A Piece for Common
I probably should've sat down and written this post directly after watching the episode, but as usual, I put it off about a week. I suppose the good part is, a lot of the emotion has faded and I’m more prone to leaving out the drama. This one was tough, but now that I think about it, they all are, just in their own ways.
I just finished watching episode 8 (they send me the episodes a couple days before they air), and it is humbling to say the least. Right when I think I have so much to say about my teammate BK, and how he made things so hard for me on this build, I need to remind myself that I, on my own, am pretty good at screwing things up in colossal ways. I guess its all part of woodworking, or anything we do that we really care about. We are not machines. We let our emotions run. And sometimes our inadequacies take the lead. The build of this wardrobe, along with the next episode are great examples of this.
The first day of the build, I had a complete design block. I was up all night trying to come up with an idea, and about an hour before I had to be up, it hit me. Like always, I knew it was going to be a close one with timing, so I scheduled everything down to the T. There was very little room for screw-ups, so it was stressful from the start, not to mention we had lost about 4 hours on the first day of the build, and going on very little sleep; we started the 2nd day.
For the legs, I used my typical technique of making a template out of MDF. I had ordered some wide 8/4 Walnut for these parts of the piece, so I had very little joining to do. I rough cut the leg parts, and used my templates to clean up the edges and make them as perfect as possible. While I was doing this, BK was making the long,(about 7’ long) box that was to sit as the base, and have three drawers for shoes.
Once I was done with the legs, I started on the large box that sat on top of the shoe compartment; I wanted this to sit tight and clean, so I mortised in the two sides made of 6/4 walnut into both the top and bottom. For the doors, I wanted them to wrap around the sides about 6”, this is one area I probably should have simplified if I would have know the problems that lay ahead, but as usual I couldn’t help myself. The doors are made of 4/4 Teak and, I think, the only decent way to hinge a door like this is by using a ball bearing on both the top and bottom. I hate seeing any hardware, so this is a technique I use often.
To make the hinges, I drill a hole in the bottom of the box, right below where the return part of the door sits. I thread the hole using a tap, and screw an allen bolt with a dimple on the top, a ball bearing sits perfectly in it. Then, I use a Festool centrotec countersink bit to drill a dimple on the bottom of the door to catch the bearing coming up from the bottom. I carry that line to the top of the door and make a dimple for a bearing to sit between the door and the top of the box. If all measurements are right, and all bearings line up, the hinge works perfectly, and its the cleanest one you'll never see.
Once I got the hinge done, I moved onto the Latch. I’ve done this latch before so I flew through it. This is a bit more detailed and a little more difficult to explain, but between a table saw, bandsaw, drill press, lathe, and oscillating sander, I pulled it off.
We had ordered a mirror to fit on the inside of the door, cut to size all ready to go and….. well for some reason, that never made it, I won’t mention any names. If you watched the episode you know that the dowel that was suppose to go on the inside never made it as well. Things happen, and that's exactly what happened a lot on this piece. We threw the shelves in the top part, and the drawers in the shoe compartment. We barely had enough time to attach the top to the bottom part and it showed.
The image of the broken screw will forever be lodged in my memory. I wish I could go back and have a day to show this piece a little more love than it got, but I don’t think that’ll ever happen even though I asked if I could.
