I'm in the process of expanding and re-doing our kitchen. I've decided to make the cabinets myself after going around and around with cabinet makers and stores. My wife wants either painted white beadboard or near-shaker style cherry. I don't care, I can make either. But, I told her that cherry is really tricky to match and is very unpredictable as to color as it ages. I told her the areas that are not exposed to light like the rail covered by the edge of a door might not darked equally, blah blah blah. In other words, I'm a bit afraid of using cherry. She seems to lean toward "wood color" rather than the white when I really push her, although she likes the white a lot. Heres the real question: I told her that I'd much rather build the project out of mahogany as it is so much easier to match and I have a great source of both figured and pattern grade mahogany. After she gave me "the look" I told her not to worry as all this mahogany comes from tree farms now (I was told that I swear!...Honest!!!...I almost, kinda believe it...). So she says that would be great as long as I can prove it is farmed raised and not rain forest origin. Anyone know where real mahogany comes from, farm or forest? BTW, this stuff looks like real Honduras mahogany, not the fakey Filipino and Indonesian crap. This dealer, BTW has had a lot of undeniable rain forest mahogany that was 100% clear, 36 inch wide and 4 inches thick, 16-18 feet long. Thats NOT what I'm thinking of buying, this stuff is up to 16 inches wide 1 inch thick, 100% clear.
Spanish, Honduras and Cuban mahoganies are all related and protected species, and that's all there is to it. If it's African or West Indies mahogany, you're good to go in every sense of the word. Beeeeeeeeyoooooootiful.
Scroll down to 26 - show it to your lovely bride. The POTUS is hard at work making sure you, the fine woodartiste, are safe from persecution by gub'ment and bride. http://www.cites.org/common/prog/mwg/MWG2/E-MWG2-10-02-US.pdf Here's the source - aside from contents in main section, note arrow next to mahogany on the left TOC - this will give you way more infommunition than you'll ever need to factually state, "I'm OK, the tree's are OK, and the totally legal mahogany cabinets are beeeeeeeyooooootiful, though not as beeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyoooooooooootiful as you, honey." http://www.cites.org/eng/prog/mwg.shtml CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an international agreement between Governments. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.
Well, went to the warehouse today, the mahogany was getting very low. Not enough good stuff to do the job, so that's out. I took my wife and she really liked the black walnut; it was relatively clear, very little sapwood, more brown than purple, so black walnut it will be. I'm picking up 500 board feet this afternoon along with 60 board feet of fiddle back maple from which to make the drawer sides (now that'll look cool when you open them!). and 200 BF of birch for construction; a bunch of birch plywood for the carcasses. I figure there will be 40% waste of the walnut with knots and sapwood. The project is officially on!
You can always build it with wood from the ubiquitous formica, laminate, and fiberboard trees.... Do they actually make anything out of real wood anymore? We just bought a nice bedroom set (20k$) or so, supposedly "real wood." Looks like real mahogony, but I still have my doubts. I suspect they use pine cores/ etc and laminate with mahogony. I haven't seen furniture made of real solid hardwoods in ages. Locally, we have a high end boutique furniture place in town. They sell 5000$ chairs, 60,000$ tables, etc. Now THAT looks like real wood. It seems that anything sub 20-30k$, no matter how nice, is all laminates...
Getting to be very little solid wood product anymore in all industries. In my industry caskets are getting harder and harder to find in solid species. Batesville Casket Company (a Hillenbrand company) is the largest casket perveyor in the United States and they are limiting our solid products by phasing in Veneer caskets that look just like the solid caskets that we carried years ago. I can still order solid product but I have to special order it and it costs a bit more than its veneer counterpart. The only caskets that they don't do in the veneer are the super high end Mahogany and Walnut caskets which can rival the price of some of your early 80's F cars. BTW good luck on the project and remember to post pre/post construction photos.
Statton is most of what we have in the house. It is absolute solid cherry. They will use some veneers over cherry in the newer "fancy" pieces. If you look at their web site and the age of the workers I fear this company will not exist in the global market in 5-10 years. I always liked Statton because it was solid, honest and simple, not embellished like a lot of Baker and Hickory Chair (again, except for some of their newer stuff, but I forgive them). http://www.statton.com/
Walnut is nice and you know its not coming from the rape of some rain forest. I was contacted years back by a guy who had two large(4'+ diameter) trees that he told me I cuold have. All he wanted was serveral highly figured blanks for gunstock barrells. We got 4k b.f of mostly clear black walnut from the logs!! In Thailand you can buy Teak that is certified, not just salesman talk, farm grown and sustainably cut. In the Pacific northwest here we have madrone, which is very beautiful med to dark red wood. VEry tight grain, works beautifully in either direction and is also very durable. Its hard to dry but once dry is a cabinetmakers dream. Let me know should you like to try some. Good luck with the cabinets.
here it is, 500 bf random width black walnut (on top of the poplar and maple wide boards): Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Uro... Screw Mahog or cherry. Go for some REALLY NICE South American hardwoods by shopping at www.cocobolo.com. For the price you will spend on Mahog, etc., these guys will get you 10X better wood around the same price! I buy Paofero, Kingwood, Cocobolo and Zebra wood from them. They ship UPS from Florida (I believe) and it's great! You will need to plane the wood. Pete
Thanks Pete. I considered exotic stuff but its a little too bold for this particular project. These cabinets need to be "in the background", not the focus of the room. It's a really traditional house so I needed a traditional wood to fit the milieu of the house.
First carcass made today. For the first time I used a pocket screw system. It is remarkable, twice as strong, twice as quick and twice as easy as using dados and rabbets. I made this carcass from walking into the shop to finished carcass in about 2 hours using the pocket screws. Unbelievably easy. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Wait 'til you get to the face frames! <Silver Convention>Fly, Robin, Fly</Silver Convention> You have a lot of pipe clamps? Hey: On the shelving - do your pocket screws on the bottom - much more sightly. With the middle - where the center "style" piece of face frame will attach - simply nail or screw it through the bottom @ toekick for same out of sight, out of mind reasons. As always, glue is your friend.
I got tons of clamps but you don't need them with this pocket screw system. I tell you I got religion here.
Religion! Ha! Trust me - you'll need the clamps for the face frames when attaching to front of cab shell for "clean" sides, let alone adhesion. When we did Fed & State gigs - we couldn't use any nails or staples except on the back & only at an unseen angle. Insane amount of clamps then.
Lots or progress. Cut all the stiles and rails at the same time: Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
