Buffet 1994
72″ x 36″ x 20″
Quilted Maple, Ebony, Wenge, Eastern Maple, Honduras Mahogany
In 1994, a couple in Atherton CA, commissioned me to make a dining table and a buffet. I drove to their home and showed them samples of various light colored woods per their request. They instantly fell in love with quilted maple. I made a cardboard template of the footprint of the buffet while I was there so we could see how the furniture would fit into their dining room.
When I returned to my shop/studio I decided to make the doors first because curved laminations sometimes move and have springback. I made a form to use in my vacuum press and glued up the shells (the cores of the doors) using 4 layers of 1/8 inch thick Italian bending poplar plywood. It worked great! I had zero springback and I believe it’s because I used a urea resin glue which cures to a rigid glue line.
There are 4 drawers which I dovetailed to join together. I bandsawed 3/32 inch thick veneer which I used throughout the piece in order to do the best grain matching possible. I had to drum sand the veneer down to 1/32″ in order to be able to bend it around the steep curve of the doors.
Hinging the doors to the cabinet turned out to be very time consuming. I used brass knife hinges so that they are mostly concealed.