Many woodworkers, yours truly included, tend to be their own worse critics.  I can see faults in my work that others don’t.  I notice the joint that just isn’t quite right, or my fingers know just where to feel to find that small ridge that should have been removed when sanding the project.  Talking to many other woodworkers, I understand that this is just the nature of the beast.  Serious woodworkers feel the need to produce projects that approach near perfection.  Very few of us have reached that plateau.  I know that I still have a long ways to go before I would consider my work in that light. All that being said, the problems with this project have nothing to do with my search for perfection, nope the problem is much simpler than that, the finish is a disaster.

My choice for a finish on this project was not a new one, I have successfully used it several times on other projects. So I can’t blame the problem on that, nor can I blame the application method. Same products and same application as always, but this time something went wrong. Maybe spelling out what I did will help me figure out where this went so wrong.

After completing the assembly of this curio cabinet, I did a final sanding, followed by a wash down using Naphtha and a clean rag.  After letting the curio cabinet air dry for several hours, I started applying the first of three coats.  This first coat is a 50/50 mixture of Tung oil and Linseed oil.  The mixture was brushed on  and allowed to dry for a week before the second coat was applied.  

The second coat, was a different mixture.  This time I mixed another 50/50 mixture of tung oil and semi gloss polyurethane.  Just as with the first coat, this one was brushed on and allowed to dry for another week before I moved on to what would normally be the final coat. In between all of the coats, the surface was sanded with increasingly finer sand paper. The following weekend, I applied the third coat, which was a 100% concentration of semi Gloss Polyurethane.

None of the oils or poly were old, nor had they been allowed to freeze while in my shop. The cabinet was at room temperature when I applied the coats of finish, and the humidity was not overly high when the finish had been applied.  And I had used this finish method several times before on Cherry.  So I’m at a loss to explain what I found when I took a good hard look at the finish.   

The finish is very uneven, much like one might see when they attempt to apply a stain to an open grained wood like pine, without first applying a sanding sealer. But this was a cherry cabinet, not pine.  I didn’t see this problem prior to applying the second and third coats of finish, so logic would dictate that the polyurethane coat was to blame.  At least that’s what I believed when I resanded the entire cabinet, and reapplied the polyurethane. Only to find the same issues with this new finish.

More unevenness, more blotchy areas, and I also found some sander marks that I had overlooked when I did the assembly work.  At this point I look at several options: 1) Re sand the curio cabinet back to bare wood and start anew. 2) take the cabinet back into the shop and take it apart and see how much cherry I can salvage for another future project or 3) accept the cabinet  for what it is, an ugly duck.

The problem with the second option is that I really like the curio cabinet, as long as I don’t look too close, and I spent a lot of time making the cabinet. So that option is out.  The third option wouldn’t work either. I couldn’t stand to walk by this cabinet several times a day, and know that I accepted substandard work.  So I guess my only option is to go back to square one, sand the cabinet back to bare wood, and begin re applying the finish.    Even thought I am certain that my oils and poly are all servable, I think that I will replace them, just as precaution. 

And if after all this additional work, the cabinet still turns out looking like the finish was applied by throwing the finish at it rather than a meticulous, proven procedure, I’m not sure what I will try next.  May be I can move it into a room that doesn’t have any lighting, or perhaps I can find a corner in my shop and a large tarp.

Related posts:

1. Building a Curio Cabinet Part 3
2. How to Build a Curio Cabinet
3. Building a Curio Cabinet Part 4

The first step in building the left side panel was to prep and dress pieces of cherry for the rails and stiles of the sides. Using the same methods I always do, I first took pieces of 4/4 cherry and ran one face side over the jointer, until I had a totally flat surface.  Then turning the stock 90°, I jointed that edge until it was flat and at a perfect 90° angle from the face side of the stock.  The stock was then taken to the surface plainer, where the two un jointed edges were plained. Not wanting to touch the two surfaces that I had already dressed on the jointer, I placed a large “X” on those surfaces with some white chalk. In turning the stock around while surface planning it, it just too dang easy to  plane the wrong edge. The chalk reminds me to leave those edges alone.

The next step was to rip the stock to width  on the table saw.  I used traditional mortise and tenon joinery to attach the rails and stiles together. So the rails were cut 1 ^1/2” longer than their final length.  This allowed a 3/4″ deep tenon on both ends of the of the rails. Then using my hollow mortise machine, I cut the mortises in the stiles. When I cut the mortises, I took the time to be sure that they were centered in the stock, but just to be sure, I flipped the stock 180°, and cut the mortise using the opposite face of the stock as a reference.  This ensures that the mortise it truly centered.

The next step was… to cut the tenons on the ends of the rails. A long time ago, I learned to always make trial tenons before cutting on the good stock. This allows one to “sneak up” on a nice tight fit for the tenon into the mortise. I used a combination of the tablesaw and the bandsaw to cut the tenons.  On the  faces of the tenons, I used my tenon jig for the table saw.

I did a dry fit to ensure that the fit was as good as I could make then.  You want a tight snug fit, but not too tight. Remember that if the fit is too tight when you do a dry fit, there is a very strong  possibility that the wood will split or crack when you insert glue into the joint.  The combination of the glue and tight fitting tenon can create an excessive amount of hydraulic pressure that can crack the side walls of the mortise.  The glue has to have some place to go.

As a side note on this subject, this is why the commercially  available dowel pins that are available at home centers and woodworking stores, always have grooves cut into them.  The grooves present a path for excess glue to escape from the hole, as the dowel pin and glue are inserted.  

The next step was to cut a 3/8″ deep by 1/2″ wide dado along the inside edges of the rails and stiles.  This would later accept the glass for the sides and the door panels.  I still haven’t gotten or installed the glass, as I still am very unhappy with the way the finish looks. As time allows, I will refinish the cabinet and then get the glass.  More on that later, I promise. I used a 3/8″  straight cutting bit installed in my shaper to cut the dados.  I made stopped dados for the stiles of the door.  I stopped just short of the junctions where the rails would meet the stiles.  After cutting the dados. I did another dry fit and the used a combination of a corner chisel and 3/8″ chisel to square up the inside corners of the stopped dados. And then it was on to the fun part of this project, building the decorative trim for the sides and front panels.

Even thought  the cabinet has somewhat of a modern design with the flared edges, I wanted the cabinet to have more of a Mission appearance, so I added the decorative mission inserts in the side and door panels.  They serve absolutely no practical purpose other than being decorative. I know that some purest may raise hell with me for mixing styles, but since I am not trying to make a reproduction piece, I guess the design options only have to satisfy me and the design committee, also known as my wife.

In any event the inserts are made of two vertical and two horizontal pieces of cherry.  Each piece is  a 1/2″ wide and 3/8″ thick.  Where they intersect there is a simple half lap joint. Where they connect to the rails and stiles, I once again used mortise and tenon joints.  I have to admit that my first attempt at making these pieces ended in disaster. 

What happened was that I ripped and planed a piece of cherry so that it was slightly longer than required for the vertical pieces.  I then dutifully marked the placement for the horizontal pieces, set up the table saw and began to cut the first half lap joint.  What I found out was the piece of 3/8″ thick stock was just too thin to safely cut precision half lap joints.  Even though I held the stock securely down on the table of the saw, the blade tended to kick the stock every time I introduced the stock to the blade, resulting in very rough cuts. 

I finally realized that cutting the vertical pieces to their final widths and then cutting the half lap joints wasn’t the answer. So I went back and planed another piece of cherry to the 3/8″ thickness.  This piece of stock was a little over a little over 7″ wide, which would allow me to get all seven of the 1/2″ wide pieces out of this one piece of stock. This time I was able to get nice clean half lap cuts at both ends of the stock.  Since this concept worked so well I did the same for the horizontal stock.

One I had the half lap joints cut, I ripped the stock to its final widths of 1/2″.  After dry fitting two each of the vertical and two each of the horizontal pieces together, I laid them over the dry fitted rails and stiles.  Only after a lot of careful measuring to make sure that these decorative pieces were in the correct positions, and that they were square to the rails and stiles, did I mark where the mortises needed to be in the rails and stiles.  I also took this opportunity to mark where the tenons on each end of the trim pieces would begin.

Since my doors and side pieces were only 3/8″ thick to start with, and I had already taken 3/8″ off the back side for the glass, I had to reduce the size of the mortises and tenons for the trim stock. I elected to use a 3/16″ mortise and tenon.  I know that I was cutting it close but I really didn’t have a choice at this point. 

A lot of careful layout and a lot of holding my breath, I was able to cut both the mortises and tenons without too much heart ache. This was followed by a complete dry fit of the entire package, rails, stiles, vertical and horizontal trim pieces.  Once I was satisfied with fit, and had worked out an assembly plan, I took the pieces apart for the last time.  Adding glue to the joints, I re assembled the entire package.  After verifying that the panels were in fact flat and square, I added clamps and set the assembly aside to dry.

This was repeated for the second side and the two door panels. the door frame itself is a simple rail and stile frame.  Since I already had the mortise and tenon tools out, I made these up at the same time that I made the rails and stiles for the sides and doors. 

All that remains is the final assembly and then the disastrous finish. How about checking back later, when we can have a talk about that part of this project.  Maybe getting it down in writing will give me the inspiration to finally take the curio cabinet back into my shop and rework the finish on the cabinet.

Related posts:

1. Building the Curio Cabinet Part 2
2. Building a Curio Cabinet Part 3
3. How to Build a Curio Cabinet

The object of a resawing process is to slice off a thin layer from the face of a large board. A classic use for a resawn board would be shop made veneers. Commercially available veneers are typically only a few thousands of an inch thick.  Shop made veneers typically are closer to 1/4″ in thickness. Imagine that you had a single piece of a 3″ thick piece of a quality hardwood and this piece of hardwood has a very pretty grain pattern or maybe even a burl.  And the width and length of this special board match the required dimensions for insert panels in doors for an upcoming project. But you only have this one piece of wood.

The answer to this dilemma would be to resaw the piece.  Several pieces slightly larger than the desired 1/4″ thickness could be sliced off the face of the board. All that ideally would be required would be a bandsaw equipped with resaw blade, and a resaw fence.

Since most bandsaw work involves cutting curves or radius, the typical bandsaw blade will be very thin, and have several teeth per inch. The smaller the blade, the tighter the radius that can be cut.  The more teeth per inch along the face of the blade, the smoother the cut that is made in the wood. Resawing blades are just the opposite.  These blades are typically 1/2″ wide  and will have 3-4 teeth per inch.

The teeth on some resaw blades are set so that every other tooth rakes to the other side.  The alternating tooth pattern will cut a wider kerf in the wood, than one with the teeth all in the same orientation.  But the alternating teeth pattern is more effective in removing  the buildup of sawdust in the kerf.  This build up of sawdust generates heat, which causes burning of the wood and/or blade drift. If the buildup is significant enough, it can cause the blade to bind in the kerf. A binding blade can result in several not good things happening.  The blade can break, the motor can overheat and shut down (hopefully the motor has overload protection) or the bind can cause the blade to heat which results in the blade stretching.

To obtain a good clean smooth cut using a bandsaw, the tension of the blade must be set correctly.  Too loose and the blade wanders away from the desired path, too tight and the blade can break or overload the motor. In my experience finding the sweet spot where one has the ideal tension is at best a hit or miss proposition. The manual that came with my bandsaw suggests adjusting the tension so that there is no movement left or right of the blade. The upper wheel of most bandsaws is connected to a tensioning spring, When you adjust the tension wheel, you move this upper wheel so that it is closer or further away from the table, which in turn supplies tension to the blade. There are crude tension gauges on most band saws, including mine.  This consists of a pointer that reads out against a scale.  The pointer is attached to the spring.

There are several aftermarket add on tension gauges that can be added to the bandsaw.  Some of these are simple mechanical devices that measure the tension in the blade. These would allow the woodworker to accurately set the proper tension on the blade.  While the price of these add-ons is typically over $200.00, this maybe a small price if you use your bandsaw on a regular basis, or if you have a supply of woods that you want to resaw.

When I wanted to resaw my cherry to make the inserts for the back of my curio cabinet, I dutifully removed my standard bandsaw blade and installed a resaw blade that has 3 teeth per inch. I then adjusted the tension on the blade so that I had no back and forth play in the blade, as the saw manufacturer recommends.  Before I began attempting to resaw the cherry, I decided to try a piece of 3/4 Pine, that was gathering dust in my shop.  I adjusted the fence for just over a 1/4″, and began cutting .  The first three inches of travel everything was great, after that the blade started to wander all over the place.  Checked the tension on the blade, that was still good. Then I remember seeing an article about resawing that suggested that the use of a straight fence was not always the best option when resawing.  The reasoning was that blade wander is pretty much a given, even with the best blade you can expect some wandering. They suggested that the ideal idea was to have a  curved point that would allow the user to “steer” the wood through the blade, compensating for the drift.

My bandsaw did not come with a rip fence.  At one of the woodworking shows that I attended in the past, I purchased a Kreg Band Saw Fence. The Kreg fence was installed with a minimum amount of fuss and has worked as advertised. That is for everything except for resawing.  After a little research, I found that Kreg made a Resaw Guide that attaches to the Kreg Fence. I made a trip to the local woodworking shop and purchased the Kreg resaw fence. 

Back in the shop, I went back to attempting to resaw the trial piece.  Finally success, I was able to resaw a 5/16″ slice off the face of the pine.  So I finally started resawing the cherry for the back panel of the curio cabinet.  I needed a total of three 1/4″ pieces of this project.  The first piece I cut went as planned.  I was able to resaw my desired 5/16″ piece off the face.  I went a little oversized so that I still had enough material to finish sand the piece, to remove any saw marks.  The remaining cherry (the 3/4″ original stock minus this 5/16″ piece) would later be run through the thickness plainer to reduce it to the desired final 1/4″ thickness.

Having such success surprised me, so I plunged head long into resawing the second piece of cherry, to produce the third panel that was needed for the back of the curio  cabinet.  About 4″ into the wood, the cut started to wander again. The wandering could not be stopped.  In fact it eventually ruined the piece of stock to the point that I couldn’t simply run it through the plainer. 

After some checking and playing around I found that the problem was that while was cutting the first board, the blade was heating up, and since I didn’t wait before I began cutting the second board the heat continued to build. The net result was that the blade had stretched enough that it no longer held true, but so much that I could tell by checking the tension for back and forth movement.

After some unkind words, I left the shop and went and had some lunch.  After lunch, I tried to make the same cut, and was finally successful. I now had three 1/4″ pieces of Cherry that I could use as inserts for the back of the curio cabinet.

Lesson learned, the right blade, the correct tension, the correct resaw fence are all important components required for resawing.  I also found out that what the TV shows and the experts don’t tell you is that it’s best to let the blade cool off between cuts; a lesson that cost me only a few scrapes of wood, thankfully I hadn’t jumped right into my good wood.

My frustration level is in check, and I understand what I was doing wrong. So now all I have to do is make up the 4/4 cherry  frame that will encircle the 1/4″ inserts.  How about checking back later for that and the discussions on the decorative doors and side panels.

Related posts:

1. Building the Curio Cabinet Part 2
2. Woodworking Project – Bedroom Nightstands Part 3 Resawing Panels
3. Woodworking Techniques : Book Matching

As I said above, I used Kreg Pocket screws to join the rails and stiles together for the front panel.  While this is a strong joint, it is not very visually appealing.   I much prefer the look of a good mortise and tenon joint. But that presented two problems.  I would traditionally put the rails into my dedicated hollow mortise machine and plough out the mortise in the stiles, a little time consuming, but doable.  But remember that I already cut tapers in the outer edges of the stiles.  This outer/tapered edge is the edge that is held against the base of the Hollow Mortise machine. So, any mortises I cut would therefore be cut at the angle of the taper.  Yeah I could have cut some shims, and inserted them beneath the stiles to make them square again, but after the trouble I had cutting the tapers, I figured this would just lead to more problems.  

The other issue is more about economics than anything else. If I were to make a mortise and tenon joint for the top rail/stile joint, I would want to make the mortise at least 1” long on both ends.  In my mind anything less could produce a weak joint.  Problem is that I didn’t have a single piece of cherry that was both wide enough and long enough to make up the top rail.  I could have glued up a couple of pieces to make up the piece, but I was concerned about matching the grain.

So my solution was to create false tenons.  Before I attached the rails and stiles together, I used my hollow mortise chiseler to cut squares where a through tenon would be, if there actually were tenons.  I used a ½” mortise drill bit and cut each of the squares 3/8” deep.

 The next logical step for me was work on the back panel. I went through several iterations on how to build the back panel before I finally settled on one. Naturally I wanted a back on the cabinet, both for appearance sake and stability.   My first consideration was to use plywood back.  This presented several of issues. The first was that none of my local suppliers carried cherry plywood.  I could special order it and then pay shipping charges.  I wasn’t too keen on this; I really like to be able to look at a piece of wood before I buy it. And second, I just have bad images of what a shipping company could do to a nice 4’ X 8’ piece of ¼” cherry. The plywood also presented another issue I hadn’t thought of until now.

The plan was and still is to have glass shelves inside the cabinet.  I had planned to have maybe three or four shelves horizontally in the cabinet.  I had planned for them to run the full width of the inside of the case. By doing this I could have a bracket on each end.  But my wife, better known as the design committee or smarter of us two, convinced me that having shelves of different lengths would look aesthetically better. And of course she was right.  That meant that instead of a bracket at each end of the glass, I now needed several brackets.  My wife also pointed out that the brackets should be adjustable vertically.  So we went from my original design, which had two permanently mounted brackets for each shelf, which I had planned to secure to stiles, to a much bigger project.

To accomplish the adjustability of the shelves, I decided to use the same black metal shelf guides I used on the book case in my office.  These are readily available, and not overly expensive.  But using them took the use of the plywood out of the picture.  I didn’t figure that I could secure these metal shelf guides to the ¼” plywood.  Ok I could have, but the first time we put anything on the glass shelves that they supported, I would end up with a lot of broken glass.   Not to mention the curio, or knick knacks that were on the shelf. To properly secure the metal shelf guides I would need a solid surface, something more than ¼” plywood.

Taking into account the need for more vertical support, I changed the design from only the two outer stiles separated by the cherry plywood, to having four vertical stiles separated by a cherry insert.  This way I could install four of the black metal shelf guides, instead of the original two, one on each of the outer stiles and the other two on the intermediate stiles. Since I no longer needed to cover the area from the outer stiles with a single piece of wood, the idea of the cherry plywood went further away.  Instead I elected to use solid cherry pieces for the inserts between the stiles. 

The inserts ended up being a ¼” thick and were cut to fit into dados in the rails and stiles.  Rather than simply planing pieces of 4/4 stock down to a ¼”, I used my band saw equipped with a wide resaw blade to split the 4/4 stock into two pieces that were about 3/8” thick.  Resawing even with the best equipment will leave the wood very rough, but a couple of passes through the thickness planner took the wood down to a nice even ¼” thickness.

I just made resawing sound easy; it isn’t that simple of a task.  There are so many things that can go wrong when resawing.  Believe me I should know, because I have wasted many good pieces of wood trying to learn this skill.  Describing that will take up more space and time then I have here, so I think this would be a good place to stop for now.

For more information on or to purchase any of the products discussed in this post, please click on the highlighted links and images in the post.

Related posts:

1. How to Build a Curio Cabinet
2. Woodworking Projects: Building End Tables Part 2
3. Woodworking Projects Building a Bed Headboard Part 2

There are several things that are different about building a curio cabinet, than any other project I have ever built.  First of all, I am not sure what to title the article.  I built a cabinet to display…… well that’s the problem.  I am not sure what to call the things we intend to display.  Where I grew up in Michigan, they were called Knick Knacks, in Minnesota where my wife hails from they were called curios. And here in New Jersey, they don’t have Knick Knacks, nor do they have curios, they have Tchotske’s.  It’s a Yiddish word that is pronounced, chotski. Whatever name you choose to use, I built one to hold and display the items we have collected over the years.

Another thing strange about this project is that I have not completed the project. There are a couple of reasons, first I have been kind of busy lately, and second I am not happy with the way it turned out.  The cabinet is completely built, and I have applied a finish to it.  But I am not happy with the finish. It really looked good while it was out in my shop, but when I brought it into the house; I noticed several areas that didn’t look right.  There were a couple runs in the finish that I hadn’t noticed before. Also I found a few sanding marks that I had over looked. So when time permits I am going to return it to the shop and completely re work the finish.  But more on that later, for now let’s just talk about building the cabinet, that will eventually hold the knick knacks/curios/tchotske’s.

Wanting to take a departure from my traditional choice of wood for a project, I choose to use solid cherry over oak.   There were a couple of reasons for this.  The cabinet, if it ever gets finished, will sit adjacent to the kitchen which has tons of oak cabinetry already in it.  I was concerned that another oak cabinet would simply get lost among all the other oak pieces. Second, I normally love the way that cherry finishes, and how the patinas of the cherry normally darken with age which, in my humble opinion, adds to the beauty of the project.

If you look at the picture shown here at the right, you will notice that the stiles of the front and back panels flare out.  At the top of the cabinet they are 4” wide, and are 5 1/2” wide at the bottom. I felt that this would add more visual interest to the cabinet, than if I had simply made the stiles perfectly straight up and down. I initially felt that making the four stiles, two for the front and two for the back panel wouldn’t be a big deal.  And of course I was wrong again.

I have a tapering jig for my table saw that I figured would be the best tool for cutting the taper, but that idea soon went out of the window.  The issue with the tapering jig is that it wasn’t designed to cut tapers over long lengths, such as the stiles of the cabinet.  So I turned to another method to cut the tapers. I simply drew the taper along the length of the stile. Then using my jig saw I rough cut the taper, staying just proud of the actual line. 

To sweeten up the line, I next turned to one of my routers equipped with a flush trim router bit  , like the one at the right.   To provide the guide bearing a reference, I next installed a piece of 4/4 pine along the length on the desired taper.  I was concerned that the pine guide would flex, when the router was pushed against it. To prevent this, I tacked the pine strip to the cherry blank.  I had considered using clamps, instead of the nails, but realized that they would be in the way of the router.  I should add that the pine guide piece was tacked to the backside of the stile blank. 

The results of this were less than spectacular.  The line wasn’t very smooth, nor was it very straight.  After some thinking I realized that the pine was the wrong choice for the guide strip.   Since I didn’t want to add this piece of cherry to my already bulging scrap bin, I elected to clean up the line with a combination of hand tools.  The first tool I took out was a smoothing bench plane. With a little work with this great hand tool, I was able to remove most of the distortion in the taper.  This was followed by some hand sanding.   Finally the first stile was done. 

All that I had left to do was to make three more stiles, each with the same taper.  To make the remaining stiles, I choose to use the first stile as a template for the rest of the stiles.  I first rough cut the tapers with the Jig saw and then cleaned up the cuts. This involved clamping the first piece over the blanks for the remaining pieces, and then using the same router and bit to cut the tapers.  After cutting the second stile, I examined the cut.  It was cleaner and smoother than the one cut with the pine guide, but still not perfect.

My initial thought was that there was something wrong with the guide bearing on the router bit.   But it was free and moving smoothly, so that wasn’t the issue.  I also took a close look at the router bit to make sure that it was sharp and had no nicks along the cutting edges. These also were okay.  It was only after I put the first and second pieces edge to edge that I realized that the deformities matched up piece to piece.  This discovery met with several choice words that I can’t and won’t repeat. I then decided that my only recourse left was to clean up both stiles at once.

I decided the only way to really clean up these lines was to use the bench plane on both pieces at once.    I then clamped the two pieces together, using several small bar clamps.  This was followed by me slowly cleaning up taper lines with my bench plane.  Once these were finished, I began the same process on the two stiles for the back of the cabinet. That action took another day of time in the shop. 

In the end, I determined that using a soft wood like cherry isn’t the best choice for use with a guide bearing.  It is just too soft.  Next time I have to make a long taper like this, I will look for something harder like oak, or maybe even a metal guide. To be honest, I enjoyed working with the plane; it was somewhat therapeutic, but I wouldn’t want to do it every day.

So what’s next?  We have to complete the front and rear panels, the tapered stiles will be used for both of these.  Then we need to build the two side panels. This will be followed by building the two doors.  All of which is more then I have room for here, so those items will have to wait until the next time we get together

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