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This is my latest project. The main features is the tambour door (like a roll top desk). The doors slide in between channels and is hidden in the back. The inside has 4 drawers, some with dividers. The rounded inner corners swing out on a pivotal hinge. They open fully out when one of the main doors are pushed all the way in the box. There's a drawer on the bottom, which goes all the way to the back of the box. The top has three compartments, the two compartments on either side open like a scarabs wings and is 1" deep. The center opens normally, but is 3" deep. It gives a pretty neat allusion, because you don't expect it to be that deep there.
The tambour door is made from Spectrum glass. I chose it because it had a uniform grain and because I ran out of the first choice glass. But I'm glad I chose it because it gives it a good uniform color. Each door consists of 32 strips of 1/4" glass glued to some canvas.
The main bulk of the glass is Armstrong blue iridescent. Originally I wanted the whole thing as this color. But I only had one 18" x 24" sheet, which I knew would cover the main glass, but not the doors. I looked around for the glass but, alas, I couldn't find it. So I went with the Spectrum blue opalescent (after a few hours of choosing). I divided the whole thing up into 1/2" sections, mainly to match the curve. But it would have looked silly if the straight pieces weren't also 1/2" wide. The red trim BTW are tiny pieces 1/4" x 1/2".
The inside is made from an unknown glass, a light salmon iridescent. The color I originally wanted had more orange in the iridescence. I used to have quite a bit of it, but I didn't have enough for this project.
I found a perfect little crystal for the center. It had no holes in it, and was multi faceted. I soldered it very carefully. I made sure the face was square to the front, and the lines in the back were as straight and true as possible.
The upper lids are made out of clear New Antique, whether it's GNA or FNA, I have no idea.
Originally the upper section (starting at the red line, just above the opening), was supposed to remove. It was going to be held on with screws. It was there in case I had to fix the doors. Everything lined up perfectly, but the screws were bending something inside, and so I just soldered the whole thing on. Which is just as well, because it looks a lot better, and is stronger this way.
And on a side note, this is the patina colors I used. The outside was left silver; I wanted to give it a subtle yet stern look. The inside cabinet was patinaed copper. I used Jax, so it would stay copper for a very long time. The inside of the boxes are black, so they match the black glass, and help to hide them a bit better.
There was a big mess up on my part for this project. As I mentioned, the bulk of it was made up of 1/2" slices. I cut them exactly to a 1/2" with a 1/64" tolerance. When I dry fitted it, it fit fine (try saying that 5 times fast). But after I foiled it (and I mean all the pieces, around 300 or so), I found out that it grew quite a bit. So an 8" piece was more like 8-3/4". Which of course made me panic. This was the first time I got to use that black triangle thing that my grinder came with. I set it up to slightly below a 1/2". I then made a push stick from a piece of Plexi-Glass. After running a few practice pieces through, I was ready to grind the rest of them. All in all, I wasted an entire roll of foil, wore a part of my grinder bit down, and used up quite a few hours doing all this. But I had to do it; this project was very measurement sensitive.
A few other minor errors were these: the doors originally were supposed to be 33 pieces each. But for some reason, the pieces some how grew and I had to get rid of a piece. The glass started out as 7" but ended up as 7-1/4". I guess a few of them had a few minor angles.
Then of course, somehow I soldered the 2nd base on wrong. It didn't lie flat; it was about an 1/8" too high in the back. I tried to fix it but couldn't. However, it was square to the sides of the back, and the measurements were fine. This also created a problem with the doors which were rubbing against the top. To compensate, I making the glass a little longer at the top. Later I found out the problem was that the upper section didn't fit exactly right. However, that's all a part of creating something new.
The weight I added here, because it weighs a lot. It's very dense.
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Started on 9-22-98
