This wine cabinet took me a while to build. I came up with a design using AutoCAD in my off hours at work. This saved me a lot of trouble because I had all the finished pieces dimensioned out. This way I was able to dedicate a fews hours here and there on specific components of the cabinets prior to assembly.
I started with the case, which was made out of oak veneered plywood. I rabbitted the back sides of the case to receive a 1/4" plywood back, but I didn't glue the back in place yet. Normally, inserting the back piece helps to square up the cabinet, but I knew that assembly and finishing would be much easier if I glued in the back piece at the end.
Next, I built the face frame. I wanted to add inset doors which would be surrounded by a decorative bead on the face frame. Some people cut the face frame thin, and then run a bead on a seperated piece of stock and cut the bead off. They then apply the bead to the inside of the face frame with glue and pins. This way is easier, because you only have to miter the bead at the corner. I ran the bead on the actual frame, so assembly was a little trickier and, if you mess up, you have to mill down and cut a new piece of stock and then run the bead and try again. In hindsight, I would have pinned the bead to the frame after.
The drawers were also tricky. I made another mistake with them. I didn't leave enough clearance between the drawers and the side of the face frame. When I added the doors, the drawer hit the side of the door. I fixed it by planing 1/4" off of the sides of the drawer and moving the drawer over to the side. However, the cabinet doors still have to be opened all the way in order for the drawer to pull out - another mistake I don't think I will make again.
The wine rack wasn't too difficult. I cut the strips to width and then ran a bevel on the two sides on the router table. Then I cut all of the strips to length. The trick was to design the assembly so that I could slide the 4 panels in and out. I knew that it would be impossible to stain the boards in place. I accomplished this by pinning the bottom runners to the floor and the top runners to the bottom of the shelf. This way, I could slide the panels in and out from the back.
The cabinet is designed to hold 16 bottles of wine in the racks. Liquor bottles in the bottom right. wine and bottle openers in the drawers, and glasses on the middle shelf. Later, I may add some racking in the middle to allow me to hang taller wine glasses upside down.
I got a piece of nice marble from work for the top. The marble has hints of brown and green in it, so I wanted to find a finish that would work. Most people baulked when I said I was going to make the cabinet green, and I had to play with the recipe for a long time before I came up with a finish that I liked. My goal was to accent the colors in the marble with a stain, not paint, because I wanted the grain of the oak to show through. I was pretty proud of the result.
The inset doors were also a new challenge for me. Modern european hinges allow you to turn one of three screws to adjust the door and get an even reveal all the way around the cabinet. These hinges are the reason that inset doors are even coming back. Before these hinges, making inset doors required a lot of time and craftsmenship. Basically, using the hinges that I used, I made the doors over sized. Then, starting with the bottom of the door, I made light tappering cuts until the door fit just inside the face frame. The goal is to create an even gap, or reveal, that is the exact same width as the distance between the two leaves of the hinge when it is closed. This is usually about 3/32nds".
I made the cabinet feet to bring the cabinet height to 34 3/4". The marble is 1 1/4" bringing the total height to 36".
Jessica got me a really cool present for my birthday. She took my signature and had it made into a brand. I told my mom that now, when the appraisers are looking at my work on Antique Roadshow, they will know it was an authentic Stephen Mann piece...obviously worth millions.
A lot of woodworkers ascribe to the philosophy of tackling at least one new skill per project. I think this is especially important when you are starting out. For me, running the beads around the face frame and building inset doors were new skills. Making mistakes and learning from them is another important inevitability in woodworking. Making the drawers too close to the side was incredibly frustrating and difficult to remedy - so frustrating that I will never make that mistake again.
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