Sliding Dovetail Update

For my kitchen cabinet project, I wanted to use a modular approach to installing cabinets. Typically each cabinet is standalone, and are bolted together as they are installed. This means that between the cabinets are two walls, the right side of the cabinet on the left and the left side of the cabinet on the right. In furniture cabinets, only one wall would be used. I'm using sliding dovetails to allow cabinets to be interconnected while sharing a common wall.

The final cabinet will consist of five interconnected cabinets. The center cabinet shown below will hide trash and recycle containers on a pull out shelf. I plan to install this cabinet into the kitchen and then connect additional cabinets by sliding their walls into the corners of the installed cabinet.

  

The jig that I described in my sliding dovetail blog entry is working well. The cabinet sides are square and secure and if I need to use my router table for something else, the jig allows me to replicate the precise positions necessary to duplicate a cut.

Mission Style Finishing

Quarter-sawn white oak veneer purchased from Certainly Wood is used on most of the exposed wood surfaces. The panel frames on the pull out drawer face were made from recycled oak flooring. To have a 1" wide frame, I've ripped and glued together two flooring pieces. A white oak veneer hides the glue seam. To strengthen this frame, I've inserted dowels (shown on the left) and then to hide them, I applied another piece of veneer (shown on right).

Since this blog is oriented to wood finishing, I wanted to discuss my revised Mission Style finishing treatment.
I do a lot of Mission Style finishing and have some recipes on my blog. Here are my NEW easiest steps, with most products available from your local big box store.

1. Sand the wood surface to 150 grit.
2. Use a very diluted water-based dye stain. It should look like a weak tea. This dye colors the wood but allows the rays and flakes to still be visible. Spray the dye if possible, otherwise flood the surface. For the dye, I use TransTint. It's in the jar on the left in this picture.
3. Let the dye dry thoroughly and then spray with an unwaxed shellac (Bulls Eye, next to the dye in the picture). This protects the dye from subsequent steps.
4. I use Minwax Gel Stain to highlight the grain and figure in the wood (third from the left). I mixed one part Mahogany to four parts Antique Maple to get the color I wanted. After a minute or so, wipe the stain off across the grain. This leaves stain in the grain.
5. This is important, let the stain completely dry overnight. And because it is still cold in my garage, I can't use a water-based finish. I sprayed four coats of satin lacquer from Deft for the finish. Each coat will magnify the wood patterns.

 The major new techniques in this project have been Sketchup and sliding dovetail joints. So far, I'm happy with both.

Progress on my Hallway Table using Reclaimed Wood

Just an update on my Bold Doors entry. I've assembled and glued the legs to the aprons rails using mortise and tenon joints. On a previous post, I discussed how applying gel stain which highlights the grain. Using 150 grit sandpaper, I removed the stain from the wood surface and then sprayed with a light brown water-base TransTint dye. I use my small touch-up gun with a 0.8mm nozzle. This is my favorite spray gun because its so easy to clean.

The rails have a ¼" rabbet cut to hold the tabletop made from a reclaimed cupboard door. Using a door is a requirement of the competition. I want this wood insert to be colored black so I paint it first before I install it in the oak rail frame. There was one hole and some dents that needed to be filled. After sanding it enough to remove some of the polyurethane finish, I filled the recessed areas with drywall joint compound (Even Jeff Jewitt, wood finishing author, says he does this). Drywall compound creates a very smooth surface and its easy to sand. To create a good bonding surface for the acrylic black paint, I sprayed the surface with Zinsser BIN Primer. This is a shellac-based primer that bonds to anything. This will be the magnet that holds the acrylic paint to the door's existing polyurethane finish.

I've painted this piece black with a small amount of Valspar acrylic paint. This sample quantity from Lowes is all I need, so this was cost effective. Everything I've read says it is difficult (or not recommended) to spray acrylic from a HVLP gun using a small compressor. I've sprayed acrylic successfully using my full size 20oz capacity gravity gun with a 2.0mm nozzle, but it takes longer to clean the gun than my touch-up gun.  As an experiment, I tried the touch-up gun using a 1.5mm nozzle. As Jeff recommends, I've diluted the Valspar with 10% water.
It works! I wouldn't want to spray a whole room like this, but the touch-up gun is working fine for a small piece.

Next: install the black tabletop and apply a water-based finish.

Mission Style End Table with Marble, Finished

I just completed the end table and change the embedded stone from slate to marble. The slate was too bumpy and heavy for a table top and it even showed minor scratches. Marble isn't my favorite but I can get attractive 12" x 18" tiles for $8. The top is constructed from quarter-sawn white oak veneered on red oak. Red oak is readily available from my local Lowes store. After staining, you can't tell the difference in the species of oak.

Here is a view from the top showing the final construction of the curved sides. I was worried that they might flex easily but that has not been the case. It's easy to miss that they are curved. I think this is a design issue because there isn't anything straight to highlight the curve. Perhaps it would have helped if the sides were flush to the curved top.

Finishing only took two days. The first day to apply gel stain to emphasize the grain. The following day I lightly sanded the oak leaving the stain in the grain, and then sprayed it with a brown water-based dye. After it dried, I used a spray can of Deft satin lacquer to finish the project.

Mission Style End Table with Slate, Part 1

I've wanted to integrate slate with wood and thought I'd share my progress on an end table that I've just started. I had a piece of plain sawn oak that I want to make more interesting. I glued quarter-sawn white oak veneer to it to make the top more interesting. I plan to apply the Mission Style finish that I described in an earlier posting.

Here is what it looks like after applying Mahogany gel stain. Notice that the grain pattern is now more visible because the pigment gets lodged into the pores. I'm going to let it dry over night and then sand off any stain on the wood surface while leaving the stain in the grain to accentuate the pattern.

After I sanded the stain with 220 grit, I sprayed on a brown water-based dye. To protect the dye from subsequent operations, I then sprayed with Bulls Eye Shellac. Now I'm ready to glue the plywood bottom for the slate and then insert the tile into the tabletop.

Toning for Accent

Its been too cold in the shop lately so I haven't done much finishing this month. I received a tile that a relative had made and used some scraps of cherry to make a frame for it. I routed a pair a beads on the edge and sprayed it with a water based red dye. I usually use a water based finish so to protect the dye, I sealed it with Bulls Eye Clear Shellac. Then I noticed that the beads didn't really stand out. It was only when they cast a shadow did they show well.

This gave me an idea to try toning to simulate a shadow. Toning is selectively applying stain over a finish to highlight some feature. Most articles about toning say you need to spray it but for my frame, I just wanted to apply a little dark stain on each side of the bead. I decided to try an artist marker of the shade I wanted. The product I used is called Prismacolor which is a dye in an alcohol solvent. Applying it on the shellac is a bad idea since it is alcohol based too. This time I needed to seal the shellac. Since it was still too cold to spray a water based finish, I sprayed a coat of lacquer which isn't very temperature sensitive. I then used the fine point edge of the marker and drew a line between the two beads and then on each side. I sprayed another coat of lacquer to seal the dye. It was just enough to get the beads to "pop out" in any lighting.

Night Stand

I wanted to show you what I did with the table top that was used to try different spraying techniques. The center of the top is ash veneer on plywood and the surrounding wood is a figured cherry veneer on plainsawn cherry. I ran out of cherry for the legs and was wondering how close I could match the color using poplar. I sprayed the same red dye as I had used on the cherry, then sealed it by spraying with clear shellac. Finally, I used a water-based finish. The whole finishing process took less than three hours of which two and half were waiting for the wood to dry.

The wood surface on the legs is a little rougher than I want. The water in the dye has caused some of the wood fibers to raise. I could have tried sanding it lightly after applying the shellac, but I was concerned about removing some of the stain. Next time I will first spray the wood with water and sand it smooth after it dries.

I'm please with the poplar and feel that I could have applied veneer over it on the table top and saved some money.

Table Top Re-visited

Finished Table Top

I wanted to apply the technique I previously posted to this table top. Two wood veneers have been used, ash and figured cherry. I wanted to dye stain the ash a light brown color and the cherry red. I spray the dye to get uniform coverage. The challenge is controlling the spray so that it doesn't stain the wrong wood. I accomplish this by masking the wood, just as you would when painting.

To highlight the grain of the ash, I first applied a gel stain. Details about this are in a previous post. The next step is masking the ash with tape and then spraying the surrounding cherry with a red dye. I use water-based dyes made using Homestead's TransTint. Straight lines are easy to tape but the curve looked to be difficult.

Luckily, I had cut another curved section to help glue the top together. I used this as a template for cutting the tape with a knife. This made taping the curved sections easy.

I covered the remainder center of the taped section and then sprayed the red dye on the cherry. I remove the tape immediately so that there would be less chance of the red dye soaking under the tape. As I discuss in my previous post, spraying a mist of dye makes it dry immediately. After the dye completely dried, I applied tape over the cherry and sprayed the ash with a brown dye.

I again removed the tape immediately, and after the ash dried, I sprayed a light coat of shellac to protect the dye from the water-based finish. The final step was to spray the Minwax Polycrylic and then I was done. The top photo shows the finished top.

Mission Style Finish Recipe

My computer desk

I'm really attracted to the Mission Style finish. The character of the wood is really highlighted by this stain treatment. I use quarter-sawn white oak, the traditional wood used in mission style furniture. Cutting wood quarter-sawn reveals an immense pattern of rays and flakes in oak. Their undulating pattern is accentuated by a pigment stain. An additional dye stain gives the wood your desired shade of brown. Traditionally, staining the wood was performed by exposing it to strong ammonia fumes. I tried this once and became the least favorite member of the family.

Over many years, I have created a multiple step process that works reliably. As I have said in previous posts, I tend to use veneer. It is much more affordable and available than solid wood. I purchase my veneer online from Certainly Wood.

Here are the steps and an explanation of why are done.

1. Sand the wood surface until you reach 180 grit. There is no reason to go finer.
2. The pattern in the wood is highlighted by creating contrast between the grain and the wood surface. I use a Mahogany colored Minwax Gel Stain to embed a dark pigment in the grain. Use a disposable glove and spread clumps of stain on the wood. Almost immediately, take paper towels and remove the excess stain on the wood surface by wiping across the grain. This leaves the pigment in the grain and leaves the wood surface almost the same color as what you started with.
3. Let the gel stain dry for 8 hours or until it's solvent can't be smelled.
4. Preferably using an orbital sander, use 220 grit sandpaper to remove the stain color from the wood surface. The pigment stain will remain in the grain which is below the surface. You want to color the surface with the water-based dye stain. I like to use Homestead's TransTint. They have many brown shades located here.
5. Apply a dye stain either by spraying or wiping it on the surface. Spraying is faster but I've wiped it on for many years. I pore a little on and spread it lightly with a 3M maroon colored Scotch-brite pad. You want the get the surface universally wet with thin film of dye. Let the dye dry without wiping it off. This will give it a uniform appearance, as long as you didn't leave puddles of dye liquid on the wood.
6. The dye usually drys within a hour. Spray it with Bulls Eye Clear Shellac to protect the dye from later steps.
7. After the shellac drys (usually in minutes), feel the surface for smoothness. Sometimes the water in the dye will raise the wood fibers. Lightly sand them off using a maroon pad. Don't bare down which may remove the stain.
8. Now you are ready for a finish to protect the wood and the stain. The shellac you applied will protect the stains from most finish treatments. I like to use a water-based satin finish. The satin sheen lowers any glare from light reflecting from the wood surface which obscures the grain. I use Minwax Polycrylic Satin Finish. I'll spray Polycrylic deluded 10% with distilled water. Deluding it makes it easier to spray. Let it dry for several hours and feel if the surface is smooth. If so, spray it one more time and you are done. If its a little rough, wait overnight and sand the surface lightly with 220 grit sandpaper, just enough to remove the rough spots. Spray it again, and then you are done.

I'm sure this seems like many steps but the end product is worth the effort.

Staining two different wood species

A sign of fine woodworking is pairing several wood species together in a project. Here I am making a tabletop using two veneers, ash and cherry. The challenge I frequently have is getting the two different species to be exactly flush. There should be no bump when running your finger across the glue line. I typically use a biscuit joiner to align the tops before gluing, but the finger is sensitive to any bump. I've come to the conclusion that I have to allow for light sanding. But this will prevent me from staining the pieces before glue up.

To accent the pores in the ash, I have applied Minwax Gel Stain Honey Maple. Using a paper towel, I wipe the gel off across the grain. This leaves the colored stain in the pores. Lightly sand the ash using 180 grit sandpaper after the stain has dried. If you can smell the solvent from the stain, then it's still drying. The ash will be dyed after glue up.

After gluing the pieces together, I lightly sand the surface with 180 grit to make the top perfectly smooth. The ash needs to be dyed a light brown and the cherry a light red. I use water based dyes made using Homestead's TransTint. The problem is keeping the dyes from staining the wrong species. I masked the cherry with tape and sprayed the ash with the dye and after it dried, I sprayed a thin coat of Bulls Eye Clear Shellac.

The tape did a great job of protecting the cherry from being dyed. Next I need to apply the red dye. Rather than having to cover the ash with tape, the shellac will prevent the red dye from being absorbed. See how it beads up on the ash. Simply wipe it up with a paper towel.

Let the red dye dry and spray it with shellac. Even after the dye has dried, a water based finish can ruin it, so the shellac creates a barrier between the two. Finally, spray a coat of Minwax Polycrylic on the surface. Let it dry for several hours and run your hand across the surface. Any small bumps can be leveled using a 3M gray colored Scotch-Brite ultra fine pad.

One more coat of Polycrylic and then you have a smooth table top you can be proud of.