I offered the drawer up to the cabinet and it needs a little off the sides to go in. This is a good thing. It allows me to try to get a really good fit, and I can clean up the faces of my joints at the same time. Here I'm taking fine shavings off each side, whilst checking the fit again and again.
All too soon, here I am. The final day of my short course at John Cass. Lots to do today, and I have to finish this cabinet, what with having nowhere to work at home. Onward. Well, after making a total hash of the back of this drawer last week, I rapidly made another one. Thankfully, it all fitted and here’s the drawer being glued-up. You can see the bottom of the front of the drawer drops down below the base. This is because, on closing, I want the drawer to cover the bottom-front rail of the cabinet. And so, we have a drawer! I checked the drawer for squareness, using a rule across the diagonals, and they measure the same. Things should be square and the drawer should fit. The rear of the cabinet has it’s top rounded over, the traditional way to finish this. I’m still not sure why this is. By the way, the rear and sides of the drawer are oak, which is nice and strong in these relatively thin pieces and it gives a nice contrast to the dark walnut on the lapped dovetail joints at the front. I offered the drawer up to the cabinet and it needs a little off the sides to go in. This is a good thing. It allows me to try to get a really good fit, and I can clean up the faces of my joints at the same time. Here I’m taking fine shavings off each side, whilst checking the fit again and again. Time out from the drawer for a while, and we drilled a slot in each side of the cabinet inner, with a Festool Domino. Later on I’ll fit ‘buttons’ in these slots to allow joining the cabinet top. More on this later. The final cabinet. The drawer runs smoothly, (which was my main concern), and the whole cabinet should look nice once all the surfaces have the oiled finish that’s currently only here and there. I’ll post a final set of pics once I have that done. Phew! Tools in the rucksack and exit stage left.
