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| by:
Cathy Dalrymple
photos: Roger Yip
illustration: Len Churchill |
CD STORAGE CABINET (part 2) |
Give it Structure
When you’re ready to make the cabinet itself, you have
eight pieces to prepare: the sides, top, bottom, back and the
three drawer fronts. As you work, keep in mind that for a good-looking
finished piece, the wood grain should go around the sides, top
and bottom of the cabinet in a continuous direction. I used
iron-on edge banding to finish off the exposed plywood edges
before assembly. The back doesn’t have exposed edges,
so it does not call for banding.
Assembly
Use three #20 biscuits or 3/8"-dia. x 1 1/2"-long
fluted dowels to join each corner of the cabinet body with glue
and clamps.
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| Reaching
the CDs at the back of each drawer is easy with
full-extension slides |
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Next, cut
three drawer faces from 1x8 dressed maple, trimmed down to 7
1/4" wide by 18 5/16" long each. Cut thin-kerf slices
partway through the surface of the drawer fronts to create the
look of three separate fronts per drawer. Fine-tune the fit
of the fronts within the cabinet, aiming for a 1/16" gap
all around. I used scraps of melamine as spacers to help do
this job.
To make the CDs at the back of the drawers easy to access, I
used full-extension mechanical slides for the top two drawers
and a full-extension bearing-guided glide for the bottom one.
The glide costs more, but it doesn’t require that the
drawer tilt in order to remove it. That’s worthwhile because
you won’t be able to tip the drawer up to remove it when
the cabinet is sitting on the floor or a desk.
Once you’re satisfied with the spacing of the drawers
and their sliding action, attach the solid-wood drawer faces.
Dig out the melamine spacers you used earlier to help with drawer-face
spacing. You’ll find that double-sided tape is useful
for holding the fronts in place while you adjust their relative
positions. When everything is in place, fasten the drawer faces
permanently with four #8 x 1" screws driven from inside
the drawer boxes. I installed the knobs on the drawer faces
before securing them to the drawer boxes since the mounting
screws were too short to go through both boxes and faces.
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CLICK
ABOVE FOR
DETAILED ILLUSTRATION |
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Take the
drawers out of the cabinet now, marking their locations so you
can put them back later. Sand everything with 180-grit paper,
then apply a coat of dark walnut stain. After it’s dry,
sand lightly again with 220-grit paper, then apply another coat
of stain. Let the second coat of stain dry for two days, then
apply two coats of clear urethane, sanding between the first
and second with more 220-grit paper to get rid of raised grain.
Fit the back panel in place, secured with metal L-brackets screwed
to the inside surfaces. All you need to do now is decide whether
you’ll organize your CD collection by artist or genre.
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PART 1
| PART 2 |
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