Small Cabinet/ TV stand

[big tim]

On the 1st of Jan. I posted a thread for some finishing help to finish this
cabinet for my daughter to match an Ikea side board she has. Several forum members responded with suggestions, all were appreciated but I went with the suggestion from Cabinetman.
Here is a picture of the cabinet I made before finishing.

Here with the doors open:

This is the sideboard is has to match;

And here it is finished and at my daughter's place.

I used aniline dyes dissolved in water. 2 parts Ebony and 1 part Ruby dyes after testing various combinations on a test piece first of course. I used half of one of those household combination scrubpad/spongesto apply the dye.
I rubbed the dye in first with a circular motion to work the dye into the
pores, then rubbed with the grain and then wiped off the excess.
I finished off with 8 coats of oil based MinWax wipe-on satin poly on the outside of the cabinet and about 4 to 5 on the inside.
The cabinet ended up a bit too shiny compared to the sideboard. I wonder if I could have used a flattening agent in the poly? My daughter is very happy with it though.
Thanks for looking, constructive comments will always be welcomed.

Tim

[Pappy]

Fantastic match job, both on the construction and the finish.

[SARGE..g-47]

Nice job, Big Tim... You said it was shinier than the side-board. Multiple layers of poly is going to do that even in satin. I notice that it sits in the window with direct sun-light hitting it. I'm sure it tones down at night. over-cast and if the drapes were closed.

In the future you might try a rub out after the final coat to bring the lustre down a shade. I am having to do it as I made a country kitchen table from white oak and 4 chairs from Indonesian rubber tree wood salvaged from pallets from my work. Both are open grain, but the parawood is tighter than the white oak. Had to use two shades darker in the parawood than the white oak to get the match.

After 8 coats of wipe on.. I still had too much gloss IMO for country furniture design. Country furniture shouldn't have much shine at all. The way I do it is to carefully and gently rub it down with 1000 grit wet-dry using mineral spirits as the lubricant. Strickly hand rubbed as you can't attain the "light feel" that the actual hand relays to you. You want the slightest of pressure applied which is difficult with any form of sanding block. It will take the shine down a tad or a tad and a half, whatever that means. ha.. ha...

I would say have a good evening.. but I had to swear off that stuff as it confuses too many people into thinking they could be in a time warp or something it appears. :>)

[John Hunter]

Very nice!

[Ken Massingale]

Great job, Tim.
Ken

[Ed62]

Nice job. I like the looks of it.

Ed

[ChrisD]

Excellent match, Tim, although I'm pretty sure your joinery is much better than IKEA's.

I think the little Swedish company's got some something to worry about...

[Stormbringer]

Way nice Tim! I also liked the unfinished look before the stain. You taking orders?

Greg

[GPA61]

Excellent work Tim.

[bigstick509]

Very Nice

[SHADOWFOX]

That looks awesome, Tim! Thank you for sharing!

[big tim]

Thanks everyone for the compliments.
Sarge, thanks for that tip on rubbing down the finish. I still want to investigate the posibility of using a flattening agent. I'll send an e-mail to MinWax and see what they have to say.
I used dowels for all the joinery, Chris, using the "DowelMax". A fairly expensive gadget, but beautifully made and very accurate. I'm not sure I
would do that again though for the cabinet part itself, using it on the base is fine but for the cabinet you end up with a situation like this:

The sides and back were glued and assembled with dowels, but in this
picture I was just double checking the alignment before glue-up. I probably could have used fewer dowels, but this was my first try using dowels.
What I did was first glueing the dowels into the sides and back which you
can do one dowel at a time, but then you have to apply the glue to the bottom panel, all the dowel holes and the dowels. The dowels swell up pretty fast and you need to do it quickly and use tremedous pressure to clamp it all together. I laid the assembly on its back on the end of the bench and used the twin vise and bench dogs to apply the pressure as well as barclamps to clamp it.
Anyway it turned out allright. Live and learn.

Tim

[mater]

Very nice work.

[wareagle]

Really nice job Tim.

[Wood_workur]

I'm not a big fan of very contemporary furniture, but that if beautiful.