So this piece was primarily a chance to play with drawer techniques when using non-mechanical slides (in this case, oak rails screwed to the side of the carcase, slots in the side of the drawers). A few lessons learned:
- To prevent racking, drawers want to be as tight a fit on the sides as possible.
- Use a soft wax, not just a melted beeswax, for drawer lubrication.
- Do final fitting on the drawers after finishing. Finishing dramatically changes the thickness of the slide rails.
- Even ¾" maple sides will bow out and change the fit on other drawers if the drawers are fit tightly.
- I still need to figure out a good way to mill the countersink and attachment hole into the drawer rails so that I can do adjustment on the rails after I screw them in.
Drawers are Poplar, with Ziricote faces from the seconds pile at Luthiers Mercantile, they were once destined to be guitar backs. The two pieces weren't face matched, so I joined the sequence there in the center, it didn't work as well as I'd hoped.
Handles are from a block pulled from one of the buckets of wood scraps donated by Griffin Okie for Family Build Night. I'm not sure what it is. Of course those are sequenced down the face.
Sides are maple, and next time I think I'll do an analine dye, or do my first few coats with an amber shellac, to make it pop more.
There are a bunch of flaws, somehow I ended up cutting the fronts shut a hair shy of where I wanted to, the dovetails got a little sloppy in the glue-up, but it was a great learning process, and it'll look better in my shop than the red metal toolbox that it's going to replace.