The living room: Furniture

 June 2026

As promised the follow up on the sideboard.

In my last post I had put together the main part of the sideboard, the legs and the drawers.  I was working on the hinges.

Since then I have managed to make the four doors: two for the sides and two different ones in the centre.

The doors for the left and right side have carvings, which I managed to do with the Proxon.  It's not perfect, but it will do.

The drawer fronts are also carved: 

They still need handles, but I have not decided yet how to go about it.  An initial trial with polymer clay was unsuccessful, so I will have to come up with a better idea.

The doors on the outside also have a carved post which I managed to carve from a piece of bamboo dowel.  I forgot to take pictures, but I can describe what I did.  I cut the dowel in half, lengthwise and glued the two parts back together with a piece of paper in between.  This made it easier to carve two identical parts. When finished I dropped them in lukewarm water to dissolve the glue so they would come apart.  I learned this in the distant past when I had to turn two identical parts for a piano I made.

The centre doors were somewhat easier.  I just had to carve a few straight lines which went fairly well with my carving tools.  Unfortunately I made a slight mistake when cutting the doors, but could rectify it.  They were a bit too wide and instead of cutting 1/2 mm off each door I cut 1 mm off the right door.  I solved the problem by fitting a centre piece on the left door, which looks quite natural.

I am still struggling with the hinges.  After I made the first 4 plain sets I also had to make 4 decorative hinges for the centre doors.  It took a bit of experimenting, but ended up with something half decent...

This is just a test piece...

I have found a bottle of simulated liquid leading in my paint box and treated the paper hinges with it.  That worked well. However, it clashes with the hinges I have already made and since I found them rather stiff to handle I decided to make a few new sets.  These will fit better and after I have used the liquid leading on them they will look better as well (here's hoping...)