovetail in the rails.

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Now, something important to note is that it is ok to go all the way through. Why? Because the top will cover that up. Even if it didn't, a nice through dovetail is a neat feature to let people know the detail and quality you've put into the work. Next, create the mating piece. This is done by carefully nibbling away at the stretchers bit by bit. Remember, any adjustment to the fence is compounded by a factor of two as you have to rout both side of the piece; use scrap first to get the perfect fit.

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The mating pieces.

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Here is a shot of the stretchers dry fit. The closest one shows a finished fit and the far one shows how they go together.

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My next order of business is to mill and glue the pieces that will form the vertical partitions. Once I have those done, I will also finalize the bottom platform, square one end of each board and glue it up. I can't do much with the bottom after that until the router bit I ordered for the profile shows up (hopefully Friday).

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More work on the Media Cabinet

So for the last couple of days I have been working on milling more wood for the base. I really need to get the base right or the whole thing is going to be off. Also, as usual, I've made a slight design change. In the stock picture, the base is flush with the rails and posts. I liked this, but it was going to be trickier than I wanted it to be. Also, I'm using solid wood, not plywood, so this would be an issue with wood movement. So, I've decided to change it to set on top, like a table top, with a 3/4-1" overlap on three sides (not the back). This solves my wood movement problem (sort of) but will also dress it up a bit; I'm going to use a classic ogee profile on it. So, with that, I've done all my mortise and tenon joints for the base rails.

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Here it is all dry fit.

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I have not glued it together yet as I want to add two cross braces about a third of the way in from each side. This will give me better support and also give me another place to screw the base into the bottom with slots for wood movement.

Next I milled up the 4/4 lumber that is going to be used for the base.

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And here they are LOOSELY dry fit to the bottom.

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I still need to cut them to exact length and glue them together. I'm not in a huge hurry for that as I had to order the router bit I need for the profile so it won't be here for a while. But I think what I will start on next are the two main vertical support in the center of the cabinet, as well as the outside verticals. I'm not completely sure how I want to attach these to the base, but I am leaning toward mortise and tenon here as well; input welcome on that one.

Well, back to the jointer and planer...

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Media Cabinet has begun...baby steps

Have to crawl before you can walk and walk before you run and that is how my projects get started. I am preparing to build a media cabinet for my house based on a Pottery Barn design.

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The first thing I had to do was get some measurements, which Pottery Barn provides, and then guesstimate how much wood I was going to need. I am not using any plywood, all solid wood, so I will be compensating for wood movement as I go. So, with that, I have procured what I hope to be all the wood I need, but I will probably need more.

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The lumber is made up of 12/4, 8/4 and 4/4. The 12/4 will be for the legs and the top (resawn) and the 8/4 will be for book matched doors, rails and stiles and other parts and the 4/4 will be for just about everything else.

So, for the baby steps, it begins with deciding what to use where, which I've started to do, as well as mill the lumber. Here you can see some of the 12/4 milled for the legs; these will be cut in half to form two legs, four total and a leg in the middle for center support.

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Next I needed to resaw some 8/4 to make the rails for the base; I'm building the bottom platform before anything else as everything will be based on this dimension. So here I am setup for for the resaw.

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And a shot after it has been cut.

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This, roughly 6', section will give me all four rails I need for the bottom; two about 57" and two about 18". Next will be milling them to final size and laying out and cutting the tenons. Once I cut the tenons, I will layout for the mortises and begin to fit dry fit everything and move to the next stage. More to come...

Be Safe!