Cabinet Is Finished – With A Finish
We’re about to finish a year and I’ve just finished a cabinet – with a finish. On all counts I’m happy as I can move into the holidays unencumbered by pressing schedules.
I’m posting this for two reasons. The lesser of the two is that I’ve talked about this project in previous posts and thought some might want to see it finished. But the larger reason is that when I did a post titled When is a Piece Ready for Finish, several people asked me the popular question “What’s your favorite finish?”
I’m not a big believer in “best solution” for anything without a bunch of “it depends” going along with the answer. And nothing could be more true for finish choices. I love the look of a plain oil finish. Properly applied I believe an oil finish is the most beautiful wood treatment and unless you’re eating off it, probably a sufficient finish for most pieces. If I feel I need a film finish I favor shellac, mixing my own from flakes and applying it in many very thin coats. Still, when I’m sending something off to a place you don’t know and to someone you’ve never met I start thinking of a wipe-on polyurethane finish.
And this cabinet falls into the last category. It’s going to a guy’s “mom” in northern Quebec. It’s also a maple cabinet and maintaining a light-color was part of the directive. A good way to finish with no color change would be something like General Finishes “water-based” polyurethane as these dry very clear and. I wanted to warm up the piece a bit, however, so I went in a different direction.
The first step in my process was to tape off the glass so I didn’t have a lot of scraping to do. If I had it to do over I would have taped a paper cover over the entire glass, though the approach you see here worked pretty well.
Actually, that was the second step in the process. I didn’t attach the back of this cabinet until everything else was done. The back was a framed panel and so while I fitted hinges and doors and did last-minute detailing I finished the cabinet back. Thus, by the time I got ready to do the rest of the finishing, I could put the cabinet on its back, supported by some of those little pyramid thingies and this gave me access to the entire cabinet without having to move it around.
I started by applying two coats of boiled linseed oil. Then I went Christmas shopping for a couple days. Before moving on, I went over everything with a bit of 400-grit sandpaper, just to put a bit of tooth on the surface.
Then I applied four coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal, my favorite wipe-on polyurethane. Between coats I went over the entire piece with a gray buffing pad, again, to produce a bit of tooth. Fine steel wool works for this as well. The secret to applying polyurethanes by hand, in my view, is to do it in very thin coats. Most “mistakes” I see come from attempts to slather the stuff on while hoping that its leveling properties will eliminate brush strokes. It won’t.
Once the last coat was dry I stuffed a lump of good-quality paste wax into the middle of a piece of t-shirt material. With the fabric pulled up around the wax I started rubbing it on the cabinet surface. Mostly I use a swirling motion but I’m not sure it matters as long as you get a thin, even coat of the wax on the surface. If you’ve never done this, you’ll find that the wax won’t flow until the friction of the action warms it and then it will ooze through the fabric. This provides really good control over the process. I did one or two panels and then buff it out with a clean cloth.
And here it is. I apologize for the poor photo but it’s dark here most of the time (8 hours of daylight) and it was dark and I was lazy and so “lighting” comes only from the shop lights.
Cheers — Larry
Making Cabinet Pulls in Cherry
If you’ve been following my blog you know that one of my current projects is a hanging cabinet that will house a spoon collection. I’m at the fiddly stage. All the basic construction is done and I’m dealing with hinging, wall mounts bracketry, door magnets – the fiddly things. In many ways this is the time a piece comes together but it is also a time when you don’t seem to accomplish very much per hour.
A quick way to solve the door pull requirement is to let your fingers do the walking through the Lee Valley hardware catalog or run to your Woodcraft or Rockler stores but I thought it might be nicer to create a set of pulls in a slightly contrasting wood. For that purpose I used cherry.
I started by slicing a square stick from a piece that was 3/4″ thick. I guessed about 1/2″ maximum diameter for the pull handles so this was larger than I needed but as it was headed for the lathe, I simply lopped off the corners with a spokeshave and chucked it between centers. A skew made quick work of rounding up the stick.
Using a parting tool, I laid out two handles as above. The ends were set 3″ apart and taken down to 3/8″ dia., the center to 1/2″ and the halfway points to 7/16″. The spindles extending from each end were taken to 1/4″. You can see that I’ve got a larger spindle than I need for these parts but it was convenient at the time.
With the dimensions of the center and ends established I simply tapered between them. The taper you see here was repeated on the other side and on the other handle (to the right of these photos) but mid-process I decided to make the top and bottom tapers slightly asymmetric. This, in my view, improved their appearance.
I trued up the exiting 1/4″ sections as these are to fit into 1/4″ holes. A bit of sanding and this part was done.
I took another stick of cherry and planed to it to 1/2″ square. This stick was to become the end pieces for the handles.
Using a block plane and scraper I chamfered and smoothed the corners of the stick. Doing this prior to cutting saves a lot of tiny work later and is much quicker.
A carcase saw and bench hook made quick work of creating 1 1/4″ long pieces that become the door pull end pieces.
I used an egg beater drill and 1/4″ brad-point bit to drill holes in one end of each piece to accept a short dowel for attaching them to the door. The lower holes will accept the pull handles.
I used a technique similar to one Marc Spagnuolo (aka The Wood Whisperer) presented (He said he learned it from Darrell Peart) to round off, somewhat, the ends of the end pieces. I wanted the ends to remain mostly flat but with all the edges rounded over. In each case I presented the end of the piece to the sandpaper by swirling it round and round rather than back and forth. I started with 80-grit paper to eliminate the saw marks. Then I moved to an 80-grit sanding sponge. This rounded over the edges. Then I worked through 150 and 220-grit papers, finishing with a 220-grit sanding sponge.
These are the result. I thought they looked pretty good. But now I know how it feels to be a mystery novelist as they write that plot twist at the end so that the guy you think did it, didn’t. You see, armed with these pulls, I stuck them on the doors with some double-sided tape and, well, they just didn’t look right on this small cabinet. They were too large for my taste. Looked good but drew too much attention to themselves. I presented their creation because they are, nevertheless, useful pulls and I’ll find a place for them some day.
And so I took another stick, this time maple with pronounced straight grain. I used rasps, files, knives and spokeshaves and removed everything that didn’t look like a door pull for my cabinet. I came up with these.
And here’s what the cabinet looks like, ready for finish.
Cheers — Larry
When Is A Surface Ready For Finish?
When you’re new to woodworking, and trying to learn, it must be frustrating to read “Prepare your surface and then apply your favorite finish”? This is an example of well-meaning woodworkers, and woodworking magazines, attempting to help people while forgetting that those who need advice also need the details. All of us who fall into this trap need to follow what will be, from this day forward, called Larry’s Law. Larry’s Law reads something like this: “If it’s so obvious that you don’t need to explain how, then why say it at all?” I’m still working on the exact wording and will publish the final version as soon as I can follow its advice. “Prepare your surface -> apply a finish” line is a classic example of the problem. We see it everywhere. Sometimes you’re provided details like “sand to 220″ but not enough to really understand what the experts (and guys like me) do.
How does one really determine if your spiffy cabinet, bench or table is ready for finish. You’ve sanded it, of course. But how do you know the scratches and flaws are gone? Too often it looks great until you apply the finish and then the scratches show their ugly face. Those buggers are elusive.
But there is a way and it’s easy. You need three things. Obviously you need a piece you think is finished. Here I have a door panel for a cabinet I’m working on. You need some mineral spirits. Some, who don’t like the smell, use alcohol. I prefer mineral spirits because it doesn’t evaporate away as quickly. The third thing you need is what I refer to as a shadow light. It’s simply a light you can shine at a low angle over the piece, looking for tiny shadows created by imperfections.
I have to say that in preparing this post I learned a thing or two of the difficulty in presenting this technique. The technique will reveal very small imperfections but it’s hard to get a camera to pick them up once revealed. Likewise, if the imperfection isn’t subtle, the camera picks them up without the technique. What’s a guy to do?
Cheat! Well sort of. I simply added a scratch to the rail of this door, shot photos and then repeated the process until I got a scratch deep enough that it would show up in the photos. Unfortunately, if you look very closely at the pre-treatment photo, you can see the scratch too, but pretend that you can’t. The depth of this particular scratch was determined by my ability to photograph the ‘after’ photo. Sometimes my camera-slinging abilities are limiting. Sorry about that, but I did scratch my cabinet for you. That’s gotta be worth something.
Here’s a photo of the piece in ambient (big overhead flourescent) light. You’ll have to click on both photos to see anything as these thumbnails don’t show much of anything.
My process is to wet a cloth with mineral spirits. With the cloth in one hand, and the light in the other, I wipe mineral spirits onto the surface just ahead of the light. Moving along the surface I look for problems. Very small dents, scratches or other rough spots are readily visible using this technique. The mineral spirits does evaporate away quickly, however so, and you’ll probably think I’m crazy, I’ll often use really tiny Post-It Notes to indicate areas I need to fix. They make really tiny ones to use to mark book pages and they’re ideal.
And when you’re done fixing the problems, you have “prepared your surface.” It is now ready for “your favorite finish.”
Cheers — Larry
Cutting Clean Notches for My Cabinet
When I did the post on creating the spoon holders for my cabinet project I didn’t think that cutting the notches was worth mentioning. Two things changed that view. First, I got two emails asking me how I was going to do it. Second, I tried cutting them on a table saw and then with a bandsaw and I wasn’t pleased at all with the results.
The problem was that these notches are 1) front and center in the cabinet (ie. visible) and 2) I saw a lengthy period of trying to sand them smooth if I used either of these techniques. I suspect that those who asked me how I was going to do it have already been down this road.
But as a guy who also works in miniature, I have lots of fine sawing implements. One such implement is my Gyros saw, which is available from Woodcraft stores and online. This little guy is about 5″ long and sports 60 teeth per inch (tpi). It cuts slowly but the cut is baby-butt smooth. I had 60 notches to cut which meant 120 cuts. As I said, this saw cuts slowly but once I’d marked the cuts to be made, I used a bench hook for support and those 120 cuts took me 16 minutes. There was some coffee slurping going on as well. I’ll probably touch the edges with sandpaper to remove the sharp edge but otherwise no sanding will be required.
Cheers — Larry
Back to the Cabinet
I recently lamented having problems with my “skills” while building the back for my cabinet project. I’m happy to say that it’s true – perserverance is a good substitute for ability and my cabinet now has a back.
The hinges are on their way from Lee Valley (the blue masking tape idea is just not going to work) and the glass will be ordered tommorrow. I may just make the Xmas deadline for this project.
What router bits did you use for the edge profiles?
As I’m talking about this cabinet, I will also answer a question I’ve gotten from two people via email. I guess they noticed that the top edge profile is not a simple round over and the bottom has a slight ridge running along the center of the edge.
I’m not sure what router bits one could use to do these profiles. While I own a couple dust-covered routers, I created both of these profiles with a reliable Stanley #5, doing a bit of fine-tuning of the profile with a #3 set up as a smoother and a bit of scraper work.
To make such profiles I mark the centerline on the profile and the amount of relief I want on the top and bottom faces. Removing the material in between generates the profile. I do the cross-grain edges before doing the long-grain edge to avoid most tear out problems. This is far faster than messing around with routers, doing test cuts, etc. More important, it’s quiet. I like quiet.
Cheers — Larry
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