When confronted with the challenge of building a project for $25 in materials, I sought inspiration from my surroundings on the West Coast. The cabinet-on-a-stand I designed is a style made popular by the talented Californian furniture guru James Krenov. But unlike the master, I opted to use pre-milled materials, since that's what so many workshoppers build with.
Click here for the detailed cabinet plans!
Planning on the cheap
I took this challenge to prove you don't need exotic wood to make an elegant project.
I used vertical-grain Alaskan yellow cedar and western red cedar fence boards and, by the time I finished, all my offcuts fit into a shoebox. If you're going to cut things this close, select the straightest, knot-free wood you can find.
For door hinges, I bought a surplus piano hinge for 40¢ from my local Habitat for Humanity Restore (www.habitat.ca), which I then cut and drilled to make four hinges. I made the knob and magnetic catch in the shop. See “Hardware How-To” below for details.
Where to start
Begin by gluing-up blanks for the cabinet's sides, top and bottom. My limited woodpile meant I had to cut boards close to their finished length before gluing, but I did leave enough extra to trim after the glue had set. I used a smoothing plane to ensure one side of each glued-up panel was flat and then sent them all through the planer for a few very light passes, reducing thickness to 11/16".
Next, cut the curve on the front edges of the top and bottom. Make a template out of 1/4"-thick MDF by tracing a bent strip of wood. Cut close to the line with a bandsaw or jigsaw. Smooth the edge with a belt sander, then trace the curve from the template onto the workpieces before cutting close to the line. Clamp the template to the workpiece and use a router spinning a bearing-guided, flush-cutting bit to mill the wood to final size.
In order to join the cabinet's sides to the top, I plunged three #20 biscuits slots at each joint. Alternatively, these joints could be dowelled or splined.
To make room for the tongue-and-groove back panel, mill a 3/8"-deep x 5/16"-wide rabbet on the back inside edges of all cabinet pieces. You could use a dado blade fitted on the tablesaw, but a router makes it easier to halt the rabbet in the top and bottom pieces. Temporarily assemble the cabinet pieces, then mark where the rabbets need to stop on the top and bottom pieces. Mill the rabbets, but use a sharp chisel to square up the ends.
I made the vertical divider and shelves from 24"-long tongue-and-groove boards with the edges sawn off. After jointing and edge-gluing two pieces to 3/8" x 7 1/8" x 24", flatten one side with a plane, then send the panels through the planer to reduce thickness to 5/16".
The top, bottom and right sides of the cabinet need to have dados plowed into them to receive the ends of the shelves and vertical divider. I fitted a 1/8"-diameter spiral flute bit into a router to mill these dados, guided by a T-shaped shop-built fence. Set the depth of cut to 3/16" and make a first pass with the router, which makes a gauging cut through the part of the fence that bears against the workpiece. After that, align one edge of the fence against an accurately placed pencil mark to locate your dado. Be sure to stop the dados, either with a clamped block or by following a pencil mark.
With dados made, cut the divider and shelf pieces to length, remembering to leave an extra 3/8" for the 3/16"-long tenons on either end of each piece. The vertical divider must be trimmed to the actual dimensions of the cabinet.
Prepare dados for the vertical divider first, then cut tenons on the vertical divider to fit into the temporarily assembled cabinet. Mark and mill dados for the shelves, then cut their tenons to fit. I used a regular saw blade on my tablesaw to nibble away at the tenons, then a shoulder plane to fine-tune them.
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