 
IN NEED OF UPGRADE Greene and Greene inspired this new home for electronics. SHOP OWNER: Scott Burr LOCATION: Ben Lomond, CA This is what used to sit in my living room and housed the entertainment system. It was made from a recycled futon frame, a few carriage bolts along with a circular saw and a power drill. Boy have I come a long way since then. Pretty hideous, eh? 
Well, the old Sony died a while back so it was time for an upgrade on both accounts. Here's how it looks now. It was made with only hand tools, except for a little help from the band saw in making the side panels and front door to house the sub woofer. I want to give a big shout-out to Robert Lang for his book and all the help I received from him on this forum, as well as all the help I got from everyone here on WoodCentral. 
Here are the branches that I first drew on my CAD system. The patterns were printed out, tacked down to the wood, and cut out. The vertical branch is mahogany (as is the rest of the sideboard), the horizontal one is Jarrah, and the two small ones are walnut. The wood came from a local hardwood supplier but was purchased in three visits. I got lucky with the purchase of wood used for the front of the unit because they had just received it. All in all, there's about $700 tied up in wood. 
Next, it was on to the filler panels, which are oak ply that was ebonized with India Ink. 
Here’s a completed side. Note how the grain in the oak is continuous across and down the panel. The sub woofer drawer was made mostly the same way as the side panels, except no plywood filler panels. To let the air through, I used ¾" acoustically transparent black foam, cut with patterns the same way.   
Here's a close up of the joinery and the Ebony plugs. 
The case construction is straightforward mortise and tenons, pinned with ebony plugs. The shelves and vertical partition are housed in ¼ " grooves, screwed from the sides with plugs like most G&G work. The decorative bead on the bottom rail was made with my trusty Preston Reeder. I had to grind a blank to make it because neither a stock Stanley nor a Lie Nielsen have this profile. 
The drawers were difficult, since I'd never made box joint fingers before. I cut them out like dovetails after drilling ¼" holes at the base to get that rounded look. They are glued and pinned. The backs slide in and get glued. Each drawer holds 320 CD's and a few less DVD's. All the handles were carved by hand. 
Initially I was worried about the strength of the drawer slides but they’re plenty strong. Here's a close up of the slides. 
The top has breadboard ends with pretty much the standard G&G details: 
The strap hinges came from Lee Valley. They are made by Acorn hardware. The finish is simply boiled linseed oil followed by some paste wax. . . .
Scott Burr
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