Day 10 – Sacristy cabinet

I got all of the cedar boards cut out and planed last night, so today I inserted them into place. (They are Spanish cedar that I had left over from another project, very aromatic) Everything fit well so I glued them down then nailed it to make sure it didn’t go anywhere. Cedar is a soft wood and can tear away from the glue joint with enough force. I had a couple of 3″x1/4″ slats lying around so I glued/nailed them in perpendicular to the cedar just to give it a bit more strength. It didn’t look bad either. I set that in place and proceeded to attach it with the pocket hole screws. Next I needed to drill out the drawer faces for the drawer pulls before finishing them. Since I don’t want to disassemble the drawers to put the faces on the drill press, I made a simple jig to guide my bit in perpendicular to the face as well as evenly space the holes. I placed the holes for the pulls slightly above center to avoid having to drill a larger hole in the front of the drawer. My screws were only long enough to pass through one of the two boards. Once that was done I remembered that I hadn’t finished rounding the edges of the top piece. I set up the 3/8″ round over bit in the router table and rounded the top and bottom of the sides and the front. No reason to round the back edge. I gave everything a once over with the sander and did a final test fit. The only things left to do are build the ten spindles, stain all the visible surfaces, then a couple of coats of urethane.