The Woodshop Shed

Another Headboard

Furnished content.
(from WoodNet.net)


[font="Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif][font="Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif][font="Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif]The same customer I built a headboard for a few months ago asked if I'd build one for the guest bedroom. Of course. This one is cherry and of the same style as the last and is made with a veneered panel and solid wood frame wrapping it. I had a large "beam" of cherry that I was able to get both the solid pieces and veneer from, so the color is consistent. I had to do a fair amount of color matching work to get it close to the other furniture in the room. I did that on another cherry piece I built at least 8 years ago, and the color surprisingly hasn't changed compared to the one I matched it against, so I have some confidence this one will remain unchanged, too, although I did warn the buyer that it very well could. Being the instant gratification society that we now are, they choose to have the colors match now. Here is a drawer from a dresser that I used to match the color. The grooves you see in the panel were cut with a narrow kerf blade right on the veneer seams. It gives some visual detail and also hides any imperfections in the seams.[/font]




The headboard is held to the wall with a French cleat top and bottom. The cleat on the wall makes it so the headboard sits 1/4" proud of the wall which allows it accommodate variations in the wall not being flat. Again, that turned out to be a good decision. The pictures need to get recentered over the headboard, something the owner will do.







And here it is near a nightstand, one of the cherry pieces in the room.




Happy customer.

John[/font][/font]

[font="Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif]So' how do you go about matching the color of a new piece to existing ones. Well, it depends upon how you think the original was finished, and also the effects of time on clear coated pieces of pieces made of cherry, sapele, maple and several other species. The existing pieces looked like to be finished with clear lacquer, but clearly the color had darkened over fresh worked cherry, so I couldn't just finish them with clearcoat. Using stain to adjust the color would muddy the grain so even if the color turned out correct it wouldn't look correct. The way I went about adjusting the color was to use dyes. But since cherry has a reputation for blotching, and this wood looked like it would do so badly, I used toners made from dye in the shellac and in the final clearcoat. This only works well by spraying. I've done it by hand, but the results are not nearly as predictable.Here's a sample board I made showing the process.[/font]

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[font="Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif]I had to adjust the sheen of my clearcoat to match the existing furniture, too. At the top is the raw wood with a coat of Sealcoat shellac, which I did because I was worried the toner would blotch, even spraying it.Below that is one and two coats of Sealcoat plus Transtint Golden Brown dye. And the darker stripes over that is the clearcoat with Golden Brown plus another Transtint colorto adjust the color. The first dark stripe was the final choice, made with Golden Brown and a little Medium Brown,and has some waterborne flatters in it to bring down the sheen. It took at least 20 samples to get it right.[/font]

[font="Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", sans-serif]John[/font]

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