Terry & Cari

Well the long wait is over … almost.

I’m not really sure when I started working on the entertainment console (I think that it was late fall). At any rate I picked up a head of steam the past month or so here and I got the majority of it done. The plans that I based it off of are from Fine Woodworking #200.

The construction is basically a cherry plywood carcass. I used simple pocket hole joinery and a bit of glue to join the carcass together. I then added the solid cherry side panels and trimmed the exposed plywood with solid cherry. The top is solid 1″ cherry. The author used cherry ply trimmed with a solid cherry border but with kids I didn’t wanna risk an undetected spill and veneer peeling away so I chose a solid top. The console sits on 6 2″ casters and can be rolled back and forth to get access to all the cords. I finished it 2 coats of General Finished Seal-A-Cell and 4-5 coats of General Finished Arm-R-Seal Semi-Gloss.

The drawers are hard maple and are joined with a thru dovetail. I finished them with a single coat of blond shellac. They finish here wont see too much abuse.  I make the bottom left hand drawer about 4 inches shorter than the other 3. I did this so I can mount my power strip/surge protector back there. That way I can basically push it right back up against the wall. All in all I think that it looks pretty schweet.

I think that the major blockage for me on the project was hemming and hawing about how I wanted to do the side panels. In the end I went with a simple 1/4″ panel. I figured that since they are covered by the speakers most of the time they don’t need to be fancy. I also played around with a locking bit for the for the side panel because they are actually L shaped. Part of the panel wraps around the front of the case. In the end I decided that I didn’t need all that extra strength and a simple 45 deg cut on the table saw would just fine. Of course that meant spending a few hours fine tuning on the saw to get it to adjust to 45 deg.  Note to self it helps if you adjust the correct stop. I find it funny when watching Norm, David Marks, Marc Spagnuolo etc… they never really show the fine tuning that you have to do before you can make your final cuts.