6 Sep 2022, assembled, time for staining
new photos in slideshow are here. Had to "fix" a few of the dovetails to make them look better. Also did the wood flour mixed with glue trick in a few spots.
new photos, click here
3 Sept 2022, some assembly and a dry fit
I will admit, I had doubts at times. Definitely doubted my measurements and calculations, but all turned out well! The one thing that helped is I held off narrowing the tenon pieces until the dry fit. No need to try and cut everything perfect before the first dry fit.
So far I've only glued the dovetail joints. Got these woodpecker clamps at the Springfield Mass woodworkers show. A littly fiddly at first, but once you figure them out, they work really well.
And the first dry fit
Today I need to make frames for the bottom, You can pull all you want on thru dovetail joints, but they can blow out to the sides. so I'm going to make square frames for the bottoms, and mortise tenon those. Will use pocket holes to keep the dovetails from blowing out.
also, have to cut all the plywood for the bottoms and sides. I've got 1/4" marine grade plywood for that. going to sand and stain what I can before the final glue up. I'll just HVLP spay the water based poly. I've gotten better at that.
2 Sept 2022, Friday work
Just parts so far, nothing put together yet. Cutting the dado groves today, staining parts, and then assembling,
Drawer will be 42.25" long, 17 7/8" wide, 12.5" tall. Half will just be for a single burner Camp Chef stove. The other half for large kitchen stuff. Like a wok/pressure cooker
All the mortise holes in the photo below were from just one....ONE....setup! Ditto for the tenon pieces. I love the ability of the MultiRouter to reproduce cuts. It's not even that hard to setup, but you do need to save some scrap pieces to use for the setup cuts. Kindling for future camp fires. It's not that wasteful. You only need pieces big enough for the joints
This drawer is heavily dependent on the capabilities of the MultiRouter (sold by Woodpecker Tools now), click here. Long ago, I remember hemming and hawing on whether to upgrade my contractor type table saw to a cabinet saw vs getting the MultiRouter (when was sold by JDS tools way back when). I've never regretted getting the MultiRouter. It dumbs down mortise and tenon work, and also makes it easy to repeat. And I recently got Woodpecker's new thru dovetail template for it. I have the Leigh D4r dovetail jig as well, but I'm finding the Multirouter's thru dovetail easier to setup. No fiddling with the pins in the Leigh jig required. For dovetails, the Leigh D4r jig is way more versatile, but I find the setup more challenging. For both, once setup, it's easy to repeat over and over again.
Instead of commercial full extension ball bearing slides to extend the drawer, I'm going to try using 1"square steel tubing that will slide on roller skate bearings. Got the idea from this Pask Makes youtube video, click here. The hardware and steel tubes to do two Pask Makes style drawers is about $200, so less than half the cost of equivalent commercial slides. I'm also thinking they won't gum up like commercial full extension slides can, and the square tubing looks more heavy duty to me. Time will tell. I did get 32" full extension commercial ones for the Dometic fridge slide on the driver side of the truck bed, so I'll be able to test out the pro's and con's of square tubing vs commerical slides over time.
Even though the drawer is only 42.25" long, I can keep the square tubing longer, because the tubes can hug the battery box behind the drawer. So the tubing will be close to the full 6' truck bed length. Which means, I'll be able to fully extend the drawer out of the box surrounding it, and still have 2' of tubing supported in the box. Photos and probably a youtube video on that later.