I now have the door panels assembled and roughly fitted to the cabinet front enclosure. In the previous post I mentioned that I had stumbled on to some nicely figured European beech. This is an excellent example of the concept and term dynamic design I described in a much earlier post. As much as I like to follow through with a pre-existing design, when an opportunity presents itself and I can enhance a design,a strong consideration is given to seizing this opportunity. My original design was nebulous regarding the front doors, I had some sort of inlay in mind as an embellishment. The figure I have found in these slices of European beech are, in my opinion, a more natural embellishment and if oriented correctly, dramatically change the front graphics of the cabinet. Some judicious resawing and a short time later and I had enough veneer slices to create the bookmatched veneers for the fronts of the door panels. I utilize straight-grained beech veneers for the back of the door panels. The veneers are edge jointed prior to assembling together to form each of the four sheets for the two door panels. I take great care in veneering the substrates for the door panels and make sure that the substrates are perfectly flat and smooth since the veneers will telegraph any bumps or surface irregularities into the top surface.
In the photo, I have the door panels mocked up in the cabinet front to determine if the aesthetics are both correct and pleasing. I'm not looking for complete symmetry at this point and this is obvious in the detail of the figure of the individual door panels. There is instead, a partial symmetry in the door graphics which makes us more aware of the natural growth pattern of wood.
Next I make preparations for installation of the knife hinges for the doors after some final fitting of the doors within the cabinet opening.
2 comments:
Ah this is interesting. Through your explanation of book match veneering for these door panels it is now obvious to me that I should start to look at wood for book match opportunities.
In addition to possibly using a 5" piece of wood and resawing the same wood to expand over 20" of surface space.
It makes a lot more sense to me by reading it through this project blog.
Are you vacuum veneering?
Yes, vacuum veneering.
Bookmatching adds a level of excitement to a project. You can create interesting patterns depending on how you resaw the plank.
I have a conventional small vacuum clamping press with threaded rods I could use but vacuum pressing is a huge leap from this setup.
Norman
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