The last remaining task for the crib was to construct the drawers that go into the base.
The drawers are a simple box of 1/2″ birch plywood, with 1/4″ oak plywood for the bottoms. To hold the drawers bottoms, I setup a 1/4″ slot cutting bit on my router table and cut a groove in all of the 1/2″ plywood pieces. The fronts and backs of the drawers have their through grooves hidden by the sides. The face of the drawer will hide the grooves on the front of the piece; only on the back of the drawers will be exposed – which will be hidden inside the case. Once all the grooves were cut and passed the dry fit test, I applied some glue and clamps. I even channeled my inner Norm and added a few pins to each joint for strength.
While the drawer boxes were drying in clamps, I started working on the drawer faces. Because I liked the look it gave the rail tops, I eased the edges of the drawer faces with my block plane. Besides making them slightly safer for children (this is a crib), I think it softens the profile of what is otherwise a square piece. The next step was to drill a hole for the drawer pull. I’m using just a single knob for each drawer, so I needed to find the center of the board. I decided to draw lines corner to corner and drill at the intersection of the lines. Because I was marking on the back of the board, I only drilled the hole deep enough to just puncture front side – to avoid any tearout on the front. Then I flipped the board over and completed the hole from the front.
Once the glue on the boxes had dried, I clamped the drawer boxes to the faces and drilled pilot holes for the screws attaching them. I also outlined the box on the back of the drawer faces, so I didn’t finish that section, both to help with gluing and to avoid wasting finish. With everything marked and drilled, I set to shellac the drawer faces. Same as the rest of the crib, I brushed on two coats of shellac, followed by wiping on a final coat that was cut 1:1 with denatured alcohol. Drying time, some glue, and a few more screws left the drawer construction complete.
Little did I know that mounting these drawers would be far more frustrating than building them! Some of the frustration was due to the way the “plans” were put together (I’ll have a separate post on that), but some was due to slight mistakes I made during construction. The center support is the mounting point for the inner drawer slides on each drawers. Unfortunately, I didn’t have it perfectly centered. This meant that in order to get the drawer box AND two sets of slides (one on each side) to fit between the center support and the leg, I was going to have to cut into the support to mount the inner drawer slide. I really didn’t want to drag the crib’s base back into my shop and I didn’t want to run my router – and it’s high speed sawdust – in the baby’s room, so I went galoot and hollowed out the groove with some chisels and a mallet. I guess the next two hours were my penance for using my nail gun on the drawer boxes…
Despite all that chopping, I finally got the drawers mounted, opening, and closing. This project is finally done!
I’ll have a wrap-up post some time next week to go over the entire project!
