Entry Details

This cabinet is a bulletin board in disguise. Notes, cards, keys etc. are pinned to its cork surfaces along with our calendar of events. Hence we call it our calendar cabinet. Of walnut, in a simple, practical design, it hangs in our kitchen. It matches shop-made kitchen cabinets in plain shake style, i.e., flat panel out, raised in. The shop-made molding appears throughout the kitchen; the dimensions of the molding are not included above. It has four interior surfaces which I will call pages.

Page 1 is cork, glued to plywood, screwed to the back of the cabinet door (photo shows page 1 at right and page 2 at left). The door is 18” x 25” with stiles 1 ½” and rails 3 ¼” (lower) and 2 ¼” (upper). (Uniform stiles and rails lack interest, in my opinion). The panel is walnut burl. The door has a piano hinge at the right and a magnetic hinge at lower left. Stiles and rails are joined by mortice and tenon.

This photograph shows the cabinet open fully after the fashion of triptych with page 3 at left, page 4 in the middle and page 1 at right. Pages 2 and 3 are cork on ¼” plywood, housed in the mortices of a 24” x 15 ½” walnut frame with 1 ¼” stiles and 2” rails. Stiles and rails are morticed and tenoned. This panel is hinged at the left and has a magnetic catch at the right. Page 4 is the back of the cabinet, and consists of cork on plywood screwed to a mortice relief.

This photograph shows the hinging of the panel carrying pages 2 and 3. This assembly is hinged at the left using full-wrap cabinet hinges rather incorrectly. The fixed side of the hinge is screwed to the left side of the cabinet and the other is screwed to the face, page 2. Ordinarily this side of the hinge would “wrap around” and be screwed in back, i.e., to page 3. The reason is this: to allow for pins, keys, cards, etc. to hang freely, about 1” is provided between page 1 and page 2 and between page 3 and page 4 when the cabinet is closed -otherwise objects would fall off or the doors would not close properly; and this odd use of these hinges in this way allows this panel to swing fully past the left side of the cabinet. The photo also shows the molding and the upper rail.

Here we show the cabinet in its natural setting. The cabinet does not have a full face frame, there are no stiles. The upper rail is shown in block 4. The lowe r rail is 1 ¾” high and provides a 1” deep till across the base of the cabinet for tracks, pencils, etc. This till is accessed with the door open. The inner panel, pages 2 and 3, is 1” shorter than the door to provide easy clearance for objects in the till. Stiles are omitted from the cabinet to maximize the width the door and inner panel and hence of the cork surfaces.