Liquor Cabinet // How to make a wall hanging whiskey cabinet

yeah yes it's another whiskey cabinet build but i think it's at least an interesting whiskey cabin or you know what we'll we'll just call it a cabinet in general i think overall it's a pretty decent little piece and i want to walk you guys through how i made it why i made some of the aesthetic decisions i made so that you can make some interesting aesthetic decisions of your own should you choose to tackle a cabinet like this something in this vein so let's get into it all right so there's really two things that i want to discuss about this cabinet the first is kind of the technical aspect of the build to help you all along with making cabinets of this ilk and the second is the aesthetic choices that i made in the concept behind it and and how that drives some of the choices that were made on this cabinet so let's start with the technical aspect because i'm doing a lot of joinery and milling in the beginning of this video and that might be more helpful for you so to start yes i did take all of this material out of a single slab um when you're making small objects like this it might be helpful to consider taking everything out of the same slab because you get a more uniform color and grain pattern than you would if you were mixing and matching woods of course not everybody has that capacity but if you do have the capacity it might be just a small little detail that helps elevate your peace and so you know mill it up let it sit for a few days up to a week let it stabilize and then go about starting your joinery you can see i'm using a dado on this piece this is kind of how i tend to build cabinets um you know kind of these house dados with floating tenons in there the dado gives it lateral stability the floating tenon of course gives it a structural integrity because they're essentially glorified dowels but they they do work quite well so that's the choice i made on this uh you can see i tend to create my dados with just a trim router there's a myriad of different ways you can create dados uh i won't say that any are better or worse it just happens to be that that's how i like doing it because it's really easy for me to just set up a guide and run that trim router along there i like that small compact size if i was doing really large scale work uh kitchen cabinets dresser drawers you know chest to drawers things of that nature i probably wouldn't use a trim router i would probably have my larger router and get an appropriately sized bit but for something this big i mean this cabinet is not very large you can see how small some of the dadoes are those are just 1 8 inch dados so a trim router is a perfectly appropriate joinery tool when working on this scale uh and then just squaring up the ends of those dados in order to to seat the shelf exactly where i want it to be very simple process and integrating hand tools into the machine joinery process i think is is a kind of a zen process for me so i enjoy having that process involved and then you just get strange little tools like this uh made out of an old paint can opener uh but you know those those are tools worth having in the shop and in the arsenal um because you know who makes a 1 16 chisel or who wants to pay for a 1 16 chisel man just grind it out of an old paint can opener it works and then these shelves are only a quarter of an inch in thickness so clamping something up like this it's kind of difficult there was a check in there that i had to remove and they're kind of stacked in there so you never see that glue seam so i just did an old rub joint it works it's a great thing again to have in the back pocket in case you need to use it in a situation like that then i started milling up the back panel material and as i'm milling this up i guess i can touch on the concept real quick it's essentially like light and dark so you have one half of the cabinet with a very light panel one half of the cabinet with a dark panel one is very straight grained very calming very orderly the other the uh walnut crotch is very loud very vibrant very chaotic in some ways and so juxtaposing those two things within an entity within a singular cabinet i think makes for some interesting visual play and then i just had a chip out because that you know walnut crotch like that is the the grain is so unstable and it runs in so many different directions that you know you may be bound to get a little tear out but fixing it up is not an issue it slides right into the frame so you know nobody's ever going to see that that was a mistake do a lot of hand cut profiles um i don't i don't remember the last time actually i did uh i used a router bit for an edge profile i think again talking about those details and things that elevate your work like taking everything out of a single slab just creating a profile by hand differentiates it somehow from the machine profiles that you see if i was making these in batch products right i would have a custom ground router profile i'm sure of that because if i'm making 50 of these hand planing 50 different you know 50 edge profiles on different cabinets would be so time consuming however if i'm making one piece it's the right decision to just take the time and make it a thing and it again it elevates the object just a little bit because it it's a profile you don't see very often just doing things like cleaning up the uh the frames by hand um with those hand planes i think again gives you a surface quality that you don't get just from sending it through a drum sander so there's that uh and now as we glue up i suppose i can i can touch back on that concept because you know everybody knows how to do a glue up i hope at least um so the concept for this piece visually really stemmed from that that duality of the human nature right within every person is multitudes right you you are more than one thing no matter what you are right i'm a woodworker i'm also an athlete i'm also a teacher i'm also a chucklehead like i'm all of these things and i think we like to put people in just kind of the singular category or pocket but people are capable of good and evil right there's the light in the dark there's the yin and the yang whatever you want to call it uh in life i think it's important to contend with the duality of your own nature and so trying to find a way to to express that visually was just an intriguing idea to me and so this is where that that light and dark that english sycamore and walnut came in on the back panel having one side of the cabinet nicely proportioned uh divided up with a little drawer all organized in orderly if you will and then the other side kind of intentionally sized for a liquor bottle um just that seems like a very easy way to denote that kind of darker side of humanity um and so that's where the concept came from and the exterior of the cabinet very much wanted to be simple uh understated and yet i wanted some kind of visual interest on there and that's where you saw me carve that texture into the wood um i think that it was so subtle right that when the wood is dry as you're looking at it now you can't really tell that it's there there's nothing there that's that's telling you that the doors are textured at all but by the time you get finish on it and those highlights and low lights are kind of hit by the raking light it really does add just enough visual interest to the exterior of the cabinet to invite somebody to come along and interact with it i don't think that there's anything really particularly interesting about just a flat door on the exterior of a cabinet even if it's like mildly curved and book matched like there's just nothing there to invite you to come say like hey this is different run your hand over this interact with it in some way and so that's what i was hoping to achieve with that texture on the door and then also you saw me turn the brass for the handles i also turned the brass pole for this little drawer you can do those just you know on a wood lathe with wood tools it's not a big deal brass is soft enough where you can turn it that way it just takes a little bit of practice all i used was a scraper and a skew and then a file to clean it up so i would say if you have a lathe play with it it's an interesting process just to get a feel for it learn from it and see what happens and so there you go you can see that little brass pull that that i uh turned for the drawer and put those pins in just as a structural uh emphasis on those drawers as well and then of course came time to install the hinges oh boy butt hinges butt hinges no these are knife hinges oh boy knife hinges uh knife hinges are wonderful they what i love about them is they disappear in the piece right so you just have these two doors that kind of appear to be floating which i really really like however installing knife hinges is never easy uh and i of course always make it more difficult on myself in that i never install the hinges until after the cabinet is glued up it's not the most economical way to do it from a time perspective because then what i have to do is to lay out the mortises on the cabinet itself while the walls are in the way um so it's kind of a pain in the butt but that's just it's just how i do it i don't know why i do it that way uh and yet i persist in doing it in spite of the fact that i know it's kind of frustrating sometimes but once you get the mortises chopped out uh in the the hinges installed they look great they slide great uh and brusso is a sponsor of this build and they make a fantastic piece of hardware so make sure you go check them out they're american-made uh right up in new jersey and so here you can see me doing that install of the uh lower half of the the knife hinge which again why why i continue to do it this way uh i honestly have no good excuse for but here i am doing the thing making things and it all you know all's well that ends well the mortises are tight the hinges fit well and everything's good and because the scale of the cabinets i tend to make are smaller in nature very often i have to alter the lengths of the screws that come with the hinges and so doing something like this where you just have a flat and you can get a more consistent length to the screw is super easy honestly i'll drive them in there and then i'll just snip them off at the bandsaw again brass being soft enough to work with woodworking tools and then just file them flush so you get a nice final result and this thing is very very close to being done uh i did have some trouble with the uh brass pulls for the doors themselves those mortises were just a little bit off so i added a flange to the outside which i didn't actually film but i think in the end it looked good it's essentially just a flat brass washer that i added some hammered texture to and that cuffs the poles themselves so there you go then it was a lot of surface prep card scraper you know for this piece of wood being so straight grain being all quarter sawn cherry i was getting a reasonable amount of tear out which i was kind of surprised by which is why you saw me using the card scraper um you know i planed as much as i normally planed and then went ahead with the scraper and just took out any of the uh tear out that i was having and gave it a final sand so just so you know if you're planning a thing and you're just getting tear out it could be an issue of a dull blade or it could just be an issue if some woods don't want to be planed for who knows why but it's what happens uh so this is my normal finishing process which people have asked me to do a video on perhaps one day i will but this is maybe five or six coats in uh and then i glue in the back panel and the french cleat just to give it a little bit of more structural integrity you don't have to you can screw them in i just tend to glue them in for no real reason outside of i want to have that little bit of extra strength in the cabinet and set it up to get some photos and then hanging up a cabinet with a french cleat is is simple as pie man i say that phrase all the time that doesn't mean anything making a pie is not simple regardless here we are uh just put the cleat on the wall and hang it up and bing bang boom you got a thing it's really quite lovely and just drop a couple of anchors in the wall so that you don't even have to worry about studs and there we go we got a cabinet i really do like the way this one turned out um it's it's a really lovely understated little piece and one that you know i hope invites people to engage with interact with and think about for a while and if it doesn't do that then hopefully it's just pretty enough to bring some people joy because at the end of the day you know that's why we make things to make the world a little bit more beautiful uh to make people smile and and to give us a sense of you know meaning and purpose and community and all those things so there it is now before i get out of here i do want to say thank you to sabretooth for sponsoring this video they provided me with the carving tools you saw that i used to texture the front doors which i think adds a really nice element of interest to this piece that raking light hitting the highlights and the low lights on the ripples on the doors i think that is fantastic they've been a wonderful partner to me for a long time so if you want to go pick yourself up some carving tools and play around with that you can head over to their website and get 10 off using the code curtis 10. so go tinker and i also want to thank brusso for sponsoring this build as well they uh make fantastic hardware which you see me use in this cabinet with the knife hinges i've been using their products for 10 years 11 years something like that since i was in school back in 2011 2012 whatever it was uh they make fantastic hardware and if you're gonna spend 40 50 80 100 hours making a piece there's no reason to cheap out on the hardware get yourself some fantastic hardware from brew from brussel nailed it uh and you can use the code curtis 10 to get 10 off over there as well so go get yourself some pretty hardware so you can make a pretty thing so that's it for this one friends thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed it i hope you go make something beautiful as well and until next time be good make a decision as always you

Channel: ENCurtis

Views: 27,919

Keywords: liquor cabinet, liquor cabinet ideas, liquor cabinet diy, liquor cabinet build, wall hanging cabinet, wall hanging cabinet for bedroom, wall hanging cabinet for kitchen, whiskey, whiskey cabinet, wood, woodworking, woodworking projects, woodworking art, woodworking cabinet, fine woodworking cabinet, fine woodworking, advanced woodworking projects, advanced woodworking projects youtube, Erik Curtis, ENCurtis, how to, woodworking tips, woodworking ideas, woodworking how to

Id: 2znDqGhx-e8

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 19 2022