Phase III deals with the drawers, there will be 8 drawers in total which will be located on the 2 sides. The drawers increase size as you go down the cabinet starting at 4”, 5”, 6-1/2” and finally 8”.
Here is the steps I took in making them
Cut all drawer parts to size.
Joinery
A little sanding
Dry Assembly
Drawer Glue Up: Assembly
Drawer Installation
False Fronts
Drawer Pulls
Cabinet Pull out Trays
On board Paper Roll Holder
CUT PARTS TO SIZE
The most exciting part of this phase of the build is that I actually get to use the assembly table to build the drawers.
Using my plans I cut all plywood parts to size, I used a mix of birch plywood and regular sanded plywood for all the drawer parts (needed to get rid of some scrap plywood, that’s why I used the sanded plywood. With the exception of the drawer bases all materials were 23/32” thick, the drawer base was 1/2” thick I needed very robust bases as I will be putting heavy tools in them.
I used my table-saw to rip cut all the drawer parts and cross-cut most of the drawer parts on my chop saw with the exception of the drawer bases which I used my crosscut sled on the table-saw.
JOINERY
I chose to use the same joinery method as “The Wood Whisperer” did in his build for the drawers and that is the rabbet joint, with a dado for the drawer base.
Basically cut a rabbet on the front and back drawer pieces which is where the drawer sides are captured and then I use glue and brad nails to secure all the parts together, the drawer base just sits into a dado that is 1/2” up from all 4 sides and I made it 1/4” deep.
This method is extremely quick and I banged out all 8 drawers in about 2 hours.
A LITTLE SANDING
After all the joints are now cut in all the drawer pieces I sanded them with 120 grit sand paper using my random orbital sander. I usually only sand the inside faces of the drawer parts and then sand the outsides of the drawer once all the glue has dried.
DRY ASSEMBLY
Now that all the drawer parts are ready for the glue up I usually do a dry assembly to make sure that I rehearse the order in which I assemble the drawer, I also make sure that the drawers are square, which they were.
DRAWER INSTALLATION
Installation of the drawers was pretty quick and easy, I used 18” long side mounted drawer runners on all the cabinet drawers and I came up with a quick installation method for them, I made a quick jig for the drawer slides to help with alignment. The drawer runners I used had 2 parts to them, one part gets screwed to the case and he other gets screwed to the drawer there was a 1/2” overlay between the 2 parts so a made a offset jig that I could align the drawer part so as that they were uniform on every drawer.
STEP 1: I used a 1/4” spacer so as that I could sit my drawer slide on and keep an even reveal.
STEP 2: Used a shop made jig to align the drawer part of the slide
DRAWER FALSE FRONTS
I made sure to use a single plywood panel for all my false fronts so as that I could cut them sequentially and maintain the grain pattern for all the fronts, I really think it adds that cohesive look to the bank of drawers. The installation of the false fronts was very easy.
Apply glue to the back of the false front
Secure in place on the drawer using 2 clamps
Drive a few brad nails from inside the drawer holding the false front in place
Finally secure with 1-1/4” screws from inside the drawer.
ATTACHING THE DRAWER PULLS
If you can remember I made my own solid oak drawer pulls a little while ago and it was time to install them on the drawers and doors.
I purchased a Kreg jig some time ago while I was making my drill press cart and it was time to use it again, this is a great little jig if you install drawer pulls, and it works great every time.
CABINET TRAYS
The Wood Whisperer design had some shelves on the inside of the cabinet doors but I didn’t think that would work in my situation, so I came up with a plan deviation and that was install pull out trays , they are basically very shallow drawers and are installed as drawers because they operate on drawer slides.
They allow my to utilize all the empty space behind the cabinet doors but have easy access to all contents instead of reaching into deep shelves and having a hard time finding what you are looking for.
I installed 4 pull out trays behind the left cabinet door, and I will be storing anything from my power tools that are too big to fit inside the drawers, I will also be storing my wood finishes and glue.
I made them the same way that I made my drawers except they don’t have false front and are only 3” deep. They work great and have so many uses, I have used them in my kitchen on more than one occasion.
PAPER ROLL HOLDER
On my last outfeed assembly table I had made a home for my 36” long roll of resin paper, I used this to protect the top of the table when I was either gluing up a project or applying finishes.
I found this design on Jays Custom Creations, I will include a link below to his build video, although mine is very similar I didn’t use finger joints for the joinery method, I basically used glue and screws and rabbets to hold everything in place and it came out great.
Phase III is all finished and we have a very functional assembly table with tons of storage with a variety of storage methods and a large assembly work surface.
My final stage of this huge build is to apply the finish and I will do that soon, this will probably take me a week to fully finish as it takes a while to apply polyurethane while sanding between coats, but when that is done I will post a finished article on the build.
See you next time and thanks for reading this long project blog, I really hope you got something out this project.