Dan,
I recommend that you seal all surfaces of made of cherry wood trim BEFORE installing it in your bathroom. Cherry is easily attacked by water and will develop mold and mildew stains which you may not be able to sand out, and rot relatively easily. In my former house, I did one of the bathrooms using cherry, and the edging of the butcher block table top in its kitchen/breakfast area.
My Projects:
My most recent project is an attempt to better organize my garage/shop, which is horribly unorganized at present, but well lighted with lots of electrical outlets and heat. I recently began installing French cleats on the walls, so I can change the location of hanging cabinets and tool boards and such to fit my needs as they change. Last night trial hung 2 cabinets I recently made - cleat system works well! The cabinets are incomplete - no doors or finish coat yet. In taking on this project, one of my underlying purposes was to force myself to try several different techniques using several different tools, to better prepare myself for some more significant furniture projects - entertainment center, coffee table (possibly with a marble or granite inlaid top), bookcases, and filing cabinet of various hardwoods. I used my TS 55 and a pair of joined guide rails to cut plywood into pieces for the boxes. I used my LS 32 and 1400 router to make shelf pin holes in the cabinet sides - and learned the importance of paying close attention to your references especially when your pieces are not an integer of 32mm! (They came out perfect, but I almost screwed them up multiple times!) I used my Domino machine to join the pieces forming the cabinet boxes. and to add reinforcing front edges to the plywood shelves. I found it much more reliable to simply pencil mark where I wanted to make a Domino mortise than to rely on the spacing pins, and improved my glue application technique as I progressed. Among the lessons I learned is that it is better to adjust the Domino machine to cause the end grain of the cabinet side to protrude slightly above the plane of the horizontal top and bottom cabinet box members so that you can easily rout/sand off the protruding edges to be flush with the plane of the face veneer of the top and bottom members. IF the cabinet top and bottom members stand proud of the cabinet sides, you'll quickly sand through the face veneer and still not have the corners come out flush. (Don't ask how I know this!) Setting up shop has also required additional wiring changes for various 220V machines including TS, cyclone, jointer/planer and air compressor. There are multiple electrical plug configurations used in USA approved for 1-phase, 230V, 15-20A machines; some of mine are twist-lock and some are not. And I have been struggling to find the right combinations of various piping, fittings and hoses to connect my Oneida cyclone unit, Dust Deputy, and CT-22 vacuum to my table saw with router table extension, jointer/planer and various Festools. That has proven a much bigger challenge and frustration that I could have imagined. Different manufacturers apparently use very differently sized units for mm and inches, because items allegedly designed for the same nominal size fitting don't fit. And last night I made my first two stupid moves with my Festool TS 55 when trimming my shelves and beveling the French cleats for the backs of the cabinets. First I cut through my sacrificial plywood layer into my MFT top, but only a small depth and distance, apparently because the saw hung up on the edge of the board to be trimmed when I was checking the depth stop setting before making the actual cut. Second, when cutting the bevel of the French cleat, I forgot to move the MFT fence further back from the rubber edge strip of the guide rail. I can assure you that the Festool 28 tooth general purpose ATB blade does a fine job of trimming aluminum! As soon as I realized what I had hit, the cut was clean and complete, except there were these peculiar shiny little bits appearing near the end of the cut. I plan to leave that 45 degree notch in the end of the fence as a reminder.
Next on my purchase list is a HVLP spray unit - big ticket given my amateur/hobbyist status. Jerry Work has provided recommendations and comments both on this site and directly to me, as well as authoring an excellent comparison and teaching article that is linked to the Target Coatings website. Are any other members of FOG using HVLP to finish their projects? What equipment did you select and why? For some of the furniture projects I have in mind, I will need to stain pieces made of various woods to color match them. For others, I will need to apply a black ?stain? to simulate oriental lacquer. For still others, clear finish. And for Festool storage cabinets, painted surfaces to match Festool green and gray would be nice. Any suggestions and recommendations are welcome.
Dave R.
We have a covered parking area in front of the garage for my wife's car.
