Woodworking Tips from Pop

Building a Custom bar

February 9th, 2008 · No Comments

Building a custom bar…..Page 5

Well, I spent the first part of the day redoing the damn arches I made earlier, I goofed!
Even though I was using a story pole, it’s easy to make mistakes. My mistake was getting ahead of myself. I should have built the columns first (like I have so many times in the past) and set them where they belong, so I could get a look at what I was building. Instead I used the story pole and jumped right into the arches. Well- the center arch ended up looking like you could drive a car through it. If I had the columns built first, I would have caught this before I started the arches. Oh well, Pop will always say it’s not a mistake until it leaves the shop.
The rest of the day was spent finishing up the new arches and adding the trim and keystone. If you click on the picture and look closely, you can see I built the arches out of birch plywood, then added a ¼” cherry plywood skin over the birch. The reason for this is that I didn’t have any ¾” cherry. I also added a 1″ wide by a ¼” thin piece of solid cherry to cover the bottom raw edge of the plywood arch. Now when anybody looks up at the bottom of the arch it looks like a solid 1″ backing piece behind the trim.
We made the three arches in two sections and joined it in the center creating one long piece with 3 arches. This is supposed to make the install easier. (We’ll see!)

Next, we went to work on the front bar. There is no cabinetry in the front bar only a 2×6x 42″ high wall that is there now. We’re just going to cover both sides of the wall with paneling and add a 32″ wide bar top including bar molding on both sides to the top of this wall. First we had to build an extension to the 2×6 wall on both sides to support our top. This extension wall was built mainly out of plywood scraps.
The stile and rail frame for the ¼” flat paneling was put together just like the stile and rails for the cabinetry face frame, with the kreg jig. I can’t tell you enough how this tool has changed the way we work. After the frame is assembled, I routed out a rabbet groove around the back side of each opening to accept the ¼” cherry flat panel. The flat panels are then cut to size and each corner rounded with a jig saw, then nailed and glued into position, ready for molding!