Wine cabinet...I finally finish a Christmas present for my son & family...only a little bit late

This took a while longer to finish than I anticipated. I learned that it’s one thing to know how to do a procedure, I.E. hand cutting a blind dovetail, and quite another to do it in practice and get a project done on time. This had it all…all the fun kinds of joinery, dados, mortise & tenons, blind dovetails, rabbets , dowels and wooden drawer slides.

I’ve made a lot of simple stuff in the past, but wanted to try something I hadn’t done before.

It all started with the old wood wine case that’s in the center of things. My daughter-in-law asked if they could have it since we didn’t use it. When I asked if they had a place for it, she said no. I told them I’d build them a cabinet around it to show it off. It’s finally done.

I designed it completely and wanted to showcase the old wine case, so that resulted in the open sides to show the winery stamp. I wouldn’t normally paint any woodworking project of mine, but this needed to fit in with another piece in their dining area that was wood w/ antique white panels, so I did it.

The doors were made with a Harbor economy doormaker’s shaper set (about $20.00 on sale, I think…I’ve had it a while) and I found that it worked quite well. Since cope & stick door construction is the weakest type, I used my horizintal borer on the shopsmith to drill for & then press in dowels for added strength at each corner.

The top of the lower cabinet is 5/4 oak and I wanted to have a glass like finish, so I used a grain filler before finishing. (more on that later)

The finish includes a semi gloss latex off white enamel on the flat panels with a gel stain applied with a piece of foam & wiped off with another to get the antique look, and then a clear coat to finish.
The oak was wiped with boiled linseed oil which gives the nice golden tone, allowed to cure & finished with a semi gloss polyurethane varnish. No stain was used.

The cabinet top got some extra attention as I wanted a “bar top” glass smooth finish here. Since oak has a porous grain, I wanted to use a grain filler & no one in our shopping area had anything specific or pumice powder and I didn’t think a sanding slurry of sawdust would be enough to fill the oak grain, so I used Durham’s water putty as a powder sprinkled on when I rubbed in the linseed oil. I had read that pumice used that way turns translucent in the oil & fills the grain, so I figured this was worth a try. (always try on a scrap piece first) I worked the water putty powder and linseed oil into the grain & wiped off the excess. I gave it several days to completely dry & finish sanded. I applied a couple of coats of Zinsser’s sanding sealer, light sanding between then several coats of polyurethane varnish. After the last brushed coat of poly, I sanded lightly with 320 on an electric orbital hand sander to get it dead flat, then made a cloth ball pad & wiped 3 coats of poly. The finish is like a mirror with no rubbing.

I really consider this to be a “benchmark” project for me in that I got to do pretty much everything needed to make any piece of furniture. It’s a great confidence builder. (Also, my wife said, “wow. if you can do this, there’s some other stuff I can think of for you to make”, so it looks like I’ll not lack for projects in the future.

-- Accuracy is not in your power tool, it's in you