carpentry 101 by handsolo

Hi all, this is what happens when you handle power tools with a raging hangover and fail to pay proper attention.

Fortunately this happened a few years ago and I learned my lesson.

The reason I show this picture is that a couple of weeks ago I was commissioned to build a cabinet for a local business and the fabrication of the doors for this cabinet called upon me to perform the same task which caused this injury. The task in point is this-

The finished article, a door frame, looks like this-

Now a little background. I live in Venezuela and as some of you may know, we are having a few problems here at the moment. I won’t go into details about that but suffice it to say that one of the issues I must confront on a regular basis is the lack of materials, or more specifically the lack of quality materials.

My client owns and operates a small food outlet in the village where I live and the décor of the shop is bright and airy. He has used Pine tongue and groove panelling to cover some of the walls and requested that the cabinet be made to match. Fortunately Pine is still readily available here but unfortunately the farms where it is grown are mismanaged by individuals who have no right to even be in charge of such a venture. But I digress, I should not immerse myself in political commentary but it is difficult to hold my tongue at times.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Pine. The reason I mentioned the management of the Pine farms is because the wood we receive on the island is usually cut so recently that it is not given time to cure before being shipped out. The consequence of this is that, in our Caribbean climate, the wood will dry out way too fast and almost invariably will warp pretty badly making it unusable.

In my early days as a carpenter here I learned the hard way that to select ones’ own wood at the yard was essential as failing to do so would result in the delivery of unusable timber which the store will refuse to accept as a return.
In selecting the timber for the commissioned cabinet I was able to obtain the best available pieces but I was to discover that the best available was still not as good as I was hoping.

Day one of the build was spent planning the timber, as shown in the video below.

This is monotonous work but essential none the less as having the wood planed to even thickness is not only a prerequisite but also enables one to see any imperfections prior to cutting. In this case the wood planed down just fine and day two was spent cutting all the various pieces.

Again, this is repetitive work but to be honest most of the tasks involved in making the furniture I make generally are. There is much work which goes into cutting and preparing the wood and it is possible to spend hours working but feeling that nothing much has been done at the end of the day. It's just the nature of the best I guess.

I get most of my enjoyment from the design stages, the process of learning what it is that the client is looking for and getting a feel for their tastes and style and then being able to make their ideas a reality. The greatest joy is when I am able to really get inside their head and create something they truly desire. In these cases the monetary reward comes a very far second to the simple joy of their wonder at how I could produce something which was only an idea in their mind.

Anyway, back to the process. As you can see from the photo below, the cabinet has two shelves and these are the parts which I made first.

Any trained carpenters reading this will, I imagine, point out that I am doing things wrong. This doesn’t worry me as I am self-taught in most that I do and becoming a carpenter was more about financial survival in the early days and I developed my techniques and styles as I went, working from contract to contract.

So, shelves made and the other pieces of the cabinet shell cut and cleaned it was time to begin assembly. Doing things like this one handed does present some challenges. I wish I had a video to show you but maybe next time. For now I will just explain that I used my feet, knees and even my teeth in the process of putting the various pieces together.

As I mentioned earlier, the wood was not as straight as I had hoped and it was a struggle to get everything lined up. Fortunately the design itself helped and in the end the whole project turned out quite nice.

As you can see in the short video below, with the use of clamps and imagination, as well as a good measure of patience anything is possible.