Well it’s been a while since I’ve my last post. A lot has been going on both with work and with life in general and it’s been hard to find the time to write much lately. But at long last I’m back to share some of the final details from the Modular tansu project.
One of the big punchlist items to deal with for these cabinets was the hardware. When I first designed the cabinets I drew hardware reminiscent of some I had seen on old tabi-dansu, while also matching the rough design of some commercially available hardware. My original plan was to buy the hardware, but despite my best efforts I wasn’t able to find anything that felt right for the scale of these cabinets, nor any hardware with the quality and details I was after. In terms of design, I wanted something simple with elegant details, while not being overly ornate, which a lot of the higher end stuff here in Japan tends to be. So after a bit of head scratching I took a leap of faith and decided to make the hardware myself. Metal working machinery is nonexistent in my shop, so I decided to make the hardware out of solid brass components which would make it possible for me to shape and form the hardware using the tools I had available, and wouldn’t require any specialy machining equipment.
Door Pulls
First up were the door pulls. The first components that I tackled were solid brass pieces that would serve as the main body of each pull and would also be directly mounted to the doors. Each of the bodies stared out as a piece of 30mm diameter brass rod cut to 15mm long, which I ordered pre-cut to size from an online hardware retailer here in Japan (Monotaro). I then drilled a hole in the center and passed through a sacrificial nail which I gripped with a drill chuck in my impact driver.
Then I jumped over to my cheapo belt sander to sand an even radius on one half of the piece. Running the belt sander while spinning the piece in my drill allowed me to keep the sanding nice and consistent.
With a course belt it was pretty fast work, and overall the results were really clean. The sanded finish was kind of cool, creating a spiral effect that I toyed with keeping, but eventually I decided to texture the round face with a hammed finish.
Below are the other components of the door pulls after roughly sanding and shaping them. I cut the hanging handles from 2mm brass plate, and used brass cotter pins to attach them to the half-round pieces. At this point with the components made I started experimenting with hammered textures on the handles. You can see the start of one hammered texture on the mocked-up assembly on the far right below. The hammering had the effect of adding a slight curve to the 2mm plate, which turned out to be a nice detail in the end, and is more visible in the subsequent photos.
Here’s a look at how the brass cotter pin holds the handle and passes through the button. After opening the cotter pin and sliding in the handles, I could then close the pin and insert it into the half-round body. From there I planned to silver solder the brass cotter pin in place and flush cut it on the back side of the body.
Here’s are a couple of the door pulls after silver soldering was complete. You can see I also soldered in a couple of mounting screws which I later cut the heads off of. I decided to use two screws for mounting to avoid issues with the hardware spinning. I find it really annoying when hardware gets loose during dry months of the year, and when you go to grab the pull you find it’s loose and spinning. So using two screws was meant to eliminate that issue.
The final step for the door pulls was patination, and for that I went with a commercial brass blackener. First I soaked each piece in a mild acid solution to clean off any oils or other contaminants, and then dunked each pull in the brass blackening solution. I followed that up with a light buffing with some wax and a scub pad to accentuate some of the hammered texture.
There was a slight bit of variation in how each of these came out both in terms of color and overall shape, but I quite like that. Being handmade it feels like there should be a bit of uniquness to each piece.
Drawer Pulls
Now for the drawer pulls. Once again the first component I tackled was the main body of each pull, which this time came from hexagonal brass rod. Again I was able to source the hexagonal rod from the same hardware store, and simply cut and sanded the pieces to length. After cutting each piece to length I then drilled a through hole to house a loose ring for grabbing when opening the drawer. I also used the belt sander to lightly round out the front face, softening it’s appearance a bit. Later I also hammered a light texutre on the front face of each body as well.
To make the rings I used a super simple method by turning a piece of wood round on the lathe to use as a bending form. I turned the wood to a slightly tighter radius to account for a bit of spring back after bending. Then I drilled a hole perpendicular to the long axis of the form to insert the 6mm brass rod I planned to use for the rings. To start the bend cleanly, I used a torch to soften the very end of the rod and bent a sharp 90 angle for inserting into the hole. Then with the rod “hooked” in place, it was as simple as bending the rod around the form by hand. The whole assemble in the picture below is sitting on my bench but when I did the acutal bending I had the form still attached to my lathe, and locked the headstock which made it easy to perform the bend.
Once a section of rod was bent into a coil as far as I could take it by hand, I used a disc grinder to cut straight though the coil ending up with individual segments. With a little more persuasion each segment could then be made flat to become a complete ring.
With the ring inserted into the hexagonal piece I pressed the ends closed and silver soldered them together. I also silver soldered in a mounting bolt and brass pin to once again aid in preventing the pull from spinning should the mounting hardware ever get loose.
After a bit of filing and cleanup of the soldered joints, I dunked each piece of hardware in the acid bath and blackening solution, and the results came out like this.
All in all the hardware design and fabrication of these pieces was pretty simple, but I’m happy with the details overall, and I think they look nice on the finished cabinets (which I will share pictures of in the next post). Making the hardware was incredibly liberating and the experience opened a whole new door of possibilities that I never thought possible. In all honesty I never really considered making hardware before, but now that I know it can be done, and without expensive machining equipment, I’m definitely going to be making hardware for future pieces.
Thanks for reading.
