Walnut Cabinet

[Chris Hachet]

Thanks, Keith. I'll look into David Barron's guide. Always interested in help. It does get easier with practice, though. More than helping me saw to the line, the tape helps me cut straight. I'm amazed how straight my cuts became. Instantly. I find it straightforward (albeit tedious) to tweak a perfectly straight wall - even with a rasp. It's easy to KEEP a straight wall with a chisel or rasp; it's hard for me to MAKE it straight if the saw cut is not perfectly vertical.

My fourth side actually fit decently off the saw; I just had a tiny bit to file.

Here's the case so far.

I find using a leg vise and turning the wood to vertical helps me saw accurately.

[Phil Mueller]

Prashun, haven't seen an update on this build since end of January. What gives? I'm interested in seeing how the book matched doors turned out. Hate to be a nag, but any updates?

[Prashun Patel]

Phil, somethin has not felt right about this to me. The design is just off. My cabinet just isn't the right dimensions for drawers. This means my doors aren't appropriate. I am therefore going to save those doors for something else and make this one into a completely closed cabinet without drawers. So I am now trying to pick wood for the doors on this one.

[Brian Holcombe]

Prashun,

If you haven't cut for hinges, how do you feel about turning those into a panel and building a frame for it. If the frame is relatively thin it may work well with the style of the cabinet.

[Prashun Patel]

Brian, I have not cut for hinges. I am unclear about what you mean.

[Brian Holcombe]

I just re-read my post, hah, it seems I forgot to include all of the critical parts.

What I meant to say was that a single door, rather than double doors, may suit your purpose well. If you took the current material and made it into a panel, then built a thin doorframe for it.

[Phil Mueller]

Thanks for the update Prashun! I know my projects always look great in my head and then occasionally in the execution, something doesn't quite work. In my case, it's probably a factor a very rough drawings and too much design on the fly. But I do like the ongoing creativity it presents.
Hope to see those doors on something down the road!

[Prashun Patel]

I'm experimenting with veneering doors. This is my first time, and it's harder than it looks!!!

I edgebanded a couple sheets of 1/2 mdf-core plywood. I resawed the veneers a little thick (3/16"), and am slip matching two door fronts. This allowed me to glue the jointed side to the substrate and leave the final smoothing until after glue up.

The trickiest part of this whole process is clamping the glue ups. I'm using cauls and Titebond. I thought I knew how to glue up. Veneering is testing me on a whole different level. Every little edge needs adequate pressure. The placement of the cauls - even on a narrow glue up (these are only 7" wide) is tricky.

Preventing slippage was also tricky. I cut my veneers a little wide to account for this, but by the 4th side, I finally figured out that because I cut the edge banding a tad wide of the door opening, I could pre-cut the veneer to be flush with the edges of the enlarged panel. That allowed me to use painters tape to snug everything.

Snugging the clamps criss-cross like a mechanic tightens lug nuts on a tire also helped.

[Jeffrey Martel]

Looks very good. One thing that's really helped me is switching to hide glue. Either liquid or hot. Should you mess up a glue up, you can just heat it up and try again. Plus, with hot hide glue, in this case you could hammer veneer rather than using cauls and clamps.

[Brian Holcombe]

Nice work!

[Prashun Patel]

I took my doors out of the cauls and they did pretty well (for the most part). I won't show you the gap around 2 corners
Like I said, getting the platten and cauls all the way to the edges has proven to be super critical. Lesson learned.

I planed the edges flat and shot the ends square. I have learned a lot from David Charlesworth's dvd's. Perhaps most critically, I am learning to plane with deliberate, slow strokes - not fast ones. It's so obvious, but the slow push provides so much feedback, allows better balance, and forces me to lift on the return, instead of rubbing on the return. I work neater too. Every 2, 3 strokes, I can clear the shavings, examine my results. I have cut the actual strokes down in half. Planing this way has been so much less fatiguing, too.

Planing left me with some tear out. I have so fallen in love with my cabinet scraper. There's a world of difference between a cabinet scraper and a card scraper. The cabinet scraper is sharpened at 45 degrees. I previously did it free hand. But recently, I've done it in a jig and honed it all the way up to 8000, treating it just as I would a plane blade. Next - and here's the obvious kicker - I WAXED the sole. I can't tell you how effortlessly this piece of walnut scraped. All chatter that I previously experienced was eliminated. I was getting full length, thin shavings that rival what I can get from my smoothing plane.

Because the blade is held under tension, it creates a camber, so I know it's not producing a truly flat surface. However, it's quite a bit flatter than any attempts I've had with card scrapers. Trying to use it on a less-than-perfectly flat surface can be frustrating. When sharpened properly, though, it requires little tension and little effort to push, so it doesn't remove a lot of material - (in my experience) not enough to bring the surface out of flat.

Anyway, I don't hear enough about this tool, so I thought I'd wax poetic for the unsung hero.

[Phil Mueller]

Nice work. Ok, I'm taking the bait!...tell me more about the scraper. Looks to be a vintage Stanley? What #? Looks like the iron is fairly short like a spokeshave. I've seen some with a longer iron. Is it the original iron?
Thanks for posting. You've given me something to think about for my next must have tool!

[Prashun Patel]

It is a wilton 79 that i got cheap. I replaced the blade with a lee valley replacement for stanley 80s. It fit. Its the kind of tool that if you are very skilled with your planes it would be extraneous. But its a cheap investment so why not have a little something extraneous? Also i am not that skilled with my planes

the iron is about double the height of a spokeshave. You can sharpen both ends so its flippable.

[Phil Mueller]

Very cool, thank you! I'm in the same place (probably less) as you are with planes. Extraneous here we come.

[Brian Holcombe]

Nice work, coming along well. Here is another trick, go back and burnish the surface with shavings, if there is any tearout it will pop out at you.