Danish Modern inspired stereo cabinet with lighted puffer fish

[Nocturnaloner]

Most of the furniture in my basement rec room is vintage 60s. It's not so much a tiki bar as a tiki home theater. One notable exception was the Target bookshelf that served as an equipment rack, and it had been bugging me for some time. Danish modern stereo and record cabinets are beautiful, but they tend to be low and wide, and space is limited.There were features that I liked in various bookshelves and record cabinet pictures online: beveled front frame, indented H leg base, tambour doors.


My first thought was the brass capped straight legs, but then I saw a record cabinet with the H base, and fell in love with it.

Not sure where this display area idea came from, aka 'the dry aquarium', but I thought of it, and stuck with it.






I drew some sketches, figured some dimensions, even did a quick 3d model and tested the leg base idea in pine, then set it aside for almost 2 years.

About 6 months ago, I got around to getting started. The challenge: combine several distinctive features from those inspirations, and make a cabinet that suits my space.




Lots of carpentry firsts for me in this project: dado joins, dowel joins, tambour, routing, and freehand jigsaw cuts, plus stain and clearcoat.

The tambour doors for each shelf are made from half-round red oak dowels, glued to a cut up pair of bluejeans. Everything I know about making tambour, I learned from Sandor:

Making Tambour - YouTube

(I think the Nosferatu fingernails are optional.)

The leg base, front frame, and shelf fronts are red oak, cut from one piece of S2S lumber from a local hardwood lumber yard. The rest of the case is 3/4 birch plywood from Lowe's. No screws or fasteners other than glue and dowels were used in the case itself, just in attaching the rope light and the pull handles. The pull handles are cut down wood ring mandrels. None of them match.

The tambour door tracks had to line up from shelf to shelf as closely as possible, so they would open and close smoothly. The template for the door tracks was a big nylon cutting board purchased on Amazon.

The bottom shelf has a taller front and a false bottom with space to run cords for the puffer fish, which are on a dimmer circuit, along with the string lights around the perimeter of the room.


The doors have front and back stops, so they can't open too wide, and can't close past the centerline.


I've got a thing for colored lights. Naturally, in addition to the puffer fish lights, the waves design in the lower display part of the case, ended up with LED rope lighting. You can get RGB rope lights from China by way of ebay, that come with a controller and a remote control.

This allows you to set different custom colors, or pick a large number of preset colors, and fade from color to color.


Removable inner panels conceal the back of the tambour doors. The RGB rope light also runs around the back of the cabinet.

(Sorry about this huge image)

Equipment: My table saw is a portable job site saw on a DIY stand between two picnic tables. This allows me to rip full size sheets of plywood with no problem. All cuts were done with the table saw or a jigsaw. Sanding was done by hand or with an electric mouse sander. Doweling jigs were a must, one for end joins, and one for corners. Cordless drill. 8 corner clamps, 5 bar clamps, and a couple of wood clamps. Lots of Titebond II wood glue.


Challenges: Almost every large piece of wood in this project warped to some degree after cutting, sides and front frame especially. I got most of it out through clamping, but rest assured that it doesn't suffer from being excessively straight or square in any dimension. Call it Danish Modern Primitive.









Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out. It's stable, sturdy, maintains the tiki asthetic, and keeps the tech gear hidden within reach.

[ This Message was edited by: Greg_D_R 2014-06-13 11:49 ]