Monday, June 11, 2012

Cabinet Starts

While some of the remaining stand business was going on I could get on to veneer work for the sides of the cabinet. The top had already been done while the bottom was made.
Veneer matching is always trickier than I suspect given a material to work with. The technical and mechanical processes I know I'm capable of. Picking the "right" match, and where to cut is the tricky part. It would certainly be easier, take less time, and effort to just throw them together or say "hey these look kind of close." I can understand, but it's not for me in this work.

This was a longer series of veneer joints for the back panel. For this surface I had to plan out grain graphics to work with a vertical partition that has yet to be place, though I know where about it will go.
The joint with the tape across it is a book match which I generally prefer to avoid. You can see the different "shades" at the joint but is actually due to orientation of the wood fibers themselves refracting light in different ways making them appear to be different shades when in fact they are the same. Well, that seam is where my vertical partition will go.

After the veneer was "pressed," smoothed, sides trimmed, and doweled... the cabinet starts to take shape.
Feels like I have put so much time into all of these parts already. Coming out with such a "basic" form as this at first feels a little discouraging. There is much time and effort put into the "front end" of construction like this. Making sure all the details will work later on, planing strength and accuracy into all aspects. I know it will come together to make whole more than the sum of its parts. However, one can't help but to stand back a ponder a bit.

Moving on. Time for the back panel.
The back for this piece will be assembled with the sides before the whole assembly will join with the stand. After cleaning up the back I've done some minimal doweling between the back panel and the sides. The three dowels are mainly for location but certainly don't hurt the structure, with the long grain edge joint I don't need to worry about more robust strength.

The main assembly will look something like this though the back is not completely fit yet.

Also, somewhere along the line I was able to locate the door frame components. I do not believe I have spares, fingers crossed!

4 comments:

Jeff Branch said...

It is interesting to me that you utilize dowel joinery for the case. I am thinking about returning to using dowel joints more, but I think many people would find dowels sort of boring. It gets very little respect these days.

Your case is looking great. :)

Nicholas Nelson said...

Ha boring, little play on words? Is the domino what's cool these days?
In case construction, at least with solid wood, dowels can be better than dominos or tenons. This is because with tenons running across the grain in the top/bottom panels most of the contact is against end grain of the top/bottom. One dowel has the same amount of long-grain contact as one tenon of any width. Based on this, two dowels along one inch is stronger than one one inch wide tenon.
Dovetails in case work are cool and all but has a different aesthetic, also in this case cannot be done.
I would like to do a cabinet with a dovetailed case some day though.

In any case, I like dowels ha.

LORD GODFREY said...

I keep running into that same issue where I don't have any spares either. Scary but puts hair on the chest, a big,thick,black shag carpet like pelt.

ruzzel01 said...

Terrific idea. I would probably change mine.

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