1:12 Scale Duncan Phyfe Style Dressing Table

Since I have actually never made a piece of dollhouse furniture from scratch, this will be more of a "see my progress" project report than a "how-to" blog.

I was going through my back issues of "Miniature Collector" magazine No. 19 and found a Duncan Phyfe dressing table pattern to try.

All the wood pieces have been cut, sanded and stained with Minwax dark walnut. The wood used is from Popsicle sticks or basswood purchased from Hobby Lobby.

For my first try at this, I did not do anything very fancy. There are no dovetails on the drawers. I'm just hoping they will fit the table once it is all glued up. I got a magnetic gluing jig from MicroMark and it arrived this afternoon.

So, I'm going to take this jig for a drive right now and blog tomorrow on how it all went.

December 19, 2014

The Learning Curve

This project is finished and I would not hesitate to display this Duncan Phyfe dressing table in a dollhouse. The jig worked very well for gluing up the parts. Thank you to Tiff, who mentioned using plastic wrap under the pieces being glued on the jig. Wood glue (and the wood piece) does stick EXTREMELY well to the aluminum base.

There were a few minor boo boos on the joinery of the pieces. Next time I will change my sequence of gluing up of the parts. All square box parts should be glued up together first and additions added after that. For instance, all the parts of a drawer can be glued up together, but the legs of the table, with the carved dowel divider already glued in them should be added after the main case is glued up.

I would also change how I stained the wood. If wood pieces are glued side by side, I'd stain the edges, glue the pieces together, and then sand and stain the entire glued up section.

The drawers fit very well.

The drawer pulls are made out of conical shaped brass beads. I added brass wire to these to make the pulls. The knobs  are attached by drilling a 1/8th inch hole in the drawer front and using Epoxy Weld to glue the pull in place.

Completely finish the drawer front, including the paste wax final finish, before drilling the hole for the pull.

Next time I also will NOT use my household drill to drill holes in the wood of miniature furniture.
I will use my Dremel tool and a diamond burr drill tip.



For the final finish I used Minwax brand Paste Finishing Wax. Rub it on the wood, let it dry for about 10-15 minutes and then buff it with a soft cloth. The paste wax made this piece have a very nice luster and look like a real piece of furniture.
It really brought out the beauty of the wood grain.

I got a 1 lb can of the furniture paste wax at Lowes. This pretty much gives me a lifetime supply for making miniature furniture.

My thought is to do this project all over again using the techniques I learned.

My next thought was that it is time to move on and do a different piece of furniture and use my new techniques on the new project.

 

 

My New Home in South Carolina

Hello Everyone,

Just starting in on something new for me: a blog.

I plan to journal most of my projects for scale model miniatures on this blog, with an emphasis on horses.

For my first post, let me say I'm so excited and happy to be back home and living in South Carolina again. Time flies. I can't believe I have been here almost a year now.

My house in Katy, TX sold for a very good price and I was able to buy two acres of beautiful country property and become totally mortgage free.

This was the first sunset photo I took from my back yard.

Rainbows happen often here.