The 'Owl' Cabinet; Progress

 As mentioned in a previous post, another Jim Krenov cabinet, or interpretation thereof is under way.  Thus far, by some miracle, there don't seem to be any horrendous gaffs that have been committed and it's pretty much gone together as planned...and it does take a lot work with the little grey cells!

JK's doors are always the hardest thing to make, so I started with them and as I'd never made a set of 'sail' doors, I made a prototype in pine, shown in the second pic.  This is one of the Ash panels being planed:

 ...using my little convex sole maple plane and couple of ancient 'rounds' to get into the tighter part of the curve. Jointing is by Dominos (quick and easy) but here I've used some mock green 6mm mdf doms:

Both doors are shown, with the mock pine door on the rhs. Dominos are also used for the main construction, with the horizontal ones being machined wider so adding a degree of 'slideability' 

when all four sections are assembled:

At this stage, you'll be able to see the verticals, the doors and one of the veneered horizontal panels, yet to be machined:

Shaping on the vertical panels is done in much the same way as the doors:

...but this time I used a straight edge to guide the planes, which made life a lot easier. Then it was simply a question of refining and finishing the curves at each end:

If you look at the following pic, you'll see that the doors sit into a stopped rebate at the front of each vertical side and the veneered top and bottom are 'wrapped around' which took a bit of sorting out to machine:

...but I got there in the end leaving a few mm all round for the eventual fitting of the doors. As mentioned earlier in another enthralling post, I hate fitting brassware but strangely, the Brusso hinges shown dropped into their recesses absolutely spot on:

It's all come together quite nicely, so I'm moderately chuffed with the progress to date.  However, over the last couple of days I've pondered at length just how the hell JK made and fitted the drawer assembly:

It looks very simple, but it's fiendishly difficult to make, fit and assemble into the cabinet.  Having worn out a load of brain cells over the weekend I think I've worked out how he did it and moreover the sequence of events to construct it and fit it into the cabinet. My version won't be exactly as shown above but in essence, fingers crossed, it will look very similar. 

Treasure Box; Deux

 Sometimes, deep down, you get a feeling that something's not right or won't work and such an insight happened the other day about the current little box, details of which were outlined in the last enthralling episode; I knew that faffing around cutting another hinge slot simply wasn't going to work!

As a result, all the holly banding was drum sanded off and I decided to try and use a wooden hinge aka Rob Cosman as I'd made a few of his boxes fairly recently...

As I'd never done any veneering using end grain 'oysters' this was a new departure for me and as a consequence there was a bit of a 'learning curve' accompanied the many and varied cock ups which which were too numerous to detail, even by 'The Blokeblog' standards. I was determined that this job wasn't going to end up as bandsaw fodder, so I simply soldiered on and sorted out the mistakes, errors and general goofs as they occurred. 

It was finally done today and despite all my reservations, it hasn't turned out too badly.  Fortunately SWIMO likes it and has accosted it for her watches.

...and once the lid's been opened:

The overall effect is acceptable, though the holly, although excellent to work with is fairly unforgiving of any discrepancies in the jointing and is also very difficult to keep anywhere near clean.

At the end of the jour, I'm glad this little box has been dun n'dusted and 'er indoors has found a suitable use for it.

Onwards and upwards.