The Master Closet

After trimming and sanding, note that the cherry edge is slightly darker than the birch. The stain should fix this.

Leo's workshop

Getting ready to apply the edge banding on the closet boards.

A closeup of a test board with a small piece of edge banding. The banding is cherry, the plywood is Birch. This roll contains 250 feet of cherry wood.

After staining the test piece ... the cherry and birch now look almost the same, except for the grain pattern of course.

6 supports ready for stain. The trimmer used to trim the edge banding is seen on the right. The slots seen on some of the boards were made by a Festool Domino machine at a friend's house. See it in action here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1581599047487979329

I decided to pre-stain all the exposed surfaces before assembling, hoping to save time. Here is unit 1 almost ready for varnish.

After a few coats of varnish.

This is one of the shelves after varnish but before polishing. This shelf has 5 coats of varnish ... I'm reading a book that suggests 5 to 7 coats before doing a rub down polish. I will be attempting to do a satin finish that has a furniture look to it. We'll see!

A closeup before polishing shows the brush marks from the varnishing.

This is after a 1000 grit polishing. The uneven brush strokes have been taken down some.

Another angle ... 1000 grit polishing. The uneven brush strokes have been taken down some.

After the 2000 grit final polishing. I did an intermediate 1500 grit polishing but couldn't get a picture to show the difference.

Another angle ... the 2000 grit final polishing. I did an intermediate 1500 grit polishing but couldn't get a picture to show the difference. Note that most of the uneven brush marks from the varnishing are gone.