a mahogany sideboard

well, in my previous post i mentioned that we had TWO 

challenging projects ...  here's the second one .. 

click the pictures to enlarge them

a few inlays, some nice mahogany, a natural finish,

what's the big deal? 

like a lot of things, if  you do it right, it all looks easy.

ever watch a good golfer? try that and see how you do ..

so, we had some info from a designer that determined 

the basic inlay layout and colors

it was relatively easy to import that image into our cad program

and draw over it, keeping as faithful to it as we could ...

but then we had to make the wood look like that, and

have all 50 little leaves fit precisely into all 50 little pockets

that Kristian cut for them on the cnc.  we first tried cutting

them and sticking them in the pockets, sanding them flush,

then taking them back out and painting them, woodburning 

the veins into the leaves and gluing them back in ... 

this is the general idea, in walnut. originally it was

going to be a redwood piece, but at $42. a board foot plus shipping

and not easily accessible in the rough, we tried walnut and

in the end settled on some old, wide, short, 

6/4 x 3' mahogany boards i had on hand ..

tedious for sure, and tough to glue them in perfectly flush.

the paint could not be sanded even a little bit or the 

wood showed through. will suggested that we try some of 

the pressure dyed colored veneers he uses for his

banjo inlays ... BINGO!

these veneers were a little over a 32nd thick and kristian

 epoxied them to some 1/16th inch poplar, cut them to fit,

sanded them flush and made some test panels from mdf.

the branches are made up of multiple pieces of natural walnut

joined in the obvious places ... lots of pieces there too!

there was a thought that we could add some 'falling leaves'

to the third door, but they didn't seem to fly.

 and did i mention the refrigerator?

all kinds of complications there ... 

the door rises as it opens and the door can only be so thick

or it binds on the case before it gets to 90 degrees.

'do not obstruct the vent in any way' said the

instructions ... but it's ugly

and there's a switch that turns the light on when

you open the door. we compromised by making 

some slots, cutting the switch thing shorter and using

magnets to allow the base piece to be removable as needed.

anyway after some trial and error and some serious back and

forth emailing and sample mailing, we were able to 

wrap it up last week.  we are waiting for our shipper

to  grab it and deliver it to asheville ... 

hats off to kristian for pulling this one off !!!!

it was not as easy as it looks!