Microrike out Oak Street – all systems nominal.

Commenced on a make-work, skill-improvement program – the File Cabinet.  Not for paper files, but for my not-inconsiderable set of wood and metal shapers which until now have been scattered about the place like errant dust bunnies.  And so resolved to form a small, three drawer cabinet to co-locate all of them.

Made 3 drawers, badly, before the rain arrived.  And I guess that was what drove me – Make Three Drawers Before The Rain.  Can’t recommend this as a modus vivendi.

And just like having an expectation founded upon slim (or no) precept, it was all for naught.  We’re to be cheated once more.  The big stuff passed to the north.  Here, in Dryvillle we get an hour’s worth of heavy fog.

But then, an unexpected pleasure – The Prof arrives with tenure track decisions and other considerations….along with a half case of Guinness

BOXDAY –

But not right away, right off it’s off for a Customer Satisfaction Survey, then provisioning.

Have the factors of Colton Hall regarded the New Antique donation pedestal.  Dr. Copeland has and wonders about the baffle.  I’m baffled because no where in the specifications was there any mention of a baffle, what it might do, or where it might reside.  I disconnect this no-where conversation by offering to repair an office chair that exhibits a missing caster.  Not missing, just unable to reside in its underleg situation; the reason is clear, the insert into which the shaft of the caster has worked free, is broken, and worse, has enlarged it’s little tunnel such that merely inserting a new insert, so to speak, would not be a long-term fix.

Even so, I volunteer, and take the caster and futzed insert along to TJ’s where I buy no new inserts, other than that which comes in 16 oz cans.

Thence: The Dump where as I am admiring a 25 billet mail box – the kind with the 19^th century little doors in the front, up drives the woman who just bought it.  Nice score on her part.  No score on my part either at the Toxic Table or with Esmeralda who wants to charge me near $10 for a metal cash box, three swivel casters and a 1960 sewing machine attachment box.  I offer a fin.  Nope.  So be it.

Be it so at Grocery Cheaplet where the grill stuffs are affordable and the check-out doesn’t punch too much of a hole in the already leaky wallet.

It’s a tray, it’s not a drawer – 45 degree joints, even though the tray is glued to the floor all around, is just Wrong.

Back to The Castle and the consideration of yesterslack’s earnest, well-meant but FAIL On All Counts so-called drawer construction.

None of the effort can be used.  Except for firewood.

Nothing for it but have at again, this time no 45 degree joints, but locking tongue and groove, at which I need more practice; but lammed them out anyway.

And still do.

Had enough IKEA bed slats to lam out three 40 x 20 drawer sides and sufficient skadjed ¼” ply for the floors to make another three drawers.

Do I have something sufficient for the case?

I do, more scavenged ply, about 3/8” thick.  Trick is to 45 all the meet angles.  Tricky.  Still don’t know how well it went as I couldn’t join the case until I kerfed for drawer runners, formed the runners, then inserted them into the sides.  Sometimes too tighty isn’t righty.

Centering the slides in the geographic divisions of the width is pleasing visually, but Utterly Wrong for use with drawers.

Rise another conundrum – I’d riven the kerfs equidistant up/down the sides, and looking at it in glue up with the drawer slides, it is clear that this is WRONG.   And I do not know why.

Send Sagan.

SACKDAY –

I should have stayed in it.

Not that the day was a total wipe, but there was significant pain, and it didn’t’ start out badly.  Motored over to Colton Hall where a chair needed the JohnsonArts medicine, which it got.  Strange that the center for Historicity should have as furniture Chinese knock-off faux antiques.  Another plus was Dr. Copeland affirming that my resume was indeed under consideration by the deciding authorities for a program management job, maybe interviews in December.  Had to threaten him with a WWII Era screwdriver to get the G2 out of him…

From here, the events of the day skidded into ignominy, in no small impact to the JohnsonArts financial empire which teeters on the brink of doom, but there was more less.

Those drawer slides I put into the sides of the proto-File Cabinet?  They are in the wrong place.  They are centered on the dividing position of the three drawers instead of being at the centers of where the drawer will reside.

There’s no remediation, short of heroics, and so I knock out another set of two sides and THIS TIME take proper pains to locate the dados for the drawer slides.

The dadoes’ in the sides cut, even had the presence of mind to leave the stacked dado blade in the table saw so that when I dry-fit the cabinet, I could scope the location of the dadoes’ in the sides of the drawers and hog them out.

Which I did.

Dry Fit is Good

Drawer Fit is Good.

CPST share price is BAD.

Happy Hour commences with a distinct odor of unhappiness, until the phone chimes and I actually collect it.  It’s The Prof, can he borrow my brad driver?

Of course he can and he pays in advance with a bracer of Dublin’s Cheer.

And he cheered me up.

GROOVEDAY –

In the it I was not.  Figured to wrap up the File Cabinet Project, but circumstances intervened.

And Winter here is over, we had a lovely day and a half of it early this week, now it’s back to relentless blue skies, hardly a breeze, and temps in the 70’s.  Terrible.

To cases – The meet mitres at the File Cabinet case edge were mostly satisfactory for shop purposes, completely unsatisfactory should this had been for a paying customer, so I opted for corner trim to overlay my inconsanguinuities.  Corner trim formed from the cut-offs from the bed slats from which the drawers (Take 2) were generated.

Detoured back to the drawers, finessed the sliding fit, then was keen to position the drawer faces.

But before I could do this, needed to apply drawer pulls since the I intended to affix same from the reverse, which would be inaccessible once the drawer face was in place.  Chose remnants from the Colton Hall Donation Pedestal, remnants that retained, on one long face, an 80 year old patina.  Coved out the underside for a finger grab, then screwed the three of them on the three drawer faces.

Now, how to acquaint the drawer faces to the drawers so that when in repose, the faces are equidistant up-down and side-to-side.

That’s the top drawer in the foreground clamped in the vise, you can see the cut off nails.

I don’t know how a Real Guy does this, but what I did was pound in three nails in the front face of each drawer, then cut off the heads.  Then, I positioned the face of the bottom drawer where I wanted it relative to the case, then slid the drawer into it from the back.   The nails marked the position so that both the drawer and drawer face could come apart for the glue, yet would still find the desired position for re-assembly.

All was well until positioning the top drawer.  Arrrggghhh!  The bottom of the top drawer overlaps the top of the center drawer face by about 1/8.”  Which would mean that the top drawer couldn’t be pulled out without pulling out the center drawer.  I haven’t read up on this, but suspect that this isn’t the way you want your drawers to work.  Clearly, the top drawer slide groove had to be moved down to raise the drawer up to clear the face of the center drawer.

Sometimes a sixteenth of an inch matters.

Probably there was a more elegant work-around that what I did, which was to fill the groove with ply and when the glue is cured, re-kerf it.

Oi.  Nothing is easy here.

Zo, instead of lamenting my bad luck, for I do not know how I could have foreseen this interference/overlap issue (although probably a Real Guy could have) I screw-glue the faces to the bottom and center drawer, which brings me to cut and install the edge trim on the case, which I do and the thing is starting to look like something other than driftwood.

And even though I cannot finish the assembly this day, I can install inserts into the top and center drawers that will nestle the files, which I do.  Praise Be To Oscillating Spindle Sanders.

CABDAY –

But not until after two flying dreams, one prolonged and a lucid dream, although I wished I would have fastened my seat-belt.

Just as I’m opening The Shop, the fellow, Jim, who will replace the Castle steps materialized.  He’s a tall drink of water, ruddy and with a customer-centric manner.  Sam The Slam wants only the steps replaced, a bit wider; me too.  No work to commence until a permit is secured, which could be tomorrow, or it could be next month.

No, Sam will not be sporting me for three days at the New Camaldoli Hermitage whilst the Castle is more or less inaccessible.

I return to the File Cabinet.

Groove filled, groove about to be moved….

Shag off the excess of the ply filling the former groove, then sand it flush.  Then it’s find the top of the new groove and sneak up on the dado width.

Result: there’s still interference between the bottom of the top drawer face and the top of the center drawer face.

Nothing for it but to plane down the top of the center drawer face until we make clearance.  I have five hand planes, but the one I always reach for first is a $7.95 job out of Harbor Freight.  It works wonderfully, set to shave off about half a piece of paper thickness.  Ungawa!

Glue-screw the top drawer face, then turn to forming the insert to hold the files in the bottom drawer – the files I use least.

This done, lam on the shellac to the bottom and center drawers, the case back and the case.  Not bad.  Shellac, one of your almost no-fail finishes.

Unclamp the top drawer and do the same on the shellac.

Thirty dollars worth of files in a case that took 20 hours to make.

Install the files, take the glam shots, put the cabinet on the horizontal router table, it’s now and for a while home.

The Learning:

• Give yourself a little more vertical clearance for drawers than you think you need.
• Drawer slides on the bottom of the drawer, rather than in dadoes and slides in the sides of the drawers are easier on the artisan.
• Don’t be too choosey during a lucid dream.