Drawers

I’ve been tucked away in my “man cave” whilst Perth gets battered by the storm of the decade.  We’ve not suffered any property damage however a few local trees and fences are down.  No doubt there will also be a number of building that have lost their rooves (or roofs… depending upon your english).

I had a little problem to overcome with the current cabinet project.  It will have adjustable glass shelves, which means all the partitions need to be drilled with a series of holes for the shelf support pins.  All these holes have to be parallel or the shelves will wobble.  So how do I drill holes that are perfectly aligned and the direction of the hole has to be exactly 90° to the partitions.  No doubt a major cabinet shop would have a CNC machine.  My solution was to make a template from a piece of scrap plywood.

 

This was aligned with each partition and clamped in place.  Next I needed to drill the holes to the right depth and at 90°.   I did this by gluing two pieces of scrap timber together and then vertically drilling a 5mm hole through the middle with the bench drill.

The length of the drill bit was adjusted to ensure it drilled the required depth.  My technique was to align the tip of the drill bit inside each hole in the template  and then slide the block of wood down the bit until it was flush on the surface of the template.  Theoretically the drill bit was now at 90° to the partition.  It was then a matter of repeating the process for each hole.

I ensured the template didn’t move during the process by drilling diagonally opposite holes first and then fitting a 5mm HSS bit into the hole.

I hope I got this part right otherwise the shelves either won’t be level or will be wobbly… perhaps both!!!

The centre of the cabinet will have a timber shelf and two large drawers.  I laid out the drawer runners opposite each other in an effort to ensure they were also going to be parallel.

I’m recycling some old metal drawer runners.

The centre was then assembled by gluing and screwing.

The two white pieces of particleboard are spacers.  Once the glue had set I concealed the screw heads with timber plugs I’d made from some scrap timber using my Aldi plug makers.

Once the plug glue has set I’ll cut off the surplus plug with a chisel.

Then I made the horizontal support for the back of the carcass.

Pip will note my red arrow which is pointing to the rebate I’ve cut in the rear of the support.  The plan is to run a concealed LED strip lighting along the back of the cabinet. 

Finally I fitted the drawers made earlier in the project.

Next task is to fit the partitions to the cabinet base.