Computer Cabinet - #6 Completing Drawer Sides & Backs, Sanding plus a Patch

Making the backs comes next.  The blanks were cut and thickness sanded the same time as when I made the drawer side blanks so they are right at four hundredths of an inch too thick.  First step is to cut the blanks into rough sizes about 1/8” wide and half an inch long.  That’s followed by running them through the thickness sander so they fit into the ½” dado in the sides which measures four hundredths of an inch less than ½”.  Cutting them to length is next.  To make sure the interior dimension is the same at the back as it is in the front, I cut a spacer the exact same length as the space between the sides at the front.  It’s then moved to the back and the back piece is cut to make a tight fit in the dados.  I could have measured the distance but then if the side spacing measurement was off or the dados were not exactly right the back width would be off.  For me this way is simpler and less prone to error.  Here is that setup with the back next to the drawer, the other bottom drawer up next to be done and at the top four drawers dry-fitted and stacked.

When the back is fitted here is the completed dry-assembled drawer and it disassembled ready for finish sanding.

The finish sanding starts by working on the curved hand-hold.  The rest of the drawer can be power sanded but this needs to be done by hand.  Using one of the drums from the oscillating sander wrapped in 120 grit paper the curves are sanded smooth paying particular attention to the end and near end grain on either side.  Once that’s smoothed the 120-grit paper is replaced with 220 and finally 320.  This is the primary area that’s going to be touched so I want it to be really smooth.

The rest of the pieces are all power sanded using a random orbital sander with 220 grit then finished off with a ¼ sheet pad sander loaded with 320 grit paper.

One of the sides has a hole completely through where a small knot fell out.  The top photo shows the black epoxy used to fill it full from both sides, mounded up slightly.  After letting it cure overnight sanding with 220 then 320 gives a nice smooth flat surface.

Over the years I have built a lot of different drawers using all types of construction including everything from unevenly spaced dovetails to box joints to light use ones that were simply glued and pin nailed together.  One type that has seen a lot of wear and tear are the shop’s 37 drawers which consist of glue, air driven finishing nails and screws.  Some are fairly lightly loaded but most have tools and a fair amount of weight.  The oldest are probably pushing 20 years and are as solid and operate as easily as they did when new.  A major contributing factor to the ease of use is heavy duty full extension side mounted drawer slides.  Here is what a side view of one of the shop cabinet drawers looks like.

For these cabinets I am going to use a variation of that style.  The glue and screws will be retained but nails will be omitted and replaced with an additional screw.  Because I don’t want the screws visible, they will be counter sunk below the side’s face and the hole plugged.  As a tie to the cherry unit the drawer cabinet will go into the plugs will be made out of cherry rather than oak.  Below is a rendering of what I have in mind.  Look closely and you can see that the front plugs are bigger than the back ones.  There is a reason for that I will explain later.

The drilling of all those holes requires accurate layout so I will use a couple of tri-squares, dial calipers, and a marking gauge to make sure there is consistency in their placement.

Once the holes are marked the setup on the drill press for the front holes can be done.  The fence is set so all the holes are a consistent distance from the front edge and the depth of cut is limited with a stop on the drill.  Here is what that looks like plus a close view of the finished countersunk hole.  Note the drill, it’s designed to make a pilot hole and countersink all in one pass.  Unfortunately, the pilot hole is too small for the shank of the screw and too large for the threaded part but that can be worked around later during the drawer assembly.

The second set of holes to be drilled are for attaching the sides to the back which are smaller than the front ones.  First, is that most of the stress on the drawer is where the front attaches to the sides and that’s because of the forces applied when pulling the drawer open or closing it.  The back just holds the sides together and keeps things from falling out the rear, so the joint does not need to be as strong.  Second is due to the dado the back fits in.  As the side is ½” thick and the dado is ¼” deep the thickness available for the screw head and plug is only ¼” so a thinner #4 screw is used versus the #6 at the front. 

The end result will be the same.  A countersunk hole for the screw and the peg albeit smaller but the method is different because I don’t have combination pilot hole and countersink bit for a #4 screw.  What’s required is two setups – one to drill the pilot hole and one to make the countersink.  I tried drilling the pilot hole first then the countersink and doing the countersink first then the pilot hole which worked out best.  Here is a cut through one of my test pieces that shows what I am after.

The top photo below shows the ¼” counter sink hole setup while the bottom photo shows the setup for drilling the smaller pilot hole.

There is one small detail that needs to be taken care of after drilling the pilot hole.  When the drill breaks through the back side it does not leave a clean exit hole.  You can see that in the left photo below.  The rough edges get cleaned up with a countersink/pilot hole drill whose bit diameter matches that of the pilot hole.  In case you are wondering why this combination bit wasn’t used to drill the hole in one pass it’s because the diameter of the countersink part is too big.

Next Up – Drawer Assembly & Cutting Plugs

Computer Cabinet - #5 Drawer Fronts & Sides Almost Compete

Now that the basic shaping of the hand hold in the drawer fronts are done, I need to soften their hard 90-degree edges.  That’s done by adding a rounded edge using a 3/16” radius router bit mounted in the router table.  Normally that’s an easy thing to do.  Put the bit in the router, set the depth of cut then holding the piece against the ball bearing guide on the bit run the drawer front right to left by the bit for a nice smooth radius on the edge.  However, in this case there is a problem.  Because the end of the drawer fronts have a rabbit cut in them there is nothing for the bearing to ride against hence nothing to control the depth of cut.  Below you can see what I mean.

The fix is to set the router table fence in line with the bearing.  That way the entire edge of the board controls how far the bit cuts into piece and gives a nice clean straight edge.  Here is what that looks like.  The problem this setup creates is the hand hold cutout does not get routed. 

The solution for that is to move the fence back away from the bit so the bearing can ride against the cutout then start routing just before the cutout begins and quitting just after it ends.  This is how that looks.  When routing the inside edge of the drawer front, I can do the whole length in one pass since it does not have the thin rabbited edge.

Because I still had the plywood blade on the table saw from cutting the drawer front template to size, I decided to cut and fit the plywood back of the cabinet next.  The cabinet looked really square when checking it with my 8” hand square.  To add a little more accuracy, I checked the cabinet’s diagonals and they were within 1/16”.  Pretty close and easy enough to correct.  Below shows the how a diagonal clamp across the long dimension allows me to very carefully apply just the correct amount of pressure to pull it into place so everything is square. 

Once the cabinet is squared the back is clamped and screwed in place.  Here it is shown with some of the screws installed.

The back is held in place with flat head screws that require a stepped bit to drill the pilot hole and a small flared area at the surface for the underneath side of the screw to fit into.  The top photo below shows all the parts I need to drill the holes.  There is a spacer, the 2-piece drill/countersink and the stop collar.  The lower left shows how all the pieces work together.  The stop collar controls the total allowable depth the bit can drill but because the countersink would drill too deep the spacer raises the bit assembly up a little so the diameter of the countersink is just slightly larger than the diameter of the head of the screw.  The center right shows the #4 x 5/8” screw and the completed pilot hole.  The lower right photo is of the installed screw and you can see how it sets just a smidge below the face of the back.

With the back in place it’s back to working on the drawers.  First off is to go through the side pieces and mark them as to what side is out, the front, top edge and as they are oversize where to trim.  One thing to keep in mind is the sides have to be made in left and right sets since they are mirrored images of each other.  (That’s the voice of experience speaking.)  Here all that has been done plus this piece has had the left end squared and the right end trimmed to final length plus an inch.

Cutting the dado at the back edge of the drawer side is next.  It’s cut using a stacked dado consisting of the outer two 1/8” blades and two 1/8” chippers. 

Next is to cut the drawer fronts and sides to their final width on the table saw.  To do that the dado set comes off and the rip blade goes on.  First cut is a skim pass opposite the side that’s marked for waste.  This is to remove the small amount of chip out where the dado blade exits its cut.  There is not a lot as you can see below but the skim cut removes it and helps make a nice joint.

Now the rip fence is set for the front and sides final width.  A single pass through the saw cutting off the edge marked as waste gives me identical width sets. 

Cutting a groove with the stacked dado blade in the front and sides for the drawer bottom is next.  I will be using ¼” oak veneered MDF for the drawer bottoms which is not exactly ¼” thick but averages about 1/64” less.  I am not worried about the apparent slight difference between the dado and the bottom panel because when doing a test fit in a scrap the bottom fit into the dado just right probably because of variations in the bottoms actual thickness.   Here is how that setup looks.  The two push blocks allow me to put good downward pressure evenly across the piece and keep it tight to the fence.

Next is to cut the sides to their finish length using a setup similar to the one above when they were rough cut to length.  With that done the front and sides are pretty much done except for finish sanding.  In the photo below you can see how the sides are mirror images of each other.

Making the bottoms is next.  Amongst my leftovers was this long piece of ¼” oak veneered MDF.  Cutting a long narrow piece of material presents its own set of challenges.  If you’re not really careful the piece can rotate while being cut, get pinched between the blade and the fence and come flying back at you.   In doing a couple of dry runs with this setup there was a problem with the drag between the MDF and the outboard support that made me feel like I could not adequately control the cut.  Adding a sheet of 6 mil polyethylene on the support greatly reduced the drag making me comfortable that it would work.  If it hadn’t and I was still uncomfortable with making the cut I would have found another way.  One thing I have learned in over 50 years of working in the shop is to really listen to the little voice in your head when it says, “Are you sure this is safe?”  Once broken down into smaller pieces they are cut to fit which leaves just the drawer backs to make.

Next Up – Completing Drawer Sides & Backs, Sanding plus a Patch

Computer Cabinet - #4 Starting the Drawer Fronts

Once the drawer sides are at their final thickness the drawer fronts can be worked on.  They were left to make sure they were going to stay flat and true rough sanded at 80 grit.  In checking all was good so I could finish the thickness sanding down to 220 grit. 

Deciding which blank gets cut down for which drawer takes a little time as there are some flaws to work around like a few cracks, some dowels and a couple of screw holes.  When done here are all the marked pieces ready to be ripped to rough width and length.  The numbers are the nominal height of the drawer front.

Here are the drawer fronts ripped to rough width and length set in front of the cabinet case.  One of the things I like to do when making drawer fronts is to have the grain flow from one drawer to another.  Horizontally that’s down by cutting the fronts from the same long blank.  Vertically it’s accomplished by matching similar grain.  In this case all the fronts are from the same board.  The chalked notes on the pieces indicate which front goes where and the order of operations, more on that later. 

The drawing below shows the drawer joint where the front and side come together.  More details of how the sides are going to be joined to the front come later.  The 3/8” lip at the side is for the metal drawer slide.  Cutting the 7/8” x 5/8” rabbit into the drawer front comes next.

Cutting the rabbit starts by roughing it out the with a ½” wide stacked dado in the table saw.  Two passes are needed to remove the material and that’s been done in this photo.  The number one on top of the front lets me know this is the first end to be cut.  I will cut all of the rabbits on one end before cutting the fronts to their final length.  That’s to give me a cushion in case something goes wrong and I have to cut it off and redo the rabbit.  

Final cleanup of the rabbit is done on the router table where the bit takes off just a few thousandths of an inch to clean up the cut.  Since this joint will be visible every time the drawer is opened, I want a nice crisp joint.  Not shown in the photo is sacrificial piece on the exit side of the cut to help keep the front square to the fence and to reduce blowout when the bit exits the cut.

Cutting the fronts to their final length is next.  That’s done on the chop saw using a stop for consistent results.  After that the second rabbit is cut following the same steps as before.

Ripping the drawer fronts widths down to just an eighth of an inch over size is next.  Here is what the fronts look like set into the cabinet.  They will be ripped to final width at the same time as the sides so they all match dead on.

Early on I decided to omit the handles on the drawer fronts since I did not want to shorten the drawers to provide for clearance between handles and the existing doors.  A simple drop cutout will be used instead to provide a hand hold.  Since the outer cherry cabinet has doors, I am not worried about the drawer contents getting dusty.  The profile starts by laying it out on a piece of carboard then cutting with scissors.  That’s laid on a ¼” thick piece of scrap oak veneered MDF the same width as the drawer front and cut out using a jig saw.  I could have used the bandsaw but because the template is only ¼” thick and the blade has 3 teeth per inch there would be at most only one tooth in contact with the template during the cut.  That’s not enough so I would have to change the blade and reset all the guides which makes just using the jig saw a lot quicker.  To get a better cut a jigsaw blade with ground teeth is used rather than one that is just stamped out.

Once cut the oscillating drum sander with a coarse sleeve is used to clean up the edge and bring it close to the line.  Switching to a finer grit sleeve the edge is brought right to the line.

To assure a good mirror image the template is set on a piece of paper and the cutout is traced onto it.  The template is then flipped over and any high spots are marked then sanded off.  This process is repeated until when the template is flipped over there is no difference making the cutout is truly symmetrical.

Making the cut outs starts by putting three roughly 1” squares of cloth based double faced carpet tape on the jig then setting it on the drawer front making sure the top and both sides are aligned with the edges on each side.  Once I am sure the alignment is good it goes in the bench vice for a quick squeeze to set the tape.  Here the template is attached and ready to go.

From there the bandsaw is next cutting about 1/16” away from the template.

With the handhold roughed out cleanup of bandsawn cut using the oscillating drum sander is next to prevent grabbing by the router bit.  Only a small amount of material is left to be removed with the router bit.  There are a couple reasons why.  First, is because it’s easier on the router to take off a small amount.  Second, and more important when cutting the right side of the handhold curve the rotation of the bit and its cutting angle can catch the end grain tearing out chunks of material.  This is not a good thing.  Making whisker thin cuts with a really sharp bit greatly reduces the chances of this happening.

A bottom bearing template cutting bit is in installed in the router table.  The height is set so the bearing rides along the template and the cutting edge trims the blank’s edge flush with the template.  Even though the amount of material to be removed is 1/32” or less multiple light passes are made to prevent catching.  Another way to get around the problem of making the uphill cut on the right side would be to only route the left half with the bottom bearing bit.  The right side would them be cut using a top bearing bit with the piece flipped over so the template is on the bottom.

Here is what the finished routed handhold looks like set in place.  One down and five to go.  Making all six really went pretty quick, less than an hour not including hand sanding of the routed edge.

Next Up –Drawer Fronts & Sides Almost Compete

Computer Cabinet - #3 Making & Assembling Case Except Back – Cutting Drawer Side Blanks

The sides are next and once cut to width and length there are a pair of cuts to make a notch to provide clearance for the bottom hinges.  The rendering below shows the mottled gray hinge.  I know they don’t look like regular hinges and that’s because they are a two-piece European style.  Not shown is the door mounted half.

There are two different setups to make the cut.  One has the cut line on the outboard side of the blade shown below which means keeping the side to the left of the blade.

The second cut is a traditional setup with the side to be kept between the blade and the fence.  In the bottom photo you can see how the cut goes just deep enough to intersect with the first cut.

You may be wondering why the blade is set so high for these cuts and it has to do with the amount of arc the saw blade cuts at different heights.  What I want is a cut as near vertical as possible.  The top photo below shows my typical setup where the blade is set so the bottom of the gullets between the teeth is just above the top of the piece of wood being cut.  The bottom photo shows the much more vertical cut when the blade is extended fully upward. 

This is what the two sides of the cut look like.  In this case the bottom piece will be what’s seen from the inside while the top piece will be from the outside.  That’s because the new oak drawer cabinet will be inserted into the existing cherry cabinet and the overcuts on the outside will never be seen.

Next is to clamp the outer frame together to check and make sure when assembled it will fit in the cabinet OK.

Drilling holes for screwing it all together is next.  The bottom is held in place with #6 x 1 ½” screws run in from the outside.  Same method for attaching the center piece to the bottom.  The side to top and center to top are done differently by using pocket holes.  They are made using a jig and a step drill to create a flat-bottomed angled hole for the screw to go into.  The top photo shows the jig and to its right a couple of already drilled holes along with the regular countersunk holes for attaching the bottom near the top of the side.  The bottom photo shows the stepped drill.

Here are the case pieces drilled and ready for assembly with one exception.  The center needs to be cut to length and I won’t have that exact measurement until the bottom and sides of the case assembled.

The photo below shows how the sides, bottom along with a set of spacers at the top are clamped together so they can be screwed together.  Using moderate clamping pressure allows me to make any tiny adjustments in alignment needed to bring everything into position.  Once everything is in the right place and the case is square the screws are run in.

Once the bottom and sides are assembled measurements for the center support are taken and it is cut.  The case is then flipped over onto a set of risers so the top can be installed.  Here the top has been centered, clamped and screwed in place with the pocket hole screws.  Also shown is a close up of the screw set in the pocket hole and the screw itself.

Installing the center comes next.  Screwing it in from the bottom is first and here is what the clamping and spacer setup looks like.

Because I will be using side mounted full extension soft close metal slides for the drawers the center piece really needs to be exactly in the center.  This is because the width tolerance for the slide between the case and the drawer is plus or minus 1/32” and all of the drawers will be made the same width.  As an aid in centering the divider a couple of identical spacers are made by cutting them at the same time until they are a snug fit between the center and the sides.  With them in place I can screw the center down without it being able to shift one way or the other.  Here is a closer view of the top and bottom spacers in place. 

Now that the cabinet case is assembled it’s time to see if it fits in the side cabinet.  It did, just barely, that is after I removed the adjustment parts of the lower hinges but it does fit.

Setting the case aside it’s back to working on the drawer sides.  I had left them flat and straight but with varying thicknesses from 1/32” over to almost 1/16” over. Checking the ripped planks to see if they were still flat it’s mostly good news.  Nearly all of them are.  Those that aren’t had only a tiny bit of cup and since they are all a little thick it could be easily removed when bringing the sides to the final ½” thickness.  Starting with 36 grit on the thickness sander for bulk material removal I worked though progressively finer grits 80 then 150 finishing with 220 ending with all the planks just a shade over ½” thick.  No photo here since they look the same as they did in the last post when I set them aside to work on the case.

Next is to cut the planks to the drawer side blank length plus about an inch.  Right now, all the blanks are roughly the same width and length.  Deciding which blank gets cut down for which drawer takes a little time as there are a lot of cracks, splits, knots and bark inclusions to work around.  When done here are all the marked pieces ready to be ripped to rough width.

After taking the plywood blade off the table saw and installing the rip blade the flaws are cut away.  The sides are then ripped to their final width plus ¼” which gives me this stack of pieces for the drawer sides.

Next Up – Starting the Drawer Fronts