Deluxe Sewing Center

We start off this day by laying out and drilling the pilot holes for the screws that will hold the drawers together.  Once the holes are drilled, I remove the masking tape that was holding them together and disassemble the boxes, marking the parts for alignment so the holes line up properly when it goes back together.  Then I apply glue to the points where the drawer back meets the drawer sides and reassemble the box.  I do not glue the drawer bottom in -- for these need to be removable so that if Paula should ever break one it can be replaced.  Nor do I glue the drawer front in place yet -- for this cabinet is to be stained.  Drawer boxes to not get stained, and it will be much easier to stain just the drawer fronts if I can take them off when we get to that point than if I had to mask them off.  I'll glue the fronts in once the staining is completed.

Now I must work quickly to align the parts carefully using a special wooden squaring block clamped in place to help square the parts while I insert the screws and snug them up .  After checking the bottom groove to be sure no squeeze-out got in there I slide the bottom in place and secure it with a single pan head screw and a washer.

Before inserting that final screw I check the drawer box to be sure it's square, if not (and this one wasn't) I can use a clamp across the long diagonal to pull it into square while I insert that last screw.  This one was only off by 1/32" but that is enough to make the front not sit flush with the case frame on both sides, and it's easier to fix it now, this way, than to have to grind the drawer front even with a sander during the finish sanding stage.

The final step is to test to be sure the drawers run smoothly in their slots, without binding.  This day happened to be especially humid, so it was perfect to do this step.  Two drawers were sticking a bit in the last 2-3" as they were pushed in, so I worked them gently with some 150 grit sand paper around a wood block, testing frequently and taking off only what had to be removed to obtain proper operation.  We don't want to loosen them up too much or they'll get sloppy when the weather dies out and the wood shrinks again.

Next we turn our attention to making the four feet.  We'll start with a rough board from our cut-off stack, plane it to 3/4" and lay out where the crosscuts will go to get the right size pieces.  But we don't cut it up yet...

Instead of cutting out all the feet side pieces and having to cut a 3/4 x 1/2 rabbet in each of them, it's much easier to cut the rabbet on the full length board, then cut out the pieces.  Since I'm making just this one rabbet, it isn't worth the effort of mounting and tuning the dado head, I can cut a simple rabbet with two passes on the table saw with an ATBR blade for a nice clean inside corner.

Once that is done I cross cut the rabbeted board into lengths that will make one pair of feet sides each, then cut the 45° miters in the centers.  This insures that the grain wraps around the corner of the foot for an especially matched look.  When the first one is done I check to see that the miters will mate up into a nice 90° corner before cutting the rest.  It does.

After cutting the square pieces that will sit in the rabbet at the top of each foot side, I glue the three pieces together and clamp them.  These will need to sit for at least two hours before I remove the clams and move on, so I'm calling it quits for the evening.

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