Machinist Toolcart #2: Measure twice, Cut Once, then measure twice again, and cut once more.

Its been a while since the previous post mostly because I wasn’t sure I was happy with the original design.

I went to the local lumber supplier that carries mahogany plywood and bought the 3/4” material for the carcass and baking. While there I had them cut the 1/2 full sheet to 2 halves (2 quarter sheets) so it’ll be easier for me to transport with my car (don’t have a large truck anymore).

With the 2 pieces now sitting in the garage, the original design seemed a bit small to me. The idea was to have something small by design, but now with it physically in front of me it seemed a bit too small. so I designed to revamp the design and see how large I can make it with maximizing the usage of what I have (to still keep it on the smaller side of things). I came up with a slightly larger version of the original design which can be seen in the right version in the SketchUp image below. I personally found the 3+2 top drawers arrangement a bit overcrowded and at this size I figured it would also be too narrow to actually be useful so I removed the 3 drawer layer, and simplified the cabinet a bit which resulted in the version on the left below:

I also took all the parts and placed them against a 24”x48” rectangle to visualize the sequence of cuts and where each part would come from the sheet.

What I was able to accomplish yesterday was cutting the 4 carcass parts (sides, top, bottom) all beveled at edges to keep a nice flowing grain around the cabinet, and the dividing frame and block for the upper 2 drawer assembly to mount the internal drawer sliders to.

While making the beveled cuts on the 16” wide sides+top+bottom I managed to drop my miter gauge from the TS to the floor when I pulled it too far out of the miter slot. it left a nice bruise on my hand (as I instinctively tried to catch it as it fell) before it hit the concrete floor upside down and shattered the handle and bent the handle screw…. oh well…. I guess it is now a 950SE (originally a 1000SE, turned 998SE after 1st mishap… and now this). luckily nothing critical was broken and the Incra miter gauge still performs just as well. In future projects I’ll have to rethink treating wide parts differently, either with a router, or circular saw where the part is stationary as I found to have very little control over the cut when trying to deal with wide parts for cross cuts on the TS and with safety in mind, the cut quality and the capacity becomes very limited (or maybe it’s just me).

all in all, parts are cut sizing looks decent, small but not too small, and thats what I need at the moment:

The drawer full extension slides I got came with plastic anchors that fit in 1/4” hole. you can either use those anchors or just screw the sliders directly to the wood. I chose to use the anchors, and see how well it would work . It did take an extra step, and am not sure it’s really worth it or not. I used a story stick to make sure all mounting holes/anchors are spaced evenly since I seem to always end up with extension slides that are not even with one another so hopefully doing it this way (with the sides still unattached) will help out. I’ll just have to make sure when I put all parts together that everything stays parallel and aligned. I based my mounting holes in relation to the top drawer assembly divider dado so that should make the aligning everything easier (hopefully):

Next would be to trim the dividers (horizontal and vertical) that were left a hair too long (to trim to fit later) and glue together the carcass followed by making the face frames (front and back) and the 1/4” backing.

Thanks for reading,
Peace!

-- ㊍ When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.