I decided! I decided to go with glass for the gaming console console door. The only glass my glass guy had that wasn't just clear was glass that has some bubbles in it. It's much more clear than I was hoping for but I'm hoping that it breaks up the outlines of the game consoles inside the cabinet. Mostly I'm getting to the stage where I just want the project done. I don't have a stream of people walking past my consoles every day to remark on the beauty of the glass in the door. Also, since I am using glass stops I can always easily replace the glass later if I change my mind.
Speaking of glass stops, I milled them out of one of my off cuts over the weekend. My glass stops need to be about 1/4 inch square and I need about 60 inches of them. I took one of my straight grained off cuts and resawed it twice (three times?) to get four pieces. The pieces were so wibbly-wobbly that I used my drum sander to clean them up and thickness them. This worked pretty well.
Our weather has been pretty nice (highs of the low 80's) over the last few days so I've been able to get two or three coats of polyurethane per day. I gave them about six or nine coats. They're going to stand a little proud of the inside of the door.
I had enough pieces of the cabinet finished to start assembly so I did. I started by adding the top to the case. That wasn't too bad. I just had to be careful to not drill through the top when drilling pilot holes. I flipped the top upside down on a pair of saw horses (actually two pairs of stacked saw ponies), set the case upside down on top to get it centered and squared up then drilled pilot holes using the holes I drilled in the top rails way back at the beginning of this project. I wrapped a piece of tape around the drill bit to act as a depth stop.
I'd previously fit the drawer fronts before finishing them. I was smart and marked the drawer fronts and the drawer boxes so I'd know where they fit in the stack of drawers and so I could match up the false fronts with the appropriate drawer box.
Unfortunately I was too smart. I'd made my marks on the faces that would be screwed together so after fastening the fronts onto the boxes I could no longer tell which one was which. Figuring that really they just needed to look good I decided to just go trial and error rather than taking them apart.
A little trial and error and I got the top two drawers looking right. Unfortunately somehow I'd misaligned the false front on the bottom drawer. I really don't know how this happened but it was extra frustrating because now that I had the top and back on the case I didn't have easy access to fix it from the top or the back. I had to awkwardly reach in from the front. Especially annoying since it took me two tries redrilling and setting screws to get it right. All is well that ends well, right? Well, if the extra holes inside the drawer bother me, I can just make a new one.
The next crisis came when I went to add the pulls onto the drawers. One of them didn't go on straight like I had cross threaded it but when I double checked I'd threaded it correctly, the pull was just mis drilled/threaded. Fortunately I had a spare. Well not a spare, but I had the pull meant for the door that I could use, and I did. I'll have to contact lee valley about getting a replacement. I've never had to use their customer service before so this'll be a first for me. I'll let you know how it goes. I'll use a spare knob on the door until I get a replacement.
The last thing I noticed when sliding my shelves into place is that they are very slippy. They're not likely to get a lot of forces other than gravity acting on them just sitting in the cabinet but I can just envision the top shelf slipping for some reason (moving the cabinet maybe) and crashing down on the middle shelf and then having a mess of shelves and game consoles smashing through my glass door. To mitigate the risk I'm just going to mill some detents into the bottoms of the shelves so they'll have a positive stop.
So close to being done. I need to install the glass in the door, drill a hole for the door pull and install a temporary pull, install the door and latch, and finally cut some detents in the shelves. That's a long list of things but they're all relatively small.
That's where I am at with the gaming console console. A few hours this weekend and it should be done-done. Well, except for the door pull which probably wont be here by then.
I did get a bit of other stuff done over the weekend. I got two more false fronts glues to the trays in the storage cabinet. I got enough coats of polyurethane on them to call them done and put them into the cabinet tonight. Tomorrow is supposed to be thunderstorms and it is also a workshop night so I'll probably start another two.
I put also put a coat of outdoor finish onto my Kubb set. It was really hot in my garage when I applied it. Hot enough that my wife came out to check on me to see if I'd passed out. It was also a pretty messy job. I managed to not get the finish all over everything but I didn't do the neatest job on the set. I haven't decided yet if I am going to put the second recommended coat.
Anyway, that's all for the last week.
