Wall Cabinet

I learned a lot about woodworking by reading about it, but the only way I could really see how techniques are put to use was by watching woodworking shows on PBS. There were several that I watched frequently, my favorite being “Rough Cut: Woodworking with Tommy Mac.” Tommy, a Bostonian through and through, was quite fun to watch, and also a brilliant woodworker. On one show he made a wall cabinet, and I decided to build it myself without really having a use for it.

The project was not an easy one, but there really isn’t anything special about it. The reason I write about it is because of the peripheral projects I had to carry out in order to complete it. I built the cabinet out of cherry since I had a lot of it. I cut all the boards to size but then ran into a problem. I had to cut four sets of dovetail joints (one per corner) to form the cabinet, but I had no way to hold the work down while I made the cuts. I tried unsuccessfully for a while to hold the pieces to my bench with a literal tangle of bar clamps before reevaluating. After some research, I discovered that what I needed was a very old device called Moxon vise. I decided to build myself one of those, too. I glued up some boards to make the structure and jaw face and bought some nuts and threaded rod to make the screw mechanism. I spent hours with my drill gouging out gigantic holes for the rod and epoxying them in place. Then, without a lathe, I cut wheels by hand to allow me to operate the clamping mechanism. In the years since the vise has been one of my most important tools. I use it for every single project and often require it for most of the steps. The quality of my work has been greatly elevated just by building that one tool. With my new Moxon vise, I was able to securely clamp each side of the cabinet in place while I cut the dovetails.

Later in the project, when I started to work on the details, I was faced with having to create something called a dentil molding, which, as the name implies, looks similar to a row of teeth. The only way I knew of doing that at the time involved a crosscut sled on the table saw. Of course, I didn’t have one of those, so I went ahead and built one. Not only would it be useful for the dentil molding, but its typical primary use is to cut wood across the grain at a perfect right angle, and I knew I would find times when that capability would be useful. I used some scrap plywood and spent a lot of time fine-tuning the fence and guide runner to make a perfect angle and smooth glide. I went into the project without having thought through the whole process to be sure that I could complete it. It turns out that I couldn’t, but I was able to build the tools I needed to overcome the roadblocks, and they have served my work well ever since. Although the design is not my own (I did add a few details of my own) the cabinet turned out quite well, even though I still don’t know what to do with it.

3 thoughts on “Wall Cabinet”

  1. I liked your perseverance through this project. Half the fun of building stuff is the stubbornness of knowing there is no point in making it other than you wanting to make it. I think the cabinet turned out looking great and you could store possible future projects in it. Nice job.

  2. Your shelf turned out really nice. I totally get what you mean about the importance and ease of jiggs. Moxon vises make it so much easier. I also like how you talked about inspiration from watching Tommy Mac on TV. Watching other people’s projects always inspires me to try it out too.

  3. It’s a good feeling to go through a difficult problem and then realize (through searching for a solution) that someone else had gone through that process a long time ago and thought of a way to do it. It’s sort of amazing to think of the connections and guidelines that people have built in every discipline you could imagine… whether you learn about something like math, physics, or rhetoric in school, there are standards that people developed when first encountering the subject and that thousands of other people have learned and are following. At least for me, it’s cool to think about all of these connections with people I’ve never met.

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