Pulling

Yep, pulls are here. Pulls for some reason have been a difficult area for me, or maybe I make it seem difficult for myself. I don't feel as though I have great ideas for pulls. The main thoughts I have had about them is that I don't want them to ruin the rest of the piece ha. I don't consider myself a carver, there are reasons I mainly played drums instead of guitar.
I spent a whole day with pull mock-ups and ended up going with (as often is the case) with the first idea I had. I thankfully acquired some bits of Ornamental Maple from Jody that I used for the pulls. Thee wood more resembles Olive wood than maple and it has a smell which I think of a more subdued King Wood fragrance. Whatever the case it is a great match for the cabinet. I also used this wood for the flipper-flopper and leveler for the door.

Contrary to my previous statement I did not have the worst of times carving these little guys, but it was much more time consuming than I would have liked. Reflecting on it though I find that the pulls are a very important part of as piece. Sure people can touch and caress a cabinet all they want but the pulls are the only point of contact for performing the function of a drawer or door. If the pulls feel wrong then people will feel put off by using them. Maybe they wont pull out the drawer so often to notice how it grabs a bit as it almost comes out. Maybe they wont notice the playful cushion of air softening the closing of a door but think instead about an awkwardness.

Anywho on the technical side. The picture above shows wholes being drilled for dowels. I used tiny dowels instead of live tenons because the grain of the pull in oriented along its length. This means that the "post" only offer short grain. The dowels act as cross reinforcement to the pull.


Ah the slot mortiser with x-y table. Such a beneficial tool to have! I'm not often a fan of sophisticated jigs (which the xy table basically is) but this is one that denfinently will pay off. Here I just used it for the dowel plunge drilling. I clamped the drawer to the table at the angle I needed then drilled a whole, WITHOUT touching the clamp I moved the table and drilled the next whole perfectly parallel to the first.


Drawers are done and finished, pulls are done and attatched, feels good.



The drawer sides and bottoms of woods I got from Dan (yes one could call him "the man") from Vancouver. Beautiful material that these and probably not any picture could do justice... but these are especially poor. I'm afraid of how many pictures I will want to take of the whole cabinet in proper light when it is done... even the bottom of the drawers! Which leads me to another topic that I don't think I'll write about tonight... maybe another night.