Walnut Corner Cabinet

[jteneyck]

I made this cabinet to fill the corner where our couch and love seat meet in the living room from a walnut tree I helped take down last year.  





Quite a few challenges but with lots of time on my hands with the virus lock down it gave me something else to focus on.  The larger panels are shop sawn veneer on Baltic birch plywood.  For the curious, all the bent laminations were done on a single form.  Here's a shot of the form as I was gluing up the laminations for the drawer front.



A RAS is a lifesaver at times.  I used it to cut the door widths to final dimension.  Not sure how else I would have done it, but I'm sure it would have been harder.  



The sides are somewhat visible so I used frame and panel construction for them.  




I rarely use butt hinges on cabinet doors, but they seemed like the appropriate choice for this cabinet.  



The drawer slides on a single, center undermount slide.  I used some ambrosia maple I milled last year for the drawer sides.  



The finish was Transtint Dark Walnut dye in DNA applied by hand with a stain sponge.  Best method yet for doing it by hand.  Those applicators are terry cloth over a foam core and it holds plenty of dye solution without dripping so you can do larger areas quickly.  The finish is Arm-R-Seal satin, 4 or 5 coats applied with a blue shop towel.  



John

[MsNomer]

That is sooo classy!!

[fredhargis]

Certainly is a nice design, and well executed. Nicely done!

[joe1086]

Well, you've done it again! Gorgeous....

[Turner52]

Beaytiful piece. Great work

[lift mechanic]

Very nice, love the walnut with the satin finish.

[Kansas City Fireslayer]

Stunning John. You nailed the finish too. I’m a bit surprised you opted to hand apply the TT dye. The DNA makes it even more challenging to get even. Spraying it is so easy. Nonetheless, it looks great. What do you use for a vacuum press? I would like to add one to my shop sometime. Not a huge priority right now. Great work!

[KC]

Beautiful, as always.

[AHill]

Matching the grain for the upper drawer and the bookmatched doors: awesome job!

[jteneyck]

Stunning John.  You nailed the finish too.  I’m a bit surprised you opted to hand apply the TT dye.  The DNA makes it even more challenging to get even.  Spraying it is so easy.  Nonetheless, it looks great.  What do you use for a vacuum press?  I would like to add one to my shop sometime.  Not a huge priority right now.  Great work!

Thanks for the kind words everyone.  KCF, I often spray dye but I would have had to mask off the drawer in order to spray the drawer front.  That was the prime motivation to do it by hand.  But as you can see the color is very uniform and was incredibly easy to do with the stain pad. 


I have a Gast vacuum pump that powers my vacuum press.  That was the largest expense of the whole system.  It only pulls about 22" Hg but that's more than enough even for the bent laminations.  The bag is homemade from 20 mil vinyl that I bought from McMaster Carr about 20 years ago.  The seams are glued with standard PVC pipe cement.  I've had one or two holes over the years and they are easily patched with a piece of vinyl glued on with some pipe cement.  I made my own, but you can buy bag penetrations from Joe Woodworker for not much money.  The closure is just a piece of wood that I roll the open end of the bag around and clamp another straight against it.  It doesn't have to be fancy to work, and it does.  The vacuum pump can run continuously, but I use a simple on/off timer to control how often and how long it cycles after the bag pumps down.  I've been meaning to build one of Joe Woodworker's vacuum controller kits, but what I have works just fine so there's no real need.  All in I have maybe $400 invested. If you want to do any amount of veneer or bent lamination work a vacuum bag makes it so much easier.  I mostly use Plastic Resin Glue and it takes 13 hours in the bag for full cure.  I've done a lot of veneer layups with this system and it has stood up well over the years. 


John

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the drawer pull and door knobs are from Lee Valley. I looked a long time before I found something I thought would compliment the cabinet, and I'm pleased with the look.