Popular Woodworking 2003-10 № 136, страница 70
To get the doors to seat flush against the cabinet front, cut a shallow rabbet (3/l6" deep, the thickness of the hinge) the width of the closed hinge on the back of the door on the hinge side. This cut can be done with your router or table saw. When attaching the doors, pay careful attention to the height. Preferably they will be about 1/s" below the wings when open to keep things from bumping. You'll also notice that the left-hand door's hinge covers the dados for the drawers. Rather than place the hinge on the outside of the cabinet (making it too visible), we opted to simply file out the hinge to match the dado locations, as shown below. Drawer Space Ultimately you'll decide how the interior space in your cart is used. We've used drawers because our experience has shown that low shelving just collects junk at the back of the case that you can never see or reach easily. We've used a selection of drawer types for this project, both shop-made and purchased. You can follow our lead or choose whatever style you prefer. The lower shop-made drawer is simply a Baltic birch box drawer mounted on full-extension, l00-lb. drawer slides. This is a fine heavy-duty drawer joined at the corners with simple rabbet joints. We used a 1/2" bottom fit into a rabbet in the sides. While we usually would have recommended a H" bottom, we had the 1/2" material and didn't feel like by buying a whole sheet of 1/4n for just one drawer. The store-bought drawers are metal, lighter-duty drawers of 1" and 2" depths and have metal flanges that ride on dados cut into the sides of the case. With these, the front of the drawer overlaps the case sides to both hide the dados and serve as a drawer stop. As this would interfere with the door hinge, we added two drawer section sides made of 1/2" Baltic birch and set them back 1" from the front of the case. This also made it possible to cut the dados in the section sides after the case was assembled. The three drawers to the left use the best of both worlds, finishing off some of the wood at hand and avoiding the cost of more drawer slides by using the "lip and groove" concept of the metal drawers. On all the wood drawers, a simple 1" hole drilled in the front serves as an adequate drawer pull. Finishing Touches The last steps are adding a finish (we opted for two coats of dark green latex paint on the outside; the inside was left as-is) and then some sturdy 21/2" casters to the case and placing and organizing your tools. The photos will show you a couple of storage tricks and items available for sale to help keep things neat and tidy. PW MILLER DOWELS Miller Dowels are a clever concept that can make some types of assembly faster and easier. Essentially, the stepped-dowel idea offers the strength of a standard dowel with the ease of a tapered dowel.Alignment and splitting difficulties often associated with standard dowels are reduced, while the strength offered is actually better than with a standard dowel thanks to the ribbed design (increasing glue coverage). These stepped dowels can be used in place of screws (as we've shown in this project) - think of them as self-plugging screws. We're going to stop short of advocating Miller Dowels as a replacement for all screws, though.While the strength is good, they still won't pull up an ill-fitting joint, and if the glue is not allowed to cure before removing the clamps, there is the potential for the joint opening slightly after removing the clamps. So proper clamping and glue-curing time is still essential. Then there is the economic consideration.A pack of 50 dowels (23/4M or 3V2" long) and the necessary bit cost about $30. Packs of 25 dowels cost about $7.That's about 28 cents per dowel versus 4 cents per #20 biscuit or about 8 cents per premium screw. All things considered, we like the idea of an all-wood, strong and simple joint - but we'd recommend choosing your application carefully. The dowels are available in birch, red oak, cherry and black walnut, and more weather-resistant species are on the drawing board. For details, contact Miller Dowel at 866-WOODPEG (866-966-3734) or millerdowel.com. 70 I Popular Woodworking October 2003 You can see the two sets of dados for the drawers with a few drawers removed. Also, notice the notched piano hinge to allow the drawers to slide in and out. |
