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Thursday, June 14, 2012

Seeing Red

A couple weekends back I brought this board into the shop to compliment a book-matched pair of heartwood/sapwood Padauk panels.
 

The project in the works is a hanging wall cabinet with a bit of a James Krenov feel, that will really showcase those book-matched panels as the doors.

This past weekend I started breaking down this board and running it through the planer so that the wood could begin acclimating to the shop’s climate and making any movement that it needs to before I mill the parts to final dimensions.

After some layout work, I found that I’ll be able get all the parts for the cabinet from this one board and my book-matched panels.


It took some careful planning, and re-planning…but I was able to align the parts in such a way that I could cut the board in half with the jig saw before having to rip on the table saw.
 

Definitely a much safer endeavor to run the smaller boards on the table saw to rip away the pieces I’ll need for the posts that will give the cabinet a floating feel.


Next up was to plane both surfaces to expose fresh wood to the air in the shop.  Since I’m planing both sides of these boards I transferred my markings to the sides so I wouldn’t lose my layout plans.
 

This was my first time using the planer here in the CO basement shop.  I went with the shop vac and my Craftsman tool switch and the results were fantastic!  There was almost no dust or chips from the planing that escaped the vacuum.


I planed these boards down to 7/8 of an inch for now.  The final parts will come down to 1/2 inch and 3/8 inch thicknesses, so I didn’t worry about jointing any of the faces for now.  The camera doesn’t capture the shimmer very well, but these boards look stunning right out of the planer.


The boards are now stacked and stickered up on the workbench.  I’ll start breaking these down further in the next few days.
 
I’m hoping to re-saw the larger boards to salvage some thinner pieces of Padauk to use in future projects.  We’ll see how it goes.   Ideally I’d like to re-saw before breaking the boards down into the smaller parts.  This will allow me to plane the longer boards down to their final thicknesses rather than running shorter pieces through the planer.

I’m excited about this project, so keep checking back to see how it all comes out.

Pete

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