Working out how to do it

One of the great things about making furniture and boxes, is coming up with an idea and then having to work out how to put that idea into practice - problem solving.

I recently made a cabinet that has two doors, and when these are open, it reveals a drawer. I needed to make a handle for this drawer which had to be flush with the drawer front.

There still needed to be a way to grab hold of the handle to open the drawer, so my idea was to take some wood and hollow it somehow to allow purchase  for your fingers.

The shape of the handle I wanted was like the key stone in a stone arch - a 'V' shape with a flat bottom. To hollow it out, I would use a Router and something called a finger-pull cutter. The problem was how to hold the wood while the Router is spinning the cutter at over 20,000 RPM.

 

So how was it done? With lots of screws and various pieces of MDF cut to different shapes and sizes.


In this first picture, the handle black can be seen surrounded by various pieces of MDF. The handle is not screwed down, it is just held in place. The two upper pieces of MDF stop the handle from moving up and down, while also providing a guide for the hollowing process with the Router.

Fig 1 - The handle blank held down.

 

The first part of the hollowing process is to remove most of the wood with a straight sided router cutter. Finger-pull cutters are small and not really designed for removing too much waste wood, only really the 'pull' detail. As I had to remove a fair amount of wood, I made a number of passes with the straight sided cutter, getting a little deeper each time.


Fig 2 - Waste wood has been removed with a straight sided cutter.

 

The actual finger-pull shape, shown in the picture below, is done with a single pass of the router cutter.

Fig 3 - A close-up showing the finger-pull detail.

The handle is finished. All that is required is some sanding to remove the machining marks.

Fig 4 - The completed handle.

 

This final picture shows the handle fitted to the front of the drawer.

Fig 5 - The completed handle fitted to the drawer front.

Five pictures don't really convey how much time it took to make the handle, both thinking time and making time, but it was probably about 5 hours in total.



For more information please visit either my bespoke fine furniture website, or my handmade jewellery boxes website.

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I forgot the pictures

In the dark and distant past, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth........

.....okay, not that long ago but in the summer last year, I did a blog post on the making of a chest of drawers. Remember?  Probably not.

Well, I forgot to post the pictures of the completed piece. So here they are.

Notice how the drawer fronts curve alternate left and right.

The drawers are made from maple, and use dovetails in
their construction.

The drawer fronts have fumed oak on their edges - it helps to
show the curve on the drawer fronts and adds a visual detail
to the finished piece.

Next time I promise I will post the pictures sooner.




To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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It takes time

When making something, I track the time taken to perform each task. I use an online product called Toggl. It works well and is simple to use.

Why I find it useful to track time, is that is shows which tasks and processes take the most time, and how long it actually takes to make something.

For the chest of drawers I have recently made, I was tracking how long it took me to make the five drawers. I was told a good while back to allow three days to make a drawer. That is starting from raw timber and ending up with the finished drawer.

And guess what? I did take me three days to make each drawers, and hence fifteen days to make all five.

That is why handmade bespoke furniture costs more.



To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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Lights and glass

Apart from hand tools, there are loads of other tools that are useful for a cabinet maker.

I suppose a pencil, a pencil sharpener, a straight edge and paper could be classed as a collection of tools, as these are traditionally used to design work.

I sometimes still use the above, but more often than not, I use drawing applications on my computer.  There are a couple I use.

To produce engineering type drawings, I use a package called Visio. I first used this package sometime in the mid 90's while working for NatWest.  I was on a project and we were reverse engineering some code, and needed a tool that allowed us to produce flows that could be used to explain how the reverse engineered code worked - nobody actually knew.  Visio allowed flow diagrams to be made, which were the ideal pictorial representation of what we had found.  Basically Visio is a simple drawing package.  You drag shapes around, set their sizes etc. It is not technical type drawing package. It just uses shapes, but I have used it so much I find it easy and quick to produce plan/elevation type drawings.

This is an example of the type of drawing that I produce with Visio.  It give me all the information that I require for making a piece of furniture.

An engineering style diagram, giving dimensions etc.

Another good software package is Sketch-Up, which you can download for free from Google. Sketch-up is designed for producing 3D type drawings. These types of drawings are great to help people visualise something, as looking at a 3D render is a bit easier than looking at an engineering type drawing. Using Sketch-up is a bit strange at first, but there are plenty of on-line help type videos around, plus there is a useful book from Taunton Press which is aimed solely at woodworkers using Sketch-Up.

Here are a couple of images of the piece of furniture shown about in the Visio drawing.

A 3D image that gives a totally different view compared to the engineering drawing.

The cabinet placed in-situ in an alcove.

This display cabinet is the piece of furniture I am making at the moment.  It is designed to hold a collection of pottery and ceramics. It will be made from oak and sycamore (this wood being inside the cabinet to help keep the inside bright). The doors will be of glass, and there are two glass shelves.  In addition, there will be LED lights inside the cabinet to add even more illumination.

Real pictures will appear when I have finished, then a comparison can be made with my drawings. I hope they match, but I expect the real piece of furniture to be better.




To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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Follow the winding path.

There is nothing like making something extra tricky for yourself.

For example, take a hall table.  Better still, take a hall table I made. Better even still, take a hall table that I made from oak.

Now I wanted to make the table top more interesting than just a slab of wood. Don't get me wrong, a slab of wood can look very good, nice grain, nice timber, nice edge detail. But that wasn't what I was looking for.

I read something a while back about making a chopping board with solid wooden inlays. The result looked good, and the technique could be extended to other items. I gave the method a go and made myself a chopping board.  It worked out fine, and I already had in the back of my mind something to make on a larger scale...a hall console table.

I wanted the table itself to be simple with clean lines, but adding the inlays to the top would really add an eye catching detail.

"So what does the technique involve?", I hear you say.

Well before I spill the beans, let us first discuss inlays.

Most inlays are made by cutting a small groove in a surface, normally a couple of mm deep (if inlaying a veneer string, the groove could be only 0.6mm deep) and then sticking in the item to be inlayed. So the inlay is only just in the top surface.

What is different about the technique I used on this table, is that the inlay goes right through the table top.  So when viewed from the ends, the inlay can be seen 'wrapping' round the ends and continuing onto the under surface.

How is it done? Roughly like this. First of all, make your table top. Sand it nice and flat.  Cut it in half and stick it back together with the first inlay. When dry, flush that inlay back.  Cut the table top in half again and glue back together with the next inlay. When dry, flush back. Repeat until complete.

This table top has three inlays, so including the initial making of the top, that makes a total of four glue-ups for the top.  Oh, and did I say that because the inlays follow a curved path, when you stick the top back together, it slips and slides around like a bar of soap?

And did I say the inlays I used are different widths? 

And did I also say that making a table top is much harder than a chopping board because it is so much larger?

See, tricky. 

Anyway, enough words. On with the pictures.

It looks small, but it really is a full size table!

The three drawers have a hidden finger pull detail on the bottom edge. Saves having handles sticking out and getting caught on things as you walk by.

Here you can see how the inlays go completely through the table top. 

Overhead shot of the table showing the inlays - the 'Winding Paths'.

I like the effect you get doing this technique.  I have loads of other ideas in mind too.............


To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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"As I was going to St Ives....

....I met a man with seven wives,
and those seven wives each wanted a jewellery box."

Which is lucky as I have just finished making seven jewellery boxes.

Seven jewellery boxes made from ash, walnut and various burr woods.

I will let those wives argue it out as to who is getting which box!


To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

Follow me on Facebook or read my tweets on Twitter.

Good enough to eat

Here are some pictures of the chest of drawers I mentioned a few posts ago, the one entitled 'January'.

It is made from steamed pear, walnut and maple.........custard anyone?

To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

Follow me on Facebook or read my tweets on Twitter.