Spalted Maple Shelfy Cabinet

 Well this has been an absolute banner year for woodworking accomplishments. Yes, I have completed another project! That makes it two. In fact much of the work on this was done last year, all that remained was to drill it for dowels, finish it, and glue it. Of course easier said than done! 

I had a couple slabs of some unusual spalted maple from a log I milled on October 22 2010.

It wasn't really spectacularly spalted, but had some very unusual light flaking distributed throughout. I had seen a fantastic cabinet in similar wood done by a student at the IPSFC so I knew I wanted to do something with this rare wood.

 

Over the years I had in fact given most of my slabs of these away, I had two remaining when I cut into them in 2023. I quickly found that a lot of it was too soft to use, consequently I was left with very little material and had to downsize my dreams. 

Since I was already building a small open cabinet in beech, I just piggybacked this along for most of the build. 

So, picking up the project when it was nearly done, I have selected alder for the main rear panel as I thought it was something of a match with the darker parts of the maple. And for the smaller panel I selected Manitoba Maple, AKA Box Elder, as it seemed to match the 'flakes' in the maple. And both of these were fairly tame and would not distract from the main event, the flakes in the maple!

You can see that there is a hint of colour in one corner of the Manitobe Maple, which I thought was rather cheeky of me to include! You may also notice that the alder panel is actually too short, a fact which eluded me until after I had spent a lot of time planing and shellacing it! Fortunately I have a lot of alder so no harm done other to my self esteem. 

The last step before glue up was to pre-finish everything. Luckily it was a simple project so the finishing was correspondingly, well, simple! However that did not prevent me from undertaking a lot of very proactive dawdling while trying to make a decision on the finish. I tried a few options but found most of them were turning the flakes in the wood into an orange hue. Shellac did not have this effect nearly as much, so shellac it was. 

Even for a simple project like this the glue up was not simple! However it went well. 

And finally here it is, temporarily resting on another very similar shelf of arbutus from a few years ago. Even though they are similar, the arbutus shelf has a bold large panel and all the other wood is calm, whereas the spalted maple cabinet is the opposite, the panels are calm and the cabinet body is lively. Quite a different effect from two similar cabinets. 

Next up, a tansu inspired cabinet with sliding doors and Douglas Fir burl veneer panels! I hope also to get back to the glass display cabinet I abandoned a year or so ago. And I have an idea for some lamp sconces I would like to do.

Oak Box

I once made a sacred vow to never have more than one project on-the-go at a time. Despite this, earlier this year I gave up on the two cabinet projects I was well into at the time, and instead did a deep dive into a simple box with a sliding lid. Apparently three is the sweet spot!

The top and sides are red oak, the bottom Port Orford cedar, all milled from logs by myself some years ago. I gave up on my wood milling, but I am still benefiting from some interesting pieces in my wood pile.

I decided to use finger joints. Originally I was going to pin them as well, but decided that was not necessary for strength. 

I cut the finger joints using a vintage horizontal milling machine I picked up last year. I purchased a 3/4" end mill for it in order to cut the finger joints in one pass. It worked well, but it was good that I did a few test cuts as it seemed to cut a couple thousands of an inch oversized, which added up over the length of the joint. To solve this I just spaced each cut a little further apart to match the slightly wider cuts. 

For finish I applied several coats of shellac to the inside, while on the outside I used a Watco type oil. Each piece was prefinished before clamping. The top and bottom were shellaced on both sides, I did not want any oil evaporating into the interior over time. I think the figure adds a bit of interest to an otherwise utilitarian piece.

 

In order to clamp the finger joints I had to make special offsets to prevent the clamps from pressing on the ends of the fingers. Although this was not an especially large piece, the finger joints and prefinishing required quite a bit of care with glue application to prevent squeeze out.

The box is an odd size, relatively long, narrow, and tall. That is because it is intended to hold some specific family heirlooms. 

Another Shelf

In 2023 I had started an ambitious Arbutus display cabinet with legs, with the intention of giving it as a gift. However with the deadline only a few months away, I realized that it would not be completed in time so instead I decided to build a small wall-hanging shelf similar in design one I had previously made. 

It is made of beech with some unusual staining in it, and two rear panels, one of Port Orford Cedar and the other of an unknown burl.

The beech log was milled by myself in 2010. I air dried it for a year, ran it through my home made kiln, and stored it. I had several pieces initially, but gave most of them away. I did retain a couple pieces for myself fortunately! 

The alignment of the stains is not perfect, but nonetheless is quite interesting and unusual. One notable screw up I made along the way was a misalignment of the dowel pins. In order to recover I had to go with biscuits on the top. Worked out OK but I was sweating it for a while.

It all came together well, with handmade consoles and hangers. This photo is still before assembly but gives an idea. 

At the same time I dimensioned the pieces for a similar cabinet made out of spalted maple. Hopefully more to follow on this one later!