I guess I disappeared for a while, but in reality I've been busy with a multitude of things. I did finally get around to completing the beech cabinet I began a few months ago. There wasn't really much left to do except to design and create the drawer and door pulls. I use a two-tone cocobolo for this and carefully selected each pull from a blank to maximize the heartwood and sapwood graphic. The drawers needed a little more fitting, but the rest was primarily the task of judiciously scraping the exterior and interior of the the cabinet and applying finish. I also installed a brass door catch in the upper portion of the right hand door. The doors can be individually opened and each door reveals a partitioned section of the cabinet. The left side is composed of one drawer while the right side is composed of two drawers. Above each of the drawers is a shelf which is ideal to place art objects. There is also a small space below the left drawer for a smaller art object. The middle partition is purposely only half-height both to provide a separation and to admit light to either side of the cabinet interior.The inside of the cabinet is kind of sparse, but in my opinion this adds to the beauty, it is after all a display cabinet designed to showcase art objects. The graphics on the front doors immediately bring to mind plumes of fire or smoke to me. The orientation of this cabinet is a departure for me. I typically design cabinets with their height or vertical dimension longer than the width, but this cabinet has it the other way around. I like the proportions of this. An alternate photo of the interior can be seen here:
http://www.refinededge.com/Portfolio-TwinPlumes.htm
The finish is primarily many coats of thinned shellac with a final application of wax. I finally liberated a small part of my shop by completing this. Why is it that the final 10% of a project takes the longest :)
On to my next project(s).
