Thread: Google Sketchup cabinet plan - suggestions welcome

Welcome to the forums John.

Interesting design, certainly some challenging angles to work on there. Does sketchup give you the ability to measure the angles?

Cheers,
Af.

It took me a good couple of hours trying to find out how to do so (starting off by trying various roundabout methods that failed to work), but I have eventually been able to get measurements of the "dihedral angle" which will in turn give me the saw blade angle (there is a little trick when using the protractor tool in Sketchup that I learnt after finding this website ).

It was easy to find the surface measurements and their face angles.

Got to dress up some more timber and start cutting now! (better practise first on some mdf though of course )

I have now finished construction of this project in solid English Elm. Am trying to decide now what stain if any to use under a lacquer finish. If I don't use any stain and just go for a clear coat (which does look great on the samples I have had done so far) I am lead to believe that the grain is likely to fade in the sunlight over time? 'Unfortunately' (for purposes of this item) the living room where I will use this jukebox has all day sun so will be hard to avoid exposure.

One trick I have used is to rule where the line would be on both sides - can be done with measurements, not angles. You can get the measurements out of Sketchup pretty easily. Cut it off square and then use a plane to get it down to the right angle.

Used it for making the dormer windows on my daughters dolls house. Where the angled window surrounds met the angled roof. Worked pretty well

Cheers,
Dave

Just done a final sand and edge/corner rendering prior to getting lacquer sprayed on next door. Took a few pictures to document the progress. , I am thinking to go with a clear finish of lacquer and not use any stain. Although I am still worried about the wood fading, I didn't like the look of stains after having a few samples done for me, so will just have to find a place in the living room that is out of direct sunlight.

Lookin pretty schmick there

How did you go doing the angles in the end?

Cheers,
Dave

Thanks, got the dihedral angle through protractor feature in Google Sketchup. Then I could halve the angle to set the saw blade angle, and back screwed the piece of Elm I was working on to a rectangular piece of MDF, using a rafter square to make sure that the line I was cutting was exactly perpendicular to the saw fence (so cutting line was parallel to saw).

So there are quite a few screw holes on the inside of the finished case now! It was a time consuming process screwing and unscrewing and I normally took two passes close to the line (rechecking how parallel the cut was to the line) before making the final pass right on the line. I used epoxy to glue the pieces together (without any biscuits) and used transparent fiberglass reinforced tape on the outside of the join (so I could see how well it pulled up) and then pulled each piece together on the inside with more tape while the glue set. The front face was glued on last and I used three biscuits on each top face to align it correctly and help minimise final sanding. Since both sides of the front face are chamfered I couldn't use biscuits so instead screwed blocks into each side in the corners.