The Innovative Entertainment Center
Last week's episode of Framework challenged us to build an innovative entertainment center in 24 hours, and with a partner. Being that I won the last challenge, I chose teams and picked Wesley, mostly because I felt he could pull off the mechanisms of the piece, while I focused on the build. Our idea was to design and build a sleek wall-hanging piece that at first glance did not feel or look like a TV cabinet and that the mechanics and movements would make it unexpected, interactive, and innovative.
Typically, I tend to avoid common angles, edges, and lines in order to not only make the piece unusual but also give it unique character; thus leading to a much more difficult time in the building process. So, combine the difficult build with the mechanisms not working out how we planned and certain hardware not showing up, the piece quickly became a stressful disaster.
The Body: the entire outside was built with 6/4 (1 1/2") solid walnut and had a 20 degree chamfer on it in order to frame everything in it. After joining the body with Dominos and clamping it, we began to piece the rest of it together. I used the router to dado in the right vertical side as well as the middle divider. On top of that, we also dado-ed in the false plywood back which ultimately hid the liquor stash that had a poorly chosen unattractive green paint on it.
The Door: this, of course, was the focal point; I joined solid walnut, then carved in an organic texture, following the grain to give it a natural feel. We had ordered the Blum Aventos HL hinges, (which allows the door to move almost directly vertical from its current position) but these hinges were out of stock and we we running short on time. This forced us to use the Blum Aventos HK system (which flips the door open) making the door a bit obtrusive, but being that we were on a strict time limit, we needed to just finish the piece.
The Components: we made a drop-down housing to hold the gaming system, cable box, DVDs, etc. In order to make this function, we relied on using a lift system for a TV, but flipped it upside-down. Serious issues arose with this feature, but we don't need to go into that. Also, for the secret bar pullout, we had planned on using the Blum Servo Drive, but for some reason, that failed too (and I'm still not sure what happened).
The Vase: made out of solid walnut, I took stacks of 8/4 (2") walnut and shaped it on the lathe. After hollowing out, I coated the inside with silicone to seal and make it capable to hold water.
The Finish: usually, I don't use oil with pigment in it, but in this case, I felt a darker color on the body would showcase the carving on the door a bit more, so I used the Watco Dark Walnut Danish Oil.
All in all, this was a really tough piece to pull off in the 24-hour time restraint; the project was riddled with things that went wrong and in the end we didn't have time to make this piece look and work the way we wanted. This is a great example of something I would NEVER allow out of my shop in the condition it was in, which is too bad because I didn't mind the overall design, it was the execution that I was not too proud of.
