Bedroom Dresser Part 2

In part one of the dresser build I assembled the basic cabinet. The next stage of the project is building and installing the drawers. I made some very careful measurements, but I've learned to build one drawer first before cutting the parts for all the other drawers. There is a 1/2" gap at each side of the mockup drawer to allow for the slides, and there is no base panel at this stage.

There are going to be twelve (12) drawers, which means 48 front, back and side panels need to be cut. I'm making the front and back panels from 1/2" Baltic birch plywood, and the sides from 3/4" thick plywood, and there are two variations of drawer depth, which keeps things interesting.

A 1/4" x 1/4" groove to accommodate the drawer base was cut 1/4" from the lower edge of each panel:

Test fitting the first base panel:

Cut another eleven (11) base panels from 1/4" Baltic birch plywood:

The base is cut 1/16" undersize in both dimensions, and then I planed a slight bevel on all of the edges, which makes assembly of the drawer a lot easier.

All of the parts were sanded to 220 grit all over:

Pocket holes were bored in the fronts and backs:

The drawer parts were deliberately cut one 1/8 of an inch narrower than desired, to leave room for  veneer at the top edge. As previously mentioned, it has been deemed vital to make sure there is no visible plywood. The veneer was cut into a mixture of 1/2" and 3/4" wide strips...

...and was installed with a mixture of glue and pin nails and clamped overnight. I had to complete this process in two batches.

While I was waiting for the glue to dry, I worked on the drawer assembly setup which I adapted from a jig I made for building the doors for the router table cabinet:

This is how the jig looks when loaded with drawer parts: 

First two "drawer halves" constructed:

Rinse and repeat:

After that it's a case of two halves plus a bottom panel makes a whole and then I aligned the first drawer with the cabinet and installed the drawer slides to prove the concept:

I took a couple of victory laps around the workshop, and then went into mass drawer production:

The positioning of the slides is somewhat arbitrary, but they do have to be level and at the same height at both sides of each drawer. This is most easily achieved by cutting spacers from scrap pieces of plywood:

There are a number of methods to align the drawer body before attachment to the slides. One way is to install spacers above the first drawer and use them to set the height of the next drawer. This method requires cutting just one set of spacers and can give excellent results if all the drawer bodies are exactly the same dimensions.

I've obtained more consistent results by setting the location of each drawer body with respect to the base of the cabinet. This method takes longer since it requires cutting a new set of spacers for each drawer:

The top four drawers were set with respect to the stretchers at the upper section of the cabinet: 

All drawers installed and operational. 

Top down view where you can see the maple veneer at the upper edges of the drawer:

I still need to make the false fronts and the framework that the cabinet will sit inside....

PWR UP!

We went to the amazing AC/DC show at Levi's stadium the day after we got back from Las Vegas. We went with a couple of friends so the minivan that I bought a few months ago was the perfect vehicle for this trip too. 

Vegas Baby!

 A few days in Las Vegas and a trip to the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon.