Diamond Points Cabinet doors

[<marierdj]

I have four cabinet doors to make with ash. I would like to make them with Diamond Points patterns. I do not know how to make these Diamond points and I am looking for advises. TIA

[Edward Hennessey]

MDJ:

Good to see you. Do you want the pattern to cover the entire door except for a frame? Do you want the pattern to be continuous within its field? And, lastly, do you want the pattern to be cut/routed into the existing doors or would you be interested in various kinds of overlays in haute relief? If you have various skills and tools, much of this can be done yourself. If not, this is work that can often be done at a reasonable cost.

Regards,

Edward Hennessey

[<marierdj]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, over the years I have acquired all kind of woodworking tools. About 75% of all the furniture in my house were made by me. Not to mention my children and grand children. Thirty five years ago I made an entrainment center with ash to accommodate the electronics of that time.

Now with the advent of the LCD television and others. I am thinking re-configuring the old design to suit the new gears. As the old cabinets were made with solid ash I intend to use every bit of it.

It would be nice if the pattern could but.routed into the existing 3/4" thick doors. I am also interested in the overlay technique in haute relief or is this what is also known as the appliqué technique? Any feedback will be appreciated

Denis

[Edward Hennessey]

D:

You're welcome.

Doable. Routing would offer you the choice of different bits for different groove profiles. A hand router with a guiding jig would work. If you can indicate that you have a router of specified horsepower and whether you are familiar with simple jig building and routing, it would be possible for myself and others undoubtedly more intimate with the process to comment.

It is a noticeably different effect than incising the wood, so you would have to look for examples to see if that is the appearance you want. One plus comes from the fact that you should have a wide variety of styles, sizes and woods in such diamond elements to choose from over a number of suppliers. And if you fancy something intricate, you could use the first technique in combination with this one.

You would need to have a truly flat panel for best results with this method, along with some experience on positioning such pieces and cleanly gluing them in place, which would entail a way of applying compression while the glue sets. Weights or various kind of clamping jigs are options. There are other attachment approaches utilizing doweling, mechanical fasteners with cover-up dowels, etcetera.

In the long run, this second approach would seem more complicated.

You might want to balance your human investment in this possible task against a commercial quote. There is a shop near me of the kind that one could probably find in most places by asking glass people since they trade in wooden windows and doors. This shop is used by those vendors and both their results are professional and their prices are attractive when I don't have the time or interest in pursuing a job myself.

Anyway, with your reply, this should focus the issue enough that discussion can get started.

Regards,

Edward Hennessey

[Edward Hennessey]

D:

Well, since no one else has chimed in, here's a bit more on one approach with the router. Since you have four doors, you might want to make a frame larger than any of them--so you can make an unobstructed pass all the way--and fit pieces in a diagonal pattern such two or more pieces will evenly support the base plate of your router to keep it horizontal and one piece will act as a guide for the pilot bearing your on your bit as you make the cut. The nice thing about this is you can just turn the door around to make your second run of cuts to complete the diamond pattern going the other way. Of course, you must have some way to hold the door in place while cutting it and be careful to only make as deep a cut as the hp on your router will support. You can always deepen your cut in successive passes. If you haven't had much experience with a router, it's a good idea to try this on some scrap to get the feel of things like feed rate before you deal with your doors. The sharpest bits you can find will really help. Tungsten carbide are nice. I hope that either is of some help or there are evident errors within which will attracts correction or better ideas.

Regards,

Edward Hennessey

[Joe]

The diamond points I've seen look similar to this;

" is not thick enough to give adequate routing depth for the shadow effect. I would create the diamonds (saw and router) and glue onto another face panel. 1 1/2" (two 3/4" glued) would give adequate depth for the effect and is closer to the thickness in diamond points that I've seen. (3/4" door + 1 1/8" applique is what is described on the parts list from the above link)

Another possible idea is grain matching. Although it is quite a bit more work and has the potential to "ruin" your material if it isn't successful. Grain matching is usually done with veneers or bandsawn slices, but I've seen beautiful work in solid wood. Ash can have prominent and consistent grain. If your stock does have prominent grain, you could also do a diamond or reverse diamond pattern like one of these;

best way to do this is to make paper stencils and tape them to the surface of the wood panel. Take digital pictures of each stenciled area. Measure the distance between the camera and the wood and keep it consistent for each picture. Shoot directly perpendicular to the center of each stenciled area. Crop the stenciled area in a paint program. Now you can arrange the cropped sections in any patterns to roughly view the end result. The entire stencil process can also be done in the paint program using one picture of the entire panel.

The build process involves a lot of panel glue-up work that will be displayed in plain view. You need good flat stock and some experience in this to achieve best results. I'd recommend making one glue-up panel out of scrap stock before you cut your real stock if you haven't done the chosen glue-up pattern before. Clamping can be slightly trickier that standard straight glue-ups.

This is how I do burls or exotics for smaller grain matching projects. You can slide the stencils around on the wood to find the best sections for patterns. I usually use a similar technique with an opaque projector for marquetry projects to locate interesting grain patterns within defined cut shapes. Easy to zoom in and out for re-sizing patterns, change angle slightly for warping pattern, etc. and switch out different pattern outlines quickly. Once and interesting grain pattern is found just quick trace over area and continue with another outline until the board is fully utilized. Then cut all patterns at once with the bandsaw, scrollsaw, fretsaw, router, etc..

Usually I don't fully utilized the board so a final step before cutting is to take a picture of the board with outline traces, place in paint program and use custom paint program brushes to maximize use of the board or pattern nesting software to fully utilize. An example of pattern nesting software, many are available;

in your paint program (paintshop pro, photoshop, gimp, etc.) can be any shape. Usually the brushes are circles, dots or lines, but the brushes can be outlines of any shape or entire pictures. Brushes can be re-sized. Make custom brushes of standard geometric shapes and any common custom shapes used. (birds, flower petals, leaves, etc.)

[Edward Hennessey]

Good post, Joe.

Like you said, there are a lot of different ways to approach the question and differeing effects to be attained by each.

Another notion for Denis is to find some open-work lattice in a diamond or near-diamond pattern. I've seen this used in dividers and other furniture application. If you like the ide of negative diamond forms, this would save you a ton of cutting, positioning and gluing problems versus the discrete element approach. You might find some of these lattice panels in hardwood but I'm more familiar with them in various colorable manufactured forms. For that matter, if you find a piece, you could use it as a routing guide if bas relief that's not tres bas is appealing. And if you wanted to go diamond on a smaller scale, there are expanded metal sheets which would make amusing guides too. It is just a matter of searching out availability to ascertain whether this is an interesting path for you.

See you later Denis.

Regards,

Edward Hennessey

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