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.