Krenov Style Cabinet

Beautiful work Bill

Steve Kubien

>Congrats on the fine work. That is a very nice piece. What sort of finish will go on the ash version?

Steve Kubien

? about the finish

Wendell @ Murphy, TX

>Nice work on the cabinet.

I am thinking about trying some milk paint on some shop cabinets so your comment about hating milk paint caught my attention. What don't you like about milk paint? I had never seen Country Colors before. How do you apply it to your pieces, by hand or by spraying?

Wendell

Very nice work!

Jonathan Kaplan (OR)

>I look forward to seeing the version in ash...

jk

Answers about the finish

bill tindall

>Country Colors- available from Woodcraft and Japan Woodworker, and Klingspor- maybe everywhere. Available in milk paint colors. Nice guy runs the business. I met him at Klingspor one day.

What I hate about milk paint- It settles, it rots, it goes on blotchy, its expensive, you have to mix it. Country Colors is formulated to go on very smoothly.

I dab a small rag in the Country Color paint/stain (I'm not sure what to call this stuff. It is about like gel stain). And then I rub it on, spreading it to achieve the desired effect. I usually go for a semitransparent look , but it can be double coated and cover up the grain of poplar. It is very easy to spread, and make darker or lighter by spreading. As a semitransparent it goes a long way. For the cabinet I can't see any gone from a pint can.

For the inside and back I wanted something light and didn't have a Country Color that was light on hand. I went to Ben Franklin and got acrylic artist paint- 69 cents for a bottle. I thinned it and it went on like the country Colors. I used about 2 tablespoons full for the whole insides and shelves. Antique white is the color. it looks more yellow in picture than in real life and the cabinet is a navy blue. I was puzzeling over the color at Ben Franklin store and some ladies came to help. While we were discussing various whites another lady came by. When I expalined what I needed she grabbed the container of antique white and said this is what you need and everyone went Oh, yes. Turned out she was an artist,which I am definitly not. I am in awe of their ability to deal with color.

Re: Krenov Style Cabinet

Steve knight

>very nice work.

Very nice Bill

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>Thanks for sharing. Also thanks for more information on your finishing and milk paint techniques. Very good to know...

Very nice, and ?? on dowels vs tenons

Bruce, a MN Galoot

>This is a very nice cabinet, and if you don't mind, you might see a rendition someplace in central MN this summer :-)

The question I have on tenons is what layout you used. I built a hutch about 15 years ago, solid butternut throughout, and used the "cabinet dowel" construction method Krenov outlines in his books. It has held together well, although I was skeptical at the time. However, I do remember not liking that method for reasons I couldn't articulate, but I didn't know enough about solid wood construction to come up with an alternative method.

So, tell me about your tenoning method, please.

Bruce

Re: Very nice, and ?? on dowels vs tenons

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>I'll let Bill describe his tenoning method, but I'll provide you with an entertaining rant about dowel construction.

It is pure, unadulterated junk, a cheap trick, that even under the most optimum of conditions might hold for a half a century or so. There are lots of reasons dowels are inferior to mortise and tenon. I'll expound on the most important.

First, glue works face grain to face grain. While the dowel and the hole in the end of one stick have lots of face grain, the hole in the side or face of the other stick has almost no face grain. Glued dowel joints don't hold. After several seasonal humidity cycles, the dowel joint will open up. The dowels just push themselves out of the holes.

Second, there is a whole lot less wood in a dowel, or even a handfull of dowels, than in a tenon. After the glue fails, the dowels break, because they are weak, and the shoulders on the sticks don't support them. Adding more dowels doesn't help, even temporarily, because that just weakens the stick you drilled the holes in the end of. The glue you put down the hole doesn't hold the end of the dowel to the bottom of the hole.

Fourth, drills have a tendency to wander. This is minimized if you use a drill press and sturdy jigs, but it doesn't help for hand tool joinery. This also forces the designer to offset the faces of the two pieces of wood being joined, to minimize the visual effect of less than precisely aligned joints. If you get a mortise and tenon misaligned, it's easy to fix it by gluing a scrap on the side of the tenon and replaning it. Try that with a round dowel.

My understanding is you are not even allowed to touch a Krenovian cabinet, much less fill it with a heavy load of reference books, so in his case, he can get away with allowing structural integrity to take a back seat to design.

I prefer dovetailed carcases, but then I have to apply moldings to hide the dovetails. Gustav Stickley provides some insight and instruction on M&T carcase construction, because that is how the best Mission, or A&C, pieces were constructed, without applied moldings.

BTW, I have built small cabinets using Normite methods. They still hold together. Maybe someday one of my descendants will report to some of your descendants on this forum whether what I did worked well. I kind of doubt it will get glowing reviews, however. I used biscuits instead of dowels. I think they have some advantages. I don't understand why Jim Krenov doesn't use biscuits. No, what I really don't understand is why Jim Krenov doesn't use through dovetails, exposed and celebrated, for carcase joinery. He obviously has the skills, and his artistic idiom would certainly allow them.

Re: Very nice, and ?? on dowels vs tenons *LINK*

Wiley Horne

>Hello Bruce,

While we're waiting for Bill, I'll say a little on the method of case construction. I was making a Krenov wall cabinet a few months ago, and had the same feeling as you about dowels. I wanted to do something traditional, but dovetailing the case would require moldings, which would not fit the look. So I settled on a multiple-M&T joint for case construction.

The sides carry the tenons, and the top and bottom have the mortises. At each end of the case sides, I put 9 tenons, so 36 tenons in all, and the same number of mortises top and bottom. The tenon section was rabbeted about 3/32" on each side to fully conceal the joint. I used 13/16"+ thickness for top and bottom, and the tenons are 11/16" long. So each tenon is 1/4" thick, 5/8" wide, and inserted 11/16" deep--9 per joint.

That turned out to be overkill. The joint is strong to beat the band. But a more sensible approach would have been to use about half that many tenons, and that is what I would do next time. Or else use those wedged through-tenons that Sir. Wm. mentioned. It isn't intuitively clear, but when you actually drive that joint together, you will see that the multiple-M&T is very strong indeed. I didn't make photos of mine during construction, but if you're interested, I have photos that John McDonald made of a similar joint (many will remember John from Badger Pond), and perhaps he will either post his photos, or allow me to. Basically, a pattern of about 1/2" thick tenons, spaced 1/2" apart, and rabbeted on both sides, will work very well. Make them about 5/8" long.

The link below is to my case. It's a prototype.

Wiley


Krenov-style case--prototype

Amen!

bill tindall

>

And I used fewer tennons still

bill tindall

>I can't add much to Wiley's description except to encourage his picture post. It helped me a lot. Mark both M and T out at the same time. Drill the mortise with forstner bit and chop corners. Tennons can be made by any number of methods, but put a shoulder on them to hide intersection.

I can't imagine using dowels. I am taking a class from a Krenov student Sat. and intend to ask about the dowel thing. I'll let you know what is behind it.

Re: Very nice, and ?? on dowels vs tenons

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>WOW. If that's just a prototype, I think I'd be afraid to look at the real thing, for fear the tigers would jump off the screen and knock me right out of my chair. The figure might be a little too busy for my taste, but you did an exemplary job of matching patterns, and following the design all the way around the piece. I think I could get used to it. It's kind of like a Schubert symphony.

Note that I have not done a joinery like that, but intuition tells me that in a case that is about 6" deep, about two tenons per joint, with about a 1" gap between them, would work fine. For a deeper case, for example to hold books, I would maybe use three tenons. Depending on the overhang you wanted on the ends of the top and bottom, you would want to offset the tenons towards the inside of the uprights, to maximize the strength of the top and bottom boards between the tenon and the end of the board.

Re: Very nice, and ?? on dowels vs tenons *LINK*

MikeW

>Being the dissenting type, I would suggest that dowel construction works just fine.

The link goes to a client progress album for a display cabinet. I moved relevant photos into a new folder.

Some will want to point out that it was bad enough that I used dowel construction, but did so with a cross-grain situation. I have an answer for that in this situation, but do not really think it relevant for now.

The cabinet top and bottom utilize 21 dowels each around the 3 sides. This cabinet's construction mirrors several I have done, though only two others have the same cross-grain dowel issue. They are 6 and 9 years old, respectively.

The now 3 display cabinets of which this is one are made to sit in front of a window--another cause of alarm, I'm sure, due to the direct sun, etc. The other two have "weathered" this condition just fine.

To be honest, the first two were made before I even knew who Mr. Krenov even was. I have since learned his main method of constructing cross-grain cabinets such as these, and it is a better way, especially depending on the specie of wood chosen. (Do the math concerning wood movement before railing, eh? Quarter-sawn Bubinga on the 3, 8.5" from outside first dowel to outside last dowel on the sides.)

Without going into details, a few years ago I was at a very low point in my life and it looked like I would not work in my shop again. I had a different style, but still cross-grain, dowel constructed cabinet in the house. It had been completed two years before for a client that flaked out on paying the last portion of the commission. In a weak moment, I took a 5 lb. dead blow to the cabinet. It really took a long time to, uh, disassemble it.

The next day I took the cabinet out to the burn pile and it sat there through two days of off and on rain (hey, this is Oregon). That's when I got curious enough to retrieve a few pieces and examined them. Other than shearing some of the dowels, the top and bottom pieces cracked in several places, some at a dowel point, others between two dowels. I used the bandsaw to cut into the dowel holes and took a chisel to the dowels themselves. They were holding just fine.

I use a variety of construction methods. Dowels are one of them.

YMMV.

Mike




21 Dowel Salute

Re: Good question, let's hear from others.

Norman (Metcalfe, Ont.)

>Bill,

I have also asked a College of the Redwoods student and never received a clear answer. When James Krenov was on a Chat night a few months ago, one of the questions was mine asking if dowel joinery was always used in carcase construction. I think my question was missed, it was a busy night.

So sure, being a big fan of Krenov, I would also like to know why dowel construction over mortise and tenons. Is it mainly for simplicity ? I made the jig he has in his books to align the dowels holes between sides and top and bottom, seems to work well..

One of the key advantages I can see is that you can locate the cabinet sides further back from the sides of the top and bottom. This is possible with mortise and tenons but not with any conventional corner joinery.

Norman

Multiple M&T, by John McDonald *LINK*

Wiley Horne

>I heard back from John McDonald, who many of you will remember from Badger Pond days. He was glad to share his photos of an alternative to dowelling.

In order to get the photo space, I have posted the photos on Roger Nixon's Traditional Tools site. The link is given below. I have used this joint, and it is plenty strong.

Wiley


Multiple M&T Joint, by John McDonald

Re: Multiple M&T, by John McDonald

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>You're right, Wiley. I stand corrected. For this joinery, more tenons are better than fewer tenons. The reason is that you need to increase the area of the long grain surfaces in the mortises. Also, note that unlike most M&T joints, as used in tables and frames, you need to precisely match the lengths of the tenons to the widths of the mortises. That's a whole lot more difficult than a jiged dowel setup.

In some ways, I admire the lightness of Krenov's pieces, but the style is quite different from more traditional styles. Back in the 18th Century, they would have "solved" the problem of hiding the joinery while providing a top with overhang by simply attaching a second top board to the top of the carcase (or building it up with mitered moldings). Of course, that would at least double the visual "weight" of the top of the cabinet. But, of course, the styles back then were based on the Classic Orders. and were therefore supposed to appear much heavier.