Finally finished the cherry cabinet

I am finally finished with a project that I started several years ago. The cabinet is cherry with veneered plywood for the top, sides, and back. It has two dovetailed drawers with cherry drawer fronts. I have procrastinated in finishing this project. First, it was the finish - what to do to get the nicest finish. I finally ended up using a wipe-on polyurethane. It seems to be a nice choice for this piece. Overall I am really pleased with the outcome.

But the main reason that I have procrastinated for months is the poor workmanship on the top. Unfortunately, I planed through the cherry veneer to expose the very ugly plywood layers (try yellow) under the veneer. So there are, not one, but several places on the most viewed surface of the cabinet that look damaged.

I learned a lot with this project. I made my first dovetailed drawers. I used poplar for the drawer frames. This was my first experience planing and fitting the drawers into the cabinet frame. It now resides in my office at Wooster.

In addition to the fitting of the cabinet. I was able to complete a small project to make two letter openers - one from cocobola and one from acrylic. These kits were from Berea Hardwoods so I needed to purchase a drill bit and a bushing set in order to turn the blanks. The construction is simple but there may be an error in the instructions. There is a center band that has a recess on one end that is supposed to fit over a stub of the 1/16" of exposed brass tubing. The picture of the letter opener in the instructions suggests that the center band is reversed. So, I am not sure that my rendering matches the intended assembly. At least they seem to work.

I decided that I wanted to make a number of bowls - some to use up some ambrosia maple bowl blanks and several others to make a set of walnut salad bowls. I wanted to do these on a production line - first turn all the outsides, then turn the insides, and finally, apply the finish all at the same time.

With the time that I had I was able to finish the outsides of one of the ambrosia bowls and three of the salad bowls. When I return to the workshop next weekend, I would like to finish turning the inside and outside of those five bowls. I am able to easily use my sharpening station to keep the gouges nice and sharp.

So, I completed two and a half projects this weekend. A fun two days in the shop.

Epoxy inlaid gift boxes

This project came from the December, 2005 issue of Workbench magazine. It starts with separating a 3/4 inch lid blank from a 3" x 6" x6" turning blank. A decorative symbol or drawing (the article includes three: dragonfly, wheat, and love symbol) is adhered to the lid blank. The lid blank is scroll-sawn and then filled with colored epoxy. The lid and body pieces are then glued to waste blocks.
Using a faceplate the lid is turned to round and the design paper and excess epoxy are turned off the top face of the lid. The lid is finished and then parted off. The body is likewise rounded, hollowed out to match the lid, and parted from the waste block. I used black epoxy for the walnut and jatoba bowls and beige for the burl bowl.
I followed the process as outlined in the article and ended up with four small, attractive and interesting lidded boxes. I used a bowl gouge for most of the turning as opposed to the article's use of scrapers. I had some difficulty with a cloudy epoxy finish which took extensive polishing to remove. I used a sanding sealer and then polished the boxes using the Beall system.
I would like to try the project again using some different designs and unique woods. I would also try a different method for mounting the wood so that I can get a better appearance and form to the lid and box bottoms.