Drawers - part 3: Assembly

The box joints weren't especially close, so would never hold the drawers together by themselves. To make sure they didn't fall apart, I glued the joints, and then nailed them as well, recessing the nails with a nail punch so they wouldn't show in the final result.

The last drawer came together like this (shown at x15 speed):

It even fit the framework:

Alternating between routing and assembly, I put all four drawers together and - with some judicious filing of edges got them to all fit in the framework quite neatly, which was nice.

Coming up in the next post, fascia and top...

Drawers - part 2: Routing

Ok, so the Dremel router attachment was delivered and I got back to work. This turned out to be quite tedious, in a classic (not the) right tool for the job way.

The router was needed to make dado joints (simply, straight grooves) on the back, front, and sides of the drawers, and two rabbet joints on the front piece to help fix it to the sides. That's six cuts with the router per drawer, time four drawers is 24 router cuts.

Technically routing with the Dremel worked, but it took a long time to make each cut, as it wasn't powerful enough to go the full depth in one pass - typically needing 5 passes. By the last cut, it took me about 15 mins, earlier ones had taken longer whilst I was getting used to the process and tool.

Here's some video of the last dado, at 15x speed.

Admittedly it would have been quicker if my workbench wasn't so ramshackle, but then again - if I had a router table it would have taken about 5 seconds per cut...

I assembled the first drawer before routing all the parts, so what I learned while assembling it could feed into the next set of cuts. The main point was making sure that all the dado joints lined up well, by combination of measurement with a ruler, and direct comparison of one bit of wood to another.

Assembly coming up in the next post...

Assembling the framework

Here's the framework assembly video I mentioned in Framework.