When we walked in, who should be there but our friend Matt Sware! You can see Matt's picture in this post, holding a Bilstein shock absorber. Anyway, we ate together and had a great visit. But in the conversation, Matt said, "So, this wine rack is going to be done, like, 10 years from now?" Ouch! So here's a project update, just to prove it isn't stalled.
I'll admit there was about a month where the shop was dark, as I finished the Musical Associates summer season, and I prepared for the season startup of the Lancaster Church of the Brethren ensembles. There was also that little side trip concerning my new Shop Truck, and I spent some time making this: a new rack for choir folders at LCOB - a sixth one to add to the five already there:
But work has continued on the wine rack also. In fact, a recent visit by Arlen Clarke and Carol Goldsmith prompted me to finish a single-level rack for him. He traded the wine pictured for it!
After that, I got all the other rack pieces, so laboriously made and documented in the prior parts of this saga (1, 2, 3), glued up and stained using the Bartley's honey gel stain.
Then it was time to figure out the cabinet I was going to install them in. I decided to make a full-sized drawing to see how it would look in the space. I don't do that nearly as often as I should, but for a project of this complexity, I needed to see a real picture. I drew it on a piece of white laminated hardboard.
We invited John and Dee Zimmerman (who is an artist) over to get a second set of eyes, and decided on a few detail changes to the lower part that will make it a bit taller, and improve the proportions. I also went to a small lumberyard in Lititz and bought enough quarter-sawn oak for the sides and shelves. The boards in this picture are 10 feet long - good thing I have a Shop Truck!
The next thing was to get that rough wood into a more finished state. I have a 12-inch planer, but the initial process requires a 12-inch jointer. My jointer, pictured behind the wood, can only handle 6-inch or less. So, I asked Laverne Eyer if I could bring the wood over to his shop and use his 12-inch jointer to flatten the first side. He said yes, and kindly helped me for two hours in the heavy labor of pushing each board over the jointer multiple times until it was flat. I forgot to take pictures there, but once the wood was flat on one face, I returned to my shop and planed the other side flat also. Here's some of the planed wood on my new-to-me shop cart (thanks, Sydne!):
The next step is to build a prototype cabinet out of junk plywood. There's no way that I'm cutting all that joinery in that expensive, newly-planed wood until I test out the jigs and methodology first! I hope that by sometime in January, I'll have a fifth and final part of this saga with the finished cabinet in place... we'll see.
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