17 May, 2021, Oakland, CA
I have become an absolute woodworking podcast junkie. The best – in my humble opinion – is FineWoodWorking’s Shop Talk Live. I began listening to the most recent episodes around the turn of the new year and have been working my way back in time. I’m currently somewhere in mid-2015 with 80+ hours to go. Should be done by Labor Day.
The gang on the show have covered so many great topics and craftspeople that even trying to sum it up would take pages. Overall, it is always time well spent, and kudos to them for the consistent quality as well as the drive to evolve the production value of the show. The backbone of the endeavor (again, just one man’s opinion) has to be Mike Peckovich. This guy is so knowledgeable and dishes his hard-earned wisdom with an earnestness and genuine enthusiasm that is truly special. When he published his first book in late 2020, I put it on my holiday wish list. This little cabinet was inspired and informed by Mike. I wonder how he would like it.
I picked up a lot of tips and tricks from the podcast and associated research that went into this piece, but a few things that really drove my vision were material selection, material thickness as it relates to proportion, use of subtle details to make a design one’s own, and finding ways to make interacting with the piece exciting and/or comforting. We make furniture to be used after all.
It all started with dovetails. I wanted to practice this beautiful and strong form of joinery and boy did I get to do that… Eight joints worth (that is a great name for a reggae band btw) for a total of around 60 pins that needed to be fit. It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth the effort – both in terms of practice and results.
I employed Mike’s techniques using a custom-ground blade to cut the tails quickly and precisely, then a small (3/8″ ?) template routing bit to remove waste from the pins once the first 3/16” or so of the joints were fit with a chisel.
Next was a curve. I’m also a huge fan of Michael Fortune from FWW and Instagram. He always introduces some funky curves or other organic shapes (I’ll be writing on one of his designs next). I chose a humble arc with a 4 ½’ radius as the curve for this project and started by shaping the curve on ¼” particle board that would serve as a routing template for the horizontal members as well as the front of the drawer, which is not coopered like a barrel, but simply six layers of ¾” maple shaped, stacked, glued, and sanded smoother than Miles Davis in the early ’70’s.
With the joinery on the drawer and main cabinet complete, I turned my attention to a few flourishes that I thought would really make this piece pop.
Veneering is something I’ve heard a lot about, but had not tried personally, and wanted to learn. If you are staying away from this because it seems tricky, don’t. It was really very easy and offered great results. I bought some sequence-matched burled Maple veneer sheets from my local woodworking store, book-matched a pair, and attached them using contact cement in about an hour including the time it took to apply three coats of shellac.
My kid and I were at the art store a few weeks back and they had a huge selection of patterned papers available. I bought six sq.ft. of some flax paper that had a cool metallic Aspen leaf print for about four dollars. Some contact cement and shellac secured this to the bottom of the drawer.
Finally, the drawer pull. I wanted to add a little bling using some brass sheeting I had left over from another project, and spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon building a table-saw sled and routing templates so that I could make a version of the “contemporary pull” featured recently in FineWoodworking magazine, which I did. It was really quite beautiful, but had a few major design flaws… Secondarily, no splines. Primarily, brass – while soft as metals go – is much harder than wood. My design had the brass sandwiched directly in the center of the pull (the long way). Trying to bore holes to accept hardware resulted in the drill bit going askew and making an awful mess. I tried a few other techniques, but in the end broke the thing apart and had to start over. This time I settled on a more straightforward inlay technique that would be attached with epoxy vs hardware. Not as ideal, but still a very nice touch – especially since the scrap of Maple I used had some beautifully curly grain.
Overall, I learned a lot from this piece and am proud to present it to my sister and brother-in-law-to-be as an engagement gift. I am certain that (short of burning somehow) it will age beautifully and bring utility, comfort, and happiness to our family for many, many years – just like a good marriage should.