Friday, I finished up the three bottom storage drawers. The drawer joinery, is another one of details that my design deviates significantly from Norms. For utility drawers like these, that aren’t going to see a lot of daily use I like to use dado & rabbet joints. They’re easy to make on the table saw, & provide a strong mechanical connection.
The following rendering shows a drawer constructed using this joinery method. The drawer sides have a dado cut into both ends, while the front & back have rabbets cut on their ends that fit into the side panel dados. The false front is glued onto the inner front panel.
Rendering of a drawer with a false front, that's held together with dado & rabbet joints.
The following shots show the steps I use to make drawers using dado & rabbet joinery. For reference, the drawer sides are 1/2″ ply, the bottom is 1/4″ ply, and the false front is 3/4″ ply. Before you start, one thing I recommend, is to place indicator marks on key faces. It’s really easy to get a board turned around and cut a rabbet or dado on the wrong side when your running a batch of boards. Indicator marks help prevent this, assuming you remember to pay attention. Trust me, I’ve learned this the hard way many times over.
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I started assembling the carcase last Wednesday, and finished up this weekend. At first I thought I would have it done in a day, but I always seem to underestimate how much time waiting for glue to dry consumes. It was worth it though, because if I knock on any of the panels I get a nice hollow ringing sound (signifies sound joints). I must admit, that at first I was a worried about the carcase assembly, because I don’t have a lot of casework under my belt. In the end, it was very strait forward an uneventful, because I took the time to do two separate dry fits.
Assembled Carcase
Sunday on the other hand was far from enjoyable. I learned two things Sunday afternoon that I won’t soon forget. One, no retail store (around me) carries drill bits sized in 32nds above 1/2″. I was to lowes, Menards, Home Depot, Farm & Fleet, Ace, True Value, even my local Rockler store, and none of them carry 17/32″ bits, let alone a brad point. Two, who ever decided router bit shancks should be 1/4″ & 1/2″ in diameter should be slapped across the back of the head. Imo they should have been 15/64″ & 31/64″, that way You could use 1/4″ & 1/2″ drill bits to make holes to hold them.
On Friday, the plywood I ordered finally arrived, so construction has commenced. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the main differences between my table and Norm’s are the joints. He’s well known for his use of screws & biscuits. For example he used biscuits to join the case back to the sides and internal dividers, and well I find this method substandard. I chose to use dados, but as you can see below this leads to a scenario where 3 stopped dados intersect with a 4th dado.
Normally stopped dados have to be cleaned up with a chisel, but since these intersect with another dado, a router equipped with a special template bit can do the clean up faster than anyone could do by hand. Check out the following photos you’ll see what I mean.
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The cold snap we had here last week, brought this project to a dead stop for a few days. Thankfully the mercury has climbed above freezing again, and I was able to finish rough cutting everything to size last night except for the cabinet sides. As soon as the local wood shop gets the 3/4″ plywood in I ordered (I need it for the cabinet sides), I’ll start assembling the carcass. In the mean time, I’m going to check if my table saw is out of alignment, because I got a significant amount of burning on rip cuts last night. This usually indicates that the blade is no longer parallel to the miter slots.
Five sheets of plywood really doesn't look like much after you cut it up.
I’m not really sure why, but I have been putting off making one of these for years. Making a cross cut sled is easy, but getting the fence square can be a real PITA (Oh yea that’s why). This sled is a smaller (42″ x 42″), simpler version of the Ultimate Crosscut Sled presented by John McCormack in the July 2008 issue of Fine Woodworking. The actual dimensions of a sled are so dependent on your particular saw and project needs, that it’s pointless for me to draw a plan in sketchup for you to download. The following are some things to consider before making your sled.
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