Viola Cabinet
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For high school graduation I'm trying to build a "wood project" for each of my children. This project is for my daughter. She is an avid viola player (is even majoring in college around the instrument) and I wanted her project to be around this passion of hers.
The cabinet will have four drawers and an opening top. The drawers are sized to handle music sheets (the lower drawers) and the top drawers are for resin and misc items. The opening top compartment is sized to fit her viola. Granted, it will need some padding or support but the wood part of the project will fit the viola with some room to spare.
This project was completed prior to me creating this wiki so what you see here is just a re-telling of what I remember of the project.
I'm 99% sure that at some point I built the whole project in SketchUp. Now I cannot find those files. :-(
This is the first pictures I have of the project. As you can see it is essentially just the carcass. The carcass was plywood with a knotty hickory veneer. I don't remember fully why but the top compartment will be lined with 3/4 inch knotty hickory wood. You can see parts of that lining too. (I don't think it is affixed yet.) I think the idea was that I didn't want the veneer look on the inside of the top compartment.
This set of pictures show the knotty hickory face front installed.
Anyone who knows me will know that I tend to over engineer things. The base is a 2 layer system of 3/4 inch boards glued together. The "inner" layer is shorter than the outer layer which gives a cavity that the carcass can sit in.
Either the base was slightly too large, or the carcass and/or base wasn't 100% perfectly cut to 90 degrees. The point is that I had a small gap between them. This bothered me greatly.
The base got a roundover cut along the top edge.
As mentioned before, the top compartment is lined with 3/4 inch boards. This give the top surface a 1 1/2 inch width.
This 1 1/2 inch edge needed covered. I cut a lip or face to cover it up.
This picture reminds me that I had "just" gotten the Festool Domino 700. I dominio'ed this project like crazy! As I remember it, I think I installed the face front with something like 30 dominos! (I thought the gap spacer feature on the Domino was to indicate the distance between each hole.) Its a miracle it went together. By the time I domino'ed the top lip, shown here, you can see I was learning to back off on the number of dominos to use.
The installation of the drawers was very scary to me. All the degrees of freedom just drove me nuts. I delayed and delayed before actually drilling into the carcass to install the drawer sliding hardware. Note: These are slow close rails.
Here are the rough-cut drawers 'installed'. Also, based on the dates in the image names there is a 9 month gap between installing the rails in the carcass and test fitting the drawers. Like I said, this intimidated me a lot.
The drawers in their near final configuration.
Up to this point this project is fairly "viola agnostic". The finishing touch I wanted was some sort of emblem to show that this project was built with a purpose! The alto clef is the scale where most viola notes are played. So, that became the target emblem.
You can also see that I've build the lid for the top compartment. It isn't fully finished here, nor are the drawers, but I wanted to get a feel of the whole project as I sized the emblem.
The emblem piece is still not affixed to the project but you can see here that the drawers and lid are mostly finished, since their edges have a round-over cut on them.
A local ham radio and wood worker I know was kind enough to CNC inlay the alto clef emblem! Also, I believe this picture is with a coat of Danish Oil applied.
I decided early on that I wanted a natural, but wet, look to the finished project. Research led me to applying a "clear" Danish Oil as the finish. I should note that my finishing skills are still very poor. Essentially I sanded the project to something like 220 grit and then went to town with layers and layers of Danish Oil.
You can see some of the drawer fronts in the background.
The hinge is simply a surface mounted piano hinge. I think I tried to inlay the hinge into the surface but it is hard to see here whether I did that or not.
I've made this mistake twice now. I build a "box" that has a 1 1/2 inch lip. Also, my lids are too heavy for a simple piano hinge to hold (nor do I want the lid to come slamming down). It is hard to see but they are installed in the picture below. The mistake that I made is that the slow closing hinges are not designed for 1 1/2 inch delta between the inner wall of the box and the lid. This applies extra and odd torque on those hinges. In the future I need to find different hinges or use a 3/4 inch lip like everyone else. :-)
The project is done and is ready to be delivered to my daughter. This trip, about 120 miles, was nerve wracking as I certainly didn't want anything to go wrong given how much work I put into this project.
