- The Wood Whisperer is sponsored by Powermatic and Titebond. They say that imitation
is the most sincere form of flattery, and I'm
not 100% sure I believe that all the time, but in
this case I can tell you it's 100% true. So a couple months ago I was
scrolling through Instagram, I saw on Mike Pekovich's feed he did a class with a student by the name of Sean Montague, and
together they built a cabinet that I absolutely adore. Turns out it was heavily inspired by the work of Philip Morley. So I happen to follow Philip on Instagram and I saw some of the
details for previous projects he's done and I decided
I would incorporate those into this build. So thank you all you guys
for your inspiration, but most importantly Philip,
your work is amazing, man, and I'm just glad you're
allowing me to steal your ideas. All right, so here it is, the media credenza made from walnut. The doors are a bookmatched crotch walnut, some really cool techniques
we'll get into with that. The doors are not hinged,
they're just sliding doors. So easy to make and there's
no metal hardware at all here, but look how smooth these slide. So we've got three compartments, each of them is fully ventilated, there's holes for cords to go through, there's actually interconnecting holes so you can send cords from
one compartment to the next. And I gotta tell you
for me, I'm not putting a lot of gear in this
thing, most of my gear is very lightweight and doesn't really produce a lot of heat, so
I'll be okay with this. If you are putting some heavy
duty in something like this, you may want to ventilate a
little bit more aggressively with active ventilation. But here we go, it's gonna
be a really big build. We're gonna make some mistakes. My brother-in-law Jason is helping, this is the first project we've done from start to finish together and I gotta tell you, the
process of teaching someone else, being responsible for their safety and making sure they're
learning along the way as we build and film
means that I just made some stupid mistakes,
I just forgot things, and wasn't as careful as I usually am. So you're gonna see me
make those mistakes, and then you're gonna see
me fix those mistakes. All right, so it's a big
build, let's get into it. We're gonna start by
making the case panels, including the sides, the partitions, the top, and the bottom. We're doing our best
to match up the grain, but that can be pretty trick with walnut. But guess what? Paying any attention at
all to grain matching will likely put your
work ahead of about 90% of what's out there, just make the effort. Everything is cut oversized in length. Most of the panels will be
a glue-up of three boards. So I lay them out and define the areas that I want to remove,
and then check and see if we still have enough width. Now we'll mill the boards four square in preparation for glue up. I'm actually usually
using five-quarter stock for this project, but you
can absolutely get away with four-quarter if you want to. Five-quarter is nice because
the parts are just beefier, and for longer pieces you
don't have to worry so much about removing too much stock
when you're milling it flat. Because we don't have time
to glue up the panels today, we're leaving the parts
a little bit oversized and letting them sit until
we're back in the shop. This way if the boards
move while they acclimate, we'll be able to mill them
flat before the panel glue up. Fortunately when we came back
the boards were still nice and flat, but I'll give 'em
one more pass on the jointer and then through the planer
before gluing up the panels. For walnut, I like to use Titebond III. Not really because it's a waterproof glue, but because the glue
line dries pretty dark and makes for a less noticeable glue line. Once the glue is dry I
rough sand the panels and put them aside while I
work on a top and the bottom. Now, these boards are more
than eight inches wide and I really don't want to cut them down just to fit them on my jointer, so I'll employ a little
trick that'll allow me to keep the boards at full width. I'll temporarily remove
the guard on the jointer, giving additional room for the
excess to hang off the edge. We can then joint an eight
inch wide section of the board so that it's nice and flat. The board is then flipped over and using double-stick tape we can attach a piece of scrap plywood that's just about the same dimensions as the
jointed area of the board. With the ply pressed up
against the little lip, we can apply pressure and
then head to the planer. Now with the plywood face down we could pass the board through the planer to get a nice clean
flat and parallel face. To finish milling the
board we'll flip it over, remove the plywood, and then send it back through the planer again to
remove the remain high material on the other face. While it's generally not a good idea to remove a safety device from any tool, this is one instance where
I consider it justified. Just be careful to make
sure you replace that guard immediately when you're done. Because the top and
bottom are pretty long, I'll use dominoes to help
keep the boards aligned during the glue up. This isn't a necessity by any means, but it does help the glue up
go a little bit more smoothly, and I likes it smooth. I also like to run a set of clamps in the opposite orientation to help keep the pressure balanced. I find that this helps
the panels stay flat after the glue up. When the glue dries, the
surface is rough sanded and the panels are trimmed to final width. The MFT is a nice tool for
not only trimming the boards to length but also making
sure that the ends are square. A large framing square
and some sort of guide for your circular saw
is a good alternative. Using my drawings for reference I'll begin marking the locations
of the dadoes and grooves on the top and bottom. Because walnut is so dark,
I'll use a white pencil to reinforce the start and
stop points for the dadoes. That'll make it easier
to see when I'm routing. All the joinery will
be cut using the router and a half-inch bit. To cut the inside dadoes, I'll
line up the bit with my marks and then cut a piece of scrap ply to match the distance
from the edge of the board to the router base. Now I can clamp this scrap in place so that it's flush with the ends and use the other edge as
a fence for the dadoes cut. Remember, these are stopped dadoes so be sure to watch those layout lines. We have three more of these to do. For the dadoes on the ends, I'll just use the router's edge guide. Now for the sliding door groove, the bottom groove is really shallow at about a sixteenth of an inch. The top is a little deeper at 3/8. Next up, we'll cut the partition and side panels down to length
and width at the table saw. Each panel gets a wide tenon along the top and bottom edges. And I'll scribe across the grain to not only mark the
locations of the shoulder but to help prevent tear out. Now I'll use a sacrificial
fence to bury the dado blade, just slightly allowing me
to make the rabbit cuts on the ends of each board. With a cut on each face, the end result is the wide tenon that we
need to fit into our dado. Now the ends of this
tenon need to be notched so that they accommodate the fact that the dado is a stopped dado. Magnetic stops are super
handy for stuff like this. With a nice sharp chisel it's pretty easy to use the main part of the
shoulder as a reference, allowing us to kinda
slice the high stuff away. Because the dadoes were
made with a router bit, the ends are rounded. So I'll quickly round the
ends of the tenon to match. I generally size my joinery slightly thick so that I could sneak up on
the final fit using hand tools. So just a pass or two
with the shoulder plane and these tenons fit like a glove. At the front of our
case the partitions need to sit back about a sixteenth of an inch behind the sliding door grooves so that they don't interfere
with the sliding action. All of the partitions
and sides are processed in the same way, and when
I'm done I number each one so that I could reassemble
them in this exact order. Now with the top and bottom in place we can really evaluate the
fit and plan our next move, which is the back panel groove. This groove goes around
the inner perimeter, so I need to cut the
groove in the side panels as well as the top and bottom. A quarter-inch bit and an
edge guide does the trick. Next, I want to add a bullnose profile to the top and the bottom. I don't actually have
a proper bullnose bit, so I'm just taking two passes
with a large round over. The bullnose is added to
the side edges and the front but not the back, the back stays square. Since the bit doesn't actually
give me a perfect bullnose, I'll try to finesse it a
little bit at the workbench. I could then smooth the back
edge with my jack plane. Once again, we can dry fit the case in order to measure for the
quarter-inch back panel. The back panel is made from
quarter-inch walnut plywood. We'll test the fit before moving on. If all the joints close, we're good to go. Now to allow for some ventilation I cut a few slots in the
back panel near the top. These are just cut with
a 3/8 inch router bit and an edge guide. And this is something
you can have fun with, make a design that looks interesting. And I mentioned this at the beginning but it bears repeating, if you have heat producing
gear in an enclosed space, you might need to consider
more substantial ventilation. At the bottom of each compartment, we use a Forstner bit
to drill a large hole that's big enough for
plugs to pass through. And on the partitions
we'll cut a semicircle that allows the passing
through of plugs and wires between each internal compartment. Now we'll prep for finish
by sanding all the panels to 180 grit. We have a lot more work to do, but it makes so much sense
to apply the finish right now before we do the glue up. Those inside corners would
just be a pain in the butt, so I'll apply the finish,
taking care to avoid getting it in the dadoes or on the tenons. The finish here is Osmo Polyx-Oil Pure. For a little more detail on
how to apply this finish, check out the video I did on
the round red oak tabletop. Once the finish is cured,
it's time for the glue up. I'll use two-by-fours
with tape on the edge as a platform to lift the
assembly up off the bench. This is gonna make it a lot
easier to apply our clamps. Because I know this one's gonna
require a lot of fiddling, I'm using Titebond's Liquid Hide Glue, it gives me a lot more working time. While we're watching this assembly, I wanted to take a minute to tell you about my new book, Essential Joinery. It's 216 pages of big pictures and step-by-step
instructions on how to make what I consider to be
the most essential joints in woodworking, and I'll
show you multiple methods to make each joint using various tools. The book is published
by Spring House Press and is available at major
retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and
if you want a signed copy you can buy one directly from
me at essentialjoinery.com. If you're just getting
started in woodworking or maybe just want to
up your joinery game, I would love it if you bought
a copy of Essential Joinery. Let's get back to the build. When applying the clamping pressure, we'll use rags to help prevent
marring the finished surface. The ends are pretty easy to clamp since we can get pressure
all the way across the joint, but in the center it's kind of impossible to get clamping pressure in
the middle of those partitions. So I'll use a couple of
sets of cambered cauls to put pressure where it needs to be. The cauls are intentionally
bowed in such a way that by the time we flatten out the caul there's already a substantial
amount of pressure right at the center, and
that lets us clamp across the entire joint with only two clamps. Of course, as always, we check for square before leaving the assembly overnight. Now we can start on the base, beginning with these cute little feet. We use 12-quarter stock to
avoid having a glue line in each foot. The pieces are cut square, jointed, and planed and then cut to length. We actually cut a few extra just in case. Now, whenever you make legs or feet, don't just arrange them randomly, try to seek out rifts on grain where the grain of all the legs will go toward the center. This will give a much more
consistent look to our feet and when we cut the curves, the grain will actually
appear to follow the curve. Once we have the orientation we want, we can roughly mark the mortise locations so that we don't get them mixed up. I'll lay out the mortises on each foot or at least the start and stop points. We'll use the hollow chisel
mortiser to make the mortises. I don't really use this tool that often, but in this case, given
how small the feet are this tool cuts the mortises
quickly and safely, it's perfect for the job. I actually have a video on
setting up a hollow chisel mortiser that you might be
interested in checking out. Now for the base rails. I'm trying my best to
pick grain that follows the specific curve that we're
gonna cut into the rails. It's not easy, I found one great
section for the front rail, it's really the most important, but the rest are just okay. I really don't want to have
to get another eight-quarter board so we'll make due with what we have. The parts are rough cut
with the jigsaw and bandsaw and then jointed and planed
to the final dimension. The long rails will be cut
to length at the chop saw. The short rails are cut to length, but spoiler alert, they're
being cut to the wrong length. I'm not gonna say that it's Jason's fault because those are his hands
and those are definitely his tattoos, but I'm
kind of in charge here and I should be double-checking everything that the new guy does. But I didn't, so stay
tuned for more on that. Now for some tenons. I'll draw the full tenon onto
at least one of the rail ends so that I can get the tool set up. I'll be using the dado stack
with a sled at the table saw. We'll start with a test cut and
make adjustments from there. Once the tenon just starts to go in, I'll keep that setting and
cut the rest of the tenons. Now for the bottom short
shoulder I'll lower the blade. The top shoulder is just
too much for the blade size that we have so I'll cut what I can and then switch back to a single blade to nibble away the rest of the stock. Any material left over on the
shoulder can be chiseled away and the width of the tenon can be finessed to the perfect fit. Of course we do have eight
total tenons to finesse but I'll save you the trouble
of watching all of that. For the feet, I'm gonna
make up a little template based on what looks good to my eye. There'll be an outside curve
for the front faces of the feet and a small inner curve
for the inside faces. The shape is applied to
the two outside faces of the leg blank. Before making any cuts,
bring all four feet together just for a little bit of a sanity check. There's probably several
ways to get this done, but I like to start by cutting
both curves on one face, then taping the off
cuts back onto the blank to cut the other face. At this point, there's really no more flat reference
surfaces to work with so I'll finesse the feet
at the spindle sander just by holding it up
and applying pressure, then checking my progress repeatedly. At the workbench I'll
finish sanding the feet, including all of the curves and flats. Now I can dry assemble the feet and rails. The rails have a very
interesting profile to them that starts by matching
the profile of the feet. So I'll measure the reveal
and mark that distance at the top of the rail,
leaving a little bit of extra meat there to
allow for the curvature. I'll draw on the shoulder of the rail to help visualize the
cut that I need to make. With the bevel gauge set to the angle, I could then set the
saw to the bevel gauge. Now we can cut the
bevels on all four rails. Using a hand plane, I'll
shape the rails by eye, trying to achieve the same
profile that we have on the feet. Once I'm close, I sand the surface to kinda blend it all in
and then check my progress against the foot. All of the rails get
this exact same profile, but if you want the truth,
they're not all going to be exactly the same. Thankfully, the human
eye isn't really great at spotting tiny differences
in curved surfaces and profiles, so even if
they're not exactly the same no one's ever gonna know. With the feet and rails assembled again, I'll mark a line where the
curve at the foot stops. That's the point that our
rail curve needs to begin. It slopes downwards to the
center and then back up again to the other foot. A Lee Valley drawing bow is
perfect for the short rails, but the long rails require
a shop-made solution. Using a strip of quarter-inch MDF and some blocks and clamps, I could flex the strip to
get the curve that I need. The curves are then cut at the bandsaw and smoothed at the spindle sander. All of the parts get a round over and a nice finish sanding to 180 grit. To assemble the base, I'll start by gluing up the short rails first. I'll use the cut offs from the feet with some cork added to the face as cauls, and that'll match the curve
perfectly for our feet. This allows the clamp to
engage with a nice flat surface while still applying pressure across kind of a wacky shaped joint. If there's any discrepancy
where the underside curve meets the foot, I'll
chisel and sand the area until the surfaces meet cleanly. While the glue is drying,
I'm gonna make some cleats that we'll use to hold
the base to the case. I'll drill the holes and then
angle the bit back and forth to create slots that'll
accommodate some wood movement. The cleats will then be glued
to the inside of the rails. Now I can glue on the long rails. Now it's time for some more finish. You just gotta love the dramatic change that walnut experiences once you hit it with a beautiful finish. At this point, we let
the finish dry overnight. The next day, I decided to
put the base on the case only to discover a problem, a big problem, a big, big, big, big problem. The short rails were cut too long and the base is now three inches too big. After about 45 minutes of this, I put on my fixer hat and decided on a reasonable strategy
to salvage the base. You ready? I start by marking the center line and then measuring out in each direction to establish the correct rail length. There's plenty of room to spare here, so I'll get out a hand saw
and do the unthinkable. I saw right through the side rails. The remaining rail stock
that's stuck to the foot is chiseled and sawn away. I decided the easiest thing to do here is to leave the tenon in
place as a built-in patch. In order to rework the
rails, I need a flat surface. So I saw off the cleat as close
to the inside edge as I can and plan to reuse this cleat. The inside face of the
rails is then planed, scraped, and sanded smooth. At the chop saw I'll carefully remeasure and mark my lines and
cut the rails to length. For the new joinery I'm gonna rely on the Domino to bail me out. But as great as the Domino is, this process won't be foolproof. I first need to accurately
locate the mortises on both the feet and
the ends of the rails. Because the foot is all
goofy shaped and small, I'm gonna have to cobble
together some sort of fence to accurately register the Domino. Even then, the Domino
feels a little bit wobbly so I'm doing my best to
keep the Domino straight, which is hard to do
through the constant stream of angry stinging tears
falling out of my eyes. Fortunately, the mortise
in the rails is a breeze because we've got a flat and
square surface to work with. With the rails and feet assembled again, I'll repeat the process of laying out and cutting the bottom curve. And now I can glue the
frame back together. You know what happened,
I know what happened, but for anyone who hasn't seen this video the fix is totally undetectable. After the glue dried, I applied
finish where it was needed and then attached the base to the case. Well, that was fun. People always tell me that
the mark of a good craftsman is his ability to fix his mistakes. That sounds great on a Facebook meme, but in reality it's BS. Great craftsmen work hard
to limit their mistakes as much as possible,
and the better they get the fewer mistakes they make. But when a mistake does happen, the fixing of the mistake becomes
an entirely new discipline of problem-solving, and it
pays to get good at that too. But it's always better
to not make the mistake in the first place. The credenza has three adjustable shelves, so we glued up a few panels
and then cut them to width. A few holes are drilled
in each compartment. And, by the way, if you do
adjustable shelving like this, don't make your cabinets Swiss cheese, pick the most common locations
and add a few options, you don't need to go nuts. And man does my hair
look gray in this shot, no wonder I'm getting offers
for hair dye sponsors. The shelves are dropped in place, and I notice that they
look a little bit thick. Again, I'm using
five-quarter stock for this and I don't want to sacrifice thickness so to make them appear thinner I put a shallow bevel at the front. Now we can start working
on the raised panel doors. I'm selecting grain for the frames that's pretty straight and boring. I really want the panels to be the thing that catches your eye. The parts are all cut
and milled four square. For the panel stock, I'm
looking for some nice crotch. To try to keep the crotch centered I'll draw a center line through the knot and then measure above and below to ensure that we get the whole crotch, not just part of the crotch. I'm pretty lucky to have
fairly large crotches and both are similarly impressive. Okay, I got that out of my system. Now each board is resawn in half and the bookmatch will make up
a single panel for each door. To help stabilize the boards I'll fill any major cracked with epoxy. Once dry, I'll sand the epoxy down and then begin to joint and plane all of the door stock together. The boards can then be glued
together to make up the panels. While those dry, we can finish
milling the door frame parts to size. At the router table I'll
use a slot cutting bit to create a slot in a piece of scrap. I don't want to put the slots
in the door frames just yet because we've got some shaping to do, so this is only for the sake of setting up for the tenon cuts. To make the tenons, we'll
scribe the shoulders first. Then using the dado stack at the table saw we can cut the tenon and test the fit. I don't show it here, but
I'm using the test piece that we just cut to make sure
that the tenon fits perfectly. The top rail of the door
receives a little curve. The panel also gets a complementary curve so when I draw this curve
I'm gonna save both pieces and that'll give me two templates. After smoothing the edges, the
two curves won't be dead on as a match, but they'll be close enough for what we need to do. Now I can trace the rail
shape onto the top rails and then cut them at the bandsaw. The curves then smooth with
a flexible sanding strip. Now back at the router table we can use a slot cutting
bit to cut the groove on the inside of all of
the door frame parts. For the straight parts I'll use the fence for some extra support. On the curved parts I'll get what I can with the fence in place
and then I'll do the rest without the fence there. Router tables usually
come with a pivot pin that makes cuts like this a lot safer. But I honestly couldn't find mine so I'm kinda setting a
bit of a bad example here. If you have one, use it. Thankfully the cut went well and a test fit of the
frames looks pretty good. So let's jump back to those panels. I'll cut the panels to
final size at the table saw. The panels will receive a raised profile and I'm gonna run a test board
just to confirm the setup. That looks pretty good, so
now I can route the panels. Remember, I mentioned at the beginning about being a little bit distracted by having a new helper in the shop, well here's another place
where it rears its ugly head. I forgot to cut the curve in the panels. No problem, I'll just cut the curve now and then redo the raised profile. Making the raised profile on a curved face is a little bit weird, but if you take your time
and you keep the board against the bearing at all
times it's not too bad. On the back side of the panels, I'll cut a small rabbit that
things the perimeter down so that it fits into that
frame groove that we cut. Now for the curved portion at the top, we use a slot cutting
bit to cut that rabbit. If the rabbit's just a little bit snug, we can use a shoulder
plane to finesse the fit. With the bottom rail in place, you can see how the panel
is just a bit narrower. This is to allow for movement when it's locked in the frame. The panels are now sanded thoroughly, giving extra love to the end grain at the top and the bottom. I like to sand with the
grain into a higher grit than the rest of the panel. This helps prevent the end
grain from getting really dark when it's hit with finish. The rails are all sanded on the edges and the corners are eased with sandpaper. Before assembly, I'll wipe some finish on the perimeter of the panel. This helps ensure that we
don't see any bare wood if the panel decides to shrink. Time for the glue up. Now I'm using hide glue again for some extra working time. We put plenty of glue on the tenons and in the groove area
that accepts the tenon. And while the panel just
floats for the most part, there's no harm in putting a dab of glue at the very center, assuming
there's room on both sides for the panel to move. Joints like this don't
require tons of pressure, just enough to close up the gaps. After the glue dries, we'll sand the frame to remove the glue and remove
any remaining mill marks. Now, the sliding doors require
a little bit of fiddling to get them to work properly. I highly recommend making
a test piece from scrap. This'll help confirm the
total height of the doors as well as the dimensions
of the rabbits on both ends. The bottom of the door
gets a very shallow rabbit and the top gets a deeper one. When cut just right,
the doors will pivot in, push up, and then drop
down into the groove. When the doors are installed,
I push them all the way to each side to see if I
need to finesse anything. Looks like I've got a slight
gap at the top on the left, so I'll use a hand plane
to make a slight taper so that that gap disappears. And now more finish. This, however, is the most exciting part as we get to see that
crotch grain come to life. Some people see an owl,
some people see a dragon, I see a dead tree. After the finish dries,
I'll drop in the doors, sit back, and appreciate
this amazing walnut from our friends at Austin
Hardwoods in Denver, Colorado. So here it is, the media credenza. Super fun project, a lot more challenging than I actually anticipated, and it was a good learning
experience for me. So I hope you enjoyed watching the process and the project go together, and we will have at least
the SketchUp drawing and a basic set of plans for you if you want to build something similar. All right, thanks for
watching everybody, take care.
