Kitchen Remodel #14: The Veneering gets going again

Well it’s been 232 days since I last posted on my Kitchen remodel. It’s not that I haven’t done any work. It’s just that I haven’t posted.

I’d built the base cabinets and installed them in earlier blogs and it was time to get the drawer fronts created.

Let me say this, “My wife is a trooper, she is willing to live with the mess (begrudgingly), but she still puts food on the table and doesn’t make me take her out to eat until it’s finished.

I started the veneering. I cut plywood that would cover a complete cabinet – all drawers. That way I could do the veneer matching and sequencing that was required. I knew that my design of the drawers would mean that the entire drawer front was not covered in my designed veneer and so i was able to fill in the edges and the pieces between the drawers with mahogany veneer. The regular veneer is Eucalyptus Burl veneer. I bought it about 6 years ago.

This would be the drawer fronts on a 4 drawer cabinet.

This was the back (inside) of the drawer fronts that will never be seen by anyone. Normally you use backer veneer, but to me that would mean buying some more so i used some maple veneer that I already had. This was quilted maple.

Then the drawer fronts are all separated into their individual pieces. I marked on the back the cabinet number and the drawer number so that I would be able to get them installed in the correct sequence on the cabinet.

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It was in the middle of the winter time and so I moved to the bathroom of the shop which I keep heated. I set up a small work surface on the laundry sink that is in the bathroom.

The strips are Yellow Birch and are about 1/16” thick. I cut them on my bandsaw and sanded them on my thickness sander.

The clamps are rubber bands cut from truck tubes that I got free from a local tire repair shop. Why they would keep old blown out tubes are outside my realm or wondering, but I’m glad they had them and I got them free.

Here’s my blog on these clamps

Here are the edge banding on the drawer fronts.

The edge banding could be installed on both ends at the same time, but you could only do one side at a time. So it became, do one edge then trim, do the other edge then trim, do both ends.

The trimming was first started on the router table, but I was experiencing some chip out so i went to the table saw to finish them all.

I them made my jigs for doing the cloud lifts for the drawer fronts. these were 1/2” mdf with 1/4” mdf as the support base.

The drawer applique would be installed in the jib and I would draw the cut lines so that it could be cut down.

The piece would be trimmed on the bandsaw to almost the final dimension.

I used a top bearing 15 deg router bit to trim to the final size.

I used double faced tape to hold the pieces so that they could be trimmed to final size.

In a couple of cases the tape didn’t hold.

But when cutout and installed they came out great.

I used sapwood on the top piece and heart wood on the bottom and the sides. The edge banding also followed the same rules.

The ends of the top and bottom pieces also needed to have the 15 deg cut also. I made another jig to hold the pieces for trimming.

The applique covered over the mahogany veneer that was placed around the edges of the veneered up pieces.

I used paper clamps to hold the pieces while glueing.

And also spring clamps.

The pegs for the drawer fronts were made with Blackwood. 3/8” square

The holes were cut with a mortise machine.

Installed in the fronts.

Now the drawers fronts are semi complete.

-- What happens in the workshop stays in the workshop. No wait that doesn't sound right. Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †