Phil Bumbalough
Selected Projects
The following are several projects I have completed over the few years that my woodworking shop has been in operation. None of them are works of art but I had fun making them.
Sitting Bench
This is a very simple project, a medium sized sitting bench. It's about 12" wide, 19" tall, and 40" long. It is built in a Shaker style out of construction grade pine.
Although it is not apparent in this small image, the grain pattern is all rift-sawn. Since this is not how the average 2x10 construction grade lumber is sawn I achieve it artificially. A brief explanation of the process is to take 2x10 or 2x12 yellow pine construction lumber and rip it into strips a little thicker than the intended final board thickness. These strips are then rotated from the original cut direction 90 degrees and glued together. After the glue has cured for a long time, the lumber is processed normally using jointer and planer to the desired thickness.
This technique although time consuming produces wide quatersawn / riftsawn grain patterns in inexpensive pine boards free of knots and other defects in any thickness desired.
Coffee Table
I built this coffee table concurrently with several other pieces of living room furniture. The style is basically Mission. I used solid Maple and veneers, the joinery is traditional mortise and pegged tenon.
The top is veneered with Birdseye Maple that I cut into veneer myself. This was my first project working to an extent with my own veneer. I learned how and how-not-to use it after completing these furniture pieces.
The top is an MDF substrate to which the veneer was applied. To hide the edges, it is banded with solid Maple on all sides.
After some experimentation, I decided to cut all the mortises using a forstner bit chucked into the drill press and a cross-slide vise. The system worked well but that's a lot of mortises. I do have a hollow chisel attachment for the drill press but it did not cut as well as the forstner. I could have justified one of the low end dedicated mortisers but I've seen too many bad stories about them on the net. What I think I would like to use would be a horizontal slot mortiser, maybe on the next mission project!
The original finish is water based aniline dye stain with two coats of Deft gloss and semi-gloss (each) lacquer sprayed with a conventional gun. At a later date, I tried to get a glossier finish on just the top. I stripped the top and applied sealer and oil based polyurethane with an HVLP spray rig. After that had cured for 2 or 3 weeks used an air sander to sand the surface to 600 grit and then polished the surface with a buffer and 3M polishing compound. I still don't have it as glossy as I would like.
Picture Frame
After completing my kitchen remodel, I had a fair amount of lumber left over some which had some form of processing done to it. To use it up and finally display a poster I had purchased some time earlier, I made this picture frame.
The poster is a picture of the famous toolchest of a piano maker H.O Studley and was featured in and issue of Fine Woodworking magazine and on the back cover of a later issue. This tool chest has also been seen on an episode of the New Yankee Workshop. For more information on this remarkable chest, visit FWW and a Masonic site for the original FWW article.
The frame is made of quatersawn red oak stained with an Aniline dye and finished with thinned oil based polyurethane.
I built this entertainment center before I had even half of the tools shown in my shop pictures seen elsewhere on this site. It was also built before I knew what I would be getting into on a large project like this; pretty much, this was woodworking 101 for me. I mostly learned how NOT to do things on this project.
The basic design of the piece is Mission. It is made of solid Maple, Birch plywood, and Maple veneer. After a considerable amount of time and a large number of design concepts, I finally settled on the Armoire type case with full length doors. None of the entertainment centers I saw in stores had full length pocket doors so this seemed to be a nice differentiating feature and aesthetically it's a more homogenous design.
The door panels and some of the side pieces are commercial veneers over a plywood or hardboard substrate. The crown molding is a cove cut on the tablesaw and is made of some wild grained Maple. Just underneath the crown is a flat band of Walnut. On the front corners of the crown are some thicker pieces in the same profile but made of Birds-eye Maple. The primary reason this was done is due to the fact that I did not have enough of the wild grain Maple, it seemed to look good on the finished piece.
The entire case rests on a "foot". I knew this piece would be heavy but I wanted to be able to move it somewhat once it was installed. At one time I estimated the entire case to weigh almost 400 pounds (unloaded), if the case did not have this "foot" it would be immovable; it is still difficult to move but not impossible.
The design of the case did not really allow for a true face frame so I decided to try and build all the anti-rack strength in the back. The back is frame and panel however the panels are let into rabbets and screwed in, I wanted to be able to remove them later if needed. Behind the stereo equipment is a sliding panel and opening for all the wire to pass into the cabinet.
The exterior finish is water based aniline dye stain with several coats of Danish oil rubbed in with 600 grit sandpaper. The interior is the same except I used wipe on polyurethane for the top coat.
Chest of Drawers
I built this chest of drawers in 1998. The overall style is basically Moravian which is somewhat similar to the Shaker style. It is made of Maple hardwood except for the back panel, drawer bottoms, case bottom, and the top substrate.
The top is veneered with Birdseye Maple that I cut into veneer myself and was left over from another project. To hide the substrate edges it is banded with solid Birdseye Maple on all sides.
The case sides are fairly conventional frame and panel, the back is also frame and panel with plywood used as the panel material. The bottom is plywood, due to the face frame it cannot be seen. The case sits on a pediment base that is through dovetailed on all four corners. The face frame looks conventional but in the building process the stiles were attached to the sides. When the case was assembled, the rails were attached to the inside of the stiles from the interior; at that point the face frame became indistinguishable from a conventional one. This case does not incorporate a dust panel between the drawer bays.
The drawers are all different sizes for aesthetic reasons. The drawer boxes are made with through dovetails on all four corners, the front of the boxes have a profiled 3/8" thick front applied. All the drawer boxes except the top pair have cedar panels laid into the bottom, the top drawers have cork applied to a plywood substrate. The drawers ride on a conventional side runner and kicker glide system.
The finish is water based aniline dye stain with two coats of Deft gloss and semi-gloss (each) lacquer sprayed with a conventional gun. This project took me about 100 hours to design and build.
Chair Side Chest
I built this chair side chest immediately after building four other living room pieces that included the coffee table seen elsewhere on this site. Some of the components are actually spares and scrap left over from the other pieces. By this time I had learned to cut and apply shop-made veneer correctly.
Although the construction appears to be frame and panel, it is not except for the back. The sides began as a veneered piece of plywood onto which other pieces of various thickness' were glued to to achieve the frame and panel look. This was done in order to simplify the construction of the interior and as an experiment.
There are five graduated drawers, the smallest of which has a custom made divider system for holding pencils and other similar items. The wood used is Maple with shop-made Birds-eye Maple veneer. The pulls are made of Walnut with a lighter wood as the "eye". The finish is Aniline dye and lacquer
Last revised: November 04, 2007.
Photos and descriptions used by written permission Copyright © 2006-2007 Phil Bumbalough. All rights reserved.