(uptempo music) - well it actually took a couple days, but i do have my mirror andi've got my backer board plywood here, and i haveit sandwiched together. and we can take a measurement so i know exactly how deep to make that rabbet. and it looks like we're coming in at about 7/16 of an inch. of course, you're also gonna want to check
the length and the width, and make sure that that works witha 1/2 inch wide rabbet that we're about to put on the frame. mine was cut dead on, so i'm ready to go with the routing. i'm gonna make the rabbetusing this rabbeting bit. you can see it's got a nice bearing here to help guide the work, and depending on the size of the bearing, you could change
the size of the rabbet. so, the one i have heregives me about 1/2 inch from the bearing to the tip of the cutter, and that's gonna be perfect,so the only other thing i'll need to set is the actual depth that we measured before. and all i need to do to make that happen is just to take my setting, here, draw with a nice sharp pencil, give myself
a pencil line to reference from and then i can set my bit just like this. and here's a quick tip for you concerning router direction: youwanna memorize the rule. on the outside of a frame,you go counter-clockwise. but on the inside of aframe, you go clockwise. that's just the way it is; memorize it. now you'll probably noticethat the rabbeting bit will leave us with a rounded corner,
and our mirror is notrounded, it's square. so we need to squarethis off with a chisel. we're just going to usethe existing sections, that we've already routed, as a guide. and use a nice, wide chisel to kind of work my wayover to where i need to be. (hammer knocking on chisel) all right, so now we can do a little test fit with our mirror.
when you just drop itin here, just support it with your fingers from the other side. oh yeah. that's nice! so what do you do ifthe fit isn't perfect? let's say it's just alittle bit too tight. well, in this case, arabbeting bit only has so many bearings that you can use, so it's hard to go in deeper that way, so what i would suggestis using a pattern bit.
that's also bearing-guided, butyou can use a straight edge, just a clamp-on straight edge, and ride that across the straight edge to sort of expand this opening a little bit, and push it back a little bit further. hopefully, you won't have to do that but there's definitely ways to get the job done if you need to. all right, so now let'scut our backer board,
make sure it's cut to the same size as our opening here, andwe should be good to go. let's just drop this bad boyin place, make sure it fits. oh yeah, that's nice. good fit! so of course, to hold this back panel in, we're gonna need somesort of clip or something. so let's make someshop-made clips out of wood that we'll be able to screw in and'll hold everything in place.
the clips are made from scrappieces from this project. while their dimensionsaren't really critical, i milled them to 1/4 inch thick, by 1 1/4 inches wide, and 2 inches long. each clip is then givena gentle round-over and a light sanding. i'd like to have two pre-drilledoffset holes on each clip, so i measure in 1/2 inch from each end, and then about 1/2 inch in from the side.
i can then use a countersinkbit to drill the holes. now, with a bunch of theseclips around the perimeter, we can screw it to the frame, and have an overhanging portion thatholds the back panel in place. and we can just drive insome of these 3/4 inch number six screws to make sure everything is firmly attached. and, i won't use glue on this. and the other thing isi'll probably want to drill
a little bit into the frame, to pre-drill. so we'll do that after the stain, finish and everything is applied. this is as far as we'll go with these. well, there's one moretreatment i wanna do to our frame here. i wanna give it a nice round-over all the way around the perimeter, as well as the insideperimeter, and the back.
and it's not only gonna look good, but it's gonna make itfeel nice to the touch, and i've got my trim router set up with a little tiny round-overbit that should do the trick. well, now let's give ourframe a final sanding to 220, and then 320 grit. so the finishing aspects of this project are gonna be a little bit more complicated than i normally like.
i usually like a nice, simple finish and with a wood likethis, it doesn't take much to make it look absolutely beautiful. but in this case, becauseit's going in a bathroom, where cabinets are already in place, we need to match a manufactured finish that's on those cabinets,or at least come close. now, the good thing is, because the grain of our frame is so busy,
that's gonna distract theeye, and i don't think it's necessary for us to havean absolutely perfect match. futhermore, there's a physical separation between the mirror and thevanity that's below it, so i've got one of my drawers here, so we can look at the finishthat's already on there, sort of identify someof the properties of it, and see if we can't come up with something that's in the ballpark of this finish.
let's take a close look. so the wood here is definitely maple, and the color isn't all that special, it's just kind of a medium brown color. but the thing i wanna point out is some of these darker areasin the nooks and crannies. and this is even more evidenton the doors in the bathroom. that's got some dark stuff in there, what that is is a glaze.
and a lot of these cabinetcompanies will do this. they'll put a base color on, then they'll put some finish on, and then they'll use aglaze to kind of darken and create shadow lines,and give it sort of a, a bit of an aged look. so that's a pretty popular thing to do. so we'll have to try toreplicate that with our frame. now, even though i've got some experience
with color matching, i usedto work at a refinishing shop where that's kind of all we did. we'd strip finishes down and try to get it back to something that matcheswhat the customer wanted. so we mixed a lot of our own stuff, and that gets complicated, but sometimes it's the onlyway to get the color you need. these days, i like to go simpler, i like to find off-the-shelf products
that get me in the ballparkof where i need to be, and this way i can usuallydepend on that same product being available a coupleof years from now, instead of having tolook through a notebook and try to find a perfect recipe. so what i had in my finishing cabinet were a couple different things. i've got a wood stain herefrom general finishers called "pecan," and then i've got avan dyke brown glazed effect.
and let me show you with a sample board exactly how this is gonnago, and the progression from raw wood to finish. on the first panel, i just have my stain. this pecan water-based stain. in the second panel, i clear-coated it just to kind of lock that color in and get ready for the glazing. in the third panel, ihave my glaze applied,
its been sort of applied liberally and then wiped off, and the goal again is for it to find all thoselittle nooks and crannies and give it a more "aged" look, which is kind of hard to do on a flat surface like this, but anyway, on the fourth panel iwent back and applied my clear coat on top of it, just to kind of give me an idea ofwhat the final look would be.
and this is what we would use to compare against our existing piece. now, of course, that's not perfect, but i honestly feel likethis is close enough to get me where i need to be. most eyeballs will noticethe incredible figure of the frame, its gonna be,dare i say, overwhelming. compared to everything else in that room, it'll definitely catch the eye.
so i'm not too worried if the color is just slightly off. using off-the-shelf products,i'm happy with this result. now because our stain is water-based, we have to pre-raise the grain,before we do anything else. when freshly sanded wood gets wet, the grain raises andthe surface feels rough. pre-raising the grainprevents that from happening when we apply our stain or finish.
so i simply wipe a liberal amount of water onto the surface of the frame. after it dries, i sand itlightly with 320 grit paper, just enough to remove the roughness. now i can apply thestain using a cotton rag, also known as an old t-shirt. water-based stains do dry quickly, so it's important notto drag your feet here. i'm wiping the stain on liberally,
and then wiping the excessoff, one frame piece at a time. by the time you have the back done, you should feel much moreconfident as you approach the more important front face and edges. and while i've got the stain out, i'll throw some of that on the clips, too. now, the good thing about the stain is that it's pretty easy to fix mistakes. here's an area where igot a little bit sloppy,
and it's already dry. a damp rag is all it takes to clean it up. the next step is to apply a clear coat. i'm using sherwin-williamscab acrylic lacquer with my hvlp turbine. the sheen i'm using iscalled "medium rubbed effect" which, to my eye, justlooks like a semi-gloss. so we need to make sure thatthe material is stirred well. i then fill my cup with the finish
as it passes through a paint filter. this will remove any dryfinish or impurities. i do my spraying outdoors,which is pretty convenient in arizona where thetemperatures are warm, the air is dry, and we don't have much in the way of airborne bugs. i start by spraying theedges, and then the front face of the frame. the purpose of this first coat
is to simply seal in the stain. if there's any roughness on the surface, i'll gently sand with320, back inside the shop. be cautious, though, as youdon't want to sand through that stain layer; justknock down the major stuff. now it's time to apply the glaze. the glaze is not reallymeant to act as a stain, which is why we sealed the surface. instead, its purpose is to add dimension
by depositing color intothe nooks and crannies of a particular piece. that includes deep grainlines, edge profiles, corners, and, in our case, the v grooves that we cut into the joints. you simply paint it on, and then wipe off the excess, leaving material packed into the crevices. and you should note thati'm only applying this
to the front and edges of the frame. there's really no reasonto glaze the back. and although it doesn't reallyabsorb into the wood fibers, it can certainly darken the surface a bit, as some of it will adhere to the finish. the end result is a slightlymore rustic and aged effect. i let the frame dry overnight, and started with more lacquerfirst thing in the morning. i sprayed the back of the frame first,
applying a nice, heavy coat because this is actually the only coat that i'm gonna apply to the back. once dry to the touch,i can flip the frame and spray the front. i'll apply a total of two fairlyheavy coats at this point. after a few hours of dry time, i'm gonna wet-sand the surfaceto level out the finish. now, we're not gonna do apiano-gloss finish here,
so this is just a rough leveling. i use water as a lubricant,and a sanding block with some 500 grit wet/dry sandpaper. use a light touch, as thewater will suck the block down to the surface, and you can easily burn through the finishif you're not careful. a clean rag is then usedto wipe off the water and the finish slurry. the surface should look mostlydull when you're finished.
it's not perfect, but it'sdefinitely better than it was. now here's the secret sauce: the final coat of finish willbe mostly lacquer thinner, with only a small amount of finish. i'd say maybe about 80/20. because lacquer burns into itself, and lacquer thinner reactivates it, this thin mixture will adda final coat of lacquer that helps level the existing surface,
while providing a near-perfectfinish right off the gun. furthermore, it has so much thinner in it that it dries incredibly fast, giving the environment less time to deposit crap into the finish. all right, so the final finishis looking pretty darn good. right off the gun, at this point, i don't really think ineed to do anything else. the good thing about afinish like this, though,
is that, if you needed to,you could certainly do some post-processing, if you will. where you smooth it a little bit more, maybe buff it to a highshine, whatever you wanna do. but if you can get greatresults right off the gun, you don't necessarily need to do that. now, here's the thing. this finish highlights that you don't need an absolutelyperfect environment
to get a good quality finish. i sprayed outside, in my driveway, and my shop is kinda dirty right now, there's dust all over the floor, so it's absolutely animperfect environment, yet somehow we get a really good finish. it just comes down toknowing the materials, knowing a few tricks forsmoothing the surface and dealing with those airborne particles
that are almost definitelygonna settle into your finish, but there are ways to deal with 'em and get results like this. all right, so now that wehave the finish applied, we have to protect that finish because we need to put it face-down to apply the mirror andput some of our stuff on the back of it, sowe'll come up with a way to protect it, and get everything done.
well i don't know aboutyou, but i am fond of stealing blankets from the house and bringing them into theshop just for things like this. and, now we can put on the backer. and now i'm just gonnaplace my clips around in the approximate locationswhere they're gonna go. i want two per side; i thinkthat should be just fine. each clip is then lined up,and i'll grab my drill here just to pre-drill a little bit.
get it started. now i'll drive those 3/4 inch screws. there we go. so all my clips are inplace, and at this point you might be wondering, "how the heck are wegonna hang this thing?" well, i've got theselittle metal clips here, they're called eagle clips. they are a lot like a french cleat system,
where one of these goes on the frame, the other one goes on the wall, and they interlocknicely, it's a great way to hang something like this,and gives it a lot of support. the problem is, though,we have these clips here. so if i just mounted one on the frame, i would never actuallybe able to make contact with the one that's on the wall. so we'll need to just adda little spacer block,
made out of the same material, that will go underneaththis here, all right? and let me show you howi'm gonna attach it. now, while one clip is good, two is gonna be better for this. so i'm gonna have one on each side, and the most important thingis that we keep this frame nice and level, so toensure that, i'm going to measure up the samedistance on both sides,
about 3/4 of an inch, fromwhere our backer board starts, put a couple pencil lines,and then i'll be able to attach my support piece here. and same thing on thisside, 3/4 of an inch up. line it up, and i can attach it. and first, start with a little bit of ca glue here, super glue. to make sure it doesn't move on me. now all we need to do is line up the clip
with the top of the support. and i realize i'm kind ofplaying with fire a little bit, without some kind of amarker to control the depth. so a little piece of tape will do. and now i'm just gonnadrive the two screws, now the key is that the screw needs to go through the clip, through thesupport, and into the frame if it's gonna be strong. all right, so i had to upgrade
from the number six 3/4, to anumber eight one inch screw, and that should do the trick. another thing to keep in mind here is if you really want togo with prettier screws, you can certainly do that. these aren't the most attractive ones. of course, the sameprocess on the other side. all right, let's see how we did. that's looking pretty darn good.
needs a little windex, but that shouldn't be too much trouble. so at this point, theonly thing left to do is hang it in the bathroom. (easy music)
Komentar
Posting Komentar