The Bureau Is Finished

Well, all is not mdf here even though it may look like it in my most recent post ... Will finished up the double bureau yesterday and as I suspected, the cherry is spectacular ... This is my first photo session with my new lights and I think I can do better. The cherry seems kind of 'cool' compared to the real thing ... It's still set up so I've got all weekend ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
this was a hard piece to photograph with all the 'action' in the wood grain ... i took the one above recently and it looks like we could call it 'bee's wing cherry'.
It's interesting to see how the design evolved as we progressed. If you check the cad drawing in the previous post (linked above) you'll see we started out with the legs pointing in the opposite direction, which is the way we've always used them as table legs. in this case, when we were waving them around before they were attached, inverting them seemed to give the bureau more connection and a 'better' feeling .... The cherry was soooooo nice, we debated the hardware choice until the very last minute ... In the end, we didn't want to 'clutter' the look of the piece and Sam is in the middle of a big railing project anyway ... So, brainstorm, imho ... continue the bolt theme with lag bolt pulls ... There was some concern about getting them installed exactly perpendicular, so we made the jig below. First we drilled the guide holes on the drill press, marked out the centers, stuck the brad point drill through into the center mark, pushed the wood guide firmly against the drawer face and drilled the pilot hole. Next we put a longer lag through the wood guide block and screwed it home. That created the perpendicular threading for the actual, shorter pulls which we installed by hand in the precut threads ... there are four 1/8" thick carpet glides on the back of the jig to protect the finished drawer face while in use ...
Below is a close up of the metal finish on the legs ... The angle iron was dynabraded (rotary air sander) with 80 grit and 120 grit. next it was treated with a chemical called ‘ready brown’ from Sur-Fin Chemicals that works on brass and steel to quickly darken it to a brown black color. After treatment it was neutralized with a solution of baking soda and water, sanded again to add highlights, and top coated with ben moore ‘high gloss, low lustre’ metal finish … sounds complicated, but isn’t …
Great job Will and Sam ....

A 'Bethlehem Steel' Bureau

I'm sort of fascinated by the wood and steel elements of our newish 'Bethlehem Steel' line. We have been working on it for about a year now and this is the first case piece ... There just seem to be endless possibilities here ... This one started with the drawing above, but as we were building it, even though all the other tables in this style so far have had the legs pointing down, this piece definitely seemed to want it's legs inverted, pointing up. OK, we'll listen. We turned them over and the results are below. More anchored to the ground, but yet lighter feeling at the same time .... Sometimes you can figure things out in the drawings, but sometimes you have to let your instincts take over .... The piece, to us at least, seems to be stronger and more solid in this configuration ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
The case with side shims and full extension undermount runners ... It's the first time we tried the Grass runners ... So far so good ... They seem to wobble a bit less when you open and close them , and close a little faster than the Blums ... Cheaper too from our supplier ... The high dolly was a brainstorm too ... Hate, hate, hate crawling around on the floor ...
Mocking up the bolts with masking tape .. three holes or four ?? Three it is ...
More bolts in the front center leg ... This is some of Irion's finest figured cherry .. I've had this log for several years waiting for the right project ... We had Just enough to make it ...