First Project - Krenov Cabinet

[Hans Braul]

Wow! - you are one talented guy! I love it. Ditto the others on the pulls. Fantastic workmanship for anyone - nevermind a first project.
Congrats
Hans Braul

[Ben Davis]

That's one heck of a first project! Coopered doors. Knife hinges. Unforgiving bird's eye maple. I'm impressed!

[Josh Brower]

I don't want to be a nag, but if you don't get some honest criticism you can't improve....I've won nationally judged woodworking competitions, so I'm speaking about things that make a difference at that level at not at yours. Please view my comments as where you are going and not where you are now.
1. You should use a naturally bendable product to produce the shape of the curve for the front door and top. Yours is too flat in the center, and wouldn't be visible in a computer model.
2. The hinges are mounted to far forward leaving a gap behind each door visible from the sides of the cabinet that allows you to see inside the cabinet with the doors closed.
3. The wood should all have the same figure throughout your piece, or as Krenov would have put it....put the face of the wood in the doors. He most often used the best wood as a bookmatch in the paired doors. Your best grain is the birdseye in the top which won't be visible once you put it up on a stand making it a waste. The doors will be visible forever. One side has crotch grain, the other side is rather plain, and the front has a light blister figure. It probably would have been better to have no figure at all than to mix so many different figures in one piece. Wood movement due to difference in wood from different trees and different parts of the trees can be hard to account for.
4. In the knife hinge in the bottom right of the photo you can see you cut the mortise too deep. This is simple to fix by shimming. Any ledges you can feel with your fingers aren't good. You shouldn't be able to feel your joints or where your hardware meets your wood.
5. There is a part time teach at the College of the Redwoods where Krenov tought that makes custom hardware that you can order to put on your cabinet. He did a recent article in fine woodworking on how to make your own if you are handy with metal also.
6. The cleats visible on the top shelf look way to large if you are using them for some kind of drawer runner. I can't imagine why you would need such large pieces of wood there in that space. I think you have overengineered their size.

Hope you enjoy the comments. I have all of Krenov's books and enjoy having my own work judged. I am frequently frustrated when the judges comments disagree with each other or point out different things that I don't agree with. When you read my comments remember that opinions are like AH's...everyone has one. Best of luck.

Josh

[Dave MacArthur]

Great first piece! I like the maple, and it's nice to make something useful for the family as a first piece--what a great way to get some support for woodworking!

You know, I read Josh's comments up above, and I have to say they were quite instructional for me. I looked at the piece and didn't notice any of those items, yet when Josh pointed out areas for possible improvement, I scrolled back up and yep, sure enough... This leads me to believe that I would possibly make the same hmm... imperfections is too strong a word, but can't think of another one... as Phillip. And they're all pretty easily solvable, but I wouldn't have thought to consider those changes maybe.

After reading Josh's post, I actually like Phillip's piece MORE, because in some weird way it make's me think that he did such a really nice job, and yet here are some easy things to remember on his NEXT project that will make his work even that much better--I'm imagining great things for him, based on this fantastic start.

I wanted to say thanks for posting to Josh also, sometimes all thread replies are rave reviews--I appreciate the learning points you made, it will certainly help ME, and hopefully Phillip too.

[Phillip Ngan]

Josh, I totally appreciate you taking the time to evaluate the cabinet and to write such a detail and instructive critique.

I want to respond to some of your points, not as a defence, but to elaborate and give some of the back story,

2. The hinges are mounted to far forward leaving a gap behind each door visible from the sides of the cabinet that allows you to see inside the cabinet with the doors closed
4. In the knife hinge in the bottom right of the photo you can see you cut the mortise too deep. This is simple to fix by shimming. Any ledges you can feel with your fingers aren't good. You shouldn't be able to feel your joints or where your hardware meets your wood..

Both observations are spot on. I have to say that as a beginner, "hanging" the doors was the most challenging part of the project. I hadn't read instructional magazine article or books beforehand about how to get the doors right, so I was not aware of the challenges that awaited me, let alone being able to work out any techniques or tricks to do a good job. The only thing I did was to make the doors first and then fit the cabinet around them. I believe that is how James Krenov worked too. The gap was a result of being way to conservative about leaving space for the door to swing, especially because I used the L shaped knife hinges. The deep recess of the right hinge was to compensate for the fact that in my initial hanging, the right door was fractionally higher than the left. So I had to drop the hinge slightly so that the vertical gap between the doors was as uniform as possible. It was a trade off, but in the end I thought the central gap was more important.

3. The wood should all have the same figure throughout your piece, or as Krenov would have put it....put the face of the wood in the doors. He most often used the best wood as a bookmatch in the paired doors. Your best grain is the birdseye in the top which won't be visible once you put it up on a stand making it a waste. The doors will be visible forever. One side has crotch grain, the other side is rather plain, and the front has a light blister figure. It probably would have been better to have no figure at all than to mix so many different figures in one piece. Wood movement due to difference in wood from different trees and different parts of the trees can be hard to account for

Since I don't have a bandsaw (or the slab in this instance) to make a book matched pair, this is what I ended up with. But I will be more patient and discriminatory next time about the grain pattern of the doors. To take it one step further, the door pulls were off the shelf parts. If the doors are the focal point of the piece, then the pulls are the focal point of the door, and I'll try to use more characterful pulls next time, which will probably mean make some myself. I understand that inattention to important grain patterns is a typical newbie trap.

5. There is a part time teach at the College of the Redwoods where Krenov tought that makes custom hardware that you can order to put on your cabinet. He did a recent article in fine woodworking on how to make your own if you are handy with metal also

.
I noticed he made the wood friction door catches.

6. The cleats visible on the top shelf look way to large if you are using them for some kind of drawer runner. I can't imagine why you would need such large pieces of wood there in that space. I think you have overengineered their size.

That is useful to know.

And now if you could see the piece up close and touch it you will also have noticed:

- the top piece has thickness planer snipe along one side edge
- the top has tearout about the size of a Looney in an area of reversing grain, despite using a LN smoother
- the use of mdf for the dividers inside
- the magnetic door catches are pretty roughly installed

Despite all these things, I`ve been very encouraged by the positive comments that people have made on SMC. And somethings went well too, like

- use of sketchup to create a paper template for the door profile, and being able to plane to that profile
- how the BLO-laquer combination turned out. I know lots of people want to keep maple light coloured, but the amber effect was what I was wanting
- oh, and of course, being able to produce something, anything, out of my fledgling workshop.

The next step is make a stand, and the draw to fit on the shelf.

[Brian Frances]

I have to say, that if this is your first piece or big project then it was executed extremely well. The appreciation and attention to detail will come with careful planning, studying other pieces, careful selection of materials, using more precise techniques and tools and through experience etc.
Very well done!