Mahogany Wine Cabinet, woodworking, furniture making, carpentry

I'm Mike Frankton in this video I'm gonna build a mahogany wine cabinet and this cabinet was commissioned by modern bungalow a furniture store located in the bustling cosmopolitan city of Denver Colorado and everywhere on the line at modern bungalow calm working with modern bungalow on this project was a real treat for me there a furniture store that care about quality and they want their pieces to be well crafted as it turns out that's what I like to build so this was a fun project to build also they gave me a lot of design freedom they showed me a picture and they gave me some dimensions and said do your worst so this was what I came up with and my goal for the design of this piece was I wanted it to fit quietly in a house that was decorated in a mission or Arts and Crafts style but I wanted the design to be slightly more contemporary and I'm not sure if I achieved that or not but that's what I was going for the left and right side panels as well as the back are constructed from Baltic birch and shops on veneers so this project starts with a whole bunch of wrestling and then I glue those sawn veneers together and a quick pass on the jointer and I make a parallel edge the table saw and I'm ready for glue up every time I do this I'm always surprised at how such a simple products such as tape can be such an effective wood clamp but when done properly this process creates a nearly invisible joint and I am somewhat ham-fisted so I take great care when folding these veneers over the edge of the table it's very easy to rip the tape once the joints open it's easy to put a little bit of glue in there and then fold the joint back closed lifting up the outside edges with some blocks will ensure that the joints are pinched shut and of course what goes up must be peeled off but the reality is all this blue tape just gives me a gigantic blue tape ball to play around with this is from downtown 45 feet nailed it so pretty this point the veneers are all glued together and nice and dry but there's gonna be some slight discrepancies in the thickness sometimes I joint the face of the board that I'm sawing the veneer off of and sometimes I don't I go ahead and glue them all together and I level everything nicely through the wide belt sander I bring the veneer down to their final thickness of approximately 1/16 of an inch nextly i sized the sheets of veneers to the same size as the pieces of Baltic birch that they're going to be glued down to I always maintain my composure during stressful glue ups so I make sure to get the right side facing out this process is really fun and easy pour out some glue you spread it with a paint roller put down a sheet of veneer do the other side and then you stuff that bad mamma jamma into the vacuum bag and I use some blue tape to prevent any of the parts from slip slidin away and I add a layer of window screen over top just to make sure that the suck is evenly distributed across the work piece [Music] next order of business is to make some web frames and I do those using the biscuit joiner for this application I'm using the super-secret S six biscuit and it's an oversized biscuit that requires that the biscuit joiner be flushed twice [Music] the s-six biscuit which is the mack daddy of all biscuits is one of my favorite ways to join wood together it's big enough to where you get enough glue surface area so that it's uber strong and yet it's still real fast to cut the joinery for it but recently I got some bad news lamella stopped making this sized biscuit I was super bummed out but recently I found a German company who has picked up production and is selling them on eBay so hooray once all the biscuit slots have been cut I glue and clamp the web frames together then I square them up and cut them to final dimension and I set them aside for a while I'll come back to these a little later in the build the panels that I've veneered earlier are now dry enough to work with so I continue work on the left and right sides and I cut some arcs in some skirt boards there's subtle arcs on the left and right side as well as the front and I could have done this by making a template and then using a router or a shaper but when you just have one or two oftentimes it's just faster to do with hand tools once I'm satisfied that the arcs are nice and fair I used the biscuit joiner to attach them to the left and right side panels I'm changing the name of this cart from the panel handler to the shop sitter I also add a small board to the top as well just so that there's a step at the top and the bottom so I glue and clamp these up and a quick pro tip always keep your off cuts anytime you cut curves they will often become useful when clamping after the left and right sides come out of the clamps I clean up the sides and cut them to final dimension next item on the agenda are the legs [Music] and my process for cutting out solid wood parts like this goes bandsaw back to the jointer to clean up that edge back to the bandsaw and so forth and I bring everything down to final dimensions at the planer and it's always a good idea to label parts so as to not lose track of what goes where once again I'm gonna use the large size s six biscuit to attach the legs to the side panels I come up with a template and I use this template to mark all the work pieces and then I can cut all the biscuit slots all at one time if you're wondering why I decided to use veneered side panels and why I didn't just use solid wood well here's the reason the veneered side panels don't go through seasonal expansion and contraction as solid wood would do so this allows me to attach the legs directly to the side panels which creates for a super strong cabinet also it allows me to route grooves in the side panels directly where the web frames will attach and again I don't have to contend with that a seasonal expansion and contraction here's a quick pro tip I like to buy these undersized plywood router bits and then I routed grooving to work pieces and I use a piece of plywood as a spline to hold them together and what's cool about doing it this way is there's basically no setup put the router bit in the router and set the depth and get to cutting joinery [Music] now that all the joinery is done for the web frames it's time to do two more tasks to the legs first one is to cut a rebate for the back to sit into and the final task is to cut a taper on the legs and to make sure that the tapers are cut equally on all four legs I make a quick sled that I take over to the bandsaw where I remove the bulk of the waist well have a look at her pretty nice if I do say so myself and my trusty four and a half smoother tames the rough and unsightly bandsaw and surface once the legs are looking nice and pretty I glue the sides to the legs and then it's on to drilling some shelf pin holes and for this I use the muffled duo Dowler before gluing the case together I'd like to take a look at the web frames and center shelf these are all cut to the same dimensions except for in thickness the bottom web frame is obviously the thickest above that each layer i've reduced by about an eighth of an inch and i think doing this adds subtle elegance to the piece since this is a complex glue up i decided to go with a slow setting epoxy this gives me plenty of time to pull my head out of my rear end and get this case glued together properly one trick I always like to do when gluing up a case piece is to put the back in place I'm not actually gluing it in I'm gonna hold it in with screws later I'm just putting it in place to make sure that my glue up is a square as the state of Colorado and after some gentle persuasion I was able to get all of the joints to close up nicely whilst the glue is hardening on the case I turn my attention to the drawer boxes I decided to go with soft maple because soft maple is actually fairly hard and I like that it's a lighter colored wood I think that translates into a better drawer box I fell back to my secondary position and used the Festool Domino for the joinery you might be asking yourself why is Mike not using the mighty biscuit to put these drawer boxes together well I would have but they're actually too narrow the slot that the biscuit cutter cuts is just too wide for these very small drawer boxes after joinery ice and glue and clamp the drawer boxes together and then I apply Minwax polycrylic and I don't normally recommend a specific product but in this case I really like this finish from maple because it doesn't yellow it regular polyurethane turns maple and ugly yellow color alright now it's time to make some doors I start by bisecting a piece of wood I glue those two by sections back together this will then be the center panel of the doors and I'm certainly no Wizard of time-management but I always try and think in terms of what needs to be glued up and how long is it going to take to dry I try and do that first try and keep the project marching forward as quickly as possible and back to the Domino once again for the joinery I like to use a shim to move the Domino mortise closer to the outside edge of the door so that it doesn't interfere with a quarter inch groove that I'm going to cut to hold the center panel in place I'm using a router bit known as a slot cutter to cut these grooves or slots to house the center panel for the door if you don't have one of these router bits look them up they're inexpensive and incredibly useful [Music] after our wee bit of cleanup it's time to glue the doors together basic geometry indicates that if the diagonals measure equal then the door has been clamped up square drilling the three hole pattern so that I can use bluem insert a hinges I like these hinges cuz they click on and off of the case quickly and I can take them on and off of the door quickly which is great for finishing and assembly and delivery and I use the Blum universal drilling template to locate the holes for the hinge plates passes the shake test with flying colors and if I've done my mathematics correctly the door will just click into place and work beautifully these are known as blind nails you can get a little kit of these from fastcap and I like to cut them off short and then I use them to help me locate the drawer front onto the drawer box and the process is really simple you tap a couple of these onto the drawer box then you wiggle the drawer front in place give it a quick karate chop and that'll give you dimples where to drill pilot holes then you come back and pull the blind nails out drill a hole through the drawer box and then simply screw everything together and when I come back and drill the holes in the drawer boxes I use a slightly oversized hole and I do this just to give me a little extra wiggle room just in case I need to make some further adjustments and if you noticed in the last few shots the drawer fronts were really tight in the openings and I like to do that I like to mount the drawer fronts then I come back with a pencil and I use the thickness of a pencil to mark a line and I do that on all four sides and I just plain down to that line and then I know I have a drawer front that fits perfectly and the final detail before everything gets sanded and sent off for finishing is a bevel on the underside of the top and these shallow bevels I think are best done at the table saw and then I come back and clean it up with a hand plane and the bevel on the Front's gonna be cut at a different angle because I don't want it to go as far under so I just mark some lines and do this with the hand tools through the magic of editing and for your viewing enjoyment I cut out the five hours of me sanding and let's just skip ahead to the finishing process which starts with a process known as raising the grain and this is just simply wiping down the piece with water this stands all of the loose wood fibers up on end and I come back and sand those off after the pieces dried I do this because I'm gonna come back and apply a water-based dye and I don't want the grain to raise during that process I'd like to control that ahead of time and now it's time to turn art into science I try and come up with a repeatable formula I'm using what are called trans tints and I'm putting them into water and this makes for a great stain to wipe on and wipe off or spray on and I usually like to shoot for a stain that looks good with either two or three coats so I mix up a batch of stain and I play around with it and when I come up with an intensity that works it's game time and the first tip to staining wood is do it in a couple of layers don't do it in one big dark layer of stain I think doing it in a couple of layers helps create a more even color so the first coat gets brushed on and wiped off and I pay close attention to what everything looks like on the second coat lighter areas get more stained darker areas get less stained and I do this too just to try and even everything up as much as possible so in this shot as I'm applying the first coat I notice that the frame of the door is much lighter so I wipe everything off and I add just a little more color back to that frame to help bring those colors closer together here's where things get more complex after two coats of the water-based dye I come back and I do a wipe on wipe off application of an oil-based stain and using both types of products on the same project I think brings out the best in both of them dye stains are great at adding some color but often times they'll leave the wood looking a little flat ultimately it creates two consistent of a surface but an oil-based wiping stain tends to fall into the grain and the pores of the wood and this can accentuate and bring out some of the grain cause it to pop might be one way to say it and this will add some depth to the overall look of the project all of this is done in an attempt to make mahogany look as though as aged 50 or hundred years we know that mahogany darkens with time the problem is when it comes off the saw it's fairly pink and that's a tough sell for customers who want their furniture to look good the day they buy it not in fifty or a hundred years once the stain is dry I apply a protective clear topcoat and then it's time for final assembly and of course and delivery these drawer slides are the bloom tandem Plus bloom motion so how's that for a mouthful the people over at bloom should hire me for their naming Department I could probably move ten percent more units just by making the names less convoluted anyway it's a full extension undermount slide with soft-close and as I mentioned earlier the hinges are bloom and Sirte and they're great because you can take the hinge or the door off or real quick once again thank you to modern bungalow for commissioning this piece if you're interested in purchasing this piece as you should be it will be on display in their showroom until it's sold along with a ton of other cool stuff from other artisans and makers overall I'm happy with the end result I think the color looks good and I think that the design fits in with the general aesthetic of the store I ended up adding some wine storage to this lower drawer so you can house your vast collection of Chateau Cheval Blanc or your two buck chuck whatever you're into well that's it for this one I you enjoyed following along on this journey thank you very much for watching until next time you

Channel: Mike Farrington

Views: 544,170

Keywords: woodworking, carpentry, furniture making, how to stain wood, Cabinet making, cabinet maker

Id: ERxYxgSTHjI

Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 15 2020