Grandpa’s Cabinets was approached and asked if I would be interested in building a display case that would hang on a wall to house both a folded American Flag and a photo the client’s father. The photo was important to his son who lived across the country from him. After I received a photo of a design, I happily agreed to take this custom display case project.
He sent me both the flag and the photos to have here so I could make the display case fit them perfectly and assemble the finished case for shipping directly to his son in New Mexico. The first thing I did was to cut and mill all the individual pieces that would make up the case. I used solid cherry wood as the wood of choice and as the finished photos show, stained in Red Oak stain for a dark rich color.
After I laid out all the parts and did a fit and finish inspection, I cut and mitered the trim pieces that would surround the faces of the three parts of this case. You’ll notice, there’s a framed, raised box to hold a photo, a triangular box to hold the flag and the overall large box to hold both.
I cut all parts and then did an extensive amount of sanding to get all the wood to a smooth finish to accept the stain and satin polyurethane topcoats. I actually assembled this case in the “raw” and decided to stain and finish everything as an assembled case. This affords me the opportunity to do a nicer finish sanding of all joints etc without worrying about over sanding any parts of the assembled case. I used acrylic sheets for the faces of the photo case, flag case and over the entire case when assembled. The background is a black material that’s glued to the plywood back.
The wall mounting system I chose for this case consists of two piece of aluminum bars that fasten to the wall and back of the case and the case part sits into the wall piece to give a very strong hold and keeps the case always level.
I hope you like the finished case and if you are ever in need of help with a display you want, contact www.grandpascabinets.com and I’ll be happy to help with your display. Also, check out my video page on YouTube at the link here
