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A closeup of the inside. To get the stain off, before realizing I was going to simply paint over all blemishes, I sanded it down with a more aggressive 120-150 grit combo. It turned out I preferred the countryish roughness of this finish, so I didn't take them back up to 400 grit. This level of roughness is a tad more protected against scrapes and bumps as well. Anything that rubs against a smooth, shiny finish shows up on the surface.
First roundover cut, down the long edge. It worked out pretty well. I was worried that the fence might prevent me pushing the entire thing in there, if everything wasn't extremely square, but it worked out well, for all sides.
These are the two types of small clamps I like most. Both have strengths and weaknesses. The Jorgensen's - at left - have nice flat edges, and stand up easily, supporting small work well. They're lighter, but still strong, and the sliding part slides a bit more easily, but their handles are tiny, rickety, and hard to grip, with fastening rivets that often scrape up my hand ,smaller threads that can take 10-15 twists (not full revolutions) to tighten fully, and the pads leave dark, ugly, deep, oily marks in wood that are hard to sand out.
The Bessey Tradesmen - at right - are much stockier, stronger, clamp with more power (600lbs, IIRC), have very strong, easy to grab handles that don't scrape me up, and tighten up in 2 or 3 twists (not full revolutions), but can't stand up on their own, and can be quite heavy for lighter operations, as with these boxes, which I would consider at the lower limit for Tradesman work.
In short, despite the dark oily marks, and uncomfortable grips, I sort of prefer a stack of Jorgensens for little box work like this, but definitely want the Bessey's for larger projects that stand up on their own, supporting the clamps with their own weight.
Here's a view of the second panel before pulling off the wax paper. This was on both sides to protect the clamps from the glue, and to help squeeze glue back in as it tried to squeeze out.
Flipping the panels over, the textures don't match up as well, but these will be inside. There's a lot of color variation in poplar.
These were the colors I went through trying to find the blue that was in my mind. It turned out to be the third one down on the right card here, "Windsor Haze." The funny thing was that I started with the card on the left, liked the two middle ones, but they were too bright, and I wanted something between them, so I found the 3rd card here, third swatch down, which was between them, but it was still too bright, then after a wrong-turn with the 2nd card, found the 4th card, 3rd swatch, which was almost perfect, although I wished it was slightly closer to the swatch above it. It turned out that the paint dried a bit lighter and did look a bit between those two. Perfect! That worked out quite well.
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Tragedy! While screwing on one of the leaf pulls, the pressure of my hand squeezing the knob broke this pull's stem off. I didn't think this would work, but I was able to tape the leaf to the rounded melamine shelf here and balance the leaf stem on top with some epoxy mixed in between. All I can do now is wait, and come back tomorrow to see how it looks.
I had to get fancy here. The third box - for the bottom shelf slot - is taller, and needed some supports to get things at perfect right angles, and to pull faces flat, as the wider wood strips that formed the vertical bits were a tad warped.
I used a scrap piece of wood to clamp the two close panels together, making sure I set them up to have their bows facing away from each other. This way a single clamp would pull the bulges together against the flat edges of the scrap wood separator.
I really loved these strips. They're about 1/8" thick, maybe even thinner than that, and at least 12" long, probably longer. The pieces I had cut previously were just a bit too tall to fit in the spaces between shelves, so I shaved off exactly enough to make a perfect press-fit. That left me with these useless little flaps that I didn't want to throw out.
You can see the rounded-over vertical edge opposite the hinges on the inside of the left cabinet door here. That will allow it to swing open without scraping the inner vertical panel in the foreground. I believe pro woodworkers will often simply taper this, but the roundover matches several roundovers that will be found around the project by the end.
All attached. It's crooked, as the actual wheela assembly on the catch plate is crooked. Here is where I bow to mass production, and the crappiness of cheap hardware from Home Depot. It's crooked in real life, so the hidden catch plate behind the door will be exactly crooked in that way, as well. At least they'll work smoothly.
A double-spiral soft-tone wind chime made of copper pipe, wood and fishing supplies. Traceable templates. Clear instructions. A great gift
Handcrated by Malina. Thanks, Malina! This thing worked great. You did an awesome job. It cleaned up really well, too. I went at it with some plastic steel wool to get the handle and buckle back to somewhat clean (rubbed her name off, though), and the bristles are still silky smooth, with no fly-aways.
I slipped some pieces of blue painters tape through the holes to clean up the ratty edges imparted by the hole cutter.
In this rear view, you can see that the bottom pads between the boxes are exactly as long as the box is deep. The top ones are slightly shorter, owing to the reinforcement bar sticking down from the top, which must be cleared. Also, a back cap is in place to sandwich in the magazine box, keeping it from bumping around in shipment.
I'm setting up for the great glue-up here. I'll be doing so on the panel on the bench in the background. I've set the panels up here to mimic where they'll be, so I don't screw it up in the fury of getting biscuits lined up, glue painted on, and boards pressed in before the glue gets too dry on me.
Here's how magazines will fit in the box. They can't stand up, because the internal height of the cabinet is 10", by specification from the client (mom).
That's it. This is a square viewed edge-on, and that's what will fit in the box I got from the storage place.
I forgot to rout the channel for the other shelf, as indicated by the center line inside the left cabinet area here. It got too late to go back and do it. A job for tomorrow... I'm holding the cabinet door in my hand here.
Getting custom paint at Home Depot after work was a breeze. I had always thought this would be a chore, but <10 minutes of deciding on a color, and 10 minutes of mixing later, I was off with a $10 quart of exactly what I needed to finish up these darn boxes.
I was a little nervous at this point. All of this work in my free time here and there for the past couple of months, and now I was going to burn my name into it. I didn't want to screw it up.
This thing is a fortress against shipping disasters, and I fully expected at this point that it would survive a plane crash into the sea, whereupon it would be discovered and befriended by and island-bound Tom Hanks.
Note that I have written a stern warning about being careful with the piece that pads in the leaf pulls. I don't want mom to tear into this, pull on that piece too hard, and break off another of the stems, as I did when installing one of the knobs previously (I later bought a replacement).