Walking a Fine Line

In this episode, I really had to make some difficult choices around stringing for the drawers. In a lot of cases, it pays to do some mock-ups and experimentation to really come up with the best solution to any woodworking problem. In this episode, I put the finishing touches on the drawers, fix my little snafu from episode two, and get the final finish and hardware in place. In the end, this project was far more work than I expected it to be. I always seem to introduce either changes in direction (via mistakes) or additional complexity that seems simple in the design phase, but a lot more effort in practice. But that's what makes woodworking fun and challenging, and why I keep coming back for more!

Frontin'

With the hanging cabinet project, I saved the hardest part for the end - the drawers. Because the base is bowed, the drawer construction takes on an added element of difficulty. In this episode, I tackle fitting and shaping the drawer fronts from a single piece of mahogany. In many ways, I assumed that by doing a smaller project like this would actually make construction easier. But in reality, the diminutive size can actually make things a bit tricker in some cases, such as the drawer fronts. But why would I want to make thing easy on myself?

Fitting in

The final carcass construction for the hanging wall cabinet requires a lot of fine tuning of the drawer dividers and shelves. Even on a small piece like this, dialing in the thickness of the dividers and notching everything out to create a nice clean joint really makes the difference in a hand-built piece. Any gaps or loose joints will definitely get noticed, especially in the drawer dividers where there's nowhere to hide. This short episode also shows how important hand tools are even if you have a predominantly electron-fueled shop. Then, in the next episodes I will focus on the door fronts and then the curved drawers.

A game of recovery

You might recall that I’m building this entire live-edge hall table completely on the fly. This all started with the live-edge top dictating the exact size and shape of the carcass. While this project seemed simple enough, having no drawings, model, or even sketch started to become a limitation. I started to make some fairly dumb mistakes that I would have easily avoided by looking at a 3D model or even a sketch. But woodworking is a game of recovery and agility, and fortunately I didn’t screw anything up so badly that I had to start over. I retrospect, deciding to introduce drawers into the plan this late in the game probably didn’t set me up for success!


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