Credenza / Entertainment Center #6: project from HECK #2 - assembly

Being disappointed I let the project sit for a good while. It was good and cured by the time I got back to it, so I wasn’t afraid putting some clamps on it. Started by gluing up the ends.

Seemed to be going alright.

Well I don’t have any pictures of it, but my pipe clamps left some pretty deep-looking gouges (to me anyway). That was a huge bummer. I figured I’d sand it out and re-finish just those parts again once everything was glued up. I wisened up and used some pine blocks for the stretchers.

Next I drilled some pocket holes in the underside of the bottom panel and got that screwed in. I also didn’t grab any photos of this, but I actually clamped scrap pieces of plywood to the top of the stretchers above EVERY pocket screw to make sure the panel didn’t shift while screwing it in. Well – it decided to in a few places anyway. Not huge, but enough that I noticed it. This is another case of probably-not-noticeable where it’s going, but still bothered me.

And this is when I realized my big mistake. I applied a 1/8” roundover to the front edge of all the frame pieces, but left the back edge sharp since it had to butt-up against the plywood panel. Well guess what? My idiot self glued them up BACKWARDS and put the roundover on the plywood side leaving a very nicely machined v-groove all around the plywood panel. ugh.

It was only on two sides thankfully, but it wasn’t all of them and I didn’t finish the side of the plywood, so no hiding it – it had to be addressed. Instead of remaking the sides after all that work, I figured the best option would be to put filler in the gap. I got some Timbermate and mixed it with the stain I was using. I taped off the groove and stuffed it in there.

when it was dry I peeled off the tape to sand back the filler and put some finish on – but not so fast! Angry tape liked to eat finish for dinner and it peeled off my finish with it! ARGH

I was pretty upset so I let it sit for a while. Eventually I decided to scrape the flaky finish off, sand it back to blend it, re-stain the area I sanded and put a few more coats of finish on to even it out. Took me a few more weeks because I was pretty let-down by the whole thing. Eventually it got looking pretty good again though.

It was at this point though that I realized I used too much glue and it swelled my dowels and split one of the stretchers right at the end. ARGH

I was pretty upset at this point and the project sat for a few months. My family also came down with covid and it took a while to recover. Thankfully we all did. I’m back in the shop now and finally willing to get back at this project. The next update will be more light-hearted, so don’t worry. But man was I ever fed up with this thing. If it wasn’t for someone else I would have scrapped the whole thing. Today, I’m glad I pressed on. Here’s where it was after the finishing woes.