So I’ve never built any kind of furniture before, but after messing with my SO3 for 6 months or so I got inspired after my wife remarked that she would like a cabinet for a vinyl record collection that we inherited and have started adding to. The catch was that the cabinet needed to match some of the other antique furniture that came with the collection, so I was limited in what designs I could carve. The antiques have very simple hand carved designs in them. While I was excited to do some fancy 3D carvings, that idea was vetoed.
Cabinet is made almost exclusively of Alder, and measures about 28 inches wide x 24 inches deep x 46 inches tall and was designed in Fusion 360 with the exception of the front design which was in VCarve Desktop. Link here with more info on carving the design using tiling.
Things I had never done before but learned as part of this project:
Glue-ups (almost all the components other than the shelves and back are made from smaller width boards)
Cutting dados and rabbets (the big shelves inside the cabinet are set in stop dados)
A lot learned about pre-stain conditioner, staining, and finishing (honestly I screwed some of this up badly but was able to cover it up creatively)
How to install Euro-style hinges
There are lots of flaws in it, but I feel really proud to have built such a big project. If only it hadn’t been 3x over the time budget, and about 2x over the money budget…
Special thanks and shout out to @Griff, who gave me some great carpentry advice along the way.
Finished product with records first:
Brighter picture:
Complete assembly in Fusion. It was really helpful in this case to model all the parts in Fusion because as I changed dimensions and adjusted things, the parametric functionality really saved time by not having to re-build every part.
After many screw-ups while making components, finally dry fitting everything before glueing.
Staining and finishing coats complete, just waiting to install the doors.
