Project: Cherry Vanities for Master Bath (COMPLETED)

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Jim, Spraying sounds like a great way to apply finish and prefinishing is the way to go if you can swing it. Can't wait to see the final install on this project. Thanks for sharing with all the pics. Alan

[Jim Becker]

It was back in the shop today to work on the vanities. Since the carcasses are, for all practical purposes, done, (outside of fitting drawer boxes when they arrive) it was time to move on to the cabinet doors.

You may remember that for the guest bath vanity I bravely re-sawed a cherry crotch for the door panels. 'Not going to happen for these vanities! It's very hard to find an un-cracked crotch big enough for this purpose (I only found one more) and it's way too easy to make a costly mistake, too. For these doors, I'm jumping into the wonderful world of vacuum veneering.

I already have a Gast vacuum pump that sits under Stubbalina (my lathe), so I ordered up some plumbing and a bag from Joe Woodworker awhile back. It's actually a pretty simple setup...some hose and a few fittings, a vacuum gage, and "the bag". I opted for the better quality bag as I sensed I might enjoy this kind of thing and for the price difference, I would have peace of mind that the bag would last a long time. I bought one extra length of hose to extend over from the lathe to the workbench and picked up a few fittings at the 'borg to allow quick connection of my extension to the line from the pump. Now, all that stuff isn't enough, so I spent a few minutes preparing some important components from MDF before getting started with the actual veneering.

When you do this work, you don't just stick a thin panel into the bag and have-at-it. You need platens to spread the clamping force and they need to be constructed such that they also allow for the vacuum pump to remove air from around the clamped object du jour. So to get started, I cut up a piece of 3/4" MDF to match the rough size of the panels I would be working with...15" x 12".

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While I was cutting, I also sized a number of panel blanks...including extras in case I, umm...made mistakes...

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Because I was curious, I slipped a few into the bag, sealed things up and sucked the air out just for grins. Worked like a champ!

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Now, the platens are not at their best when they are just flat sheets...there needs to be some channels for air to move toward the vacuum port on the bag. A few minutes at the table saw produced the necessary effect.

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[Jim Becker]

The platens, one scored, had their edges eased to protect the bag, and this is the end result.

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A quick test using the newly configured platens insured I would know what to expect once I started actually using the bag as a clamp.

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Speaking of the veneer, I finally opened the package that I received months ago from Rosebud Veneer...very nice! 'Just what I wanted for these panels.

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The first step with the veneer, itself, was to establish exactly what the field would be using the first flitch and one of the pieces of 1/4" MDF substrate. I wanted the feather figure to present in a certain way as well as enhancing the book-match effect between the mated doors.

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After establishing the position of the panel on the first flitch, I cut out the rectangle marked with the substrate in the previous step using a veneer saw (and frankly, a razor sharp knife).

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[Jim Becker]

The piece from the first panel was used to mark the next and subsequent panels so that the book matching would be visually the same across all four doors on the two vanities.

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Once all the crotch veneer pieces were prepared, I also cut out some backers from "ordinary" cherry veneer to be on the backside of each panel. At that point it was time to try my hand at veneering. Now, I had originally planned to do a "practice run" with some odds-and-ends veneer. Well, I just plain decided to "go for it" since I have plenty of the crotch veneer should terrible things happen. So it was time to get out the cold press glue and start spreading it...

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According to Joe Woodworker's instructions, the cold press glue should be spread not unlike a heavy coat of paint...like this...

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Here's the first two panels, glued and in the vacuum bag.

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About an hour and a half later, after some lunch and a forum break , it was time to see if I screwed up or scored. I'm happy to report..."scored" is the result!

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[Jim Becker]

The second set of panels were then glued up, assembled and clamped.

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In the mean time, I got started with preparing the material for the doors' rails and stiles. Some more of the QS cherry stock was pulled off the pile (all the remaining QS stock, in fact) and I marked out the rough cuts, keeping track of the relationship for each component/board so that there would be matched sets across the two vanities.

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These were quickly cut down at the miter saw so that they were ready to mill flat and to thickness.

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No pictures of jointing and thicknessing...you've seen that before...but here is the end result:

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The next step was to straight-line each component so that I would have the grain/figure oriented the way I wanted for each component. I did no edge jointing...straight-line cutting on the slider is cleaner and finish sanding ready.

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[Jim Becker]

The next step was to rip the components to 3" width. Yes, I could have done this with the rip fence, but I wanted to both take my time and also try out my new ripping jig for the slider. Setup took a little more effort, but the end result was once again a finish-sanding ready edge with no further involvement of the jointer.

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A few minutes later, I had a pile of rails and stiles precisely 3" wide and ready for cutting to length on the miter at the table saw.

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Which I did a few minutes later. Now far be it for me to let you think everything was perfect...not! The very first stile was cut 2" too short due to a mental error when setting the stop on the miter fence. i screwed up. Said bad words and all that... ...and then I took the one remaining piece of appropriate material I had left and made another stile which will fortunately work appearance-wise. Fortunately. Otherwise, it would have been a very expensive mistake...


Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...all four panels were done in the clamping, so I laid them out on the bench in order. Very nice! (Sorry I didn't hit them with MS or alcohol to pop the figure, but I didn't want to mess with the uncured glue at that point)

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I did take a moment to measure the panel thickness as this will be needed to cut the grooves in the rails and stiles to capture the panels during final assembly. 0.3" was the result.

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Given that the glue would need more time to fully cure, I piled all four panels up and put a little weight on them just for good measure. This is how they will stay for a few days.

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[Jim Becker]

At the end of the day, I had four veneered door panels and the necessary rails and stiles for all four doors. Very productive...now all I need is the time to cut the grooves for the panels and get them assembled. (I will be partially finishing the panels before assembly, too)

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[Don Bullock]

At the end of the day, I had four veneered door panels and the necessary rails and stiles for all four doors. Very productive......

Wow, that was a productive day. I'll be very interested in seeing how your doors came out. I've never attempted any veneering, but am interested in learning more about it.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Hi Jim, That was a very productive day! Thanks for the pics. I did some veneering a few months ago before my move. The Joe Woodworking site is so informative. One note on plattens: I used melamine for mine and cut grooves in them just like you did. Sometimes the glue can seep throught the veneer and stick to the platten and the melamine makes it easy to just pop it off the platten.

[Neil Lamens]

Hi Jim:

That's an excellent tutorial you put together. The approach on using your platens specific to small panels shows excellent efficiencies. Staying with Allan's meleamine, a pc of wax paper between works fine too, still alot of life in those platens.

Like the "go for it" attitude..........it's just not that hard.

Really good Jim..........Neil

[Jim Becker]

Thanks for the advice on the Melamine and waxed paper. I'll keep that in mind for future projects!

And yes, I felt it was worth just "going for it" for two reasons: 1) if I screwed up I could recover reasonably since I had extra materials and 2) it would truly illustrate how easy this can be, at least for flat panels.

[Jim Becker]

Now that I have the family vacation out of the way ...I was able to get back in the shop to work on the master bath vanities. With the addition in framing, I'm starting to feel the need to move things along as I have more pieces to do after these are done. And that list got longer today as some of the bookshelves in the existing loft library of our great room will have to be replaced sooner than expected due to the field conditions for tying the old and new structures together.

The focus is now on the doors and drawers so the first thing was to get the pocket holes drilled in the door rails.

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After measuring the thickness of my veneered panels, I determined that I could use my Forrest stacked dado setup to cut the grooves in the rails and stiles and that the blade arrangement would just fit through the opening in my saw's factory insert. (I have not got around to buying some phenolic to make a special dado insert yet...) The two outer blades with the "really thin" chipper sandwiched between them gave me just a hair over the .30" I needed to accommodate the panels. Of course, a test cut is always required for this kind of thing...

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And confirmed with the actual panel to be a proper fit...

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I rarely use the rip fence these days, but it was the right way to do this operation. For the stiles, a stopped groove was required, so I marked the fence for entry and exit before processing the 8 door stiles.

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This is the result...yes a little burning inside the groove 'cause this is a "do it slow and careful operation" but it will never be seen.

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[Jim Becker]

In a reasonably short time, I had all the rails and stiles grooved and ready for later assembly. But I took my time as these components are all carefully grain and color matched with specific positions in the four doors for symmetry and a screwup would really not be something "happy"...

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Because I'm using pocket screws for assembly, I temporarily put together one door so I could measure exactly for the panels' final trim dimensions.

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And a test panel was cut from MDF to insure that the size was exactly what I wanted.

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For best presentation, the "center axis" of the veneered panel was marked and then the piece was measured and marked for trimming at the saw.

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Everything keys of that first edge that gets trimmed, so being accurate is important. It would be a shame to mess up even one panel as that would require a bunch of work to make new as well as mess up the book matching of the flitches used for the panels. With the sliding table saw, I was able to easily position that first cut and then clamp down the material for accuracy. In addition, I used the scoring blade to avoid tear-out on the bottom veneer.

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[Jim Becker]

After rotating the first edge cut to the miter fence, the piece was clamped and cut for length. On all of the panels, this first "length" cut was slightly oversize so that the final cut later would insure a perfectly rectangular workpiece.

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The first panel that was trimmed was confirmed to be a good fit...so I could move on to the other three, being really careful when setting the stops.

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Here are all four panels after final trimming to size.

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The next step was to sand the panels, front and back. Because these are thin veneers, I only used 180 to bring things smooth and was very careful when sanding near the edges. The sanding essentially removed any knife marks from when the veneers were sliced and smoothed any roughness.

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And then it was time to oil the panels...they need to be partially finished before the doors are assembled for best results.

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[Jim Becker]

Since it was a nice, bright, sunny day, I figured a little UV wouldn't be a bad thing while the oil was soaking in. The panels already look wonderful!

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With the doors as far as I could go for the day, it was time to move on to the drawer boxes. As I did with my kitchen project back in 2003, I opted to purchase my drawer boxes for this particular project to save milling time. Yes, making dovetailed boxes isn't a hard thing, but this way I could move right to assembly...a nice thing given all the additional work I need to do over the next few months.

As with my kitchen project, I contracted with Keystone Wood Specialties to provide milled drawer boxes to my exact dimensions and shipped knocked down for assembly here. It should be noted that this supplier doesn't do retail and only caters to pro shops or those who are willing to be persistent and give a reference or other proof they are not homeowners trying to buy wholesale to save a buck. It took me a week to convince them to sell to me back in 2003. This time around, they just asked for my credit card number...

As with the kitchen, I chose maple sides and backs with maple ply for the bottoms. The total of 14 drawers (12 for the MB vanities and 2 for the previously completed guest bath vanity) came knocked down in two sturdy boxes with "custom fitted" foam protection.

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The components, themselves, were held snugly together with strong stretch wrap to keep them from getting knocked around during shipment.

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