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The front door pulls have been created and installed. It's beginning to look like a complete cabinet on stand now. I designed the door pulls to have a half-diamond embedded at the front to carry the diamond theme into the armoire cabinet itself. I feel that there is now just the right balance of color in this armoire,a subdued but striking look. I did not want to take any focus away from the tiger maple door panels but at the same time wanted to have a fine symmetry in the colors of the cabinet.In my opinion, the hint of white holly in the door pulls makes the difference.The armoire is now oriented and secured to the stand at the moment with one pin on either side, where pin refers to a short length of dowel. I can quickly detach the cabinet from the stand to continue with the next phase of work to do on this armoire. I have some specialized hardware to install in the interior of the cabinet, but this can wait until after I have partially applied some finish. It's interesting to notice how much the upper cabinet ( armoire) has already naturally darkened compared to the armoire stand which is only recently put together. This disparity in color will blend together over the next two weeks or so, one of the great features of cherry.
I've gone ahead and did some decorative detail work on the front apron of the stand for the armoire, and also managed to squeeze some Christmas shopping in. Since this is essentially a jewelry armoire, I decided on a diamond theme for the inlay detail. The pattern on the apron creates, at least in my mind, a semblance that the stand is holding the armoire up. The center diamond in holly balances out the theme and provides a contrast to the outside blackwood half-diamonds and stringing. As with anything woodworking related, the inlay work involved precise measurements since the pattern is symmetric. Working on and creating the inlay detail was immensely enjoyable to me although a little stressful at times since the spare apron I had set aside somehow developed a ding. The stand is completely assembled now and has been test-fitted with the armoire attached. I'll use wood pins to connect the armoire and stand together, this will make it simple to separate the two pieces for transport and also for any other reason that might come up. 
I've just about completed the legs and aprons for the (cabinet) armoire stand after allowing some time for the wood to release any internal tensions which might have developed. These internal tensions are brought out in the resawing work I performed for both the leg blanks and aprons. I began with a wide plank of 8/4 cherry for the legs and ripped four leg blanks from this blank. I oriented each leg blank on the plank to attain the best possible grain configuration, in this case a rift-pattern with no face grain on any of the leg faces. This is a little more wasteful of wood, but it's definitely worth the time spent. The legs blanks have a very pleasing straight-grained orientation on all four faces. In the photo, I marked the pattern of the grain on the ends of the legs and it is slightly visible. 
The drawer pulls are now complete and installed. I decided on blackwood as per the original design. The pulls are rectangular, 2 inches long , .75 inches deep (visible part) and approximately .25 inches thick. The width and length of the pulls was a matter of experimentation and as a mock-up I hot glued two to three different sizes to a drawer front blank I had as a spare.
I've been busy building the dovetailed drawers. At this time, I have seven of eight drawers fairly complete (new,updated photo, all eight done). You can see the parts for the last one in the photo along with the completed drawers. Not long into the process, I developed a rhythm and the dovetails came along a little quicker than at the very beginning. This is one of those techniques where you need to keep practising otherwise the skills begin to lapse. If the saw cuts are placed correctly, or to use the expression "split the line"... the tails and pins go together quite well and snug. I hardly bother to test fit the tails and pins together, just apply glue and tap them together. You can usually tell if there is going to be a hangup in the mating process simply by aligning the pins and tails and pressing the two together with a little pressure. Another important consideration in the dovetail process is to make sure the baseline of both the tails and pins is aligned and parallel to the edge of the boards.
The drawer build is slowly coming together. I've set up a sequence to ensure that any steps are not skipped in creating a drawer. For example, I create the grooves for the drawer bottom after making the half-blind dovetails at the front of the drawer. The grooves are created just prior to glue-up. If I create the grooves before the dovetails, the tails are considerably weakened and fragile due to the groove. The nice part is that the groove is completely housed and does not therefore need to be a stopped groove. Some of the other steps include hand planing the surfaces of each of the drawer components. Each drawer is individually fitted to its compartment in the drawer case. The drawer front is marked and cut first as it needs to be a nice, snug fit. Each of the drawer sides is then marked, measured and cut accordingly. The heights of each of the pieces are similar, I hand plane them to ensure they are exactly the same height. 
I've spent some time in the past day or so working on an optimal dovetail layout for the eight drawer fronts. Since the height of each drawer is approximately 1.75 inches, this doesn't leave much room for multiple dovetails. After some consideration and sketching of layouts on some precut cardboard, I decided on a layout comprising two tails and somewhat narrow pins. I feel this looks elegant and has sufficient strength for such a small drawer. The tails are housed within the drawer front, also known as blind or lapped dovetails, and in doing so, do not take anything away from the appearance of the face of the drawer fronts. I went ahead and mocked up a sample dovetailed corner with the exact dimensions of the drawer height and the sizes of the components. This mock-up allows me a better feel for how the drawer will look in the drawer case. In the photo, the mock-up or sample drawer corner has a cherry front and alder for the side. 
My last post had me preparing the individual panels which comprise the drawer case. After hand planing and scraping the surfaces I temporarily assembled the panels and confirmed that the drawer case is perfectly square. More importantly, the dado grooves (dadoes) are perfectly lined up in the horizontal plane for each level of drawer. I return to all the checking and re-checking of measurements I performed before creating the dadoes to assure these dadoes would line up correctly. It is also important to have the individual panels perfectly square.
I'm in the process of milling and preparing the components of the drawer case. The drawer case consists of a top and bottom panel the width of the interior of the jewelry armoire, two side panels , the back, the horizontal drawer dividers, and a center vertical divider. After preparing the surfaces of each of the panels of the drawer case, I created a series of grooves to house the drawer dividers. The grain orientation of the drawer case is front to back, as is the main case, so the grooves are perpendicular to the grain orientation and are therefore dadoes. When creating dadoes such as these, it becomes somewhat important that their spacing is equidistant from each other and that the sides of each drawer compartment are parallel to each other. I took a considerable amount of time checking and re-checking my measurements,markings, and reference edges before creating the dadoes and any joinery used to keep the drawer case together.
Since the main case is fairly complete, I've begun to create the inner drawer case. The first step in the sequence is to get the proportions correct using a cardboard mock up of the drawer case. After a few iterations, the mock up in the photo is the preferred layout. The design considerations which I used are as follows:
I have the armoire case assembled. I'll substitute the word case for carcase from now on, less typing. The doors have been mounted with the knife hinges attached. I don't attach each and every screw to the knife hinge leaves at the moment, only one screw per leaf hinge. This allows me some flexibility if I do need to fine tune the door placement later. The front doors fit well and have a very small gap between the center stiles, very satisfactory at this point. In this photo you might notice the sheen on the case surfaces, namely the left side. This is accomplished solely through judicious hand scraping after assembly of the previously handplaned surfaces, no sandpaper has touched the case surfaces.
I mentioned in the previous post how careful to be when mortising the hinge recesses with hand tools. A good approach is to use a sharp marking knife and sharp chisels of different sizes. I make sure to mark the outline of the straight knife hinge carefully using the marking knife, this creates a tiny notched line which allows me to set the tip of my chisels into. Accuracy is greatly increased using this technique over using a pencil line. The mortise recess itself is created in stages, being careful not to remove too much wood in each pass. Once a substantial depth of the recess has been created, I find the mortising goes along much quicker as there is less opportunity for the chisel blade to skate across the edge of the board. The chisel is tapped in lightly into the marked line, creating sufficient depth to remove each layer of wood from the mortise recess.
I've spent a little time ensuring the front doors were square and true to the carcase, this involved some judicious hand planing along the outside edges of the door frames where I had purposely left a fraction of an inch of extra wood. I'm preparing myself for the next step in the build sequence which is installation of the knife hinges. I typically use knife hinges in a cabinet such as this. Knife hinges are strong, fairly hidden, elegant looking, and traditionally used in smaller cabinets such as this jewelry armoire.The knife hinges come in pairs , one pair per door. Knife hinges are available in two formats. In this project, I've chosen to use straight knife hinges since the doors overlap the carcase. An L-type or offset knife hinge would have been used had the doors been rabbeted or recessed into the carcase edges instead. The straight knife hinge is by far the easiest of the three to install. 
I alluded to the term "dynamic design" in a previous post. This is a term I have coined to describe how design doesn't necessarily need to be cast in stone but instead can be modified as a project progresses. The changes I refer to are often subtle changes and not large scale changes. One of the meanings for the word "dynamic" from the American Heritage Dictionary.
In the previous post I mentioned I was going to discuss the rabbet detail at the edge of the doors where they meet. To create the overlapping rabbeted edges without adding any stock and making it appear as an afterthought, the rabbeted edge profiles are formed from the door stiles themselves. Since the inner door stiles have been designed to be, in this case 1 1/2 inches wide, rabbeting one or the other would reduce this width of stile by the width of the rabbet and in the process cause the door stiles to look a bit off. I also want the right door to overlap the left door with the assumption that the right hand door is typically the first one to be opened. 
I've gone ahead and rabbeted the door panels to fit the groove surrounding the inside of the individual door frames. I perform the bulk of this rabbeting on a router table and make the last passes with a small shoulder plane to have the door panel fit accurately within the groove. At this junction, I have the tiger maple door panels rabbeted and the door frame components prepared. There are alternative methods of joining the stiles to the rails such as dowels, a slip joint, or a half lap joint. In these cases, there would be a need for stopped grooves in either the rails and stiles or in both. I decided to use the traditional mortise and tenon with haunched tenon to join the rails and stiles, this allows me to have the grooves running the full length of the frame members.
I'm preparing the tiger maple panels prior to assembly of the door frames. This type of highly figured wood can be quite a challenge to handplane to a mirror finish. The wood can easily tearout if the angle of attack of the plane iron is not quite right or if the blade is not sharp. There is also technique involved. In the photo I'm using a high angled handplane which more or less falls in between a handplane and a scraper. I choose this tool to eliminate any possibility of tearout with a degree of certainty. After this operation of smoothing the board, I use a scraper to burnish the surface and eliminate any small streaks from the handplane operation. You can see the degree of curl in the tiger maple, since the curls are fairly tight, the wood borders on fiddleback maple quality. The curls are not very pronounced at this point except in the correct light, but once a clear, deep finish is applied, the curls will pop and appear quite dramatic. I'm taking my time with this step to prevent any tearout from occurring as the two panels , although replaceable, are fairly important at this stage.
After discussing with the client, they agreed to give me artistic freedom on the door design. I spent some time working on the frame components of the individual door frames , and I've progressed as far as fitting the door frames into the carcase for test fitting. The door frame components, rails and stiles, are joined with conventional mortise and tenon construction. My natural inclination is to have the stiles on a door frame extend top to bottom of the door and I usually don't think twice about this. Borrowing a page from James Krenov and one of his older designs, I decided to instead extend the top and bottom rails the full width of the door frames instead. The lines become horizontal now rather than vertical. I'm also going to set the vertical stiles back a fraction to provide a shadow effect and give the appearance of horizontal lines running continuously across the top and bottom of the doors. 
I left off having completed the back panel. I've been looking forward to working on the front doors for quite some time now as they are a large part of the focal point of the piece. I had some nicely figured tiger maple also known as curly maple squirreled away for quite some time. After a change of heart, I decided to go shopping for a more dramatic piece of tiger maple with which to make the door panels. A couple of options were available to me, either bookmatch each door panel from a narrower board ( more commonly available) or make an effort to find a wider board and have each door panel one continuous piece. The thickness of the tiger maple board also becomes important since I also intend to raise each panel within its door frame. 
I left off with a few components which comprise the frame and panel back panel. These consisted of outside stiles, a center stile along with two resawn cherry panels. The frame components have been accurately sized and grooved for the panels. I use slip joints to assemble the frame along with the center stile. The frame is dry fitted along with both panels to make certain there will be no issues while gluing up. A small gap surrounding the panels is purposely left to allow for the solid wood panels to expand and contract with seasonal changes. After some judicious hand planing the frame and panel assembly is nicely fitted into the back of the jewelry armoire carcase. Before it is permanently attached , I perform some final smooth planing and scraping of each of the surfaces of the back panel as this is my only good opportunity to do this correctly and on a flat surface.
I left off with the bare carcase and the components for the back panel milled and dimensioned correctly. I handplane the surfaces of all the components as a final step to get the correct thickness and width along with preparing the edges. The handplaned surface becomes exceptionally smooth as any small milling marks are cleaned off. In this photo I am using a jointer plane, one of my longest planes. This provides me a perfectly straight , smooth surface. I place the back panel components on a planing board with stop, this works extremely well.
I have the carcase assembled now. Before assembling I hand scraped the individual panels, both inside and out, this should be done at this point since it is becomes more difficult as the jewelry armoire progresses. Since the carcase needs to be glued up with all panels, the glue-up step can lead to some scrambling. All the clamps need to be in place and ready, I use a wood mallet with a small board to get the joints tight just before clamping. 
With some small temporary projects out of the way I've been able to resume work on the jewelry armoire. I have the panels correctly dimensioned and almost ready to be assembled together to form the carcase of the jewelry armoire. The panels at this point consist of two sides and a top and bottom. The top and bottom panels have bevelled edges, this was an original design consideration. The top and bottom panels need to be a certain thickness for rigidity and strength, and the bevelled edges serve to provide the illusion of the panels being thinner than they actually are. These bevels, actually wide chamfers, intersect the side panels on either side for a nice transition. Because the top and bottom panels in this design extend past the sides, the choice of joinery is rather limited. Conventional corner joinery such as dovetails will not work here.
This week I am attending a week-long class with a renown furniture maker and prolific writer of woodworking articles and books. Garrett Hack is quite well known throughout North America for the detail and hand tool skills he brings to woodworking and furniture making. In the course I'm refreshing some existing skills and techniques along with learning a multitude of new skills. The essence of the course is fine detail such as inlay, stringing, banding, cockbeads, etc.
I find it fascinating how furniture design has evolved over the centuries. If we go back to the middle ages and the era before, quite a few developments in furniture construction techniques were in progress. Prior to this era, in the centuries before, very little furniture was available, it was considered a luxury to have chairs, tables and cabinets. The larger, more finely made furniture of this era was typically destined for the aristocracy of the time as a display of their wealth and status. Most conventional furniture of these early periods was assembled without consideration to wood expansion and contraction or wood movement. This worked for many years, since the interior of buildings in this era was often at the same temperature as the exterior. With the advent of heated interiors, wood movement became much more of a factor to deal with in construction and design of furniture, and the practice of simply assembling wood planks together to form furniture needed to evolve. It was in the middle ages that frame and panel construction was adopted. This technique allowed a solid wood panel to literally float within a wood frame composed of rails and stiles. The solid wood panel could expand and contract on a seasonal basis, and not cause any structural failure within the furniture. All of a sudden many more possibilities were created for furniture design and its widespread appeal began in earnest. 
I left off in my last post with a gathering of jointer components which needed to be re-assembled. Over the past day or two I have been re-assembling the new ( to me) jointer. I did most of this work myself and after having done some careful analysis, I realized there was only one way to successfully perform the assembly. I slowly built up the jointer while it was inverted.. The critical phase of assembly is joining the two halves of the table, the infeed, outfeed, and cutterhead assemblies. Since the pieces are solid cast iron and extremely heavy, this was done while the pieces were inverted and raised off the floor with some boards and in perfect alignment with each other. I attached the outfeed and infeed portions of the table after lubricating the moving parts, rods and ways. At this point, the jointer table or main assembly is very heavy, so it stayed put while I built up the base. 
I have been needing a particular piece of machinery in my studio for quite some time now. I currently have a smaller version, but a larger one with greater capacity was very much needed. This machine is a jointer, which serves to surface or true one face side and edge of a rough board.The surfacing process removes any inherent twist, cupping, or bowing in the board. In my case, the larger capacity corresponds to the width of the jointer cutterhead, allowing me to surface one of the faces of much wider boards. The advantage to a larger width is that boards do not need to be reduced in width due to the constraints of a narrower, smaller jointer. The larger width allows me to maintain the figure of a board in its natural state and allows me to maintain a wider width of board for bookmatching purposes. As luck would have it, the availability of such a jointer was mentioned to me by a friend and I promptly looked into its purchase. This particular machine is a vintage Wadkin - Bursgreen (UK) jointer dating from sometime in the mid-1950's. The advantage to these older machines is their heft ,a large component of cast iron resulting in stability and solid, superior construction. Testimony of the superior quality of this vintage machine is the fact that it is still in use more than fifty years later. My current jointer has a 6 inch capacity, this vintage jointer has 9.25 inches capacity. This jointer weighs more than a quarter-ton. A few weeks went by and the call came that the jointer was available.
