Last fall, well before IWF, 2012, we invested in some “new” woodworking equipment as our cabinetry sales increased over the year.
We already had a pretty robust shop of industrial woodworking machinery, but some of the machinery is specifically designed for manufacturing interior shutters, which is our other business. And some of the machines, like a stroke sander or a cabinet table saw, are not really ideal for manufacturing large volumes of cabinets.
All of these machinery upgrades have been for two specific reasons:
• to increase efficiency of our operation
• to improve the quality of our product
We have been fortunate to work with a machinery wholesaler out of Salt Lake City, UT who has been able to find some great quality used machinery at great prices. Also, all of these machines have been purchased with cash, making owning these machines even sweeter, since we don’t have a monthly lease payment hanging over our heads.
Now onto the machines!
Last November, in the very beginning of our residential cabinet careers, we quickly realized that drilling the 5mm holes on 32mm spacings, necessary for hinge plates and shelf pegs, by hand with a drill and a jig was a huge time waster and made accuracy very difficult.
So, the first machine we began searching for was a line drilling machine. We began by looking on Ex-Factory and WoodWeb's machinery marketplace, but quickly spotted a used Blum Mini-Drill 7-head line drill machine, on Craigslist, being sold by a local cabinet shop that was closing its doors. We jumped on it immediately, and after $900 and few days of set-up and tweaking, one bottleneck was eliminated!
Soon thereafter, we realized the next problem that needed to be dealt with was the issue of cutting the profile for raised panels on cabinet doors. We build all of our own cabinet doors, and at the time, we only had a 1.5HP shaper that we used specifically for the cope cut on the rails, and a 3HP shaper that we shared for the stick cuts on the rails and stiles and the profile cut on door panels.
The 3HP shaper was not nearly strong enough to cut the profiles for the raised panels. We would have to send the panels through the shaper 2-3 times, increasing the depth of the cut each time, before the raised profile was fully complete: a real time suck.
We began reading up on what features we would need, and quickly narrowed the list down to a 5HP Powermatic Model 66. Everywhere we looked, shop owners were singing this shaper’s praise, saying it was reliable, powerful, and priced right. We also found out that most guys were recommending the older shapers over the newer shapers, saying the models seem to be built sturdier and with better tolerances than the newer models.
We found a nice looking, reasonably priced Powermatic 66, circa 1990, on Ex-Factory, but after a week or so the deal fell through. That is when I heard about the aforementioned used machiner dealer from Salt Lake City.
So I called Coby, from Advanced Machinery, and told him what we were looking for. Within a week or so, he presented us with the Powermatic 66 seen in the picture above. The machine was a bit older than the previous one, which was more of a benefit than a drawback, and had a top-of-the-line power feed unit with brand new roller wheels!
So, by the end of March, after a few weeks of searching, and $2,000, we had a new, more powerful shaper ready to go to work.
In the last entry, I left off with the top of the console table in the vacuum bag. In this entry, we will begin with the top fully veneered.
As you can see in the picture, all of the ribbon Sapele veneer on the sides has the grain oriented vertically and the grain of the top is parallel to the longest side. We veneered each surface individually, which meant that the tabletop took five rounds to complete the veneering. Each time, the tabletop spent three hours in the bag, and at least four hours outside the bag to help the glue cure. After each round we spent a few minutes checking the edges of the veneer and re-gluing any places that had not fully adhered.
A quick note about vacuum pressing. The bag itself exerts up to 1700 psi worth of pressure on the veneer. As the veneer is pressed into the substrate, the air is expelled from the glue joint and a bond is created within an hour or so. But, for the glue to for a permanent bond, it requires the water to be evaporated, which is impossible since the vacuum bag is air tight and therefore void of air in the first place. Thus, when a project is removed from the vacuum bag, it feels clammy and damp and needs a few hours in the open before the veneer is fully set.
We repeated the veneering process on the base of the table; it was a bit easier since the sides were not as angled as those of the top.
It was now time to drill the hole for the decorative metal bar that would be on the top point of the front and back of the base. We ordered two 1.5″ lengths of 1″ diameter solid aluminum bar from a local metal supplier, sanded the pieces with 320 grit paper to give them a brushed look, and eased over all the edges. On the drill press we then set up a shim that would drill a 1″ hole parallel to the floor. Since the faces of the front and back are not vertical, but angled inward about 3 degrees, if we set the back flat on the drill press table, the hole would be drilled at a -6 degree angle to the face and -3 degrees horizontal. By shimming the piece by .5″, we were able to drill the hole at a -3 degree angle to the face, which translates to horizontal. This may seem to be over-thinking, since only .5″ of the bar would be seen, but the details are what matter in custom furniture.
Next, we turned our attention to connecting the two pieces. The space that the two pieces share is pretty tight and did not make for an easy work space. We decided that the best way to connect the two pieces would be to use dowels. We drilled and glued six dowels into the base.
After the dowels were glued into the base, we turned the top upside down, and attached the two pieces. We used a polyurethane glue for this final glue-up because the glue would expand and help fill any small voids that were present inside the top and base.The tape and paper ensured that the expanding polyurethane glue would collect on top of the paper rather than on the veneer’s surface.
We allowed the glue to set overnight before we flipped the table right side up. We removed the tape and paper, scraped off any excess glue, and gave the entire table a final hand sanding with 220 grit paper. We then took the table into the finishing room and applied a dark brown oil-based stain, two coats of sanding sealer, and a coat of bright-rubbed conversion varnish.
The final product came out absolutely beautiful! The brownish red of the Sapele work perfectly with the whites, grays, and blues of the living room.
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