Woodworker's Journal fall-2008, страница 28

Fluted-door Wall Cabinet

A STRIKING PIECE OF WOOD INSPIRED THE DESIGN OF THIS BOWFRONT STORAGE CABINET.

By Mike Stevesand

'd just spent the better part of three months designing and building an elaborate computer cabinet for our home office. The work was large-scale, precise, had many subassemblies and required lots of planning, drawing and measuring. When it was done, rather than take a break from woodworking, what 1 wanted was another way of working: a project that would be freeform and improvisational, preferably with minimal reliance on paper, pencil and measuring tape.

About that time 1 came across an incredible plank of tl at sawn lace-wood, It had a dramatic elongated horizontal ray figure that I thought would nicely balance the strong vertical lines of a curved, fluted door I had in the back of my mind. My project was starting to take shape — it was time to figure a few things out.

The basic technique was clear enough: 1 would cut a plank into strips, cove each one, and bevel the edges so when they were edge-glued back together they would form a curve (this process is called "coopering," named for the barrelmakers who invented it).

The challenges were one: getting a tight joint between each strip without the strips slipping against each other and, two: smoothing the coves (rough from the saw blade) while keeping the arrises (the "spines") between them sharp and clear, which is half of the visual rhythm flutes establish, i knew that the door had to be perfect before making the rest of the cabinet, because the sizes and proportions of the other pieces would be determined by the door. With the width of the door absolutely fixed by the high points of the outer arrises, there would be no adjusting once it was made.

A Cove Conundrum or Two

Hie first order of business was to figure out how to cut the coves, i knew the trick of clamping an angled fence across the table saw and running a board over the blade, raising the blade slightly with each pass so that the skewed angle of presentation forms a radius. [ had made a few pieces of crown molding that way, but this was a bit different. The door I had in mind needed narrow pieces coved out to

28 EASY-TO-BUILD STORAGE CABINETS

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