Over the years I’ve asked many questions and been very grateful for the help of forum members. One of my only attempt at proper furniture making has finally come to fruition after two or three years of planning, cutting and assembling. It’s a wardrobe that I have made for the grandparents’ annexe that we have at our daughter’s place in France. The design is based on a project by Anthony Bailey in an old copy of Woodworking Plan and Projects. Construction is in oak and oak faced MDF and it’s finished with two coats of Osmo Polyx, although I shall probably give it a couple of coats of wax when I am next in France. Anthony’s version used dominos but I don’t have a Festool Domino machine so I used loose tenons instead. In addition, I took a short cut with the drawer construction and used pocket screws for the ply construction.
The result is far from perfect. Along the way I discovered that Titebond III is far from ideal when doing glue ups this size due to the lack of open time; as a result, the side panels are some 5 mm out of square in opposite directions. As a result, the front alignment varies by about 1 cm. and I have had to put the doors at a slight angle to compensate as well as having to make adjustments to the drawer fronts.
Although the following are not the last things I made, I’ll post them anyway. The first is a bedside cabinet. Fairly straightforward and made using timber panels and biscuits. The drawers are plywood assembled using dowels and with pine fronts.
The second is a radiator cabinet made for my son and daughter-in-law. Mostly MDF with redwood slats. I delivered it with two coats of water based primer/undercoat and my son applied the topcoat.
The third is a sewing table for my daughter-in-law. Not much woodwork. The table was rusting away in the attic at my daughter’s place in France. The frame was dis-assembled followed by lots of wire brushing with rotary brushes in a power drill and then sprayed with black Hammerite. The old top was useless, very tatty with a hole in it for the old sewing machine, so I made a new top from oak and made a new drawer.
Finally, I had a commission to make a sand table for my twin grandsons. Very straightforward and made out of pressure treated timber with pocket-hole joinery. It’s painted with Cuprinol Garden Shades – Seagrass. As you can see, the users are very happy with it.
I'm not sure why the pictures take up the whole width of the screen, at least they do in preview mode.
