Roy Underhill’s Nail Cabinet Part 7 – Nearly There!

I just finished gluing and nailing the drawers for the “Underhill Nail Cabinet”

The actual assembly of the drawers went quickly, but milling the stock and sizing all of the parts took my quite a few hours.  I re-sawed Pine 1x10s, then jointed and planed them to 1/4″ thick.  Then I flattened and squared some 4/4 Alder and Pine for the fronts and backs.  Then I ripped and cross cut the parts to approximate dimensions, and used a shooting board to accurately size the parts.

Before I could shoot the parts to size I needed to make a shooting board.  I threw away my old board when I did the shop overhaul and hadn’t gotten around to making a new one.  I had something more elaborate in mind — in fact, I’d like to just buy one that is all “scienced out”, like the great one from Tico Voit.  I’ve heard great things about Tico’s board, but we just fitted Kolya with several thousand dollars of orthodontia and my debit card is still smoldering.

Instead I made a simple board out of MDF.  The main point was I wanted it to be accurate without a lot of screwing around.  I used my heavy, thick machinist’s square and a piece of precision ground steel bar to accurately align the cross stop while I shot a couple of pins into it, then added screws for strength.  It came out dead-nuts-on.  I sharpened by LN-62 and that worked OK as a shooting plane, but I discovered that the sides on it are not exactly square to the bottom.  What’s up with that?  I’ll need to buy or make a dedicated shooting plane, but I’m particularly disappointed that this one isn’t square.  Maybe it got dropped at some point or warped over the years?

Making a simple shooting board

I started by making all of the bottoms.  I cut the parts slightly wider and longer, and used the shooting board to size them each to a specific opening.  The openings have minor differences, I’m hoping to get a nice close fit on all of the drawers.

Shooting the bottoms

I made one complete drawer as an experiment, so I could see if the sizing was going to work, and anticipate any issues.

Bottoms Done

Then I moved on to making all of the sides, then all of the fronts and backs.

Material for the drawer sides

By the time I had everything sized and ready to glue up I had a blister from the back of the blade on the LN-62 digging into my hand.  I am so ordering a shooting board plane.  I wish LN would make the #52 chute board to go with they LN #51 plane.  That would clinch the deal for me.

Once the parts were made it was pretty simple to glue and nail them together.  I have to sand them all still, my experience so far is they are coming out a slosh oversized for the opening.  I want to make sure the face of the drawer is nice and smooth, including the exposed end grain from the pine sides and bottom.  I’m going to pub a coat of oil on the exposed area, then pad on a couple of coats of shellac.  But first I have to mount the pulls, they should arrive later this week.  I should order some nails to store in this too. after that’s what its for.

Now I’m left wondering what to build next.  The stool build off is next weekend I think — but I’m not sure I have a shop-stool-in-a-weekend in me.  We’ll see.

Drawers Done