I resumed work on the beech cabinet this week. I thought I would begin with something small, as in drawer pulls. Actually the pulls are for the drawers and for the cabinet doors. I haven't decided on the final pull color or style and instead am going to make a sample of two pulls in different woods. These pulls will be similarly sized with a protruding four-shoulder tenon at the back and they will fit into a appropriately sized rectangular mortise. It's easy enough for me to accomplish this, to create two similar drawer pulls and this will allow me to consider the aesthetics of each pull sample on the cabinet.I needed to do this because it was a toss-up between a blackwood pull and a cocobolo pull. Both might work equally well but I'm concerned of the amount of contrast between the pulls and the beech, should I have very contrasting colors or more of a subtle contrast. Having said this, I'm leaning towards the blackwood at the moment. A light tan background with a black pull works aesthetically in my opinion.
In the photo I have prepared a rectangular pull and am shaping the back square. This particular pull is rectangular, but I have the other option of a more sculpted, rounded pull. I'm not sure at this point, so I'll begin with this. I could have mocked up a small block of wood and darkened it black to be able to do this testing, but not too much more work is actually involved in making the blackwood pull, so I decided to do this instead. You can see the large block of blackwood in the background from which I have resawn and cut the small blank.
