Side Table, Part 8: Drawer Details, Top and Finishing Up

The drawers fit into their openings pretty well right after the glue-up, but there was still some work to do.  The top two drawers needed a little planing on the upper edge of their left side to slide more smoothly into the back of their recesses.

I added stops so that the drawers won't slide too far into the cabinet.  It was helpful to remove the drawer bottoms so that I could mark where the stops should be glued down.  I slid the drawer slowly into the opening and got it flush with the cabinet front, then marked a pencil line behind the drawer front.

First drawer stops installed

Had to be creative in clamping the stops for the bottom drawer as the feet got in the way of spring clamps

After the drawers were fitted, I planed up stock for the top.  The stock started out just over 4/4 thick and after planing the glued-up top, it was a hair over 7/8" thick.  Notice that the grain is running in the direction of the shorter dimension.  The cabinet is about 18" wide and 24" deep.  This way, end grain will be along the sides of the top.  I thought about this orientation a lot.  Since the cabinet sides are solid panels (not frame and panel) with grain oriented vertically, the top will not have a cross-grain problem with the sides.

Choosing the show face and alignment, planed those surfaces true

Top glued up and in clamps - underside shown here 

 I had wanted to put a progressive radius round-over around the edges (with a fillet on top), but the wife nixed that in favor of a simple underside chamfer.  I used a scrub plane and smoother to create it.

Marking for the chamfer

I like how it came out

I'll be attaching the top with two screws through each of the three top rails.  This was an interesting exercise.  I had not made any allowance in the top rails for this before installing them.

An earlier picture showing the three top rails

Drilling the holes from above was not the problem - countersinking the holes on the underside of these top rails was the problem.  With good advance planing, I would have drilled holes and countersunk them before the rails were installed.  At first I used a countersink bit with my fingers, and while this worked, it was slow and hurt my fingers.  So I tried making a countersink from a screw that could be twisted and pulled from above with a drill.

Filed three cutting facets on the screw head, put the screw through the hole from below,
then chucked the threaded end in the drill and pulled up while spinning.

That worked, but not well.  What worked better was using a combination pilot-hole-and-countersink bit that had a hex shank with a socket wrench to provide the twist motion.

The solution was still slow, but much faster than the others I tried

I realize that an alternative to countersinking the screw heads is to cut away little notches on the top edge of the drawer back so that the drawer could slide under the screw heads.  But I really preferred to have the screws countersunk.

Anyway, with that done I finally attached the top and had a look at the overall cabinet for the first time.

First look - drawer fronts have one coat of shellac

I really wanted to make wooden drawer pulls for this cabinet and I had made a prototype, but the wife has a specific idea of what she wanted.  So drawer pulls have been ordered and should be here in a day or two.  My wife is going to paint this cabinet gray, then wipe on another color, with incomplete coverage to give a streaky effect.  She painted that mini chest of drawers that I made last year similarly, so I think it will look good.  But first I'm going to seal the wood with a couple coats of shellac.

First coat of shellac going on

Not sure when the painting will be done, but I'll put up a couple final pics when it's complete.  I'm really glad this is finished.  I've been working on it for over two months!  I'm still quite slow and I think about 60-70% of the time is spent on stock preparation.  Now I can finally get to some other things.