Arts and Crafts style vanity and linen cabinet
This is a small project I worked on for a bathroom remodel with BJ Larson Remodeling. I’ve never been a huge fan of this style of woodwork, but I really dig the way it turned out. The vanity and linen cabinet are made out of quarter sawn red oak. I’m not doing the finish work on this job, but if I did, I would use a gel stain top coated with amber shellac. I’ve used that finish before on this style of woodwork and it looks really sharp.
I filmed a time-lapse of myself installing the drawer boxes and drawer fronts and included it in my Spring 2011 “test footage” demo reel. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that I accidentally bumped the tracks when I was filming the time-lapse. I did a lot of work in post production trying to smooth it out but was unable to do so. My solution was to edit the “bump” to be on beat with the song. If you are a fan of the TV show Dexter, you might notice in the intro to the show they do the same thing with one of there macro shots. I wonder it it was intentional or an accident. Either way, I think Dexter’s intro is brilliant.
Spring 2011 video dolly test phase footage edited along with some old shots I worked on with Josh Van Patter (joshuavp.com).
3d hidden drawer mechanism clips by Mike Prom.
Camera dollies and custom woodworking designed & MADE by Brian Grabski.
(www.designedandmade.com/2010/08/30/time-lapse-dolly/).
Edited by Brian Grabski
Music credit: Elbow – With Love
Today, I helped/watched my designer buddy Chris VanKlei tile my little brother’s back splash in our work-in-progress kitchen. Here are some pictures of today’s progress.
Hi,
I had a question about finishes. I mainly use pine and like to use a stain to get the color I want and then use polyurethane to get a gloss and protecting coat on top. My question is what is the difference between polyurethane, shellac, and lacquer? I have only used polyurethane and was just wondering if shellac and lacquer can do the same job, or have better benefits than using polyurethane. Also do you have any favorite types of finish that would work well with pine?
thanks for your help, and keep making the awesome videos!
-Ben
There is a big difference between poly, shellac, and lacquer. For now, forget about shellac. Lacquer works great if you are set up with a sprayer and a ventilated work area. Lacquer is an evaporation finish. Each layer you apply “melts” into the previous on, making for one solid layer of finish. It’s what most people use in industry.
Conventional products like Poly and Varnish are film finishes. You must sand between each coat of finish so the next layer has something to bind to. These finishes dry slow which makes them great for brushing. The trade off is that dust can settle into the wet finish affecting the quality of your work.
Two tips for preventing dust from getting into your wet finish:
- Vacuum everything in your work area and get rid of as much dust as possible, including the floors. Vacuum after each time you sand your finish, before you apply the following coat.
- Using a weed sprayer, mist the floor with water each time before you go to apply your finish. You can get a weed sprayer at any home and garden store.
As far as a favorite finish, buy Traditional Finishing Techniques. Read the article on Oil-varnish Mixture by Garrett Hack on page 74.
If you want to learn more about all the different types of finish, buy Understanding Wood Finishing: How to Select and Apply the Right Finish. It is the bible of finishing.
Good Luck and always ware a respirator.
Brian
How-to video on brushing oil-based enamel. This video shows step-by-step the process I use for finishing “fitted furniture” style kitchens by hand.
What are the Whiskey Sessions?
The answer: Kicking it with my good friend Mike Prom, drinking Knob Creek, talking shop, and sketching out big ideas. The by-product of the first Whiskey Session was the hidden drawer mechanism that we collaborated on. Now we are working on our second project, a Mulit-Use Chair/Table. The design is pretty much ready to rock, and I will be starting on the prototype very soon. Once the prototype is complete, we may potentially do a production run of 100+, manufacturing all the parts using a multi-axis CNC router.
- Brian Grabski, author of the briangrabski.com, and president of Minneapolis-based designed & MADE Custom Woodworking. Specializing in custom cabinetry, furniture, and fine finishes, available at www.designedandmade.com. Brian can be reached at 612.702.9972 or e-mail to brian@designedandmade.com
I’ve been working on this project since the beginning of summer. I just completed the install and now I’m gearing up to enamel all the cabinets and trim by hand. I will be filming a “How-To” video on the painting process and writing an article to accompany the video. It should be fun and an educational experience!
Features that make this kitchen especially unique
- Furniture quality cabinetry
- AAA Quilted Maple veneered interiors in the furniture “uppers”
- Curved raised panel cabinet doors on the sink base cabinet
- Soft closing doors and drawers
- Solid brass full-mortise barrel hinges on the furniture upper doors
- Brian Grabski, author of the briangrabski.com, and president of Minneapolis-based designed & MADE Custom Woodworking. Specializing in custom cabinetry, furniture, and fine finishes, available at www.designedandmade.com. Brian can be reached at 612.702.9972 or e-mail to brian@designedandmade.com
How the Locking Mechanism was designed
The hidden drawer mechanism was designed by both myself and my friend Mike Prom. We came up with the original concept one evening when we had two too many cocktails out in the front porch.
I had heard about the desk in “National Treasure 2″ from a customer a couple months earlier, but I hadn’t seen it. After we started talking about it we watched it instantly on Netflix. We skipped to the scene in that movie and paused it several times to see if we could get anything useful out of it, we didn’t. I am pretty sure that Hollywood’s design doesn’t actually work in real life.
Mike sells high-end AutoCAD software to companies like Case and Caterpillar. He also does consulting for these companies, teaching them how to use the programs he sells. So in other words, he is very proficient. The mechanism was first conceptualized on paper, and then designed, using a program called Inventor.
Mike was able to provide me with 3d drawings with dimensions of every piece of the mechanism. Two of the linkages failed during the preliminary stages of construction, so we had to redesign them for a second time, and then again for the third and final time. About 40hrs later, I had it working. I shot a short “bootleg video” and put it on YouTube, and then posted it to FaceBook so Mike could see it in working condition. One week later it had 8,000 views.
“Bootleg Video” posted to facebook:
How the Hidden Mechanical Locking Mechanism works
The hand-crafted custom bookcase requires you pull open each of the visible drawers, before a hidden control springs out and allows you to trigger the secret compartment built into what looks like a normal molding.
To make things more complex, each of the drawers must be pulled out to a certain point before the latches they control slide out of the way, similar to how the pins in a regular lock work. That finally allows a length of wooden dowel to slide out – hidden, normally, as a knot in the wood itself – and when you twist it and then push it back in, a cable tracked around the back of the cabinet allows the hidden drawer to spring out.
Hidden Mechanism [video]
The Final Edited Video
With the help of Josh Van Patter, Chris VanKlei, and Justin Bullis, we brought the bookcase into the basement of the Northrup King building in NE Minneapolis. The building was at one time used as a nuclear fall out shelter.
Chris and I took care of getting the bookcase delivered and set up, Josh did all the filming and video editing, and Justin took care of the lighting and photography. Mike Prom did all of the 3D animations for the video.
Bookcase w/ Hidden Drawer [video]
View the Bookcase Featured Project
My favorite part about making custom furniture is the marketing aspect of it. I invest a lot of time and energy making videos that showcase my work with the help of my buddy Josh Van Patter. It is a really fun way to get the word out to a lot of people that there is a young guy in the Twin Cities who is making high-end custom furniture.
6 hours of heavy lifting for 7 seconds of footage, I love it!
I was approached by my friend Josh Van Patter to design him a dolly that could move a camera from point A to point B smoothly at a speed so slow it’s almost undetectable by the human eye. The purpose of this dolly is to capture time-lapse video.
The time-lapse video dolly is electronically controlled, allowing the user to adjust both the speed and direction of which the dolly travels. The dolly moves down pipe tracks at a rate of about 2′/hr. It is equipped with an electronic kill switch that cuts the power to the 1 RPM gear motor when the dolly reaches the end of the elevated tracks. This allows the user to set up the shot and leave without risking damage to the dolly and his equipment in the event the dolly overruns the length of the track.
Check out the New Time Lapse Dolly available for purchase.
What makes this dolly especially unique is its ability to accommodate curved tracks without binding or derailing. The dolly is designed on a three-wheeled platform. Two of the wheel sets guide the dolly on the outside rail, while the third wheel set assembly mounts to a telescoping arm that allows the dolly to accommodate for any discrepancies in the curved rails.
The dolly rides on a fully adjustable rail system that has the ability to break down for easy transportation. The pipe rails used are sturdy 1.375” OD steel pipes, the same that are used for commercial greenhouses. With the use of an industrial pipe bender, custom bent rails systems can be created to capture nearly any shot.
