The Shoe Closet...err Box....thing.

Welcome again to another rousing entry of amateur woodworking by yours truly. Again, it has been awhile since the Table project but bringing money in and playing with Joey takes up all my time (something that somehow doesn't bother me a bit! [the latter, not the former]).

Speaking of offspring! My son is Almost 8 Months old now and here he is as St. Joseph for All Saints Day. (All together now: "D'AWWW!)

The Wife asked me to whip out a hammer quick for his ensemble.
....it was taken away shortly after this photo shoot.

Anywho, the idea for the Shoe Box was to organize her relatively small closet into something more workable. Now she wants to make it clear she is not one of those women who have shoes hidden in secret wall compartments to conceal the glutenous plenitude of footwear from their husbands. She has a very modest collection [Happy Dear? ;-)]. Even with said collection it needed a touch of organization.
So I started with a very simple two-drawer box concept that was easy to conceive.

I used Google Sketch-up to design the box along with some other projects that are down the pike. It was fairly simple once you get the hang of it. The one thing that doesn't make sense to me is once you have it all laid out in the program, the next step is to give it dimensions so you can print it out and eventually build the ruddy thing. In the program you have to individually lay-out each dimension you want manually. Shouldn't this be an automatic feature?

My materials were again cost effective and workable. The wood of the day is of course Pine because it...well ...grows on trees (cheap). I started with joining my boards together to get the desired height for the top and side panels - using of course my trusty biscuit joiner.

Then I decided to try miter joints for the top and side panels. A miter joint is basically joining the ends I wish to glue together with 45 degree bevels. This makes a strong joint, but it also makes the surface look clean by eliminating the sight of any end-grain. 

I accomplished this by using the table saw.

Next I adjusted my biscuit joiner at 45 degrees and cut-out biscuits on the beveled ends. 

Before putting the box together, I had to rout out slots for the drawer slides. The slides were 1/2 inch thick so I took off 1/4 in. on both sides. 

Then I used the table saw to make a slot for the 1/4 in. thick plywood bottom for each drawer. 

Now to glue this box together was a bit tricky. To clamp a miter joint you either have to have a special kind of clamp or you need a lot of clamps to alternate between clamping top and bottom so the miter stays centered. I couldn't do either of these options. So I did some research and found a way to do it. First I cut a bunch of 45 degree blocks from scrap 2 x 4's laying around and then I placed sheets of paper in between the panel and blocks; and then I glued them together. This gives me a square-parallel surface to clamp on. 

It looks like this: 

 The glue to the paper gives just enough friction to hold the clamps tight. To remove the blocks, a swift wallop with a hammer did the trick leaving the paper and some excess glue.

In retrospect, removing the glue on the panels was a pain.
I started with 60 grit paper which barely made a dent. I then
 quickly switched to 40 grit paper. My forearms thanked me.

I then started work with the drawers themselves.

I used some spare Oak from the Book Shelf project for the
front of the drawers. 

 The sides of the drawers with the routed center for slides:

A dry fit of a drawer.



Once together I fit and fastened the drawer slides to the box and drawers. This took a bit of trial and error.






Once that was all done, I placed some pine stripes to line the oak fronts to hide the drawer slides and the end grain of the box from showing. This will also give a beautiful contrast between the nice red oak tone to the golden shade of the pine.









After the facade was been finished, it was time to putty the nail holes and sand it top to bottom.

Once the sanding was complete I used a tack-cloth to take off all dust particles and then I finished it with a simple natural stain. 

The Finished Product: 

the hardware was picked out by my wife.

One of those drawers got pretty sticky and hard to pull due to saw dust getting in the track. 

I didn't poly it due to the old basement attached to the old house. The stain smell crept up around the water pipes and into the upstairs which took awhile to air out. The poly would have been the same story. So I left it alone until the spring.

With every project I try to do something I have never done before so that every project contains a particular challenge. In this case, it was the miter joint and drawers in general. With all things considered, I think it turned out pretty well! Even with my bias of seeing minor imperfections, my wife loves it!  (She's a good sport. She puts up with a lot.) 

Well there you have it! Next time (not sure when), if they turn out well, I will be blogging on making ornamental wooded reindeer made with the Band-saw. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Pax

NPM