Mike's tool cupboard build (finished)

[Mike G]

I think you know me well enough by now to know that I am a tool minimalist, and that I am not one of those woodworkers whose only projects are improvements in their workshops. I'm also not the sort of person who builds showcase furniture for their workshop. However, I am getting pretty sick and tired of the current state of my space, which is like this:







The bench has tools stored permanently on it, and spilling off the shelf behind. I have a frame saw fixed to the inside of by internal security shutter, so can't access it when the shutter is open. The open shelves attract dust and insects, and there's stuff in there I haven't seen in years hidden under the crap. My secondary bench hasn't been clear for about 3 or 4 years, with tools stored permanently on top, and those in the drawers underneath are damned difficult to get to.

So with loads of workshop work coming up, I need to get things sorted. Besides, my wife wants my drawers for her potting shed.

First job was to clear up the shelves, as I need the wood:



You might just note the bench hooks, shooting boards, belt sander mount, etc, which also just hover about around the end of my bench, getting in the way. They'll get a new home too.

Here's the clear wall:



And here is what I am going to put on that wall. It is basically a 1200 x 1000 tool cupboard with a pair of side-hung doors, above a chest of drawers, and with a further store above. There will then be a corner cupboard, and a cupboard below for bench hooks, shooting boards etc. It will all be in raw pine and ply:



I managed to glue up most of the principal side pieces this evening:

 

[HappyHacker]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Your workshop looks empty compared to the amount of stuff I have piled up in mine. I only have to walk in for stuff to start leaping off any horizontal surface it is piled up on, often causing an avalanche. I did manage to clear 1/2 of one of my three benches to repair a chair I have a lot of stuff temporary stored on the floor as it does not have so far to fall.

I look forward to seeing your WIP and finished project, it may give me some inspiration and motivation to sort the mess out.

 

[Mike G]

It's an absolute fundamental of my workshop that I have few tools, and lots of space. I value space as just about the most important thing in a workshop. I am lucky enough to have an over-flow shed where a lot of tut ends up, so my problem isn't an excess of crap but lack of a formal space for each tool. I don't want to have to go and hunt through 3 drawers every time I need a file.

 

[AndyP]

Interesting Mike. I can never make up my mind as to whether an always on display tool wall is preferable to everything behind closed doors and drawers.
Only having the cupboard doors to dust rather than all the tools and all the shelves is a great advantage.

But having everything visible and easy to grab also has it's merits.

Currently I only have fixings (screws etc) on open shelves, everything else in cupboards and drawers with zero space left on the walls to hang anything else.

 

[Mike G]

The thing you get with doors is a doubling up of the available space. It's the space I'm lacking, so doors are a great answer in my case. However, just as important are the drawers below. I have a few very deep drawers at the moment, and I can't find anything without stirring up piles of steel. Going to lots of shallow drawers, close to the bench, is going to make life much easier. And, by the way, save lots of wear and damage on the tools which I won't be rifling through constantly any more.

 

[Mike G]

A little bit of progress. I took the side pieces out of their clamps, cleaned them up with a plane, then shaped the corners of the upstand alongside the "worktop":



I then made the mistake of offering them up to the wall. I notched out for the skirting and a ceiling joist, then scribed the backs to the wall. It's almost as though I've never made any furniture before, as that took away my reference edge. That ruled out using a router jig to house out for the shelves etc. What a clown.



So, I had to do an awful lot of measuring and marking, cut the top and bottom of the housing joints with a knife, freehand routed, and then cleaned up with a chisel. What a palaver:



I glued up the shelves/ worktop:





No harm done, but that really wasn't a good use of my time. I toddled in, chastened, and did some work. I hope to get a few hours at this tomorrow, so long as the phone doesn't ring.

 

[Norty Raskel]

Hi Mike,

You've inadvertently made me feel better about myself this evening!!

I'm currently making the windows for the orangerie, and I've made an alarming number of mistakes, for which I've heavily chastised myself. I feel slightly better this evening knowing it's not just me.

Following the cupboard build with interest as my hand tool collection is increasing rapidly.

Jon

 

[Mike G]

Just as there are a dozen ways to perform any woodworking task, Jon, there are at least a dozen ways to cock any of them up! I just picked one of the more basic.

 

[fiveeyes]

That first pic reminded me of my workshop. Looking forward to your success, and some inspiration for myself.
Have a good day.

 

[Mike G]

I got a couple of hours on this today, so a little progress to report. Firstly, I de-clamped and cleaned up the "worktop", cut it to length, and then formed the through tenons:



I used these to locate their mortises:



Remember the missing reference edge? I had to put some tape on my square so as to throw the mortise setting out accurately around to the other face via a non-reference edge:



Then I chopped out the mortises in the usual way:







The middle shelf was straight forward, with 2 through mortises, but the upper shelf is partly in a housing, and partly hanging in mid air.....thus requiring a dovetail joint. This produced rather a complicated end-of-board, with 2 through tenons, and two dovetail pins (and I seldom do pins first, but had no choice here). The tape is because the tenon split when I was cutting it out for the wedges:



I very nearly cut it out upside down!!!:



But got it right in the end:





No time for a glue-up tonight, but I got the wedges ready for tomorrow:





I've dry fitted both sides, so all looks ready to glue this thing together.....

 

[Woodbloke]

It's an absolute fundamental of my workshop that I have few tools, and lots of space. I value space as just about the most important thing in a workshop.

I'll disagree with you about the tools Mike but we're in total agreement about space because above all else (mostly) it's that what determines the stuff you can build - Rob

 

[Mike G]

Space is critical, Rob, as you say. Here I am laying out an 8x4 sheet of ply ready for cutting, and I've got room to get all around it:



That's the backing board, which I cut to size ready for the glue-up as a way of squaring everything up. I marked the factory edges. I had planned on a series of movable panels in the open area above the drawers, but changed my mind overnight and decided to put in a couple of fixed partitions. These were set in a housing top and bottom, and this was therefore the start of the glue-up:



These fixed panels will form a really important function, which you'll see in a few days time.

Glue-up these days is a nerve-shredding exercise. I'm sick of it really. I need a cheap readily available glue that doesn't start going off in 10 minutes.....we never used to have this ridiculous problem. Anyway, with two dozens wedges to drive into through tenons, and some quite cupped timber, this was a glue-up from hell:





One of the wedges burst through internally:



Luckily, that's on the top side of the top shelf, so my repair should be invisible.....or at least, unseen.

With my main router table out of action (covered in the crap I moved from the shelves I am replacing), I had to drag my old one out of retirement:



It clamps in the vice (it has a leg if I need it), and has an adjustable lift/ micro-adjuster, so it was a doddle to set up quickly to help with making the drawer support frames:







By the time I had made them, the carcass was dry, so I de-clamped and pinned on the play back-board (using, shock horror........a hammer!):





This photo might help understand the complication of the half-housed half-dovetailed corner join:



I put that down as a useful afternoons work. I doubt I'll get too long on this tomorrow, but maybe I'll be able to clean up the tenons, and fix the drawer supports in place.

 

[9fingers]

Well that is three of us - myself, Rob and Mike with very different ideas & methods of woodwork and tools but we all use Everbuild D4 adhesive!
:lol:

Bob

 

[Woodbloke]

I need a cheap readily available glue that doesn't start going off in 10 minutes.....we never used to have this ridiculous problem.

You find the answer to that one Mike and you can write your figure on a blank cheque , but as Bob9F says above, Everbuild D4 ticks most of the boxes - Rob

 

[Mike G]

This all took rather longer than I'd thought. I started by cleaning up all the wedged tenons and dovetails:



Then moved on to preparing the drawer supports for fitting, starting with the central vertical piece:





I then offered a couple of frames up so that I could locate a mortise under the top to house the end of the vertical member:





Then I glued in the drawer support frames. It is worth pointing out that I was fighting some pretty fearsome cupping on the outer (front) boards. You can see that I had previously run a relief cut up the middle of each, so these clamps are as much for pulling that in to nearly-flat as holding the frames in place:



I then glued the central piece in, with each of the half lap joints fitting rather neatly:





After gluing in some dividers on top of the central drawer runner and clearing a space (shifting that huge pillar drill wasn't easy), I started lifting the carcass into place:





I decided a day or two back to shift this cabinet from its original location by a few inches so that I could work over-long pieces of wood at the bench, unhindered:



I screwed in a quick support under the back of the bottom drawer frame:



.......and bracketed the two vertical members back to the wall (well, joist), at the top:

 

[Woodbloke]

Looks like it's coming along quite well Mike - Rob

 

[StevieB]

As always the speed of your work is impressive!

Was there any reason you grooved the whole length of the draw support frames? You do not appear to be inserting a panel, so are using just 5% of the length of the groove as far as I can see....

 

[Mike G]

Only because it's a faff stopping and starting a groove. Also, at the time I routed out the groove I wasn't sure what I would be using for corner bracing. As it turned out I found some ply that fitted exactly, but other options might have been to cut a tenon on the end of some softwood, and that would have been longer than the ply. Thus my bracing type would have determined the location for the grooves if I had been planning on just cutting them where they were needed.

 

[Malc2098]

Nicely.

 

[Doug]

Cascamite has an open time of up to 3 hours depending on temperature which is my choice of glue for most glue ups, if it has to be PVA for a big glue up then Titebond extend gives up to 30 minutes & whilst more expensive than Everbuild it comes in handy occasionally & they now do it in 2 “flavours” original & extend ll.

 

[Coley]

I edge jointed a couple oak strings for some stairs last week. I thought I'd stick some dominoes in to add some strength and help with alignment (1 string was a bit bowed) Cant have been any longer than 2.5 metres so I thought titebond3 would be alright and I might be able to start routing again after 3-4 hours of being clamped. The glue went off worryingly quick. Should have used casco- I'd have got a better joint.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[Mike G]

Dovetails. Lots and lots of dovetails. Starting with the two doors for the tool cabinet, of ex 3x1 PAR:





Awkwardly, the side pieces were so long that I had to mark out along the bench utilising a temporary support, rather than across the bench in the usual way:







Glue up was easy, and I thought I'd treat myself to some simple corner clamping guides in MDF before starting. They helped:





There's two:



On to the drawers. There are 10 drawers, which is twenty fronts and twenty sides. I wrestled the SCMS out from its hiding place and cut everything to length:



I've roughed out quickly the layout of the dovetails. Now it's just hours and hours of sawing and chiseling......

 

[9fingers]

Mike. One small refinement to your clamping blocks. Cut a little bit off the 90 degree corner. This helps prevent any glue squeeze out sticking the blocks in place.

HTH

Bob

 

[Mike G]

Will do, Bob, although I wiped up this time prior to clamping them in place. Good suggestion.

 

[Malc2098]

I do like a nice load of dovetails!

 

[Jonathan]

Nice cupboard Mike!
10 draws....I would have to get the router jig out!
I'm working on a big face frame jobby at the moment with 27 draws all different sizes....took approximately 2 days to cut the dovetails...

Sent from my SM-J530F using Tapatalk

 

[Mike G]

First job today was to clean up the door boxes and offer them up:



I had previously routed most of a rebate out for some ply:



Now that the corners were together I could complete those rebates:





Then glue and pin the ply:



And offer up into place:





You may remember from a day or two ago where I said the vertical dividers above the "worktop" would form a useful purpose in due course.....well, here it is:



With a little rubbing strip on the underside of the door, these vertical pieces will help take the weight of the door off the hinges somewhat. Otherwise, loaded down with tools over the years there would be a tendency to sag.

Right, onto dovetails. I started these at about 2.15 this afternoon. Here is an alternative way of marking out the gauge line around the ends of all the boards. As usual with woodworking, there are a dozen ways to skin most cats, and using a chisel to mark the line is extremely quick and clean. An off-cut of the drawer material is pinned to a board to hold everything together, and the board for marking is held against it, vertically. You then just pull the chisel across the scrap cutting a line on the face of the drawer board:



I almost always start with the tail boards (the drawer sides). Using this technique, I only have to mark out once, despite having 20 drawer sides (ie 40 joints) to cut. I marked out the tails on the ends of 4 boards, and cut them:



Then, marking one of the boards as "P" (pattern), I take that one off and spin the pile over, before replacing the "P" board at the other end. I mark 2 or 3 right angle lines, but that's all:



The saw then follows the kerf of the pattern board. Rinse and repeat, cutting 4 boards at a time until you've finished. Then, again with 4 boards, cut out the waste with a coping saw (I'll show later why this is unavoidable):





That saw was in the £1 bargain bin at my local hardware shop about 25 years ago. You don't need anything more than that.

This is why you need to saw the waste away. This is my narrowest chisel (1/4"). I could make a cut about 1mm above the gauge line only because of the width of the pin mortise, and if you tried to chop out waste from there you'd A/ get pushed back into or past the gauge line, and B/ jam all the waste in tightly into the triangle above:



A couple of hours of chiseling (and using a marking knife to clean up into the corners), and I'd done all the tail boards. That was 4 hours work altogether. It's like cycling........if you keep turning the pedals you get there in the end:

 

[Malc2098]

:text-goodpost:

 

[MY63]

It looks pretty simple when someone else is doing it but I am going to have a go at dovetails as soon as I catch up.

 

[RogerS]

Those look very narrow pin sockets to me. Aren't you worried that the pins won't snap off ?

 

[Mike G]

They're fine, Roger. Probably a bit finer than typical in pine, but there's no problem.

 

[Woodbloke]

It's amazing how quickly pine drawer sides wear; when I made a very quick pine dresser some years ago for my daughter, I glued on a 6mm strip of iroko to the underside of each drawer side and a corresponding 'wear strip' onto the carcase and to date, there's no wear apparent - Rob

 

[Mike G]

I've often in the past glued in a strip of melamine edging onto the runners. It keeps things running smoothly, and hugely reduces wear. I'm probably just going to wax these, though, because A/ it's only a workshop cupboard, and B/ there are sticks of wax all over the place out there, and re-waxing is therefore the job of seconds.

 

[Woodbloke]

I've often in the past glued in a strip of melamine edging onto the runners. It keeps things running smoothly, and hugely reduces wear. I'm probably just going to wax these, though, because A/ it's only a workshop cupboard, and B/ there are sticks of wax all over the place out there, and re-waxing is therefore the job of seconds.

Sounds a plan Mike - Rob

 

[Mike G]

My weekend didn't go exactly as I'd planned. I did half a day Saturday, and a couple of hours only on Sunday. With a couple of hours today I am still behind where I thought I might be. Never mind...... First job was to start painting the door boxes:



Four coats later:



I'm planting a false frame on the front to cover the join between ply and pine, hence the unpainted margin. Here's the start of that false frame:



....and then hours later:



That was all going on during the cutting of half a million pin boards. I reckon the pin-boards part of this is about 4 hours work:



They're all dry fitted, so of course I had to knock them all apart afterwards. If anyone here finds themselves cutting lots of drawers by hand like this, my biggest tip is to be very very organised and methodical. Keep boards in neat piles. Mark the outside of the drawer on each piece. Mark where the groove will be. Number each piece. Put a letter to each corner, in the same place. When you are offering boards up for marking it is terribly easy to lose where you are, so having a fool-proof marking system is critical. Clear your bench, line your tools up, and work methodically through the pile.

When you need to take a stretch after an hour or two of doing the same thing over and over, take on another short task. I did the painting, above, through the process of doing the pin boards. I also did the skirting board around the bottom of the unit:





OK, that also involved some dovetails, because mitred corners in a workshop are only going to get kicked open, or bashed open with a broom or a piece of wood......but nonetheless it was a few minutes respite from doing the drawers.

Once they were all made and dry fitted, I knocked all the drawers apart methodically and stacked them prior to putting a groove in the bottom edge for the ply base board:



I then set up the router table ready to run those through tomorrow. Note the stops at each end, so that the groove doesn't show through on the front of the drawers:





Yes, these drawers are going to have the dovetails visible on the drawer front. They also have a dovetailed back, with a full depth board........so how is that going to work with drawer stops, I hear you ask. I have a cunning plan for that.

 

[DaveL]

Mike,

Do you want to borrow a few more clamps to allow more draws to be glued at a time?

I have some metal heads on oak beams, some light weight aluminium clamps and some double sided steel ones, but they may not be long enough for the size of draw you are making.

Sent from my Lenovo YT3-X50F using Tapatalk

 

[Mike G]

No thanks Dave, they're all glued up. Half of them are fitted (photos later). I used two clamps only, to squeeze the joints up initially. I then released them as the dovetails were so tight that nothing moved.

 

[Mike G]

It was a quick job to clean up the dovetails and fix the skirting in place:



It was a much slower job to glue up all the drawers. Two of them didn't sit flat (presumably due to a twist in one of the components), so I attempted to counteract this by tensioning them the other way as the glue set. As it happens, one I overdid slightly, and one I under-did, but both were much better than they had been in the dry fit:





Whilst the drawers were drying I fitted the door boxes, using cheap piano hinges:





This was a bit of a fiddle, and one of the doors came off 3 or 4 times for adjusting. After that, it was just lots and lots of planing, offering up, adjusting, until all the drawers fitted:





Here's how I supported the drawers in the vice:



Some years ago I had salvaged a few commercial chests of drawers from a practice I worked in as they headed towards a skip. They yielded lots of nice stuff, including these drawer pulls of solid wood:



I'm not sure what the wood is. It has prominent medullary rays, but is much too red to be oak. Anyway, I rather like them, so I cleaned them up with some white spirit, then made a jig to locate the screw holes:



When correctly located you just push on the board and the tips of the screws, which stick out the back, leave a nice clear mark:





I waxed all the runners and sides, and I now have a completed set of drawers:



Finally, because of the drawer design traditional stops are impossible. However, there is an OSB wall just 5 or 10mm behind the back of the drawers, so I screwed a couple of screws in behind each drawer box and simply turned them in or out until they stopped the drawers in the right place:

 

[StevieB]

That looks really smart Mike - very impressed!

 

[TrimTheKing]

Very nice Mike

I like the forethought too to extend the sides up so you can cram loads of crap up there without it falling off the sides! :lol: bscene-drinkingcheers: