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Here's one for 'ya. Taking
orders from a sixteen year old! A few months ago, my grandson (Austin)
purchased a new wide flat screen TV for his bed room, which he had saved
enough money for, and he placed the new TV on a folding table in his room.
Needless to say, after not too long of a time, the table started sagging
in the middle. The situation was only temporary since he planned
on talking Grandpa into making him something better. What might you
say that his chances of being successful at doing that would be?
You guessed it...... and here he is with the finished project sitting in
Ol' Dave's woodshop.
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 Austin
had very specific ideas in mind as to what color he wanted to end up with.
He told me that he wanted a very dark color but not black and that he wanted
to be able to see some "cool" wood grain. We began with some red
oak scrap pieces and started experimenting with stains. After what
seemed like about a dozen different stain trials (including black died
wood using TransTint brand dye), we decided to just spray on three coats
of dark walnut stain without wiping it off. When we tried wiping
off the walnut stain, the final appearance was not dark enough to suit
him, hence the spray technique. The photo on the right shows Austin
with some of the stain trials that we made.
I must say, the final result
looks really good but boy was it a bear to wait out the time that it took
for unwiped stain to dry! After getting Austin's approval of the
color, we rounded up enough red oak to make the rest of the parts and began
cutting!
I wanted to take the opportunity to teach Austin
some of the things that goes into making a piece of furniture and at 16
years of age, I thought he would be able to help with some of them.
Since he was still in school when this project began, I tried to involve
him whenever possible but being retired, I had more time than he had and
he didn't get to help with all the things that needed to be done though.
We began by cutting out
the blanks for the four corner legs. I used the same methods that
I used on my Modified Shaker Style sideboard project.
After these pieces were cut, I took them to the jointer to get two of the
sides flat and then to the planer to mill them to the final thickness needed
(see photo on the left).
I then showed Austin how
to mark the leg pieces up for the mortises. I used a 1/4 inch forstner
bit to rough drill the waste material from the marked areas on the drill
press and then how to chisel out the rest of the waste and square up the
cavities (see photos below).
After the legs were completed,
we cut out the face frame parts and the stiles & rails for the doors.
Some of the pictures of this process can be seen below.
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This photo shows the
stiles and rails for the door pieces laying on my workbench.
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This photo shows another
view of the door pieces on the bench.
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Here you can see the
contoured bottom piece of the face frame in the front vice of my bench.
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I didn't get any pictures
of the upper and lower end panel rails as they were being cut but just
so you know, they were made with tenons on the ends so that they would
fit with the mortises in the legs. I did get a couple of photos of
the end panels as shown below with the one on the left showing both panels
prior to inserting the end panels and the glue up. The one on the
right shows one of the panels after staining the insert panel and clamped
up after gluing.
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the meantime, we made the shelves from red oak veneered plywood and I ironed
red oak veneer on the edges of the finished panels as shown here on the
right. This is a pretty simple process but the end results are really attractive
after staining. The main case panels were drilled for pins to support
these shelves and can be seen in the photo below left.
 After
the case was assembled and glued to the finished end panels, we gave the
case a wiped on base coat prior to spraying on the final two coats of dark
walnut stain. We did this just to make sure that there was at least
some color in the hard to get to places that might get missed during the
spraying process. The photo on the left shows the case after this
was done.
The next step was to cut
and glue up the pieces for the top. We used 5/4 red oak boards that
were sent through the jointer to get good straight edges on them prior
to the glue up. After planing them to a uniform thickness, we glued
them and clamped them and waited for them to dry (photo on the right).
 All
that was left to do was spray on the stain and two coats of clear urethane
finish and mount the doors to the case. We used European hinges on
the doors. I used a 1 3/8" Forstner bit to make the pockets on the
back sides of the doors to accept the hinges. After the finish was
applied, you can see Austin securing the hinges to the doors in the photo
on the left.
I think this project was
especially fun because I got to spend some time with my grandson building
something that he shoud be able to enjoy for a long, long time!
As always, comments are welcome
and you can get them to me by the e-mail address below.
Dave
dave@oldaveswoodshop.com
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