Freestanding kitchen butternut cabinet

I completely and totally suck when it comes to fully documenting my woodworking projects. I fully intended to take pictures of the original lumber to show the process from the tree to the finished product. By the time I got around to creating this page, I had already almost finished getting all of the pieces cut. Schmuck.

 

So anyway, this is going to be a freestanding kitchen cabinet, designed to fit in a "recess" in our kitchen. It's made of butternut, a cousin of black walnut that is sometimes called "white walnut". Don't feel bad if you've never heard of it...it's not used in commercial furniture production due to its relative rarity. The species is also dying out from a blight (not much different than dutch elm disease and the one that wiped out the American chestnut tree), and I wanted to make something out if it before the wood was no longer obtainable.

 In any case, here we go!

  

 Most of the butternut pieces have been cut to size....by hand. That includes ripping the boards to rough width, planing them to final dimensions, jointing the sides square, squaring the ends up with a manual miter saw, resawing the 1/2" panel stock, and jointing the boards that have been glued together and will become the sides, shelves, etc. You can see the saws and planes in the background that I use to do stuff like this. Only two of the planes/saws are new...the rest are at least 50 years old, with one saw (the short backsaw 3rd from the left) being at least 100 years old (best guess is that it dates from 1880-1890). 

 

 Here's the base of the cabinet dry-fitted for the first time. All of the joinery is handcut mortise-and-tenon.

 

 And a week later, the solid butternut side panels (with center stile) and tongue-and-groove solid pine back are dry-fitted for the first time. Everything fits into grooves handcut into the frame. Just have to whip up a bottom and drill the holes for the adjustable shelves, and the basic carcass is there.

 

 Slowly but surely, it's getting there. 

 

Almost done. The drop down door is done (there's some support hardware for it that I didn't install for the photo), the top & bottom halves have been mated (they can be taken apart at will), and the upper/lower doors (seen in bottom left corner of pics) have been dry fitted and are ready for assembly and fitting. Once the doors are done, the whole piece is ready for finishing.

 

I honestly can't say that I'm enjoying the butternut all that much...it's really soft and stringy. Put some blue painter's tape on it, and it'll pull some strings of wood off when you remove it. You also can't sand butternut....it leaves a fuzzy surface. Even cabinet scrapers don't work all that well on it. Dunno how smooth a surface I'm going to get when I apply the finish...I'll probably have to lightly sand between every coat of finish to try and get it smooth.

 

 

 

Done (well mostly...still have to finish the bottom panel and the adjustable shelves). Sorry about the flashy pics. 5 coats of Waterlox on the outside, and a coat of oil and shellac on the inside. Butternut is a pretty wood, but not being able to sand it left a few rough spots here and there. Still, it should look pretty good in the kitchen, once that's remodeled. Oh, and the only power tools used was a cordless drill and a drill press for boring the necessary holes here and there.