Cabinet project

[cpowell]

Travis - I could help you this weekend. I'm tied up the following two weekends. If I spray the lacquer he'd never ask you to do anything again! :rotflm:

I hope you chewed on the neighbor's tail for a while. He should be there offering manual labor and helper-level support.



Chuck

 

[Travis Porter]

Travis - I could help you this weekend. I'm tied up the following two weekends. If I spray the lacquer he'd never ask you to do anything again! :rotflm:

I hope you chewed on the neighbor's tail for a while. He should be there offering manual labor and helper-level support.



Chuck

We had a very robust chat. I am no longer under deadlines or feeling rushed, and I am now starting to get some help. Still, it is a lot of work.

Here are some more pics and some updates. All of the cabinet carcasses are assembled with screws using my Kreg pocket hole jig. No dadoes, just a rabbet for the backs. Here you can also see the holes and the shelf supports I will be using. I borrowed a 13 spindle line borer for the shelf pin holes. I wouldn't mind having one myself.

Here are the shelf supports for the bar. Solid maple (actually hard maple left over from my workbench project). I fastened them to a strip of plywood to make them easier to handle for finishing.

Here are all the plywood parts for the uppers. They are just rough sized at the moment.

Here is the spray rack I made for this endeavor. I have already shrunk it once, but I need to shrink it again. Still a bit on the large size so I expect I will be shrinking it again when I get the time. It took a around 20 six foot long poplar dowels to make it. To Jeff's point, all made in China :-(.

Overall, construction isn't bad, but the finishing is the pits and I am not happy with the way it is working out. The color is pretty dark and using toner (dye mixed with the finish) is not coming out even as I would like because it is so dark. Additionally, if I sand even lightly between finish top coats I am cutting through the dye layer and it is not good. Personally, I hate finishing maple as it is splotchy, to me, splotchier than pine or cherry so I am looking for suggestions.

Should I whip up a batch of straight dye mix it with alcohol and spray it or break down and go the pigment stain route? I will probably need to do something like Minwax wood conditioner, but if it makes finishing easier, I definitely want to do it. The color shouldn't be too hard to match. It looks like an almost exact match for Minwax red mahogany.

Any and all suggestions and comments would be appreciated....

 

[barryu]

Although your project is much larger and much more involved, it reminds me of my "freebe" project.

A long time ago I took on building bird houses for a second grade class, as a favor to a friend of my wife's. The project took on new dimensions when I found the restrictions; no nails, no staples, no screws, all dovetail joints, some tongue and groove. (They didn't think kids and hammers went well together) The worst part was it had to be done all in one weekend and I had to pay for the wood. I did it but, it took two 18 hour days and I didn't hear even a thank-you from the friend.

And then about three weeks later, I received a manila envelope in the mail. It had twenty-three hand-drawn (crayon) thank-you notes from the kids and pages of stories about how they sold them to their own families. The crayons they used were some of the craft supplies they bought with money from selling the bird houses.

Although it seemed hard at the time, I look back and think I would have been a fool not to have done it.

I guess all I can really say is, "think long term".

 

[Travis Porter]

That is a very cool story. Thanks for sharing it.

You are right about thinking long term. Too many times we just look at the here and now.

 

[Bob Buchholz]

I feel your pain. If I never see another bookcase or kitchen cabinet or just the drawers and doors for a kitchen it will be too soon.

I do not take money for projects that I do for friends or neighbors so I usually have more work than time. I simply charge for materials and a little extra for misc. consumables and if I don't have a particular router bit or something that I need for the job they buy it. I have needed extra clamps, a bigger drill press, a replacement router for the table when one burned up and a few other items that I don't feel bad about tacking on to the 'consumables'.

My only rule is 'It will be done when its done, don't call asking when, don't give me a deadline and don't expect it to be done anytime soon.' Of couse I've been working on a set of bookcases since Christmas so it must be a pretty good rule.

 

[Joe Scharle]

Travis, I use a pretty basic finishing schedule for big boxes, fired from frustration and failures over the years.
Sand flats to 150, ends to 220
Conditioner (always, it's cheap and shows glue dribbles too)
Dye into sapwood & blend pigment stain all over
Wipe-on poly (I'd spray it if I had the equipment)

Good luck,
Joe