Greetings,
I have recently been asked by my family to make a new piece of furniture to match an existing antique that have been in the family for a long time. The existing piece of furniture is the small cabinet shown in the following photograph (Note: Double clicking on a photo in this post should open a higher resolution photograph).
Cabinet_Front-on.jpg
The cabinet was made by my great grandfather sometime in the late 1800's. Originally it had a base that it sat on. Some relatives remember the base still being around in the early 1960's, but it seems to have mysteriously gone missing during one of it's moves sometime during the '60s.
I have recently been asked by the family to make a new base cabinet to match the existing cabinet. As far as anyone can remember, the original base apparently was about 4 feet high, and had two drawers at the top, and two timber doors below. The cabinet in the photo apparently sat on a small 10 inch high "hutch" that sat on top of the base cabinet. So together that would have made the base, the hutch, and the cabinet on the left, about eight feet high in total.
What we know about the existing cabinet is that it was built in Brisbane sometime between 1874 (when my great grandparents arrived in Brisbane) and 1891 when the cabinet appears in the background of a family photo taken that year. I guessing that there wasn't much imported timber around in Brisbane during those years, so I'm assuming that he used a locally procured timber.
The following photographs are close-ups of the timber used in the crown moulding - a spot where I can easily get a pic of both the finished and unfinished surface of the same piece of timber. One photo is of the finished side of the timber, and the other photo is of the (possibly un-finished, or maybe it had some shellac on it way back) back side of the same piece of crown moulding.
One elderly relative thinks he remembers being told as a child that the cabinet was made from Hoop Pine. The draw bottoms (and some other bit of secondary structure) definitely look like Hoop Pine, as I've been able to do a comparison against a piece of unfinished Hoop Pine left over from a recent project, and it is a pretty good match grain wise, and hardness wise.
But comparing the modern piece of hoop pine scrap against the grain pattern in the timber used in the primary structure, shows that there isn't much of a match.
So, before I can do much about building the new base for this cabinet, I need to work out what sort of timber I'll need to find for the primary structure.
Front of Crown Moulding and Face Frame.jpgBack of Crown Moulding.jpg
So - the big question is - can anyone help me identify the timber used in this cabinet, or suggest a way of doing so ?
Thanks,
Roy
I have recently been asked by my family to make a new piece of furniture to match an existing antique that have been in the family for a long time. The existing piece of furniture is the small cabinet shown in the following photograph (Note: Double clicking on a photo in this post should open a higher resolution photograph).
Cabinet_Front-on.jpg
The cabinet was made by my great grandfather sometime in the late 1800's. Originally it had a base that it sat on. Some relatives remember the base still being around in the early 1960's, but it seems to have mysteriously gone missing during one of it's moves sometime during the '60s.
I have recently been asked by the family to make a new base cabinet to match the existing cabinet. As far as anyone can remember, the original base apparently was about 4 feet high, and had two drawers at the top, and two timber doors below. The cabinet in the photo apparently sat on a small 10 inch high "hutch" that sat on top of the base cabinet. So together that would have made the base, the hutch, and the cabinet on the left, about eight feet high in total.
What we know about the existing cabinet is that it was built in Brisbane sometime between 1874 (when my great grandparents arrived in Brisbane) and 1891 when the cabinet appears in the background of a family photo taken that year. I guessing that there wasn't much imported timber around in Brisbane during those years, so I'm assuming that he used a locally procured timber.
The following photographs are close-ups of the timber used in the crown moulding - a spot where I can easily get a pic of both the finished and unfinished surface of the same piece of timber. One photo is of the finished side of the timber, and the other photo is of the (possibly un-finished, or maybe it had some shellac on it way back) back side of the same piece of crown moulding.
One elderly relative thinks he remembers being told as a child that the cabinet was made from Hoop Pine. The draw bottoms (and some other bit of secondary structure) definitely look like Hoop Pine, as I've been able to do a comparison against a piece of unfinished Hoop Pine left over from a recent project, and it is a pretty good match grain wise, and hardness wise.
But comparing the modern piece of hoop pine scrap against the grain pattern in the timber used in the primary structure, shows that there isn't much of a match.
So, before I can do much about building the new base for this cabinet, I need to work out what sort of timber I'll need to find for the primary structure.
Front of Crown Moulding and Face Frame.jpgBack of Crown Moulding.jpg
So - the big question is - can anyone help me identify the timber used in this cabinet, or suggest a way of doing so ?
Thanks,
Roy
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