The largest single piece of furniture I’ve ever made is this stepped cabinet. Finished piece is 8 ½’ tall and over 10’ long. This project has been great, although it almost fell over on top of me at one point
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1. I started with several client meetings and design iterations for the cabinet.
2. Once the design was finalized, I did some calculations and headed to the lumberyard and bought 5 12’ 8/4 boards of black cherry to build the frame of the piece.
3. Back in the shop, I cut down all the rough boards except for one, which I made the longest members with. Then I straightened one face and one edge of each board on the jointer and then sent them all through the planer to get even and consistent thickness of 1 13/16”.
4. After that, I ripped all the boards on the table saw down to 1 13/16” squares and sent them all through the wide belt sander to achieve even 1 3/4” square stock.
5. Then I carefully calculated a cut list for the stock and cut all parts to length on the table saw.
2. Once the design was finalized, I did some calculations and headed to the lumberyard and bought 5 12’ 8/4 boards of black cherry to build the frame of the piece.
3. Back in the shop, I cut down all the rough boards except for one, which I made the longest members with. Then I straightened one face and one edge of each board on the jointer and then sent them all through the planer to get even and consistent thickness of 1 13/16”.
4. After that, I ripped all the boards on the table saw down to 1 13/16” squares and sent them all through the wide belt sander to achieve even 1 3/4” square stock.
5. Then I carefully calculated a cut list for the stock and cut all parts to length on the table saw.
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(Disclaimer: I skimmed most of the instructable so if you mentioned it somewhere in there I didn't see it, sorry!)
just a bit of background for those who don't know: the tansu is supposed to be modular, able to be broken down into individual chests and cabinets and tables and whatnot, then reassembled into the step formation.
what happened was that taxes were levied on second-floor living spaces. so the poorer citizens devised this ingenious method of cheating the tax man: go into the home, it's a simple one-floor bungalow with everybody lying around cheek-by-jowl, typical poor peasants. once the tax collector was out of range, they reassembled the step chest and revealed the trap door hidden in the ceiling that led to the upstairs living quarters.
yes i know i cannt not walk on this
i also like your shop.
in the photo in step 1, what are the long things hanging on the wall??
My shop is in a old vaudeville theater I renovated 11 years ago. So the goldish thing on the wall is a pressed tin column that framed the stage. The project made for a wonderful work space.
i will be renovating an old 60x60 pole barn to make a shop. looking for all Usefull ideas.
Would you have/be interested in sharing measured drawings, or at least a few of the 'box' dimensions? This looks like something I'd like to try for myself.
Excellent project!
Thank you for the kind words, I value your opinion. I had included a 24page PDF with lots of photos and complet instructions. Was that not the appropriate approach?
Thanks again.
Jo
If you've got the time, I think you should totally break that .pdf out into additional project steps in your Instructable by simply copying and pasting the text into our editor and migrating the photos into you library and then adding them to the appropriate step. 24 step Instructable - no problem!