Possibilities

Site Built Cherry Bar - Pre-Festool too

After years of woodworking, including owning a decent sized commercial cabinet shop for part of the time, I'm convinced that almost anything can be built on-site without expensive tools.  I'm even more convinced in the past year since buying a Festool Track Saw.  Your going to hear lots of continual praise about this tool on this blog.   I have no interest financial or otherwise in promoting this machine, other than recommending an useful tool.   In fact, for years I thought this was an unnecessary, overpriced piece of plastic, and swore I would never buy one.   It is probably overpriced, and it is plastic for sure.  But, it's well designed and engineered and ergonomically pleasing to use.   Festool could probably sell these for half the price in Home Depot and Lowes and still make a fortune, but in a way, the high price serves an indirect purpose in that it keeps away the non-serious amateur and non-professional professional woodworkers.  The tool needs to be treated and used delicately.  There are a few tricks and methods that you need to follow in order to not damage the tool or the track.  If they did sell them cheaply at Home Depot, at least half of them at least would end up being returned broken within a few days of sale.

Festool on the floor - Probably doesn't belong there, but safer than getting knocked off a bench

Speaking of the track saw, the top to my recent Cherry Mantle Project is a good example of where you can excel with a simpler, portable saw, in lieu of a more expensive shop and table saw.   This top, cut from 3/4" cherry veneer plywood, is five sided, with a cross section of almost four feet.  I wanted the grain of the wood to follow the front, long edge of the top.  This is a counter intuitive cut as using the right angle edge and side of the plywood would form the back two sides much easier.   The whole operation could be done with relative ease on a Felder Sliding Table Saw, but these cost $12,000 and need 3-Phase power and also, a 16'x24' clear area.   A conventional 10" cabinet saw would work, but you would need to spend a few hours building a fixture to hold the piece as you ran it through the saw. You also would get some tear-out on the cross grain cuts that would make for a semi-unsightly edge to glue the nosing to.   With the Festool is was as simple as drawing the five sides on the piece of plywood and cutting using the track - no clamps.  The edges were razor sharp on both sides with almost no visible tear-out.  I even was unhappy with the factory edge as it had been loaded and unloaded from trucks a few times and had some damage.  Using the track I cut an 1/8" off the edge to clean it up, prior to laying out the top.  Here is the finished piece, delivered and with the fireplace insert set.

Finished product

Back to the original photo - It looks complicated, but if you break it down, it's just some cabinet boxes with layers of plywood, solid wood, and trim built up using your basic trim carpentry techniques.  Even the fluting was done without a router table

Look Closely and you will see that it isn't that complicated.