Project Information
This is an entertainment center that I designed and built. It is huge - 9' high x 16' wide.It is constructed of curly maple, curly maple plywood, and cherry.
The upper opening is 5'2" high x 7'wide. The lower section is 32" high x 7' wide. The third photo really shows the size of the unit with me standing in front of it. The top houses the t.v. and entertainment electronics. The bottom houses the wireless based computer system.
The cabinet interior is lighted by a touch activated light system that throws light against the back of the acrylic shoji panels. The side display cases have lighting tucked behind the face frame that is touch activated as well.
This unit sits across the great room from the dining area where the Prairie Chandeliers hang. The doors carry the same design as the chandeliers and really tie the space together, even though they are different woods and overall designs. That blows all ideas that everything in the house has to be the of the same wood.
Because of the unit's large size, I cascaded the design. Everything flows and steps in three's. Maple, cherry, maple. Center, bookcase 1, bookcase 2. Notice that all the corners are rounded in the case construction.
This was no small undertaking and incredibly challenging. The doors bifold and slide in. A lot can go wrong covering a space like that. It is like a bullet leaving a rifle; the farther it travels from the gun, the farther off target it gets.
The stock for the doors was entirely unstable so I ripped the material down, glued up the strips and used curly maple veneer to make the rails and stiles. (I have a vacuum press.)
I used floating tenon joinery on the doors with locking pins inserted from the back side of the doors.
As the cherry has darkened, it has created an incredibly dramatic contrast to the curly maple. The maple is just so rich with curly figure. The tools that made this project possible were my new 8" spiral head jointer from Grizzly and the dual headed drum sander. It was not even possible to plane this material. The spiral head cutter on the jointer produced no tear out. Many, many, many light passes had to be taken with the router to do profiles.
The upper opening is 5'2" high x 7'wide. The lower section is 32" high x 7' wide. The third photo really shows the size of the unit with me standing in front of it. The top houses the t.v. and entertainment electronics. The bottom houses the wireless based computer system.
The cabinet interior is lighted by a touch activated light system that throws light against the back of the acrylic shoji panels. The side display cases have lighting tucked behind the face frame that is touch activated as well.
This unit sits across the great room from the dining area where the Prairie Chandeliers hang. The doors carry the same design as the chandeliers and really tie the space together, even though they are different woods and overall designs. That blows all ideas that everything in the house has to be the of the same wood.
Because of the unit's large size, I cascaded the design. Everything flows and steps in three's. Maple, cherry, maple. Center, bookcase 1, bookcase 2. Notice that all the corners are rounded in the case construction.
This was no small undertaking and incredibly challenging. The doors bifold and slide in. A lot can go wrong covering a space like that. It is like a bullet leaving a rifle; the farther it travels from the gun, the farther off target it gets.
The stock for the doors was entirely unstable so I ripped the material down, glued up the strips and used curly maple veneer to make the rails and stiles. (I have a vacuum press.)
I used floating tenon joinery on the doors with locking pins inserted from the back side of the doors.
As the cherry has darkened, it has created an incredibly dramatic contrast to the curly maple. The maple is just so rich with curly figure. The tools that made this project possible were my new 8" spiral head jointer from Grizzly and the dual headed drum sander. It was not even possible to plane this material. The spiral head cutter on the jointer produced no tear out. Many, many, many light passes had to be taken with the router to do profiles.
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