The trickiest moment in this build came after the glue had already set: the maker realized the interior still needed bulkheads to partition the cabinet into three sections for drawers and doors, and they went in after initial assembly, then got cut and fitted. Recovering from a missed step on a piece this size takes nerve, and nothing in the finished hutch betrays the rework.
The piece is a shaker-inspired dining hutch, mostly solid white oak, 46 inches wide, built over a month and a half for the maker's wife. The legs are laminated up from thicker oak sections, then tapered on the bandsaw, cleaned with a hand plane and chamfered with a chisel. Joinery leans on Domino tenons backed up by dowels, and one support divider pairs a Domino joint underneath with a hand-cut half-lap at the top rail. That mix of machine work and hand-cut joinery strikes me as a lovely touch.
The door panels are plywood faced with thin white oak veneers, resawn on the bandsaw, flattened with a drum sander and pressed in a vacuum bag, with faux shaker cross rails glued on top. Up above, three doors carry clear glass divided into six panes by wooden mullions; below sit two side-by-side drawers running on slides, over three arched panel doors wearing dark metal knobs and handles. A curved bottom apron, laid out using a flexible batten and smoothed on a spindle sander, forms the front below the counter.
Two things worth noting: the finish is Rubio Monocoat 2C Pure, and the maker said white oak is great but considers cherry nicer to work with. The weight remains a guess at around 175 pounds, never confirmed.
Project by Catspaw Customs. Watch it on their YouTube channel: