Spice Cabinet: Update 2

There’s no woodworking class tonight because it’s spring break (SPRING BREAK, woo!) but I thought I’d post the photos from last week’s class so I’d be all caught up. I was getting kind of discouraged and moped around the shop a bit complaining about what a pain making the diamond-patterned panel was. But then it came together by the end of the night and I went home happy.

The long skinny checkerboard panel. The issues is that I need a big square panel of diamonds rather than squares and this panel is too skinny to cut a square out on the bias.

I cut the corners off the rectangle and rearranged them to make a panel of diamonds. This method gives me minimal waste but was a real pain to figure out exactly because I’m horrible at geometry (my instructors were a lot of help).

I applied glue to the edges and used tape to clamp them together (please excuse my characteristically tidy workspace in the background). This blue painter’s tape works well for this purpose because it’s a little stretchy.

I found this piece of mahogany to use for the box of the cabinet and to border the diamond panel on the cabinet door. It’s hard to tell from this picture, but it really is stunning. Mahogany usually has a very tight grain so to find a piece with dramatic grain like this one is fairly rare.

I cut two pieces of mahogany for the sides of the cabinet and marked where the dadoes (or grooves) for the shelves will go.

Then I cut the dadoes with a panel router.

Next week I need to sand the diamond panel, cut it to size, and glue on border of mahogany. I also need to work on getting the cabinet box put together. Since I missed two weeks of class when I was out of town I don’t think I’ll be able to totally finish this project before the end of the semester. But if that’s the case I can hopefully finish it in the fall. My spices have survived this long without a posh cabinet to call home so I think they’ll make it a few more months.