They say your sense of smell holds most of our memories. Like the smell of your grandma's kitchen, or someone's perfume. Or even a musty closet - smells can take us back to memories that we've sometimes forgotten. Have you ever walked past someone and gotten a whiff of something that transports you to a different time and place? That's what I'm talking about. More on that later...
It feels so good to be building furniture again!
I finished up these cabinet doors, and started on the carcase.
There was a luxury to having so much lumber to choose from, as I could carefully match the grain and color of the boards, for the best effect.
Gluing the sides,
and planing them made the whole shop smell like root beer. Sassafras is my favorite wood, for so many reasons. It's kind of nerdy, but if you click on that link, you'll read some amazing facts about sassafras - its culinary uses, medicinal uses, and much more. Fascinating, I think.
But for me - I love the color, the grain, the ease of working with it, but most of all - the smell. As I was planing these boards, the shop filled with the most fragrant and sweet smell. I can't tell you how many times people walk into the shop and comment about how much they love the smell of wood. Well let me tell you - smelling sassafras in the air is a whole new experience.
Back to the case work - the boards were planed, trimmed to size, and domino'ed, but the dado (that's the channel that will hold the back in place) needed some work.
The dado runs end to end on the top and bottom,
but the sides both had a stopped dado like this.
It was curved, because I cut it on the tablesaw, so that curve mimics the shape and diameter of the blade.
A few cuts with a narrow chisel squared up that dado,
and I tested it with a scrap of plywood, to ensure it was sufficiently cleaned out.
Usually, I have a good variety of sheet goods in the shop, and would have been able to dig through them, to find something suitable for the back. But these aren't usual times, so the piece I found was a little narrower than want I needed. So I had some make this back in two pieces, with a center divider.
This is a little "cheating" technique that we sometimes do, when we run out of material, by the way.
Some sanding and this piece was assembled in no time.
Now I know a lot of you think that you're the only ones that make mistakes when building, but I made one here. I'm not sure why, but I made this cabinet 17" deep, and once it was together - it just looked too big to me. The scale was off, which was going to throw everything else off.
So - Plan B - I cut a few inches off the cabinet. Building is about being flexible, and well... I could have done this and never mentioned it, right?
Time to turn my attention to the doors.
I finished shaping the "tie" and dry fit them, in order to measure for the door panels.
Cutting the slots for the panels would normally be accomplished on the table saw, but - these were not ordinary doors. So I pulled out my 1/4" slotting bit,
clamped the doors down,
and cut the slots with a router.
Again - this resulted in curved corners, as shown below.
A little more chisel work was needed to square up those slots.
And BAM! - we have doors!
I don't normally sign my work - but in this particular case, I think it's nice to commemorate it. So I'm designing some sort of plaque that I can laser, to attach to the back of this. Here's my first iteration, but I'm sure it will change as this piece progresses.
Next up?
Hanging the doors, building drawers and designing the base.
Stay tuned!
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