About : tv stand wood projects
Title : tv stand wood projects
tv stand wood projects
voiceover:the woodwhisperer is sponsored by powermatic, the gold standard since 1921. (lively music) marc:now i know this may seema little bit out of order. the pieces incompletely assembled yet and we're going to starttalking about finishing but really with a lotof pieces of furniture that i built in the past,finishing comes and goes at different points in the project
it's not always simplymill, build, glue together and then finish. it just sometimes makes a lot more sense to do the finishing beforeyou're done with the project because it just makes yourlife a whole lot easier. for instance finishingthe inside of this cabinet is going to be a lot harder when we've got a setof doors on the front, when we've got the top in there,
we're trying to finish the underside, it's going to be a mess. what i like to do is now that most of thecabinet is pre-assembled and a lot of these joints are sealed off. now is a good time toactually start applying some finish while we haveall this room to work. if we don't do that like i said it's really going to be a bear
to try and get all these surfaces covered and finished and you couldeven do this one step before. you could have everything pre-finished before we even do this part of the glueup but i like to have at leastmost of the joints protected from our finish before i even go into this and the other thing is the front doors, the sliding doors, wellthey need to be mobile. if you start applyingfinish to that surface
the finish is probably going to drip down into the channel that we've cut here and it's going to justmake it a lot harder for that door to slide. i just can't imagine us gettinga really good quality finish on those doors. the first thing we're going to do is apply a wiping varnish, it's a very simple finish.
in fact it's one of my favorite finishes because it's simple and it's protective. it doesn't really need tobe a complicated process and we'll go into thosedetails in a second. first i want talk a littlebit about trim in plywood. okay solid wood trimsometimes doesn't match up with the color of the plywood and sometimes they alsowill not look the same after finish hits them because the finish
absorbs differently in avery thin veneer than it does in a full piece of solid wood. this is just a sampleboard that i've made up with a nice strip. in fact it's exactlylike our partitions here. now the side that i'mconsidering the show side of this piece looks like this and that's a pretty good match and chances are whenwe put finish on there,
it's going to look just as good. i don't think this needs anymore work but you might be in a situation and this goes with any wood, it doesn't have to be walnut where you can see thattrim and you have to decide whether you want to dosomething about that. a lot of people don't mind, so if you don't want to do anything
you don't necessarily have to but the easiest way i findto combat this problem is to use some type of a stain on top. now it's a beautiful walnut surface so it's really a shame tohave to use stain on there. if it's an imperfect walnut surface and you want a really consistent look over the entire surface, stainingmaybe just the way to go. i have some water-based stain here,
these are the same stain that i used on the off material on the back panels. it's general finishes, walnutwater-based wood stain. let me show you how that process goes. the first thing you want to do, spray some distilled waterover the whole surface because we're using a water-based stain, that water-based stain isgoing to raise the grains. what we're doing is pre-raising the grain.
let's give it a goodcoat, wipe off the excess and let that dry for about an hour. once it's nice and dry i can come back, give it a very lightsanding just to knock off the raised grain. doesn't need much. now we could start with the stain. before i use a water-based stain i like to sprinkle thesurface a little bit of water
just to pre-soak the grain a little bit so the stain doesn't absorb unevenly. these water-based stains theyusually go on pretty dark and then they dry to a dull color but that's okay because assoon as they get finish on them they'll go right back. you could see alreadyhow much better blended that stripe is. come back with arelatively clean rag here,
get that excess off. now by the time thisdries and we get a coat of finish on here it's going to look ten timesbetter that it did before. again i don't really know thati'm going to do this process on our piece here becausemost of the exposed areas are pretty well blended to begin with but it's good to know that you've got this in your tool bag oftricks in case you do have
an uneven color situation. here's the game plan. i really only want to applyfinish to the interior parts, the stuff that's going to behard for me to reach later so the outside piece oftrim, the top side over here. i don't really want to hit those just yet. i want to address those whenthe whole piece is together, especially if i'm puttingfinish on the top, it may have a tendencyto drip down the edge.
i want to make sure i'mdoing that all in one shot but everything else isgoing to get coated now including the doors,as well as the shelves, the back panels, everything but those top surfaces and the trim. what i'm going to use is a wiping varnish. this is already diluted to wiping formula so it's been diluted with mineral spirits but really if you want to make your own
it's nothing more than a polyurethane diluted about 50% with mineral spirits and just get a secondarycontainer like this. mix your own, just makesure it's mixed thoroughly and you should have it at the point that it's a wiping formula. that basically means no brushes, no brush strokes whenit's all set and done, you just use rags to apply the finish.
now the first coat, there'sreally no points for neatness. the wood is very thirstyfor finish at this point and it's going to absorb it pretty quickly so i really just slap it on, wipe off the excess andthen let it dry 68 hours. after that point you reallydo start to build a film so you have to be much more careful about the way that you apply it, so it's nice smooth, evenstrokes with the grain
but right now we're goingto be a little bit sloppier than normal. the way i usually like to do is put the finish into a secondary container. if you keep opening this can and putting a dirty rag back into it of course you're going tocontaminate the finish. the other thing is we'renot going to use all this in one shot so if you keep that lid off
the longer that's off, the longer that finish is expose to oxygen and that is how the stuff cures is by oxidation. the less time this can is open the better. i usually will start by opening up the can and pouring out just whati need for this project. that should be plenty to getme through the first coat and if you have a lidor something like this,
you just put the lid on andcontinue for the second coat using the same batch. like i said no points for neatness here, i just want to get the finish in and get that first coatsoaked into the wood. this is usually myfavorite part of a project when you really see the woodjust come to life like that, it's gorgeous. now you do want to take special care
to avoid getting finishon the exposed parts of the joinery here and it probably wouldn't bea bad idea to mask them off with some masking tape if you want to take the time to do that. at this point i have pretty good faith that we'll be able to control where the finish actually ends up. nice.
okay i will continueacross the entire piece and again try to avoidgetting finish on the trim and we're cruising right along, this is turning out really nice. now finishing the inside of what's going to be the bottom piece. it's a little bit trickier tokeep the finish out of these the grooves and dadosso what i'm going to do is use some tape here,
just put a strip in each one. now it's not perfect, youstill need to be careful but it's certainly better than having nothing at all in there. basically just push it all the way down to let hugs the sides and that should do a pretty fine job. now our second coat of wiping varnish is going to require a littlebit more caring attention
than the first. you see at this point we'restarting to build a film. the wood is pretty much sealed, it's not going to suck that much more in. the finish is going to startlayering on the surface and now minor imperfections in a way that we apply this stuff can be a lot more visible at this point. what i like to do is make a nice thick pad
of clean cotton rag, this is just old t-shirt material and honestly older the better because the more this is runthrough the washing machine, the less lint and thebetter it's going to be for the process of finishing. i've got a nice little pad here and i just hold it in my hand like this, dip it into the finishmuch like we did before.
like i said this time smooth strokes and a nice even layer all the way across. just keep moving down the line. now though we're working on theinside of the case right now i will use this exact sameprocess for every other part of the project includingthe top, the shelves, the doors, everything. before you apply your thirdcoat of wiping varnish, do yourself a favor.
feel the surface, once it's fully dry, just rub your hands all over it, what you're going to feelis a rough texture, okay. the grain is raised, there's probably some thingsthat we're in the finish that dried on the surface. what we need to do, the realsecret to a fine finish, we need to sand that material down so what i like to dois use 320 grit paper.
this happens to be a wet dry paper but you can use regular and at this point just very lightly abrade the surface. you don't want to sand through the finish, we just want to smooth it out. now we couldn't do this before because with the wiping varnish you don't really applymuch varnish with each coat and that's one of thegreat things about it.
if you sand too soon you're going to sandback down to bare wood so notice just a very light touch. how do you know whenyou've gone far enough? that's what your other hand is for, when it's nice and smooth and you'll feel a tremendous difference between the areas that you smooth and the ones that you haven't.
okay so once you sandthe entire project down, come back with a clean ragsoaked in mineral spirits and just wipe that dust right off. let that dry and then youcan go on to your third coat of wiping varnish. now keep in mind the greatthing about wiping varnish is that each of those coats is so thin that you could decide exactlywhere you want to stop, depending on the look andthe feel that you want.
if you want to buildup a really thick film, you may need to go seven, maybe even eight coats. as much as eight is excessive but if you're looking to getthat brushed on type look where it's a nice thick coat,that may be the way to go. if you really want that thick of a finish you may consider adifferent application method and using a stronger solution anyway.
with a wiping varnish what i like to do is more of a close to the wood finish that still gives you theprotection of varnish but when you touch it, it doesn't feel likeyou're touching plastic and on open pored woodsomething like walnut where you could see that pore structure, it's really a good idea to stick with that lighter type of finish.
because if you put a really,really thick film finish on walnut, especially ifit's a really high gloss, it can look a little bit funnyif you see those little pits and things in there. i'm probably going to gowith a total of maybe four, five at the most coats but the idea is from nowon we will lightly sand in between each coat. we start with 320, after the next coat
i'll probably move up to 600 grit and continue using 600grit between each coat from here on out. again stop when you think it looks good. now after your final coat, once you have the finishyou're looking for, the film thickness and the appearance that you're looking for, run your hand over the whole surface
and you may feel just a littlebit of grit here and there, just little nubs of dust or something that'sstuck on to the surface. what i like to do for that,just for the final smoothing is i take a piece of 2000 gritautomotive wet dry sandpaper, it's usually this black or gray stuff and very, very lightly andjust grace the surface across. a lot of folks say you can use brown paper from a brown paper bag to do this as well.
i've never really done that but if i didn't have any paper on hand, 2000 grit that's what i would do. this light action acrossthe whole surface like this really will knock down those high spots without actually creatingmuch in a way of dust or anything on the surface. it doesn't really scratch the surface, it's just lightly buffs it in a way.
go over any spot that youfeel with your bare hands you feel has a little bit of grit. there's one right there and that usually takes care of it. now before we do the final glueup and close everything in. it's not a bad idea to thinkabout your shelf pin holes now. if you don't have what i've got here which is a little aftermarket jig,
you may consider putting these holes in before this step, while allthe pieces are separated and you have access to allthe pieces being nice and flat on a work surface dependingon how you want to do it. for me with this aftermarketjig i just find it easier to wait until the piece is together. as long as i've got enoughroom to fit my drill in that location, i like toreference off at the bottom of the work piece like this
and it works really well for me. just think ahead of timeon how you want to approach the shelf pin holes butwhat i'm going to do like i said is use this commercial jig and it has a spring loaded drill bit that basically drillsthe perfect depth hole each and every time. all you really need tooperate it is a drill. what's a reasonable alternative
to a commercial jig like this? well you could certainly make your own but i find the easiest thing to do is just use peg board. it's widely available at any home store, just cut it to the size that you need and you've got your hole spaced perfectly about an inch apart, you can't beat it. now we haven't talked muchyet about the shelves,
each compartment gets two shelves and they're going to be adjustable so that's a total of six overall. now the shelves aregoing to be essentially constructed in exactly the same way as the partition piecesand the side pieces, it'll be a simple piece of ply that fits in to the compartment and you could dress up the front.
in fact you could dress up all four edges if you really want to but the front is really allthat's ever going to be seen. as i was looking around the shop trying to find some scrap material that would be great to usefor the edge banding on this, i came across some of my cutoffs from cutting the trim on the top and bottom pieces. i realized that these cut offs
have a little bit of an angle in them and clearly because that's how we cut it. i'm like "this actually" "might make really cool edge banding." imagine if the shelvesalso mimic the same slope that you see in thetop and the bottom trim and on this little tiny piece of wood it's very slight so it's not going to beoverbearing in any way.
that's what i'm going to do, i'm going to actually use thismaterial as my edge banding to give the shelves themselves just an interesting detailthat will be a surprise for anyone who decides to open the door and take a close look at that shelf. these little details are the things that make custom furniture so fun. you wouldn't see that necessarilyin manufactured products
so applying that is going to be exactlythe same way as before. i'm really just goingto use tape this time because of the angle, i don't really want to messaround with the clamping and just trying to make a clamping call that has the appropriate angle in it. tape will be more than adequatefor gluing this together. finally we're ready to attach the bottom,
so we're going to start byputting glue in all the dados and if you have a helper,this is the time to get them because you're going to need to move fast to get everything in position and you'll see what i mean in a second so let's start by adding the glue. now as you can see even with two people, we're running around like chickens with our heads cut offtrying to get this thing
to be positioned right. after it's been sittinghere for a day or two, things have moved a little bit so even when we did our dry fit before, well things have changed since then. it takes a little bit more coercion and that's where slow settingglues can come in handy if you're not able to get it done quick enough by yourself.
it's a good insurance policyto use a slow setting glue but i knew we've done this enough times. i know we'd be able to get it so i use standard pva glue. when you put everything together now since these surfaces are finished, you want to be very careful and make sure that ifyou get glue squeeze out that you go back and cleanit up with a dump rag
so it doesn't harden andcause you a problem later on. mine came up pretty good, i've got a little bitof squeeze out over here that i need to take care ofthat's why i've got this. for the most part it'ssecure, it's in the clamps, we might add a few moreclamps here and there. i think we're prettyexcited about the project at this point, starting to look good. (upbeat music)