Thursday, December 17, 2015

Ça Commence

I've been commissioned to build a wall unit whose primary job is to be a liquor cabinet. Inspiration for the cabinet came from classic Danish wall units and from the room where it will reside. The room is quite large with 12' ceilings. There will be three boxes, and five shelves, with three shelves wrapping around a corner in the room.

To get my head around the corner, I decided to make a scale model of the room, and design the piece on it.

Scale model 1"=1', hearing protection for scale.

















The model proved to be a very useful design tool, and a great way to convey the project to the clients.

With the design approved, I went to get some lumber. We decided on Sapele for the exterior of the boxes and the shelves, and maple for the interiors and drawers. The boxes will have sliding doors.

The car groaned a little when they dropped the 4/4, 24"
wide, 16' long piece of Sapele on it. I had
to cut it up before getting it inside.


















Careful planing was needed to ensure that I would have enough stock with just the one piece of Sapele, and I think it'll work. The lumber yard had another piece just like this one, but I left it behind.

This is about as organized as I get. It's
proving to have been worth it.

















I sawed the veneer at a friends shop, and have been jointing and gluing them together since. The big box is about 70" long, and I'm glad I only had two edge joints to do at that length.

70" edge joints pushed the limits of my
bench. The #6 was hanging off both
ends of the bench to make the cut.






















Using my Hamler insert in my #6.
Works well.



















3 comments:

Scott and Allyson's Blog said...

Really like your design. I've been planning something similar for my living room and am about to start, but still need to finalize a few details. One of them is how do my shelves (floating or shelf brackets). If you're able to share I'm curious to know what hardware you'll use for mounting your shelves. Thanks for your blog and sharing your wonderful work.

Scott

Don said...

Looks great Jacques, beautiful design. Did that little car replace the VW? Keep up the excellent work, hope you are all well.
Don.

jbreau said...

Hello Scott,
I haven't quite figured out the shelves yet. I'm thinking that they are going to be floating, but the hardware that I was looking at, seems inadequate. I'll update the blog as I go along and solve these problems. It might involve some heavier duty floating brackets getting welded up somewhere.

Don,
The VW has got the winter off. I don't want to add a rusty body to the list of issues!

JBreau