Master Woodworking and Furniture Repair

I've been commissioned to create a belt buckle display cabinet by a lovely lady whose husband has a large and fascinating collection of belt buckles.  We had a pleasant chat and came to some determinations about dimensions and requirements.  Basically, we're looking for a fairly narrow cabinet (5" - 6" wide).  30" wide and 50" tall + a bottom drawer.  Adjustable shelves (8) and a single framed glass front covering all of the display shelves. Note the black, flocked back panel. One big challenge is going to be selecting hinges that aren't going to be intrusive, but still capable of supporting a 2.5 foot wide, 50" tall piece of 1/8" oak-framed, plate glass.  I'm hoping to find a suitable flat piano hinge. Additionally, the cabinet itself will be very heavy as it will be of solid oak construction.  So, mounting it to the wall will require substantial fasteners. I've already selected and rough dimensioned the white oak stock f...

So, this one is a little out of the ordinary for me, but that's why I am so excited about it.  I've always wanted to do the paneling on a classic car interior with real wood.  I didn't quite get that, but I got an inquiry from a fellow who was looking for someone to finish a wooden steering wheel to match the original imitation wood trim in his '69 Pontiac Firebird.  I'm not posting pictures of the car to protect my customer's privacy, but if he consents when the project is finished I'll try to get a pic with the wheel in place. So I started off with the raw wheel.  It had a factory milled finish on it and a lot of small imperfections.  so the first step was to give all of the wood a light sanding to smooth the surface and clean things up.  Also, it has been handled a lot, so I needed to get rid of dirt, skin oil, etc. The next step was to mask all of the metal pieces.  The wheel has a metal core that is exposed along the perimeter both inne...