Greetings Kerry,

This will be your Private Status Page. Here you will see your cabinet’s journey from rough lumber all the way to your doorstep.

Thank you for the patience you offer to this old fashioned form of artistry. It is my hope that by showing you the project as it progresses, it will assuage any concern you may have regarding the integrity of my effort. I try to make every cabinet as if it were for my own guitars.

You may recall that your first pair of cabinets are partially completed. They are spare parts from a recent and much larger order. As such, I can show you exactly what your cabinets will look like when finished. To the right, one of the cabinets I built using the same Walnut that I will use for your project.

To catch up, you may wish to see the history of your lumber as told by the images I took as it was initially milled long ago.

After weeks of Drying and Trimming, we had perfect 1” x 2” sticks. Unless this lumber is taken to a swamp, it ought to never warp.

Notice the Oak “one by two” in the image to your left. It is the stick on the top right of the pile. I included it to show what a standard ‘one by two’ looks like. Your Walnut is oversized by 25% . This will make a unique looking and extra sturdy piece of furniture.

On the right, the 1x2’s are Rabbeted to begin the fine milling phase. The Rabbet I am cutting will eventually be the window frame. On the right, I am taping the first cut to keep the waste from blowing out after the final cut.

After a pair of simple cuts, the waste is extracted and saved. Later, it will be fashioned into the Glazing Sticks to hold the glass.

You may notice the ends of the sticks are labelled. This is done so that I may later match the grain when the window glazings are installed.

The rabbeted sticks are now ready to be chopped to precise lengths and turned into Stiles & Rails.

The “Rails” are the horizontal components of the window panels.

Rails require Tenons to complete the Mortise & Tenon joints. Here’s where my fingers get a bit close to the blade.

On the left, I am trimming the ends of the Rails to mill the tenons on a shaping machine.

After some sanding, each tenon is fit tested to the Rabbets. This stage of my process exemplifies one of many efforts that cannot be scaled or mass produced.

My joinery is always as tight as one finds on a fine guitar, well above the level of common furniture. I trust that this is what your project deserves.

On the left, a dry fit joint such as this is examined closely for any gaps and hand trimmed until it is tight.

Next a series of dowel holes are drilled. On the right, a drill press is jigged up to precisely place half of the holes in the Rail ends.

The other half of the holes are drilled into the Stiles, shown on the left below.

Hand made hardwood dowels make rock solid joints. The secret to a delicate cabinet’s strength is hidden in these dowels. Most shops use a staple that loosens in only a few years. I mill my own dowels from premium hardwood.

As with the mortise and tenoning efforts, each joint is dry tested to assure the dowels are aligned prior to gluing.

At long last, assembly begins.

The glues are slow to tack and cure, so assembly is a patience test. Faster glues are not necessarily weaker, but they emit nasty gasses forever. That new car smell is a lot of bad stuff... and long story short, the glues I use are one of the more costly aspects of my curatorial fetish.

The number of clamps required also humbles the effort, as you can see here. On the right, you can clearly see the makings of a window panel, yes? With such a verbose introduction, you’d think I was building a Space Shuttle.

As I near the end of this initial entry to your page, I am grateful you’ve taken the time to see how your project began under the banner of another client. It is comforting to know that I am closer to keeping my promises to you, with your cabinet’s components as far along as they are.

On the left, the window dressings are applied as simple coves cut on a router table.

Sculpting these effects after assembly of the panel is rare. No one does this anymore, or so it seems. Look closely at the corners of any picture or window frame and you may see the difference. The resulting rounded corners are why I take this risk.

I mention the risk because these trimmings can destroy a nearly completed component. Hardwoods are fickle, and every blade is a chance to see a new way it can fail. This risk is why cabinet makers trim the sticks prior to assembly as way of limiting the cost of occasional but eventual milling flaws.

As it stands today, your cabinets are at this stage of fabrication. The window panels are built and dressed. After a little hand sanding (as shown on the left, my outside office) they went into storage as they were not required to complete the previous order.

Today, I dug them out and dusted them off. Here they are as shown on the right. I am glad to see them go to such a worthy collection of guitars. In a few weeks, I will be done with previous promises and begin work on these two cabinets for you. They will be there in time for Christmas.

You have our contract in hand and I beg you to call if you find any concern or have any question. Soon, we’ll start looking at the size and style of your three electric guitars and I trust you will enjoy another round of hard work as we configure a design for your second room.

Regards,
Mitch

303-973-1128


Note: My techniques and tricks are for the eyes of my patrons only. Please do not share, copy or reproduce in any way this page or its content. Thank You!!!
All photos are Copyright 2014, 2015 and/or 2016: Colorado Guitar Cabinet™