Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Hiding the 21st Century...




...right below the 21st century.

One thing I love about a hand tool shop is that you can listen to music or talk radio while you work and never really miss a word or a note. I've had my iPod dock and XM radio in my shop from day one and use them every time I'm out there. What I didn't like was how they were just sitting on the floor out in the open. This hanging cabinet was the solution. I had originally planned on just doing a painted poplar cabinet, but I've had this walnut hanging around forever so I figured the no cost feature was nice. And I couldn't bring myself to paint the walnut!

The construction is nothing fancy, just rebate joints top and bottom of the sides and a dado in the middle for the shelf. French cleat to hang it on the wall. Didn't even bother with a back. The one thing I did that was new for me was to re-saw a piece of crotch walnut to bookmatch the panels for the doors. Just did the re-saw with my 22" rip saw; didn't take long at all and did a pretty fine job. Smoothed things up a little with the plane and put a crude bevel all the way around to fit into the mortice and tenoned, grooved frame doors. Finished them up with a card scraper to deal with the crazy grain of the crotch wood. When I went to glue the doors up, I decided that I liked the look more with the beveled panels out rather than in as I'd originally planned. Had I known that I'd have maybe took a little more care with the beveling. Oh well, I'm happy with the look and it is just shop furniture after all. I really like using that excuse; gives me a license to not feel I have to be absolutely perfect.

I didn't want to really spend much on nice hinges, but I didn't want shiny brass either, so I bought shiny brass hinges from Lowes for a couple bucks a pair and gave them a 24 hour vinegar bath. That gave me the look I wanted. The finish is just a couple coats of Minwax Antique Oil Finish. After hanging it and putting in my equipment, I finished things off by plowing a groove in a piece of pine, painting it white, and using that to cover the plug wires heading down to the outlet beneath the cabinet.

I may get around to putting handles on it one day, maybe not. Same goes for a catch. The doors stay closed on their own so no rush there either. Now to replace that ugly grey metal breaker panel door with a nice wooden one...


Here's an old pic I found that shows where the radio used to reside.

The one in progress pic I took; chopping out the rebate, later smoothed out with the rebate plane.

21st century sound box hidden. Right under the split unit heating and cooling system. :-)

What's behind closed doors.

And the cable trough.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nice. Love the figure in those panels. I agree being able to listen to music while working is great, and is definitely one of the reason I gravitated toward hand tools.

Anonymous said...

Love the door panels! Makes my heart happy when I know you feel up to being out in your workshop:)

Mom

Unknown said...

Beautiful cabinet but I see a pole lathe tool rack in my future!

Jamie Bacon said...

Thanks Todd! It's looks a lot better with that stuff out of sight and in the cabinet. As for the tool rack, I made it to hook over one of the bed rails on the lathe and have since moved it to the front rail to make it more easily accessible. I like it, but I probably should have made it to where each tool is held in it's own slot rather than one long, open slot. The tools tend to want to fall over with the long handles. Too high of a center of gravity I suppose.