Another way to build carcasses.

The family should be home soon so that gives me a chance to think back on this week. What would you do if you had the week off and you could do whatever you wanted with no distractions and no supervision? I built cabinet carcasses, I started out attaching the plywood sides to the face frames. Usually I make face frames that are roughly 3/4 x 2 inches and the frames are screwed and plugged to the plywood sides. Isn't that how most cabinets are made? This time I oriented the frame stock so that the edges would be the face. This meant that I had to devise a different way to fasten the face frames to the plywood. I made the corner posts square, 2x2, some places I made them 2x4. This gave me enough wood to cut a rabbet and left plenty of wood for screws to penetrate.

Fitting plywood sides.

A couple of cabinets had dividers so I ended up drilling holes for dowels. With some white glue and clamps this was squeezed together to make a clean joint and one side of the divider I could easily force flush with the drawer opening. This will make installing the drawer slides simpler. One thing I thought of was to cut out for the toe kick on the divider since I decided to drop it all the way to the floor. Usually I would have it sit on the cabinet bottom. What I wish I would also had done was cut out the notches to receive the webbing, but at this point I wasn't sure how I was going to do the webbing.

Doweled joinery clamped.

Once all the cabinets were assembled that did not have wood panels for sides, I switched gears and worked on the frames that needed wood panels cut to fit. I resawed these panels back in July and they have been sitting on the floor stickered next to my drill press with cypress slab offcuts sitting on them, hopefully discouraging the panels from cupping. The panels turned out gorgeous and flat... it is always a bit nerve racking cutting such beautiful wood when it is so easy to make a wrong cut. The wood god was watching over me and everything worked out beautifully with no casualties.

Curly maple panels fit into their frames.

At this point it was time to start sanding and finishing the panels before glueing up the frames. Before the fitting process I sanded the panels with 80 grit then 100 grit with the orbital sander. After fitting the panels they were sanded with 150 grit and then shellaced. Only two coats of shellac were applied before glue up. That seemed like plenty of shellac, when it is all installed I will probably coat everything one more time with some sort of tung oil finish, not sure which magic product to use yet, I haven't come across the ultimate finish yet. (besides shellac) I used only shellac for the cypress cabinets in the bathroom and for the wood countertop I coated it with a few layers of thinned down spar varnish over the shellac. After the panels were finished I glued up the frames and then sanded and finished the frames.

Finished curly maple frame and panels.

I decided to make the bottom of these cabinets removeable. That will not only provide a nice hidey hole but also will make it easy to clean or replace if something were to happen down the road. To do this I used my 3/4 plywood scraps and cut them into strips that I screwed to the inside to the carcass and the plywood sits on these strips. It makes the carcasses lighter to transport because the bottoms can be removed. For the webbing I also used my scraps of plywood and ripped some two inch strips that I fit into the carcass space. One direction of the webbing is flat and the other direction is on edge, the edge strips have notches cut from them so that the flat strips can easily be fasten to them from the top and then the edge strips can be screwed flush to the top from the inside, except on the back I screwed through the back into the flat strip.

Installing webbing, clamps are essential.

Right when it seems like the cabinets can go out the door there was one more thing to do. The drawer slides need to attach to something that is flush with the inside edge of the frame. In some cases the divider is already in the correct position, the other side needs to be built up. My plywood scraps and some redwood scraps came in handy for this. I used redwood as the three vertical strips that the horizontal (half inch plywood) strip could attach to. The redwood was planed down to the proper thickness so that the two layers were flush with the inside face of the frame. Now the carcasses can go, I like to fit the drawers and doors to the carcasses before they leave the shop but in this case I want to get the kitchen functioning before the doors and drawers will be built.

Bottom strip and built up strips for drawer slides.

Yellow House Kitchen

This week I am home alone, Becky and Oliver are attending a CounterPunch retreat in Long Beach. I was invited but I really want to get this kitchen of ours finished. Besides we have animals to look after and the weather has been heavenly.

Goats and Alpacas

Sometimes I wonder if I just like to do things the hard way. The way that I am building the kitchen is more like a mix of furniture construction and cabinet construction. If there is a visible side to the cabinet it is made of wood and involves mortise and tenon joinery and frame and panel construction. All the wood for the frames and panels are cut from two inch thick maple slabs that I had milled about a decade ago.

Frame and Panel construction

Last July I milled all the wood for the face frames and panels and also cut all the mortise and tenon joinery so that the frames could go together and not be mixed up while they wait for phase two. This is phase two, (six months later) the back edges of the frames are rabbeted for the plywood (backs and sides) and the parts are sanded and finished before being glued up. The frames that get panels are  dadoed with a router and the panels are cut to fit and then sanded and finished before being glued up. Plywood is cut for the sides and backs (that aren't exposed) and sanded and finished (4 coats shellac) before assembly.

Dado cut with a router.

The end of this phase will be installing the cabinet carcasses and preparing the countertops for zinc. Phase three will be making the doors and drawers but I will have to go back to work before phase three happens, unless of course I receive some sort of perquisite to cover the cost of living.

Mother Nature Rules

Mother Nature seems to be on a different schedule than the one I have been trying to make. As a New Years Resolution I have been trying to make a schedule and keep to it. It seems that whenever it is time to work on my own projects a big storm comes through and knocks the power out for 4 to 5 days. Last week a whopper came through, we received 12 inches of rain in 48 hours. The creek was flowing higher than I had ever scene it, the volume was so great that the culvert that goes under the county road was tweaked and the water was restricted. When we got down to the creek to see what was happening the creek was backing up at a rapid rate. Becky went to tell the neighbors and I went to fetch Oliver so that he could see this rare event. By the time we got back to the creek near the culvert the creek level was so high that it started flowing over the road. What was a creek seemed now to be a lake. We watched in awe at the mighty power of nature and water.

East Mill Creek

We try to live a self sustainable life here on our humble homestead. The only utility that we don't manage ourselves is power. We take care of our own water, waste and fuel. This time I couldn't wait another 4 days to get back to work so I cleaned the bench on the north wall where the lathe lives. That bench has the best light in the shop, it sits under a window but was covered in a thick layer of dust and bat shit. I unbolted the lathe and moved it out of the way and cleared the bench so that I could use it to sand the parts to the curly maple kitchen I am building for the Yellow House. The last I worked on this project was August 3, 2014. I made a To Do List on that day so that I would know where I left off.

Reclaimed work space.

With the aid of fossil fuel and a generator I was able to sand the parts under natural light and Becky helped by applying the first coat of shellac. Last night the power came back on and our candle lit evenings came to an end. (It was out from Thursday to Monday) Today all the parts were sanded and a second coat was applied, then the face frames were glued up. My goal is to get a few of the carcasses installed and out of the shop to make room for the rest of the cabinets.

320 sanding after second coat.