Backyard Birds – Part 23

I had an idea in mind for an opening mechanism for my cabinet that would cause the door to kick open when the marquetry book was pushed from the outside. I talked it over with my dad, and he thought it was worth making and testing out.

My design involved making a custom piece of metal hardware that would go on the inside of the cabinet. That meant that I had to learn how to solder two pieces of metal together: a brass rod, and a small flat piece of brass.

My first attempt didn’t go so well. The flat piece of brass came unclamped from the rod while I was heating up the solder and got stuck to the middle of the rod as it fell.

I tried it again the next day and it worked much better.

I made some pivot points that the rod would fit in above and below the marquetry book and clamped my contraption to the frame to get a sense of whether it would work.

Once it looked like the opening mechanism would work, I polished the brass on my little soldering project so that it was nice and shiny.

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