Oak Filing Cabinets

[Frank Pellow]

(part 1 of 5)

This is a project that I have been working at on and off for a long time and want to complete soon.  My hope is that if I start a thread and report on progress regularly it will encourage me to stick to the project and finish it.  As usual, I will document progress with extracts from my journal.

2008, Nov 30:
This week I got started in earnest on building some Christmas presents.  I'm making two small oak filing cabinets for our office as a present for Margaret.  This week, I cut all plywood for the carcasses and started gluing them up:

[attachthumb=#1] [attachthumb=#2]
     
The plans for these cabinets came from issue 179 of Woodsmith magazine.

2008, Dec 21:

I got back to the oak filing cabinets this week, but decided that I was not going to attempt to finished them by Christmas.  The new objective is to have them ready to present to Margaret as a birthday gift on January 1.  Even then. there will probably be some work remaining to do on them.

First of all, I cut the plywood for the carcass backs using my Incra cross-cut sled because I couldn't be bothered to clear the mess off the MFT:

[attachthumb=#3] [attachthumb=#4]
   
It's nice to have the alternative.

I finished the inside of the carcasses with a coat of Old Master?s Special Walnut gel stain followed by two coats of Minwax Wipe-On Poly:

[attachthumb=#5]
 

 

[Frank Pellow]

(part 2 of 5)

I made a prototype drawer out of fir plywood to test the fit:
     
[attachthumb=#1] [attachthumb=#2]

And, as you can see, the fit was good.

2008, Dec 30:
I got a bit more work done on the file cabinets after Christmas.  Here are some pictures with captions above each:

Oscillating spindle sander used on file drawer sides:
[attachthumb=#3]    
   
File drawer glue-up:
[attachthumb=#4]
                     
Oak strips being glued to cabinet front:
[attachthumb=#5]
   

 

[Frank Pellow]

(part 3 of 5)

2009, Jan 4:

I worked quite a lot on the filing cabinet in the early part of the week, but I still did not get it completed in time for Margaret?s birthday.  In the picture to the left below, you can see how the false fronts of the drawers are constructed.  First a plywood piece was cut and surrounded with glued quarter inch strips oak.  Then shallow groves were routed down the middles of both planes of the doors.  Then strips of oak were glues into the grooves -leaving about 1/16th of an inch within the grooves on each side of the strips.  Four small library file false fronts were then cut to fit each of the quadrants and their edges were rounded with a Cove bit.  

[attachthumb=#1] [attachthumb=#2]
       
One of the rounded hand-held sanding profiles from Lee Valley proved to be perfect for sanding within the rounded coves of the library file false fronts (as seen in the photo to the right above).

The technique I used to install an assembled false front onto a file drawer is simple and effective.  First are a couple of pictures followed by a description:

[attachthumb=#3] [attachthumb=#4]
     
First the false front is positioned, using shims where of help, in the opening in front of the installed drawer.  Employing a couple of the holes that will eventually be used by the drawer handles, the false front is temporarily screwed front the front onto the real drawer front.  Then the drawer is opened, the false front is clamped to the read front and permanent screws are driven into the false front from behind. I can't take credit for this technique -I read it in one of Danny Proulx's books.

Installing the handles presented some problems.  The bolts that come with the handles are quite short (about 1 inch) and they have a non-standard thread meaning that I was unable to obtain longer ones of the same thread size at a reasonable price.  By the time all the components of a drawer front are put together, the wood behind a handle is 2 inches thick, even if you don't include the real drawer front the material is 1.25 inches thick.  So, I had to drill a wide hole part way through the material from the back from which the bolts (2 per handle) could be screwed in.  I first tried drilling the holes with a hand held drill using a drill bit stop but I was not accurate enough which resulted in some crooked handles (more on that later).

[attachthumb=#5]

 

[Frank Pellow]

(part 4 of 5)

A coat of Old Masters Special Walnut Gel Stain was applied:

[attachthumb=#1]
 
then wiped off after 10 minutes.  This gel could not reach all the small spaces, so I simply applied Watco Dark Walnut to these cracks with a fine brush.  The handles were then screwed on from behind.  

[attachthumb=#2]
   
As I said above, a couple of the handles were a little crooked, but I went ahead and presented a single drawer false front to Margaret on her birthday.

[attachthumb=#3]
   
She was quite taken with the library file drawer simulation and likes the idea of the filing cabinets along with what I have managed to build so far.

 

[Frank Pellow]

(part 5 of 5)

2008, Jan 15:

I got back the filing cabinet project yesterday.  

The first thing that I did was fill the erroneously place holes with auto body filler:

[attachthumb=#1]
 
Then, I re-drilled the holes, this time using my drill press.  Even then the holes were not as accurately placed as I would have liked because there is no room at all for error -the two holes for the screws for each handle must be dead on.  The next time I need to drill pairs of holes like this I will do so using a template.

The four false fronts have now had three coats of wipe-on poly applied and rubbed off.  Two of the false fronts have been permanently installed and work is underway on the other two.  I took this picture a couple of hours ago:

[attachthumb=#2]

 

[Notorious T.O.D.]

Very nice work Frank!

Looks like someone has been reading their Woodsmith too...

Best,
Todd

 

[Dave Ronyak]

Great work, Frank.  Loved the photo of your presentation to Margaret.  We need to launch a scientific study of you -- you're far too productive, breaking the curve again and again -- too much energy for one man.  Wow!  I wish I had that much get up and go.

Dave R.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Very nice work Frank!

Looks like someone has been reading their Woodsmith too...

Best,
Todd

Thanks Todd.  I did give credit to Woodsmith in the last paragraph of the Nov 30th entry -that is: "The plans for these cabinets came from issue 179 of Woodsmith magazine."

 

[Frank Pellow]

Great work, Frank.  Loved the photo of your presentation to Margaret.  We need to launch a scientific study of you -- you're far too productive, breaking the curve again and again -- too much energy for one man.  Wow!  I wish I had that much get up and go.

Dave R.

Thanks Dave.

But, I don't think that someone, who has now let this project drag out for a month and a half, has demonstrated that they have too much energy.  :-[

 

[Notorious T.O.D.]

Frank,

Anyone that consults Woodsmith is doing a good thing in my view.  I have read it since I started woodworking and have learned a ton from it.  It has changed some over the years as all things to yet I think it still is one of the best sources for newer woodworkers to be successfully guided through the building of a project in an orderly step by step method.

Congrats on another successful project Frank...  I may have to build one of these units myself someday.

Best,
Todd

 

[butzla]

Nice work Frank!  I agree that you are clearly FOG's most prolific woodworker.  Do you ever sleep?!

 

[nickao]

Frank you do seem to be kicking out a lot of nice work of late!

 

[Frank Pellow]

Jan 19 Update:   (post 1 of 2)

Some progress has been made, but I am not getting enough shop time these days and, when I do, progress on the cabinets seems to be unusually slow.

The false fronts are now installed on all four drawers, but not without some difficulty.  As shown above, in order to align the false fronts, I temporarily screwed the fronts to the drawers through the handle holes.  One should avoid doing this used cheap made in China screws into oak which has not been pre-drilled.  I made this mistake and this was the result:

[attachthumb=#1]
   
When I tried to remove the screw, it broke.  And, to make matters even worse, I did it twice.  After some effort, the screws were drilled out and the handles accurately installed.

My next mistake happened when routing the trim for the base of the cabinets.  The cabinet trim has a fancy profile combining boards edged with a Roman Ogre bit and boards trimmed with a Cove bit.  The grain on the oak boards that I am using is very irregular and I experiences both tear out:

[attachthumb=#2]
   
and cracking:

[attachthumb=#3]
 
Eventually, I created a sufficient number of properly edged boards for the base.  They were installed first with glue from the outside:

[attachthumb=#4]
 
and then augmented with screws from the inside:

[attachthumb=#5]
 

 

[Frank Pellow]

Jan 19 Update:   (post 2 of 2)

I even managed to use most of the wood that I had damaged with the router.  Here, for instance is the section of tear-out shown earlier now on the interior bottom of the base:

[attachthumb=#1]

Here are the cabinets as they look right now:

[attachthumb=#2]

Similar trim will be applied to the top (when I get the time to do so).

 

[Frank Pellow]

January 25th Update (1 of 2)

The construction of the cabinets has now been completed. All that remains is to sand the wood to a finer degree and to apply the finish. I should be able to find the time to that this week.

Carrying on the picture essay from the last update:

The cabinet tops consisted of three different layers and the trim was routed to match that of the base.

The first layer, whose edge had been routed with a Roman Ogee bit, was glued into place then further attached with screws from underneath:

[attachthumb=#1]

The second layer, whose edge had been routed with a Cove bit, was glued into place then further attached with screws into the first layer:

[attachthumb=#2]

The top layer consisted of a piece of plywood with a tongue cut into three sides edged on those three sides with oak into which I cut matching grooves.

The prepared wood for the top layer:
[attachthumb=#3]

Gluing an edge:
[attachthumb=#4]

About to glue the top layer to the middle layer:
[attachthumb=#5]

 

[Frank Pellow]

January 25th Update (2 of 2)

Glued and clamped: [attachthumb=#3]

Here is a picture of one of the cabinets in just about the place that the cabinets will occupy when they are finished:

[attachthumb=#1]

And here is a closer view of a section of the top edge:

[attachthumb=#2]

 

[Dave Ronyak]

Very nice, Frank.  The molding designs came out very pleasing to my eyes.  Very nicely proportioned.

Your photos are the first I have seen of those "come'along" clamps in use pulling the trim to the edge of the panel.  Are you satisfied with them?  That is one style of clamps I do not own.  Certainly makes sense rather than needing to haul out a long bar clamp for some tasks.

You definitely deserve the prize as FOG's most prolific non-pro woodworker!!

Dave R.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Thanks again Dave.  Yes, one thing that attracted me to building these cabinets in the first place was the matching top and bottom molding.

"Come along" clamps.  I love the term.  I have had a pair of them for a couple of years, but this is the first time that I have used them.  They worked very well.

I might, indeed, be FOG's most prolific non-pro woodworker right now, but that is about to change.  Non-woodworking projects are already starting to infringe on my shop time and those projects are soon going to take over the vast majority of my time for until (at least) next November.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Here is a picture of the two cabinets, still unfinished, in what will be their home:

[attachthumb=#1]

 

[Frank Pellow]

Completed! (1 of 2)

The filing cabinets have been finished and are now in use.  
   
[attachthumb=#1]   [attachthumb=#2]   [attachthumb=#3]
   
They are exactly one month late.  :-[