Sandal Woods - Fine Woodworking & Cabinetry

Today was the Open House at Metro Hardwoods, located in Independence, which is just East of Kansas City, Missouri. In case you missed some of my earlier posts, I bought the spalted maple I will use on my Krenov-inspired cabinet at Metro Hardwoods - in short, terrific!

To download the list of hardwood lumber that Metro Hardwoods carries, plus all the exotic hardwoods, sheetstock, moldings, and other woodworking tools and materials, right-click here, and then select Save Target As… This instruction assumes you are using a flavor of Windows on a PC. This is a Microsoft Word document; with the permission of the Management, I scanned the four pages of their product list and inserted them into this Word document. The listing does not include prices - please call them to get all prices (address, phone number, and FAX number are on the first page of the document).

An interesting development today: I had an opportunity to meet Larry Sauers, President of Sauers & Company Processed Veneers. Reportedly, David Marks and Larry have a great working relationship - and Larry mentioned that his company supplies veneers for (several?) of David Mark’s projects. I mention this for one reason only: The matched and sequenced veneers available from Sauers & Company are superb - and Metro Hardwoods is an exclusive dealer in the Kansas City area.

The following photos show attendance, rack after rack of lumber, exotics, etc. Metro Hardwoods is also a distributor of General International woodworking machinery in the area, and participated in the 2008 Woodworking Show in Kansas City. The photos also show the General machinery display area in the store:

Some of the domestic hardwoods:

This is all exotic hardwoods:

The General International display area:

Jeff, the store Manager, missed lunch:

Amanda and I brought home the
short, 4-bd ft piece of
2-inch thick purpleheart:

The Sauers & Company Processed Veneers,
who partners with Metro Hardwoods - that is Larry Sauers,
President, with my oldest granddaughter Amanda:

The event was very well attended. Our hosts provided lunch for everyone; we observed that when people were not eating, they were looking for something to take home. Jeff stayed busy at the register!

As I read other blogs, I have noticed a feature that I really like: Relevant links to “stuff” mentioned in the current post is included at the bottom of the post. I start doing something similar with this post:

Relevant links:
Metro Hardwoods, map and directions
Sauers & Company Processed Veneers
2008 Woodworking Show in Kansas City
David Marks

The VacuPress vacuum veneering press arrived yesterday; I had a chance to run a quick test, to make sure everything was working as expected. It was! The total time from unpacking, to making the 2′ X 4′ platen, to taking the photos below: 75 minutes.

Now the fun can start with the application of cherry and spalted maple veneers, to continue work with the Krenov-inspired cabinet:

As you can see, the pump pulled 24.5 inches of mercury, which is great at our 1,150-foot elevation. It took 38 seconds to reach this vacuum level, using this 2′ X 4′ platen with the 4′ X 8′ bag shortened by simply moving the C-Clamp tubular clamp near the back of the platen. I am quite pleased!

Since I normally keep the shop around 60° to 62°F in the Winter, I will be using the heating blanket to preheat the bag contents overnight, to ensure that everything in the bag stays above 70°F during clamping - typically 12 hours. This will allow proper curing of the veneering adhesive (Unibond 800).

I will keep you posted on my veneer projects using this vacuum veneering system. In the meantime, today I am headed to the Open House being held by Metro Hardwoods, the newest supplier of hardwoods and exotics in the Kansas City area. I might take pictures, or even shoot some video to share with you.