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In my last video, I built this cabinet. Now, the goal wasn't really the cabinet.
Chad Metcalf explores developing his own woodworking style by building a whiskey cabinet, learning from mistakes and mastering small details.
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Key Takeaways
- Developing a personal style involves learning from others and adapting their ideas rather than copying exactly.
- Planning with the end use and dimensions in mind is crucial before starting a woodworking project.
- Small details and tiny adjustments often make the biggest difference in furniture quality.
- Mistakes are inevitable in woodworking; learning to fix them is essential.
- Prefinishing can help with glue cleanup but requires careful handling to avoid surface damage.
What the video covers
- Chad builds a whiskey cabinet inspired by a previous cabinet but aims to develop his own style by stealing and adapting design elements.
- He emphasizes understanding the cabinet's purpose, dimensions, and use before starting the build.
- Chad uses a combination of machines for rough work and hand tools for precision.
- He learns valuable layout lessons from Mike Pekco's masterclass, focusing on small details like through tenons and consistent part widths.
- The build includes hand-cut dovetails and careful fitting of joints, highlighting the importance of tiny adjustments.
- Chad encounters and fixes multiple mistakes during the build, reinforcing that errors are part of woodworking.
- He prefinishes the cabinet to avoid glue issues but has to sand out scratches due to joinery left proud.
- Door sizing errors related to hinge strips lead to additional adjustments and problem-solving.
- The video concludes with Chad's family trying to find the three mistakes he made, illustrating the learning process.
- Chad reflects that craftsmen 'steal' ideas and details from others, mixing them to create unique work.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and project goal
- 00:30Design inspiration and planning
- 01:04Project planning and measuring
- 01:36Using tools and preparing lumber
- 02:33Learning from Mike Pekco's masterclass
- 03:11Cutting dovetails and fitting joints
- 04:51Building the door and encountering mistakes
- 06:33Finishing touches and fixing errors
- 10:26Final review and family mistake challenge
- 14:44Reflection on craftsmanship and style
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
I was trying to answer a question. How do I develop my own style? My theory was that if I copied enough work from a craftsman I admired, eventually I had to start to understand how they made the decisions they were making. When I
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finished that cabinet, I still didn't have an answer. So, I started looking for the next project. And that's when I noticed this little detail right [music] here at the waistline. Something about it kept pulling me back. The problem was
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I didn't want to build the same cabinet twice. But I've had several people ask me about building a whiskey cabinet. So instead of completely copying another piece, I decided to steal the parts I [music] liked, take what I learned from
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the first cabinet, design something new, and see if a second project gets me any closer to developing my own style.
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There's a really important question when it comes to making furniture. What am I supposed to do with this? And ideally, you answer that question before you start building. I skipped that on the last cabinet. Before you figure out
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dimensions, joinery, or even what the thing should look like, you need to know a few things. What's it holding? Where's it going? How will it actually be used? And since I already had everything that was going inside it,
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the bottles, the glasses, [music] I could start with the tape measure and work backwards from there after some coffee first.
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Now, when it comes to planning a project, I found there's not really a right or wrong way to do it. The goal isn't a perfect plan. It's just to get [music] the project organized in your head.
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And since I suck at drawing, that's where Shaper 3D comes in. But regardless of what you're making, every project starts with rough lumber.
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Now, I love hand tools, but I don't love unnecessary work. So, my process is pretty simple. Machines get me close.
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Hand tools give me precision. The joiner gives me a flat reference face. Well, it gets close. I fine-tune it with my Lee Nelson number seven.
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The planer gets everything close to final thickness. The table saw, well, why on earth would you rip a board by hand?
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Then the hand tools come out. A few passes [music] with a plane. A quick check for twist, sneaking up on that final fit because I found it's a lot easier to remove the last few thousands with a hand plane than to put it back on
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once I blow past my knife line with a power tool. The more furniture I build, the more I realize the difference usually isn't in the big things. Most woodworkers know how to make a cut or fit a joint. The
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difference is usually hidden in a hundred [music] small decisions nobody sees. And the next morning, I got a reminder of this.
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When I wake up, I was drinking coffee and checking email when I saw Mike Pekco had released a new master class. So, naturally, I clicked on it. Over the last few weeks, I've spent a lot of time studying Mike's
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work, trying to understand not just what he builds, but how he thinks about furniture, and one lesson caught my attention. It wasn't a new joint or some complicated technique. It was a simple idea about layout. One of those details
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that's easy to overlook. I mean, obviously I overlooked it. I knew I wanted to try it, but first I had to cut the case dovetails, and I'm going to need some music for that. I've hand cut enough dovetails at this point that I'm
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good, but not quite a master. They're one of those things that can go from everything is awesome to the frustrating part is I know exactly what to do. I've watched the videos, read the books, and I've cut a ton of
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them. The challenge is doing it consistently every single time. So, I laid out the tails, made the cuts, transferred everything over to the pin boards, and started fitting the case together. And that's the moment you usually find out whether the last
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several hours were productive or educational. Fortunately, they went together. Not perfectly, but well enough that I wasn't cutting new parts. And now I can finally try that layout lesson.
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The lesson was pretty simple. It wasn't a new technique or even some tool I needed to buy. Although, who doesn't like a new tool? It was just a [music] small change in how Mike laid out through tenons. Now, on the last
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cabinet, I used the Shaper Origin. And what's crazy is these actually turned out better and they felt faster. I'm not saying it would be faster than the Origin in all cases, but if you're doing square mortises, it's definitely faster.
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So, in the future, if I do the tenons with the Origin, they will be round. I also noticed another little detail in the master class. He keeps all his parts the same width until after the joinery is cut. I didn't do this last time, and
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man, was this way easier. Less math and tighter joints. Now, that's a win in my book. Those little details help [music] me dial in the joints and fine-tune the shadow lines. And what I'm learning through this process is the details that
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make furniture look better are rarely dramatic. They're usually tiny. A reveal that's a little smaller. A line moves slightly, a curve adjusted by an eighth of an inch. Things most people would never notice, but once you see them, you
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can't unsee them. With the case together, it was time to build the door. And things had been going pretty smoothly up until this point. Well, that was about to change.
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I'm not sure how I managed to mess this up. I could blame my shop visitors, but at the end of the day, I'm [music] the one that made this cut. Here's what happened.
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Yep, this door [music] panel definitely isn't going to work. So, I guess I'll just make another one.
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It has been so long. [singing] And while I'm waiting for the glue to dry, I might as well knock out the drawer.
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They say my little. Somehow I actually managed to mess up the door again, just not the panel this time. It seems like mistakes are just a part of woodworking. They're going to happen, so you might as well get good at
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fixing them. And we have a little tradition in our house. Whenever I finish a project, I tell my wife and boys exactly how many mistakes I made and see if they can find them. So, at the end of this build, they're going to
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have three to look for. I had just enough bird's eye maple left over from the last build to knock out the back and the drawer sides for this one. [music] So, I've got a design idea in my mind. I
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think it'll look good, but we won't really know until it all comes together. I love the world's most physical.
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[music] You squeeze me tight. She made it through my spine la. [music] There's no [music] heat.
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[music] I should have got. [music] [music and singing] [music] [music] At this point, I thought I had the door pretty well dialed in. Just needed a little finetuning.
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Well, somehow that didn't break. Anyway, a few hours later, I was about to realize the mistake I had just made.
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That's it. Before my glue up, I actually prefinished [music] this cabinet in hopes of keeping glue from sticking where it shouldn't. And it did work, but somehow I managed to get some scratches on this thing. They're not terrible, but
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I know they're there. And normally I grab a hand plane and clean them up, but because I left the joinery proud, I can't really do that. So, I got to spend my afternoon sanding.
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And if you were wondering how the door went together, well, now you know. But before I can actually hang this door, I'm gonna need some hinges.
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Head out on the highway looking for adventure. Whatever comes our way. [music] I grabbed the hinges, glued up the hinge strip, and about this time I realized the mistake I'd made.
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When I built the door, I sized it to fit the opening without accounting for the hinge strip that would be installed later. Well, that made it about a quarter inch too wide.
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So, in my haste, I made another mistake. Now, it was too small. But after a little time to cool off, I came up with a solution. But I still needed some pulls, which seemed like a good excuse to pull out the lat...
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ago, I would have just bought the pools. But now that I've got this lathe, why buy them?
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Hey hey hey. Hey, [snorts] [music] [music] [music] So, hope you like the cabinet. Now, let's see if Christy can find the three mistakes in this cabinet. So, let's go grab her and see how we did.
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What do we do? Okay, so there's three mistakes and you got to try to find them.
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[music] Yes. [music] Is that one? [music] Okay, that's one. That one's pretty easy to find.
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Oh, you guys. Well, do we see any errors in here? You hiding anything from me? Almost [music] had it all.
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[music] [music] [music] Well, I don't think she's going to find the other two cuz she's not even looking.
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I'm not looking on the right side. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I'm not even looking.
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I looked. Is it like gapping in the door? No. No. Not there. Right there.
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No. Okay. You don't know. The first mistake is this should be back about in a 30 second cuz it's like good here.
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But like right here it's like a little bit less. Oh yeah, I see. But you'd probably never notice it if I didn't point [music] it out.
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Yeah. The other mistake was I actually the reveal here on this side. This crack is about a 64th more than this. Maybe a 32 because I messed up in making the door and I had to trim it and then I
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trimmed it too small. So you did see a big light gap there. So that's why I like put this spacer strip in here so it really just hides it.
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Oh, I didn't never notice that one. You had never noticed it. This now that you point it out though, I can fizzy.
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Yeah. So, good job. So, maybe all craftsmen are thieves. And not because they copy each other's work, but because they steal ideas, proportions, little details, and ways of thinking. Then they mix those things together until the work slowly becomes
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their own. And that's how I'm starting to think about developing style. This cabinet's done, and I think I'll build one more thing from Mike Pekovich's book before moving on to the next master. If you've got a master I should consider,
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let me know in the comments.
Topics:woodworkingcabinet makingfurniture designhand toolswood joinerydovetailswoodworking mistakeswoodworking tipsShaper OriginMike Pekco masterclass
