Project — "Making a Sideboard Again"

      I don’t think that the drawers should be all the same size even though that would be the easiest to draw and then build. The question is what size should they be.

  

And looking at the picture of the first unit I think the top drawers were 2 1/2 inches tall and really much too small to be practical.

       

  

This gives us an ideal time to come up with an ideal drawer bank. I knew that I did not want the drawers to be all the same size. I think it would be much more pleasing to the eye to have a series of drawers starting with small and then larger and larger.
   Sal agreed and we found a piece of ¼" Luan plywood that we could use for "tissuing" a suggested drawer arrangement.

          We knew the total height and we thought that we would want four drawers per column. I didn't use any great formula. I just started to draw a typical drawer and then made the next one slightly higher ... like 3.5", 4.5", 5.5" and 6.5"...
    Once we agreed with the look, I could now  figure out the rail and stile width for the face frame. These drawers will be 3/8" overlay and I am allowing for creating the rail and stile width. Two inches seems to work.

 

       

   With all the beautiful poplar boards, we will be gluing up panels to make the top, and the side panels, and the "floor".  We were pleasantly surprised to find that the long boards require "zero" joining — a rarity with wood from any source.
   We haven’t used these clamps for a long time but they will be particularly handy here. They are the R and R clamp system. In this case we will lay four side by side for gluing up the first long panel that will be the two sides. Sal is using a socket wrench to tighten the long screws.

       We want to build a dust frame for the top section. We will build this out of the same size poplar that we will use for making the face frame. Two inch widths is what we will be ripping. Sal uses a sample board of 2 1/8" width — the extra 1/8" will allow for one pass through the router to joint the edge and remove any saw marks. He is using the sample to set the width of the parallel guide.  The blade is locked up so he can set the guide accurately. To get the blade here, Sal used the saw's "blade changing lever" which locks the blade up — a great feature.

 

       

   He is ripping the stock. You can see that the parallel guide is riding the outside edge. Sal pushes the saw with the slightest pressure on that side.

  

  

   You may have noticed that the board was not clamped in the past shot. It doesn't need to be but having a block at the end of the table to keep the board from moving forward helps a great deal. There is little kickback potential of ripping, but if there were, it would be kicking forward. This helps prevent that.
I take the ripped boards to the router table where I have set it up to remove 1/16" on each pass. One pass on each side reduces the width to 2"  exactly and with super smooth edges.

 

Main Menu

Previous Page                          Next Page

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hit Counter