Backyard Birds – Part 21

Written By Sasha Kopf

During the design process, I had a few different ideas for how the door of the cabinet would open, and I decided that I wanted the bird identification book on the windowsill to be an opening mechanism.

This meant that the book would need to be separate from the rest of the trompe-l'œil windowsill. The book would also need to be hinged or otherwise moveable in some way. I decided to use concealed hinges that would connect the bottom of the book to the windowsill.

I glued the marquetry book to a small piece of padauk, trimmed it down to the right size and shape, and used a router to make a hole for the hinge.

Photograph of a marquetry book entitled "Backyard Birds" with a hinge at the bottom of the spine
Photograph of a marquetry book with a router-made hole for a hinge at the bottom
Close-up photograph of a concealed hinge in the open position at the bottom of a marquetry book

Then I had to build a special substrate enclosure that the book would fit into. This was complicated because the book had six sides with irregular angles, and it would also need to look like it was leaning against the windowsill at an angle.

I decided to build a mock-up enclosure before making the real thing.

Photograph of the first step of the mock-up, with a scrap wood version of the marquetry book fitted against a piece of MDF
Photograph of the second step of the mock-up, with a scrap wood version of the marquetry book fitted against two pieces of MDF
Photograph of the third step of the mock-up with three pieces of MDF
Photograph of the fourth step of the mock-up with four pieces of MDF
Photograph of the fifth step of the mock-up, with a scrap wood version of the marquetry book fitted against five pieces of MDF
Photograph of the sixth step of the mock-up with six pieces of MDF now able to fully enclose the marquetry book

After taking all those pictures of the mock-up process, I forgot to take any pictures of the actual enclosure. It looked pretty much the same but made out of padauk instead of MDF.

[Edit: See this post for how the opening mechanism turned out in the finished piece.]

Sasha Kopf
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Backyard Birds – Part 22
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Backyard Birds – Part 20