Koreans like to drink soju. Why? … good question. Literally translated, soju means “burned liquor”. And while that could describe its aftertaste, it probably refers to its production as a distillation product of fermented starch. Since the 13th century that starch had been rice but the production of soju from rice was banned for 35 years in the late 20th century (1965 - 1999) to address a food shortage associated with the post-war population boom. (Did I mention that Koreans drink a lot of soju?). During this period sweet potatoes, wheat, barley and tapioca were used as rice replacements and some mix of these remain as ingredients, today.

Just as many liquors have a specific country association (you know the ones: vodka; rum; sake; tequila) soju is Korea’s beverage. The most famous brand of soju, Jinro, is also the most popular liquor in the world, selling nearly 90 million cases annually. And yet, in the West, among any three spirits (say, wine/sake/soju) it is clearly “the other guy”*. Nevertheless, in Korea soju is a very popular social beverage with a respected etiquette associated with who pours, and etc. It is actually a mild tasting drink, almost always swigged “straight” and with an unstated intention that goes something like: Look, YOU want to get hammered, and I want to get hammered, so let’s get on with it. Over convivial talk and delicious banchan (side dishes) the small drinking cups are repeatedly filled and then slammed in single gulps, the goal being to get the “burned liquor” out of that cup and into your stomach with as few sensory inputs as possible. It works, too! I participated in this ritual one evening (and dreadful morning) while in Korea to celebrate my sister-in-law’s wedding. I’m good for now.

* José Carreras

Let’s get on to business … This blog entry is about my latest project, a spirits cabinet based on the traditional Korean kitchen cabinet design. I was very excited to begin this project, both because it was my first commissioned piece from a non-relative, and because I want to keep exploring how traditional East Asian furniture can find their purpose in today’s homes. As an aside, I find it interesting how traditional kitchen furnishings from Korea, Japan and China differ in form while serving the same household function. From my own observations, the traditional Korean kitchen cupboard is the most modest in size, possessing doored compartments and, often, open shelving. In contrast, classic Japanese versions are more substantial in mass and incorporate both doors, drawers and smaller compartments. Chinese examples vary in size but tend to be tall cabinets, with later pieces featuring intricately carved doors to ventilate compartments used for storing fruits and vegetables. All are fine designs that would have utility in today’s home, but the Korean version seems most suited for the special purpose of liquor storage. The dimensions provided by the customer also fit within their canonical form and so it was agreed to proceed along this front.

Design

Once it was decided to go Korean, the remaining design decisions related to door style (sliding or hinged) and whether the lower compartment should have doors or exist as an open shelf. As a kitchen item the versatility of open shelves is compelling, and I had already made a prototype of this form, but for a more refined furnishing it was decided to enclose this space with (hinged) doors. The piece is made of framed panels, inspired by a venerable example from the early 1800’s that I found in the premier reference book on this subject, Traditional Korean Furniture*. Many Korean pieces use the panel construction method and this, along with their appreciation of wood grain, leads to some spectacular looking wood pairings. Perhaps most prized is the use of persimmon wood as panels. Persimmon’s dramatic orange and black grain pattern within a subtle, pear or paulownia wood frame is a signature look for fine Korean cabinets. These would be used in the living space and not in the kitchen, but that also fits for the purpose of the cabinet under construction. I was able to appreciate a few examples up close at the Namsangol Hanok Village during my last visit to Seoul, and was inspired to do my best using the Western Hemisphere woods at my disposal. For our cabinet it was decided that the contrasting colors of a black walnut frame with cherry panels would provide the desired look. Exploiting the grain patterns in book-matched cherry panels would serve as the homage to persimmon.

* Wright, E.R., Pai, M.S. Traditional Korean Furniture, Kodansha: Tokyo, 2000.

The hardware on Korean furniture is generally made of brass or iron, adding a golden or black metallic feature, respectively. Rarely will you find silver-colored metals or wood used as handles on traditional pieces. Today, there is much more brass hardware produced in traditional East Asian designs than iron, however, iron was typical for kitchen cabinets and black colored hardware was preferred by the customer, providing me an opportunity to scour the internet and add to my “source list”. (Borrowing from the Materials section) I was able to locate a classic, round door hinge in matte black finish from a Korean vendor on eBay. The matching colored knobs were found stateside from a high quality cabinet hardware store.

So, with the basics of style, dimensions and materials settled it was time to draw up more detailed plans. I find it useful to do this in two stages. The first is a rough plan that both serves as a visual for the customer, defining “what will be made”, and also facilitates a comprehensive accounting of parts and their dimensions, important for generating a so-called “cut list”. The cut list, sometimes referred to as a “mill bill”, serves as the shopping list to be used at the lumber yard. It purposely exaggerates the size of each part to allow for milling waste (end scraps and sawdust) during the dimensioning step. The second set of plans are more detailed and describe both the exact measurement for every part and the location of all joint features, in this case dados, tenons, mortices and rabbets. While it is good to have a numeric (in inches) associated with each part/feature, in the workshop you will generally fix the dimension of one component as being the result of a cut, say the actual width of a dado slot, and then mill the associated parts, in this case the cherry panels, to best fit within that slot opening regardless of exact numerical measurement. The same goes with the other elements. In the end, the mortice opening defines the tenon size; door cavity (minus clearances) defines the door size, etc.

Materials

The woods for this project are black walnut, cherry, ash (interior rails) and birch plywood (shelves and backboard). These are common materials and easily sourced in New England. Since my objective was to highlight the cherry panels, the best cherry lumber supply would determine which yard to visit. I needed to find suitably wide boards (~8 inches), that measured one inch in thickness (what is known as 4/4 or “four quarter” at the lumber yard) and in plentiful enough supply that I would have a selection to choose from. The goal would be to find a choice specimen that fit those dimensions and was of sufficient length (~10 ft) so that all of the 12 panels could be cut from the same board to ensure harmony of color and grain. I also needed a ~7 ft length of thicker, 5/4 cherry to use as the table top. Now, boards in these sizes are not difficult to find, it was the potential for variety that sent me to my favorite lumber yard an hour’s drive north into snowy New Hampshire. Upon arrival, I found the walnut, ash and plywood without difficulty but the cherry stock was unexpectedly sparse! Some other wood species were also low or SOLD OUT. Apparently the COVID-19 pandemic had served to both heighten demand while reducing the production of popular building and craft materials and my cherry boards were swept-up in this calamity. Of the three 5/4 boards that were both wide and long enough for the top I was able to settle on a nice, knot-friendly specimen containing only a bit of sapwood on one edge. The key 4/4, panel-generating board was selected from among eight or so picked-over planks. These all had their own hard luck stories evident beneath rough exteriors but I was pleased to select the, albeit sapwood laden, pick o’ the litter which exhibited a rather fetching grain pattern. Of all the natural defects present in furniture lumber I find sapwood (the lighter-colored, “live” portion of a tree lying just beneath the bark and surrounding the “dead” heartwood) to be the most endearing. I actually try to include a glimpse of sapwood in every item I make and this piece would let me continue that streak. Happy to escape from New Hampshire pestilence-free and with all lumber in-hand it felt like a victory.

Dimensioning

After allowing the wood a couple weeks to acclimate to conditions in the workshop it was time to get serious about making something. I first marked the wood in crayon to show where each of the pieces would be extracted and was gratified to find that the project would completely consume the cherry boards and with a bit of walnut in excess. The 4/4 cherry board would only need to be bisected by resawing and then planed & cut square to the panel dimensions. The heftier 5/4 board would be planed to the desired thickness, cut into two 36 inch lengths, ripped (cut lengthwise) to 6 inches in width and then glued together to make the tabletop. Not a lot of operational risk with the cherry pieces. However the walnut, once cut to lengths, would required all manner of manipulations to create grooves, slots and notches (aka dados, mortices and rabbets). These operations provide many chances to make a mistake so some extra stock is warranted. But, in the end, I’m happy to report that these operations all went swimmingly, including the miter cuts to make the framing for the doors and top. Andrew’s home made picture frame jig did the trick on the table saw for all but the two longest pieces. These were even one inch(!) too long for the guide on my miter saw bench, but a MacGyver-like table extension was cobbled together to (as always) save the day.

Assembly & Finishing

Once all of the 53 individual wooden parts had been cut to dimension, it was time to see if the plan worked by way of a pre-assembly operation known as the “dry-fit”. Two things are accomplished in this exercise: ensuring that all the pieces fit together as intended; and rehearsing the order in which the pieces will be joined and glued during final assembly. Since all of the cherry panels will “float”, unglued in the final piece the dry-fit was all about the walnut, ash and plywood parts. It took a couple of attempts to learn the best order of assembly but the dry-fit was successful and this “first draft” assembly revealed the few spots where either the joints were too tight or where gaps existed in mated boards. These trouble spots were noted with tape and easily remedied with a chisel upon disassembly. This rehearsal also confirmed that I was deficient in clamps … yes, get more tools!

I mentioned that the panels would not be glued to the frame - this is an important, invisible design element. Left un-glued and tucked snugly in their dados they will be free to expand and shrink as humidity conditions change without risk of cracking or warping the cabinet. Assembly will require a neater-than-usual glue application to avoid squeeze-out from clamped joints that could unintentionally fix the panels in place. Floating panels also require that the final finish be applied to the panels prior to assembly so that if/when they shrink over time they will not expose outlines of unfinished cherry. Varnishing beforehand also ensures that the finish, itself, will not unintentionally cement the panels to the frame. It’s actually easier to finish wood in the horizontal position so there was no inconvenience, just a few additional days added to the schedule. I used gel polyurethane varnish to finish the cherry boards, and I am now hooked on this product. The gel wipes on (and off) with a cloth rag and dries sufficiently during this process to eliminate the possibility of catching dust during the subsequent final drying periods - no additional sanding required. The gel material also contains far less volatile organic solvent than traditional surface coating materials (oil varnish, shellac) making things easier on the furniture maker as well as the planet. It’s not for every application, but it does seem like “the future” and I’m sold! Three coats in three days and it was then time to mate the cherry with the walnut.

As the walnut stock used for the carcass appeared to be lighter in color than the material used to make the door frames I decided to stain all of the pieces with a walnut colored (gel) stain. This would darken the wood a bit but the intention was to lessen the color variations between and within boards. After all, the walnut’s purpose is to frame the cherry, not compete with its statement. All pieces were sanded to 220 grit but it was anticipated that after the door frames and carcass were put together some additional sanding would be required to smooth the joint seams and so, with the exception of some stain applied along the interior edges, the bulk of the walnut would be stained and varnished after assembly.

While waiting for the new bar clamps to arrive I set about making the four doors and table top. These were put together in the same manner that picture frames are constructed, only in this case the picture (cherry panel) is inserted prior to glue-up of the miter-jointed walnut frame. The frame pieces were held in place during assembly by a strap clamp which worked perfectly. With only one such clamp I could glue a frame in the morning and then, after it had dried, another frame overnight. The 4 doors and table top were thus completed in a three day span. Once the shiny new clamps were in I enlisted the help of my eldest son, Ben, to assist in the carcass glue-up. This was a challenging assembly operation with tenon “vectors” pointing in all three directions, 4 large plywood boards and 8 floating panels. Including the “dress rehearsal” where Ben and I discussed and refined our strategy this operation went on for almost 3 hours (with a couple “what in the … ?” moments) but it all came out fine in the end. Whew! I imagine that these will become more routine over time and that would be welcome.

In addition to the final sanding and finishing steps mentioned above, the last major operation was the hardware installation to affix the doors and top to the cabinet. These are the only places where screws are employed. The hinges used are the “surface-mounted” type found on Asian furniture as opposed to the “butt” variety used for most furnishings in the West. Fine Western cabinets will generally have the butt hinge plates hidden within mortices chiseled into the edge of the door and frame, exposing only the hinge pin. In contrast, Asian furniture makers opt to display the hinge on the outside. These hinge plates are often decoratively shaped, allowing this utilitarian element to also add charisma to the piece. The round hinges used on this cabinet will do their duty in the charm department, the only trick is mounting them “square” without any straight edges to reference. I relied on accurately marking the coordinates of the central screw openings. With each door lying flat on the workbench, I mounted their hinges at the central point and then squared the pin to the edge of the door before drilling the remaining holes to get it right. Mounting the doors within the cabinet opening was a matter of evening-out the clearances between the doors and the frame. Working solo, this is usually an awkward process but I used painter’s tape this time to help hold the hinges in place and it worked easier than ever before. You can learn something new every day, if you try. One thing I learned on past adventures is to use steel screws when first mounting hinges into a frame. The metal alloy used in the typical decorative hinge screw will surely fail and twist apart while screwing into hardwood for the first time. Don’t try it - take my word. The top would be affixed by screws mounted into 4 corner blocks, which also serve as extra bracing for the cabinet frame.

Once the hardware was removed the walnut was stained and then treated to 3 applications of the gel poly. All good! The doors still appear a bit darker than their frame but not alarmingly so. They remind me of how old, hand-animated cartoon figures often had discolored arms/legs, betraying the fact that they were moving parts requiring extra labors during production - it all fits. Upon reassembly the piece could, at long last, reveal its finished character. I think the essence of the Korean kitchen cabinet has been achieved, with an unintended whiff of Mid-Century Modern. That could be a mix of furniture styles worthy of further exploration, but for now this Korean spirits cabinet will be enjoyed, straight up.

Geonbae! (Korean toast: “dry cup”)