Building a cabriole type leg type cabinet. It will be polished to high gloss (Conversion varnish?) We outsource all of our finishing. I can't get a clear answer from our finisher. They say, make a sample/spray and polish. My concern is what happens over time? It'd be nice if it didn't telegraph through paint. The legs will be roughly 4 1/2" thick (maybe 18/4 Poplar if that exists)
Is Poplar even a good choice? quartered Poplar? Does that even exist? Flat sawn glue up/quarter sawn closed grain wood glue up? Any input would help.
Thanks
From contributor Ja
Not knowing your climate or location, it's hard to predict what would work for you, but I know that if I use yellow glue on poplar or MDF and take it up to high gloss here in the northwest US, I'd bet money I'd have to do it again in a year. They'd look outstanding when they left my shop, but would expand and contract beyond the paint's ability to keep up. Now I use unthickened West Systems epoxy on MDF stack-lams quite a bit. I'll roll coat the entire exterior with the same unthickened epoxy, then follow up with a batch thickened with their microlight fairing filler on MDF edges. It makes a nearly bulletproof sealed surface that sands very easily, and won't telegraph. I'm not on board with the idea of buffing conversion varnish to high gloss though, that sounds risky. You'd be better off going with tried and true polyurethane. If your finish contractor doesn't know what to use, there's a good chance they'll ruin your cabinet and charge you for it. If I'm going for a high gloss wet-look, I ditch the wood finishing solutions and go the autobody route: 2 coats Europrime primer, 2 polyurethane color coats, then 2 clear poly coats to give the buffing process something to polish up. Then it's the 3M Perfect-it process to take it to the end. It's a messy process that takes a very clean booth and a number of specialized tools and materials, and is not for the faint of heart, but if you get good at it you can charge quite a bit for the trouble.
From contributor ri
For a high end job, I would use mahogany. 18/4 poplar would have all kinds of issues when it would be machined. Almost guaranteed to be wetter in the center and move after machining.
From contributor Ad
Conversion varnish is not thick enough to be polished. Its basically a two coat system. It fails if you exceed a specific mil thickness.
Better choice would be 2k urethane.
Poplar is terrible for anything other than painted trim. Its simply not stable enough for cabinetry.
I would use good old clear maple. Its very stable, hard so you can profile it. Takes paint extremely well.
We've done Jared's technique for large decorative brackets or mantles. In this case its a table leg so mdf is a no go.
We've painted many of the off the shelf turned legs from Osborne. We use a couple of thick coats of primer/surfacer with filler in between. They polish up nicely.
From contributor Da
Laminated legs will telegraph. No amount of grain positioning will prevent it.
Find solid wood to use. Around here, we see Poplar, soft Maple and Basswood in thick stock. I would choose Basswood.
From contributor Ti
What type of your did you use?
From contributor Ma
David, just wondering why you would recommend a very soft wood like Basswood for a high gloss piece of furniture that will most likely see high use? I was always taught that if your going to have a high end finish, you should have a substrate(wood) that isn’t soft. One bump and that leg will look like a$$. Just wondering, thanks
From contributor Ro
Looking at the elevation, the leg is not that thick below the bottom rail. Maybe mitering two pieces just thick enough, (8/4, 10/4) to form a solid piece at or just below the carcass would answer. This would place the glue line at the corners where it would be less noticeable.
From contributor Ch
Thanks all, We'll probably just end up laminating 2 think pieces of Soft Maple. Bass wood seems way too soft. If I mitered, it'd still be laminated. Cant find any wood thick enough. Automotive finish is what Im being told from finisher
