Computer Cabinet - #8 Milling, Installing & Flushing Plugs – Drawer Test Fit – Mounting Drawer Slides

With all the cherry plugs cut their installation can begin.  Just because the plugs are cut does not mean they are ready to glue in.  When the plug cutter starts making the plug the roughly first 1/8” of the cut is tapered as in the photo below.  Normally that’s a good thing as it helps the plug get started in the hole.  However, here because the holes are not very deep it is a problem.

The fix is a two-step process.  First, the peg is chucked up in the lathe and while running the end is squared with the long axis of the peg with a Dremel tool. 

Second, also with the lathe running a small bevel is ground using the Dremel tool.  I want just enough to get the peg started in the hole.  The enlarged area gives a better look at what I mean.

To install the peg a little glue is put in the peg hole.  Not too much since the glue is mostly incompressible and I want the peg to bottom out on top of the screw.

The peg is then hand started in the hole and a block of plywood slightly larger than the peg is set on the top and the peg is driven in.  I use the plywood block as a cushion and to provide a spacer so I don’t hit the edge of the drawer front.  If you look close to the left of the bottom peg where the side and the drawer front come together you can see a tiny drop of glue.  That appeared when I drove the peg in.  There was a little more glue in the hole than needed and because the pores of red oak are open the glue under pressure from the peg being driven in traveled down one of the pores and came out there.  Off topic point of interest, unlike red oak the pores of white oak are typically plugged with tyloses which makes it almost impervious to water.  That’s one reason wine and whiskey barrels are made from white oak rather than red oak.

Here is the setup for installing the pegs.

After letting the glue cure overnight it’s time to bring the pegs flush with the drawer sides.  It starts by laying down a playing card as a spacer then using a very thin no-set Japanese pull saw to cut the pegs off.  The card is about one-hundredth of an inch thick so it holds the saw just above the side’s surface keeping the saw from scratching the side during the cut.

Next the peg needs to be brought flush with the side.  I tried a handful of different methods to do that from rasps, rifflers and hand sanding but ended up using a 2” diameter 60 grit sanding disk mounted in a drill.  The blue tape gives me a visual guide as to when the peg is flush along with if I am taking too much off one side or another.

That is followed by a detail sander with 220 grit paper to remove the 60 grit scratches and further bring the pegs and sides flush.

The final sanding is with a ¼ sheet pad sander loaded with 320 grip paper.

Once the pegs are finished the top and bottom edges of the drawer are sanded smooth.  This is followed by adding a small bevel to the exposed edges so they aren’t so sharp.  The top photo below shows the sharp edge and the white line on the bottom one is after the bevel is added.  The white line is sanding dust that got blown off after I took the photo.

Beveling the edges is done with a hook and loop (Velcro) 220 random orbit sander disk stuck on a MDF block that has had the hook fabric attached to it.  Here is the loop side of the sander disk and the round block showing the hook fabric.  Last bit of sanding on the drawers are the bottoms where the underside gets sanded with 220 grit while the inside surface goes to 320 grit.

Installing the drawer slides is next and that begins by spacing out the drawers within the case using identical thickness shims.  They were made from scraps that were just a little oversized then running them through the thickness sander until a snug fit was achieved.  After that the tops and bottoms of the drawers are marked using a scribing knife and square for the exact location.  The knife is the bottom photo below.

For slides I am using side mounted, soft closing ones.  They consist of two pieces; one gets mounted to the drawer side and the other to the inside of the cabinet.  The bottom slide is assembled while the top two pieces show its parts.

As the drawers are different heights the slides are going to be located at different points on the drawer side.   For the top drawer shown I decided to center the slide.  After some measuring a spacer was cut and clamped in place to align the slide in its proper location.  A second spacer not shown here sets the setback from the inside lip of the drawer front.  Another clamp holds the slide in place while two of the three mounting screws are installed in the vertical slots (bottom left photo) which will allow for some up/down fine adjustment after the drawers are installed.  A pilot hole is drilled using a self-centering drill bit assembly (bottom right photo) which centers the pilot hole side to side in the slot.  The third screw will be installed in the center round hole just to the right of the center clamp once the drawers are finished and final vertical adjustments have been made. 

I did make a change to the process after the third screw twisted off while screwing it in.  I had wondered about the quality of the screws as I had noticed that a fair number of them had partially filled Philips slots in the head making them difficult to install.  They might work just fine in a soft wood or plywood but not so well in red oak.  Anyway, to get around the problem a higher quality self-tapping screw (top screw below) that’s the same diameter and whose threads match the ones supplied gets screwed in then removed.  The supplied screws threads (bottom screw below) are then rubbed across a piece of wax to act as a lubricant and installed.  The process for the rest of the drawers is the same with the exception of the spacer that aligns the slide changes as the drawers get deeper.

Next Up – Mounting Drawer Slides, Drawer Adjustment & Lacquering