Monday 31 December 2012

Krenov Style Wall Cabinet


Well here it is the last post of my first year Blogging. It's been hard work but the feedback and interest has grown well and I've just passed 10,000 post views in the last month, so lots more for the New Year.
My latest project (when I could sneak some time in the workshop) is a Krenov inspired wall cabinet. I'm making the door from some wonderfully figured ash acquired from the Barnsley workshop a few years ago.


The door was to be curved which could be achieved in a few ways. Krenov typically coopered his curved doors but this works best for quarter sawn stock where the joins blend in with the vertical grain direction and would not have been suitable for this board. I seriously considered laminating the door from 2-3 mm strips cut on the band saw and gluing them on a former in the vacuum press. If I had intended making more similarly curved doors I would have gone this route, but as it was I decided to shape the door from a solid piece. The shot above shows the inside of the door with most of the waste removed on the table saw, making minute height adjustments to the blade on each cut.


I removed some of the waste on the outside of the door on the surface planer (jointer) but didn't go too far as by now the wood was getting thinner and there was a risk of serious damage. From that point it was over to hand planing using a curved sole plane for the inside and a flat smoother for the outside working down to the curved lines drawn on each end of the board.


Here is the result after scraping and initial sanding. I had considered leaving the door straight from the plane, Krenov style, but there was too much tearout on the swirling grain.


The carcass is from quarter sawn olive ash, the same board as my recently completed tool cabinet. Here I am dovetailing the sides with the boards taped together for speed. I'm still very pleased with my Bench Crafted Moxon vice, it's great for dovetailing.
Here is the carcass with the dovetails dry fitted, something I don't like doing as I normally make them a tight fit which only goes together once. After the hinges are marked and the curve traced on the top and bottom it needs to come apart for the work to be finished. I must also remember to rout out the groove for the back panel and interior fitments before reassembly.
Anyway that will happen in the New Year, so it just leaves me to wish all of you the very best for the New Year and happy woodworking!

4 comments:

  1. Another curved panel David; this is becoming a theme. Great year-end project, Happy New Years!

    Rich

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  2. Looks that's going to be a beautiful cabinet. I love the grain.

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  3. Hi David,
    I run a small unplugged workshop in Spain and I was just looking for some information about krenov curved cabinets and I found your post. I also like more solid curved doors than the laminated ones (just because I work only with hand tools and laminatiĆ³n in big pieces is more difficult). Thanks for sharing your work.

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  4. No problem I'm glad it was helpful. I'd like to see pictures of your cabinet when your done. All the best, David.

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