Frame & Panel Cabinet Build Pics

[Christopher Charles]

Mike, thanks for taking the time to post. I'm amazed by your speed! Looks great!

[Mike Allen1010]

After some time in the DL for double hernia repair surgery, I finally finished the white oak, frame & panel three drawer filing cabinet. If I’d known how much the surgery would hurt, I would have kept the hernias!

Hanging the drawers with the side hung, metal, ball bearing drawer guides was a nightmare! I’ve never use these before, I’m much more comfortable fitting drawers in simple cabinet pockets with wooden runners, kickers etc. My hat is off to finish carpenters and an especially those here in the creek who have done their own remodels and are able to cranks out kitchen/bathroom cabinets and gets the drawers to fit right in a couple minutes. It took me a full day, including much cussing, spitting, shimming and adjustments to finally get the drawer guides attached so that the flush fit drawers fronts fit into the cabinet. I’m not sure why it was such a headache – the drawers fit fine before I tried to attach the guides; once I started that, suddenly I had to plane ¼” of thickness off the top drawer frame to get a decent fit. If you look closely you’ll see were planed through into the mortice – I hate when that happens!

I used all hollow and round molding planes to put a molding profile on the cabinet top. One of the objectives of this build was to see if I can create these moldings with my bargain-basement, vintage H&R’s accurately and timely enough to avoid going back to electric router for this job in the future. My previous attempts look like crap and took forever. This time was a more satisfying experience – I guess is something to be said for practice. I was particularly pleased I was able to shoot the molding on the end grain of the cabinet top. Sharpening time versus planing time was probably 2:1. Many thanks to David Weaver for helping me get the H&R sharp and functioning. David, I really wish would come back to the Creek, we miss your contributions!

Here’s some pictures of the finished molding on the cabinet top:
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After looking at it I decided at a smaller molding underneath. Here’s some pictures of making that molding - rabbit plane, #5 Hollow and small rabbit plane for the little chamfer at the bottom, and finally installed:
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[Mike Allen1010]

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Here’s a couple pictures of the base molding with finish, also done with H&R’s. The profile turned out to be more consistent than I expected and I didn’t have to do too much sanding at the mitered corners.
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Here’s the finished cabinet. I used a darker finish for my last White Oak project, an arts and crafts inspired coffee-table. For this one, I wanted something lighter/more “golden” looking. I used 3 Trans Tint dyes in alcohol (in a ratio that I have no idea how to re-create), followed by brush on lacquer. First time for brush on lacquer. Shellac is my go to finish, but I wanted something more durable – there’s a 100% likelihood the occasional cocktail will end up on top of this cabinet. The lacquer was really thick to apply (despite my generous additions of lacquer thinner), but fairly self-leveling. My efforts didn’t turn out as clean and transparent as with shellac, you can kind of see the film of the lacquer in some places, but close enough for me.

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My takeaways from this project are: Neander frame panel construction is fun, creating your own moldings with molding planes is doable with practice/and lots of fettling, and most importantly when I hit the lottery Matt Bickford will be my first call for some of his ultra-cool H&R’s.

Not sure how long the cabinet will stay in the shop, goodness knows I’m not carrying it up the stairs!

Thanks for looking,
Mike

[James Pallas]

Mike Your file cabinet looks great. Glad your getting over your surgery. You will need assistance to get that in piece in a new home. Don't let those metal guides get you down they are really quite easy after a few times. I believe they work better for file cabinets because that paper will outweigh the white oak every time. Your mouldings look very good, especially in white oak. If your planes do well on oak they will slip through poplar so easy you will think they aren't cutting.
Jim

[Brian Holcombe]

Nice work Mike! It came out beautifully! The moldings are awesome, it's something I've very much been looking to accomplish as well.

Sorry to hear about the surgery, I went through that last summer (single hernia) it was something awful.

[Mike Allen1010]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Jim, I'm sure there must be some technique/ trick for hanging Drawers with side hung, metal guides, but I'll the damned if I know what it is. I'm guessing it would be a lot easier with overlapping drawer fronts, but still getting the correct spacing between the drawer side and the cabinet pocket to fit the width of the hinges was my biggest challenge. I guess a box full of shims and some practice would probably help, but I sure wouldn't want to hang a kitchen full of these!

Brian, I'm a big fan of your builds and I always enjoy your posts!I really struggled with my first attempts at hand planed moldings, so much so they were virtually unusable.The learning curve for me with hand planed moldings (so far) have centered around:

1) Buy Matt Bickford's book. I suck at trying to visualize three-dimensional shapes and without Matt's book it is super difficult for me to envision the width of rabbits and the sequence in which they need to be cut. Add to the equation that sometimes you're working on the edge of the board and other times it's easier to position the face of the board against the bench and I completely lose track of what I'm trying to do. Matt's book describes all of this in a clear and easy to fall way. The essential first step for me was to draw the profile of the molding on the end grain of Both ends of the board – this at least gives me a "target" to remember what I'm shooting for.

2) Getting your rabbit planes to work perfectly to deliver nice, clean square edges, while taking big fat shavings. I no longer have a table saw, but could see where a dado stack could really expedite the process. Absent a TS, having both a fenced and unfenced rabbit plane helps a lot because it allows you to change planing direction when the grain reverses. Learning how to adjusting the width of the plane iron so that it projects the appropriate distance beyond the side of the body the planeReally helps avoid a lot of cleanup of ragged edges.


3) Fettling/sharpening the H&R's is the most time consuming part for me.I ended up using some rounded slip stones and Various diameter dowels covered with abrasive papers to try and get the right, matching curvature of the iron and the sole. My H&R's are old and the irons vary significantly in their quality/ability to take and hold a sharp edge.

Being able to use irons of modern, high quality steel I think would be one of the biggest improvements for me.I would really appreciate any advice about where I might be able to buy modern steel plane irons that could be grounded to the appropriate profiles without having to go through any "hot metal" heating, tempering, quenching etc.? I'm not even sure that's possible (I'm sure George is laughing At my ignorance now) . The hot metal stuff is waaaaay over my head and not something I'm interested in getting involved in.I welcome any suggested or feedback from those who've made their own molding planes about how long it takes, the difficulty/skill required, and what the performance is like once they're done.Thanks in advance for your help!

File cabinet is still in the shop. I'm waiting for one of our boys to come home to get the darn thing up the stairs. Nothing like hernia surgery to make you feel weak and feeble!

Cheers, Mike

[Brian Holcombe]

Thanks Mike! I certainly appreciate the efforts. I will pick up Matt's book. I plan to use a molding profile on some upcoming project, I've been dying to build a ming dynasty table, and they all include some pretty interesting moldings.

Cheers
Brian

[Christopher Charles]

Hello Mike,

I hope you have a full and speedy recovery as well. And hope the cabinet makes it into the house soon or that you at least test the finish with a cocktail quickly.

I recently retrofitted a couple of drawer boxes into a kitchen cabinet that had full length slides and it was a total PITA because there is not a single square angle anywhere in my entire house. Took a bunch of fiddling and tapered(!) shims. Regardless, I found this video had a couple good tricks. And I felt better about my organization abilities in my own shop after watching

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glUwjQSTDO0

Best,
Chris

[Mike Allen1010]

Thanks Chris really helpful video - This guy is certainly much smarter than me!

The way he lays out and installs the side hung drawer guides is much simpler and more accurate than the square/pencil/shim gyrations I was doing. This video is a good reminder to me to look to see how other people do things before I try to reinvent the wheel.

All the best, Mike

[Don Kingston]

Mike
Super work.

[Stewie Simpson]

Wonderful work Mike.

Stewie;

[Brian Holcombe]

Mike, make way for new Private Messages's please