6 Drawer CD Chest

Today we will make the 6 drawer boxes needed for this project.  I should mention that these drawer boxes are a custom size, as specified by the client and are twice the depth of our normal CD drawer boxes, and slightly wider as well.  I'm not sure if Jon will be using this for CDs or has some other use in mind.

In these chests we don't normally get into frilly stuff like dovetailed drawer boxes because these require considerably more time to make, and therefore drive the price up more than most people are willing to pay.  For drawers this small, rabbet joints are quite adequate.  So, we start with a wide plank of 5/4 poplar, cross-cut it into managable lengths, rip it to width, resaw it and plane the thinner pieces to 3/8".

Then we lay out and cut the boards into box sides and ends with our cross-cut sled to get nice square ends.

Then we take off the fine tooth saw blade and mount our dado head, set up for a 3/8" width cut and a depth of 3/16". Then, using a backer board to prevent tear-out, we cut the rabbets on the inside faces of each box side.  When those are done, we put the fine tooth blade back on and set up to mill the groove near the lower edge of the box that will hold the bottom in place, and cut the bottoms out of 1/8" Baltic Birch Plywood.

Once we get the parts made, we tape together a test drawer and make sure it fits in the hole properly.  I even tape a claw to the back of the box to be sure there are no clearance problems.  Tolerances are close since we want to maximize storage space.

When I'm satisfied that we're OK, we begin actually assembling the boxes.  Because of a limited supply of clamps, we run through each step on each box instead of processing all the parts at once for each stage.

Step one is to sand the interior surfaces of the box -- because it's much easier to do this before we assemble them than after they're glued together.  Then we pre-treat the end grain portions of each part with the polyurethane glue we're using.  This is necessary because poplar is a thirsty wood and if we applied glue and assembled like normal, the end grain surfaces would suck all the glue out of the joints and the joints would fail.  When the first application has disappeared, we apply a coat to all surfaces and assemble the box with clamps.  The bottom does not get glued in place.  As is traditional for drawer construction, the bottoms are made so they can be easily slid out the back for replacement should you break one -- not much of a problem in drawers this size, but...

After clamping, the assembly is moved out of the way and we repeat these steps with another box.  While the glue on that one is tacking up, we install the small nails that reinforce the corner joints of the first box, trim off and glue squeeze-out and test to be sure the bottom still slides freely.  These will get semi-permanently affixed by driving a couple of nails through the bottom into the back piece, but only after we've done the fussy-fitting that will come with the next session.

Move the completed box atop the cabinet, move the clamped box over to the second station, and sand and seal another set of parts.  Assemble and clamp that set of parts.  Nail the second box, removing clamps as we go.  Shift everything along again and begin the process again.  Repeat until all 6 boxes are stacked on top of the cabinet.

That's enough for today.  we'll want the glue to set up hard before we start really working with the boxes again.

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