As its yet another black hole with rain and snow falling and at 11am I've just switched on the light to see the keyboard I thought I'd add another of my stories rather than sitting around moaning about the dire weather.
In 2009 I did a huge TV restoration and following is just a small but hopefully interesting part of this restoration. The wooden TV cabinet was a wreck and rather than rebuild to original specification I decided to experiment with veneering. I designed new veneer layout consisting of Sapele cross banding and inlay panels of Sapele Pommelle. This story is about how deep I go into my projects and to what lengths I go to achieve my desired results. I wanted to install some nice contrasting veneer stringing; stringing is readily available in standard sizes and veneer banding comes in many assorted designs and sizes. I looked at my veneer stock and selected two contrasting veneers one light the other dark coloured.
The cabinet was measured as to longest stringing and a couple of inches added to the length for good measure. The veneers were arranged; glued using ordinary woodworking adhesive and clamped tightly between pressure boards allowing a full day for the glue to fully harden; greaseproof paper was added between veneer and pressure boards to prevent sticking; care was taken to ensure each joint surface was not glue starved by applying the glue with a brush. I made extra width to yield spare strings. Once the pressure boards were removed the result pleased me; dead flat plywood? Now to cut the strings but how to do this accurately enough? Saw bench or bandsaw but why not make a proper cutting guide and as an experiment why not make a new cutting tool?
I made a few sketches of my ideas and settled on a guide board which would fully support the veneer being cut and also guide the cutter very accurately. Having a lathe is a huge asset allowing me to make all kinds of useful items; I used the lathe to make the new cutting tool then made the guide board top suit; it worked perfectly so now I had at last plenty of home made veneer stringing but this was for the longer more straight lengths; I needed to add stringing around very tight curves so once again a few sketches and I cut out two pairs of formers; these formers were covered with Sellotape to prevent sticking and as before the veneers were arranged and glued then clamped tightly in the formers forcing the veneers to adopt the shape of the formers; a day was allowed for the glue to harden and what a pleasure it was to remove the formers to find perfectly curved veneer. The single curved strings were cut away using the bandsaw.
All this took a lot of time and effort but this is how I like doing my projects; now I could measure the thickness of each string; as expected the obscure thickness didn't correspond with any standard router cutter and I didn't fancy attempting using a home made scratch stock in fear of causing damage to the newly veneered panels especially around the curved sections. Quite a bit of thought went in to finding a solution but in the end I thought why not make my own router cutter? I have silver steel in stock and an engineering lathe so it makes sense to me. I used 1/4" dia silver steel and in the lathe turned it to exact diameter to match the stringing thickness. I hand filed a flat at the end to form a "D bit" and added a taper at the end to give a cutting edge. I don't have heating facilities to heat such bits to cherry red for hardening and tempering but I thought given the few grooves to cut I could soon make another duplicate cutter if the original blunted? Cutting depth would be around 1/8" so I added a longer flat for chip clearance. I had never heard of anyone making their own router cutters before so this was entirely new to me.
To cut a long story a bit shorter in use the new router cutter worked a treat and only started to blunt just as the last cuts were made; what a relief this was but I was also delighted the idea had worked so well. Now all I needed to do was to glue in the strings into the grooves and bring them flush before finishing? With the strings securely glued home I set about hand scraping using a newly sharpened cabinet scraper; this looked extremely rough in action but as the waste string was scraped away the string became much tidier until it was scraped dead flush were it proved to be a perfect it; Such small success are worth all the time and effort put in; lots of frustration is usually experienced after all many of the things I attempt are new to me so untried but when they come together as well as this it is such a joy. I'm only limited by my imagination and I have a good imagination; its worth experimenting and taking chances; I could so easily have wasted many hours work had this experiment failed but I have plenty of confidence and endless patience whilst on a project. I wasn't born with patience it's something I've developed over the years; at times when things are not going as expected I feel like jumping up and down and screaming but this only makes matters worse; if something is going wrong there is a valid reason for it doing so and the reason is me so I try doing the work a different way; I'm too stupid to quit when things get out of hand; if there is a problem then I reckon there must also be a solution?
As I say this is just a very small part of a huge TV restoration but I enjoyed the challenges thrown at me with this stringing and having successfully completed it I now have a lot more knowledge not only of stringing but in making a router cutter if needed? I'm not the sharpest tool in the kit but I'm stubborn in the extreme. The pictures tell the story better and the finished cabinet is still delightful to look at. Now where is the warm sunshine I need so much?
Kind regards, Col.
- Contrasting Veneers.jpg (334.1 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
- Laminating formers..jpg (276.96 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
- Laminated stringing.jpg (294.27 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
- Laminated strings.jpg (309.99 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
- Cutting close up.jpg (295.48 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
- Cutting stringing grooves. (7).jpg (306.4 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
- How stringing looks before scraping..jpg (310.36 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
- Looks rough scraping stringing..jpg (391.9 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
- Home made router cutter..jpg (294.44 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
- Complete cabinet side removed..jpg (275.12 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
- What a joy..jpg (415.23 KiB) Viewed 3877 times
