I do not ever recall ever seeing any kind of cabinet hardware made from Petrified Wood. I'm sure it exists somewhere, but must be very rare. I decided to make door pulls from petrified wood I collected a long time ago, what I wasn't prepared for was the whole new experience in learning and just how much work it would be.
I encountered may challenges with this project right at the start, and the first one was, what design did I want to make, because the would dictate what size the petrified wood pieces would need to be. I finally stumbled upon the semi angled appearance that I spotted somewhere, the thought it might be one of the easier kinds of pull, with not too much cutting and polishing involved.
Here is a very small sampling of the petrified wood I collected, most of it is smaller "fit in your hand" size, but there are also a few larger chunks that require both hands to hold and carry, like the one in the picture shown below, which also happens to be the chunk that I used to make the door pulls with.
Once I settled on the basic shape and size I could start off by cutting some rock. I previously had an old "tile saw" that is like a basic table saw, with a fence. I didn't think this saw would be good enough, so I purchased another used saw that is a "sliding" tile saw. As things turned out I had to use both saws for the somewhat less conventional cutting job.
The table saw version worked best for the long cuts while the sliding saw was better at cross cutting the rock.
Below are some of the jigs I needed to make. 2 of them were needed to hold the rock pull in it's rough form so that I could grind and polish the door pull blank by holding on it's side, then holding the top so it could be worked on with the Diamond Grinding Pads. The cross cut jig was used for trimming the small wooden piece that was then epoxy glued to the bottom of the 2 rock door pulls. and the wooden square at the bottom of the picture was used as a gluing jig so that the door knob bolt would be straight out the back of the wood when gluing. I waxed the holes and the top so that if I got epoxy glue squeezing out, it wouldn't stick to the jig.
Next cam the grinding and polishing, which I did not photograph, but what you saw briefly in the video. There are 8 different grinding grits from 50 up to 6000, and you need to go through them in sequence just like sand paper. But all that hard work finally paid off and I got a couple of very good and completely unique Petrified Wood Door Pulls.
I have found them hard to photograph, the picture below is a side view of the pulls so you can see the grain of the wood and the picture lower down, is how they look in real life when mounted on the Whiskey Cabinet.
And here, at long last, is the finished cabinet with complete with on version of the inside set up that is awaiting approval before final version is completed.
This been a long build for me, I spent a LOT of time on the door pulls, and probably could have selected a easier design, but sometimes you don't know these things until you are well into them where there is no turning back. I also discovered cutting and polishing rock to do it somewhat quickly really requires the proper tools, which I don't posses, and that added the time and difficulty, but I sure learned a lot. And now I have even more ideas for future ideas for door pulls that I might experiment with ... stay tuned for that while I mix rock and wood for some outstanding woodworking and furniture combinations ...
Copyright Colin Knecht
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