This turned out to be a long project, with a house/workshop move in the middle. It started about 2 1/2 years ago when I was inspired by a bookcase in Niall Barrett's bookcase book- which was inspired by a Rodel piece, which was inspired by the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I looked at the concept, and concluded that it could be adapted into a kind of a highboy- a snap of my original design drawing is below, and shows where my thinking started.
I decided to build primarily from cherry, with bookmatched highly figured tiger maple for the panels, and walnut for the inlay, with some poplar for drawer bottoms/back frame etc. This was a significant stretch project for me, the number of pieces involved, the number of joints etc etc. Since I was not following Niall's plan really, I ended up working out pretty much everything from scratch. Some particular observations from the process here:
- Spiral router bits can twist their way in deeper during long cuts!
- Using a table saw to cut bookmatched pieces 8" wide is pretty hairy- full height cuts with no saw guard etc (I was fortunate to buy a really nice bandsaw before I cut the pieces for the lower doors and it turned resawing into a joy!). Not to mention the bookmatching issue when your kerf is as thick as a table saw blade.
- Making sawtooth shelf supports without a bandsaw is a pita in my opinion!
- routing inlay on legs that you have already spent hours on to handcut all the mortises etc is a bit stressful- one little slip and you need a new leg!
- making thin walnut strips of a consistent thickness was tricky on a table saw- I ended up using my belt sander to size this little pieces- another job that would have been much easier had a I possessed my bandsaw at this point!
- trying to plane highly figured maple without the right tools is a fools errand- the top piece I did with my Ridgid planer to begin with (large chunks of tearout), then with every plane I had in my arsenal (smaller chunks for tearout), then hours and hours and hours with a cabinet scraper and then finished with a sander- and they are ok, not great. Then, last Christmas I was given the right tool for the job- a beautiful Lie Nielsen low angle smoothing plane- I was able to use this on the sides and the doors and drawer fronts of the lower piece- joy oh joy- I still had to deal with the tearout that my Ridgid Planer had left, but I was able to get a good finish with only a few hundred passes of my handplane. I'm sure it will not show up in the pictures, but these panels are like glass to the touch- turns out this is one place where the right tool makes an enormous difference. I now have 3 different L-N low angle planes, and I have converted a couple of old Stanley No.3 smoothers to york pitch to have more options on my hand plane shelf- and I have the confidence to take on the gnarliest figure and grain out there.
- making long pieces that have to self square should really be done with quartersawn not flatsawn wood- check out the difference between the upper door frames and the lower door frames- the lower ones do not try and go for a walk on their own!
- Big vertical corner posts should have the grain run diagonally- managed this on 7 out of 8- but more by luck than judgement- and was that 8th one a pain to keep square- you bet.
- hidden magnetic catches work much better when they are pulling themselves onto each other, than when they are trying to align themselves in a plane
- hidden hinges like these are a pig to fit and get all your reveals/spacing equal
- half blind dovetails in curly maple don't have much "give"- these are not as good as I would like, and really don't compare with the work I've managed to achieve in hand cut through dovetails. I seem to keep getting one angle off- clearly practice is the key here.
So, the top piece originally inspired by a bookcase, but to be a cabinet for candle sticks, serving bowls etc for the dining room, and the bottom piece to hold large serving bowls, serving spoons etc. The top piece was finished (except for glass in the doors and the addition of handles) before we moved house 19 months ago. The lower piece was dry assembled in flat panels, covered in cardboard and shipped to be built in my new workshop. Once I was able to get back to it- about a year had passed and I kept looking at it and was not happy with the proportions of the doors, wanted to change the shelving method inside etc- so I decided it needed drawers, and I remade some of the components I was unhappy with. Time for more mortise and tenon work. About 2 weeks ago I got to the stage where I was basically done, except for planing the top and trimming it to size (did I mention it actually spent 3 months in the dining room while we discussed what size the top should be?). Anyway, as a result of all that discussion, I concluded that I wanted the top overhangs to be a little smaller than I originally thought- mainly to improve the shadow lines, and I wanted to make the top "float" a little- so I hand planed a rather long angle on the underside of the ends and front of the top- can you tell how much I prefer my low angle planes to my router table- it was actually fun to use a little LN low angle bronze plane to cut the end grain of the table top back- I had blisters in the palm of my hand at the end, but the finish is great!
And then I finished it- Tung oil (the wood is still catching up as the color variation is huge since there is an 18 month gap between finish states), and then I decided that it really is too high and just too big as a highboy. So, the base is now officially a lowboy, and the upper case is now just a case. I think I might build a low, one to two drawer deep linen chest for this case to sit on, but I haven't even started thinking about the design for that, so it could be years away!
Why tell you all this- well, maybe some of my painful lessons will help others, maybe some of you will get inspired to finish a project that has been in your shop too long, maybe I will help in your justifications for that "must-have" tool, and maybe you will just look at this and say "well, I can do better than that"- which is great! I guess more than anything, I did want to remind myself that actually doing stuff with my brain, my hands and my tools is why I do this, and sometimes it is easy to get so wrapped up in the tools, that it is easy to forget that they are just that- tools- to be used to create. With that said, I'm going back to my workshop, I spent a week between Christmas and New Year rebuilding by 73 year old Delta lathe- new paint, VFD, new 3 ph motor, new shelf boards etc- and now it is time to use the tool to make things, rather than smiling at my reflection in the varnish of the new finish!
Enough philosophy- hope you like the pics and please let me know what you think, or if you have any questions
thanks
Mike
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