When I saw there were 15 posts I knew there had to be some controversy, heh. Yeah, I don't like to see the steel either. But they are extremely functional. There really isn't room to undermount them usually, and nobody makes undermount slides short enough so I have to use the regular slides on their sides and the ones you can get short aren't rated for that either. I've tried the ones coated with white epoxy, and I don't know if I got a bad batch or what but the epoxy wore right off the ball bearing track and gummed them up so they didn't operate well even before I finished the piece, so I am reluctant to try that again. Lee Valley has 75 lb slides that are a lot lighter though not much smaller and they come down to 8".
The first time I used them exposed like that was the box that sold the fastest, so people don't seem to mind. You don't see it when it's closed, and they are so functional. I don't do it on every box, but it's definitely something I will keep doing and probably more often than not.
Do you even need slides at all? Why not drawers that just slide on a flat frame with a stop to prevent them from coming all the way out? My chest of drawers works that way, minus the stop.
I will admit, my wife got one of the jewelry chests that I built and I sold the other before it was finished for $1,200.00. I really don't think that I could have gotten that amount with mechanical slides.
If I may answer that, ;~) typically a jewelry chest is small, that frame that typical full sized furniture uses to support the drawers takes up precious room. Even if the support was only 1/4" thick the loss of storage area adds up in a hurry. In my particular case I would have lost about
1-3/4" of drawer space and or would have had to sacrifice a couple of drawers.
I typically make the back 1/4", which with the ply bottom glued in is plenty strong. I often like to have the top drawer close to the top of the box (sometimes I avoid any cross grain situation with the top and I need no further structure at the top of the box), which can often overhang the box a fair bit. It's not so much the access to the other drawers that is a problem, but the top drawer usually the back inch or more is impossible to get to without pulling out the drawer, and if you only have 6-7 inches of drawer to start with that is a lot. I also have concerns that if the drawers are getting pulled out so that they are almost out and then left hanging there, that's putting a lot of wear on the back end of the drawer slide groove and the front of the drawer slide. Plus there's a bit of slop necessary to account for expansion/ contraction and any possible light warping. I could fit them tight if I wanted to, but I am shipping these all over the country so I feel I have to leave a bit more slop than I would like to make sure they remain operational. With the metal slides I don't have to worry about it, or have the customer do any maintenance to wax a wood slide.
Some of the most elegant "design" feature are completely by accident.
That's why I like the adventure turning. Sometimes, there are things hidden inside the wood that you don't discover until you turn it down, which end up dictating the style or design of a piece. I love to let the wood tell me what to do with it.
In yours, the pulls, along with the "ripple" on the front-right edge of the top, perfectly contrast and compliment the piece's hard angles, straight lines, and symmetry.
I also like to leave wood with beautiful color, its natural color. Which leads me to ask if those Sycamore legs have any stain on them.
It's something I just never see anyone else do, but I do think there is a market there if you explain the benefits of them. Won't be any woodworkers buying them, but they wouldn't be buying them anyway.
And speaking of prices, that's an area I am always uncomfortable with. Usually I am selling online, but the last two are going to a gallery so I feel a little more freedom to ask a fair price, and need one since I am giving up 40% instead of around 15%. Anyone want to take a stab at pricing any of the three? I realize I haven't given dimensions, the second two are around 20" wide, the first one is around 16" tall and wide at the extremes.
For a good while I was doing more mission type of stuff and I was telling the wood what to do, but I have been having a lot of full with some odd shaped pieces of wood that I get with no idea of what I am going to do with them. They sit around for a while and I pull them out and look at them, shrug and put them back. Then eventually either I have an idea that they fit or the idea comes while I am looking at them. I really like to start a project knowing mostly what I am going to be doing, but leaving some things open to be figured out as I go along.
Sometimes that gets me into trouble, like on that first box which had to be taken almost completely down to nothing and started over. And then when I had it all redone I was gluing something and took one step away to reach a clamp and it took that opportunity to make a suicide leap off the bench to the concrete. Which it actually survived without *too* much damage, but I did more cursing during that project than working. If it had been summer I would have taken that sucker out to the driveway and used the sledgehammer on it, but it's just too darn cold out so I had to keep working on it instead.
The legs are bubinga, the top and the rails are sycamore. The legs are from a quartersawn piece of 8/4 bubinga, which it turns out has a really boring grain pattern on the quartersawn grain, but it makes good legs at least.
Now that I'm thinking about it, the legs do have that Bubinga color. I haven't been around Sycamore enough to know... in fact it looks like Cocobolo sapwood to me.
Something to consider and this has been discussed time and again. Many times the question has been asked, what material should I use for drawer sides. The common answer and a correct one is any material you want. Through the years I have pretty much proven time and again that the harder the wood that you use for the drawer sides and for the slide or frame that the drawer will slide on the longer the drawer will last and the better the drawer will slide. About 28 years ago I built our Oak frame dresser and built the drawer sides out of pine know knowing any better at the time. The drawers have always been draggy from the friction between the pine and oak. Varnish, wax, dry lube never really helped the matter. Additionally if you pull a drawer out you will see pine dust where the drawer bottoms are slowly wearing down. About 4 years later I built night stand chests and built the drawers and frame entirely out of oak. To this day there is no visible wear and the drawers still slide in and out as easily as if they were on ball bearing slides. Now I always try to build the drawers and their contact points out of as hard of a material as I can so that there is a long life expectancy and easy smooth movement.
Which woodworker could possibly afford one of those? :-}
Yup, that's my dilemma these days. I'm doing some artsy-fartsy things with my router and people pick up one of my sculpted maple leaves and want one..but then I'm at a loss. To me, it is truly waste/scrap with
15 minutes of machining time. So $ 60.00 it is, each. Then I get a call from the Legion, they want to decorate 50 soldiers' graves with them... then I can't, with a clear conscience, ask them for that much. BUT.. if I tell them, say $ 15.00 each, and the rest of the country orders 5000 of them, all other projects stop and I have to make money.... quite a dilemma. Now it's no longer scrap either. What to do, what to do.
If your doing this as part of the business and keeping books rather than just cash transactions you can claim the difference between fair market and your charge to them as business expense for a relatively small number such as that. If it were to turn to really large numbers, then you obviously have the necessity to make it have to be worth the time although one would assume there would be the "economy of scale" pricing there as well.
What you do for one doesn't have to necessarily match what you do for the other.
wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@h5g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
Exactly. High end jewelry boxes are rather unique, and the one I sold was about 1/2 the price of the High End ones that I have seen. It is hard to sell in bigger quantities because most of the public is not interested in the quality of the work. They feel that they have spent a fortune on their jewelry, they typically don't want to spend a small fortune on a box to keep it in. Woodworkers turly appreciate the craftsmanship but they can do it themselves. I think what most people don't understand in today's "immediate gratification world" is that what they are buying at Sears, or Walmart is not going to look or even feel the same in 5 years. The new has worn off and they are conditioned by furniture not lasting and having to replace it every so many years. Couple with that the fact that styles change and their old Sears or Ikea stuff looks dated. Why does it look dated? BECAUSE IT IS CHEAP! Quality always looks good and is always in style. If you don't believe that, take a look at what antique furniture goes for these days. You just have to find the right kind of customer. I am finishing up on a small job and was at an upholstery shop buying fabric with my wife. We ran into a guy that was buying new fabric for an 1860's sofa that he said had the original finish. He was buying frilly 3" buttons and tassels to put on the end of the arm rests. He mentioned that he was thinking about asking $24K when he was ready to resale it.
"IMHO"
All 3 are probably not going to be large enough to command high dollar for storage. You may very well get a pretty good asking price for the art/design aspect on them however. Providing the pictures are not hiding any problems and with the right group of customers I could see at least $600, possibly much more. It will all depend on who is looking. Again, the metal slides could bring the price down from my guess.
Take a look here, I was inspired by the chest on this site and made my small modifications and changes and drew the complete set of plans using the dimensions as a guide. I built my 2 chests based on the Gerstner 24K Crown Jewelry Chests. Notice the price at the bottom of the page. I sold mine for about 1/2 that price and I would not hesitate to compare them side by side. I made mine from maple with tiger maple veneer on the drawer fronts. the front doors had Saplted Oak center panels surrounded by Maple.
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take a look here for a more simple elegant design that is serious about providing storage for lots of jewelry.
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even larger chests
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then there is this site
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think with the right exposure you could easily fit into this end of the category. But about those steel slides. :~)
I like to make my drawer boxes out of poplar, for a few reasons. Easy to machine. I can get it in s2s 8/4 with little price premium and just rip it to 1/4" thickness for the front/back and 5/8" for the sides and it's instant drawer parts. Much less waste than dealing with 4/4. I end up with quartersawn boards, which we can pretend is relevantly more stable on an 1-3/4" wide board. And by having it as a secondary wood I can have a bunch of it prepared ahead of time all at once rather than match to the outside wood. Of course poplar isn't very hard though.
Yup, that's my dilemma these days. I'm doing some artsy-fartsy things with my router and people pick up one of my sculpted maple leaves and want one..but then I'm at a loss. To me, it is truly waste/scrap with
15 minutes of machining time. So $ 60.00 it is, each. Then I get a call from the Legion, they want to decorate 50 soldiers' graves with them... then I can't, with a clear conscience, ask them for that much. BUT.. if I tell them, say $ 15.00 each, and the rest of the country orders 5000 of them, all other projects stop and I have to make money.... quite a dilemma. Now it's no longer scrap either. What to do, what to do.
Keep in mind that 50 vs. 1 allows for a lot more wiggle room. As you well know setup time is a big and real cost. Doing something 50 times with the same set up is normally not too much more work than doing a set up for 1.
I would much rather make less per hour, not as much as you are considering, if I can get in to a mass production setting with a back log than doing a 1 at a time thing.
I underprice substantially. They can as long as I continue to be young, stupid and desperate. I'm stretching the young part these days, but the other two still apply ;) Most I've ever sold a box for was $650, and that was two weeks of work.
Gah! Where are these people and why do they never come to visit me? I get to deal with the people who want a custom made somethingorother for $15. I can't even figure out what you want for less than $15 of labor and I haven't done anything yet.
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