Kitchen sideboard

[guineafowl21]

I thought you might like to see my first proper piece of furniture, other than spiceracks and the like:

This was a ‘farm to fork’ build - I cut down a large larch tree nearby, planked it up with the chainsaw mill, then used the wood after seasoning.

I’ve been entirely taught by the Paul Sellers series of Youtube videos, and his book. What a great resource and a fantastic remote teacher.

The drawers have the dovetail ends exposed as I think they look nice, other than that it’s fairly plain. I didn’t make too much effort to sort and match the wood, as this wastes such a lot. It’s finished with 3 or 4 coats of button shellac and furniture wax. I hope you like it; in any case, it’s been great practice.

 

[doctor Bob]

Thats great, well done. Not a fan of exposed hinges but thats just me. I like it, especially due to proper from scratch.

 

[topchippytom]

dovetail features on the draws are nice but would have gone for a different hinge but overall a nice piece.

 

[John15]

Very nice indeed. I like it . Congratulations.

John

 

[guineafowl21]

Thanks all. I might try proper hinges next time, but that brassware is Toolstation’s finest and costs, oh... several pounds for a pack of ten. No expense spent in my workshop!

 

[thetyreman]

I especially like the bookmatched panels that's a nice detail, agree with drbob about the hinges.

 

[guineafowl21]

Thanks, yes, I will pay more attention to matching grain in my next project. I’m lucky to have the tree planked up right there, so I’ve got a better chance of doing so.

If you look, the left front leg has a knot at the top. The original right front leg was bookmatched to it. But I chopped all the mortices on the wrong side! So I had to make another leg. The original is still propped up against the workshop wall, to remind me not be such an eejit again.

Would you all use standard cupboard hinges (don’t know the name)?

 

[Trainee neophyte]

You only made the one mistake? Now I feel completely amateur. It puts my pathetically shoddy work to shame.

Your first piece of "proper" furniture -wow! I'm just finishing mine, and it is so disappointing , I'm seriously considering setting fire to it and starting again. The only thing stopping me is it is forbidden to have bonfires here until November.

 

[Jonathan S]

Great achievement for your first piece! Well done!
Like most said drawn brass butt hinges would of been nice, not expensive, in the past I've bought them from screwfix and the quality has been ok.

Jonathan

Sent from my SM-J530F using Tapatalk

 

[MikeG.]

Well done guineafowl, that's great. You must be very pleased with yourself, and rightly so.

A couple of things for next time. As the others have said, the hinges are ghastly. It is amazing how having one nasty little detail to look at can catch people's eye, and detract from the overall effect dramatically. Everything, but everything in a piece of furniture is a design decision, and you need to get them all right. Secondly, be careful of knots on edges. Knots are OK if positioned correctly (so long as they aren't dry/ loose etc), but you really should avoid knots on edges of any piece of wood, especially biggish ones such as on the left hand side of your front frame.

Personally, I wouldn't have split the central stiles. It looks a bit like you've just sawn a door in half. I think you should have kept to the same width as all the other door stiles.

How long did you season the wood after you planked it?

 

[MusicMan]

A good piece. Well done!

 

[guineafowl21]

Well done guineafowl, that's great. You must be very pleased with yourself, and rightly so.

A couple of things for next time. As the others have said, the hinges are ghastly. It is amazing how having one nasty little detail to look at can catch people's eye, and detract from the overall effect dramatically. Everything, but everything in a piece of furniture is a design decision, and you need to get them all right. Secondly, be careful of knots on edges. Knots are OK if positioned correctly (so long as they aren't dry/ loose etc), but you really should avoid knots on edges of any piece of wood, especially biggish ones such as on the left hand side of your front frame.

Personally, I wouldn't have split the central stiles. It looks a bit like you've just sawn a door in half. I think you should have kept to the same width as all the other door stiles.

How long did you season the wood after you planked it?

Thanks Mike. Yes, the hinges seem to be getting a lot of feedback, so I’ll take that into account for the next piece. The deciding factor for those ones was... I already had a ten pack on the shelf. Unopened, and about ten years old.

Knots were hard to avoid in this wild-grown larch - they were everywhere. But yes, that one in the left front was a pain (but would have nicely matched the right leg, ie the one I chopped the mortices on the wrong side of). There are two mortices and a quirk bead that go right through it, so I won’t do that again.

“It looks a bit like you’ve just sawn a door in half” funny you should say that... I couldn’t bear the idea of an asymmetric knob on the middle door.

One question - I did six raised panels there, a la Paul Sellers with a plane. I couldn’t get the first four with even lines, so I did my best and then softened the edges with sandpaper. The last two came out much better, but I had to soften them to match.

If I did them on the table saw, wouldn’t they look like every other raised panel in the kitchen, ie machine-made and mass produced, too perfect?
Is there a proper way to fit them into the 1/4” groove? They’re sloped, so do I make the edge thinner than 1/4” to compensate, rebate the edge, or chamfer the edge of the groove?

 

[guineafowl21]

You only made the one mistake? Now I feel completely amateur. It puts my pathetically shoddy work to shame.

Your first piece of "proper" furniture -wow! I'm just finishing mine, and it is so disappointing , I'm seriously considering setting fire to it and starting again. The only thing stopping me is it is forbidden to have bonfires here until November.

Don’t worry, I made more than one mistake - I could give you a list. One drawer has an extra bottom groove ploughed in the wrong side, there’s a drawer front in my bits bin with the dovetails laid out wrongly (finished that one, then only noticed when comparing it to the others), and the rear right leg (the one I started on) has one row of mortices at a slightly jaunty angle off-square. This angle happens to be the angle at which my vice sits. Etc. Etc. As long as they’re reasonably hidden, I’ve left these defects in as little reminders.

Oh, and my first attempt at a frame and panel door left me without a door, but with some conveniently sized kindling and a prop for pushing car brake pedals down to check the lights. Trying to chop 1/4” blind mortices down a groove in that chewy, knotty larch led to that £150 Multico mortiser I showed in another thread.

Like you, I’m just starting out, and I’ve found that the value of your first pieces, even if a bit wonky, is in the practice they’ve given you.

 

[thomashenry]

Really impressive. Very nice indeed. Question about the construction: I'm guessing the sides are M&T frames with a floating panel? If so, how did you join the fron rails to them? Stub tenon top and bottom? I've also seen Pauls Sellers use a dovetail used for the top rail.

 

[guineafowl21]

The sides are just straightforward edge-jointed boards attached in the middle to the carcass. Your idea is probably better, and now every time I see a nice sideboard I have a poke around it to see how to do it properly.

The top and sides were finished on a Jet 22-44 drum sander, given to me by a generous fellow woodworker. He refused to accept anything in return! Woodworkers are a nice bunch, aren’t they? I had a look round his fantastic workshop, and he had everything there, except a Thor white hammer. So I forced a Thor hammer into his hands.

 

[MikeG.]

I asked a quite important question earlier: how long did you season the timber after planking it?

 

[guineafowl21]

Sorry, missed that one. I cut the tree into 3m sections, then planked one into 1 1/2” boards, and the other into 2 1/2”. Ends were sealed with PVA. I also wrote the date on.

These were stickered in the usual way, and stored in a breezy shed. I have a reasonably good moisture meter, and watched the reading go down and stabilise at 14%, which is the same as the other timber in there. This took about 3 months.

Total seasoning time was 8 months from January to August. I took one of the 2 1/2” boards and cut it in half, and took a reading from the cut edge - 14% as well.