Sapele Nightstands with Claro Walnut Panels

[edwarmr]

[member=44099]Cheese[/member]

Yeah I definitely went old school  ;D I don’t have a PC so things like Sketch Up are unavailable to me on my iPad.

And I agree 100% on the wax. I used Minwax paste wax to coat the pieces. Special dark paste wax on the sapele and natural paste wax on the maple.

[member=71257]WillB[/member]

You’re welcome!

And you’re absolutely right about the width needing to be spot on. If anything you need your drawer to be more on the narrower side width wise so you can shim it out for a perfect fit. That’s exactly what I ended up doing. This is the shim set I got. It’s a little spendy but worked great.https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B007UQ74VA?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

I honestly don’t foresee too many problems with the slides even with expansion and contraction. The drawer and slides won’t expand much in width. They will expand a bit in height but I left maybe 0.015” to 0.020” clearance between the mating dovetails height wise. So the drawers should stay tight side to side keeping the motion smooth and if they expand in height there is wiggle room to keep them running smooth as well. Of course only time will tell

Thanks again for the kind words!

[member=60777]Bugsysiegals[/member]

So I had the Incra LS Positioner attached to my MFT/3 at the time and used it with my CMS-VL with a custom setup I made. The fence was actually not Incra. It was the Jessem TA fence and I used the Mite-R-Slide II to cut the dovetails. I have since sold that setup and I am in between tables. I will be ordering the Incra table in the near future.

Thanks! Yeah I was a little worried about scratching them too but I don’t think I need to worry. I coated them with Minwax polyurethane followed by paste wax so I hope they hold up!

 

[Steve1]

One's eyes are drawn to the wooden drawer slides, but as I look closely, I find other really nice details.

It looks like on swinging doors, you banded it with perhaps 1/2" profiled wood (is that sapele also ?).  I suppose that hides the rail/stile joinery and end grain on the stile, and adds a nice finished touch. 
Did you do that to the drawer front also ? 

What I like about this forum is how I can learn from the work of others.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

One's eyes are drawn to the wooden drawer slides, but as I look closely, I find other really nice details.

It looks like on swinging doors, you banded it with perhaps 1/2" profiled wood (is that sapele also ?).  I suppose that hides the rail/stile joinery and end grain on the stile, and adds a nice finished touch. 
Did you do that to the drawer front also ? 

What I like about this forum is how I can learn from the work of others.

That is known as a cock-bead or astragal. It is applied to overhang the face of the drawer front or door by the amount of the radius. Sometimes there is a thin flat groove separating the bead from the edge. This can also be called a quirk-bead.
It's a fairly old furniture technique. Not really sure of the origin though? maybe to cover up some "less than stellar" dovetails? Apprentice marks?

 

[Steve1]

Thank you for the explanation.

 

[edwarmr]

One's eyes are drawn to the wooden drawer slides, but as I look closely, I find other really nice details.

It looks like on swinging doors, you banded it with perhaps 1/2" profiled wood (is that sapele also ?).  I suppose that hides the rail/stile joinery and end grain on the stile, and adds a nice finished touch. 
Did you do that to the drawer front also ? 

What I like about this forum is how I can learn from the work of others.

[member=65451]Steve1[/member]

It is curly walnut cock beading. I used it on both the drawers and the door panel as well as around the rails and stiles on the side and back panels (regular claro walnut on the back and sides). I agree with [member=58857]Crazyraceguy[/member] that it can cover some things up  ;D The ends of my rails and stiles were not perfect and the beading makes it look a lot better. It did make mortising the Brusso offset knife hinges on the doors very difficult though. I created a jig to route the profile and just squared the corners up with a chisel.

In hindsight I wish I didn't dye the walnut panels so dark. In certain lighting and at certain angles they look incredible but where they sit in my bedroom the lighting hides the figure somewhat. Live and learn I guess.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

In hindsight I wish I didn't dye the walnut panels so dark. In certain lighting and at certain angles they look incredible but where they sit in my bedroom the lighting hides the figure somewhat. Live and learn I guess.

That is kind of the live nature of wood. It does its own thing. I'm not particularly a fan of staining walnut at all, the downside is that it will fade and get lighter if you don't. Which is quite the contrast with cherry, doing the opposite, getting darker.
The finish you use can have some effect on it too.
Over all, great looking project.

 

[edwarmr]

I wouldn’t use a regular stain on walnut but dye stains are great. It enhances the curl if you apply it, sand it off, and repeat a couple times. The dye stays in the curl but is removed from the surface wood by sanding. This increases the contrast. Also the dye is UV resistant so the color should last a long time.

I also did a thin strip of black glaze on the curly walnut door front right by the top raised portion of the panel. This added some nice contrast as well.

I’ll have to post some pictures of the matching bed frame I made 5 years ago. I like the dye color I used on the bed frame better. I should have recorded what mixture of dye and alcohol I used.

Thanks for the encouraging words

 

[fritter63]

Beautiful! That's a whole lot of 'I hate metal slides" in there!

Please let us know how those hold up to warping over time.

 

[Steve1]

I have a sapele project coming up, so the photos here were very helpful.

I did some finish tests, and come up with pretty similar to what the OP did.  But I used Tung oil rather than Danish, not sure if there is much difference.
Top to bottom is:
- GF Hi-Performance poly only - not bad but grain is much too visible for my taste
- tung oil, then blonde shellac, then grain filler, then GF poly - my favorite.  Really brings out the ribbons
- garnet shellac, right hand side additionally has grain filler, then GF poly - also pretty good, I like it better with the grain filler.
- Khaya (african mahogany), with garnet shellac/grain filler - probably will use this for inset panels