I rebuilt the drawers on Sunday. First I got the rough fit done (which was as far as I got the first time):

I still had plenty of time to add the bottoms! Traditional drawers will have a solid wood bottom and some tricks to make sure that as the wood expands/contracts it doesn’t crack. But, I avoided most of that by using some 1/2” MDF that I had lying around. The bottom of the drawer will be lined with same material as the place surface, so I didn’t need to worry about aesthetics, and the MDF will stay flat and smooth forever. Plus, I can glue the bottoms in place which will really make the drawers rock solid. Then I can work on shaving down each drawer for a good fit, hopefully preventing any racking.

I cut a groove in the four sides of the drawers:

and then added a rabbet all the way around the bottom on the table saw:

Perfect fit!

For the drawers I decided to forego the sander and went to the workbench to plane them smooth:

Next I’ll drill the holes for the pins (similar to the ones that went on the player stations) and then they’re ready to be glued up.

I fit the first of the drawers last night. It was a little tight to start with, but after taking a couple of shavings off of the top of the left side, and the outside face of both sides, it fit pretty well:

I took a couple of shavings off the bottom of the front so that only the sides are actually touching the base, for the least amount of friction.

It’s still slightly snug towards the end, but I want to wait until I glue it up to make sure I have the final dimensions before taking off the last couple of shavings.

Last night I glued up the first drawer and took the final few shavings to get it to fit. Since I was going to make the corner joints match the player stations, I needed some pins. There are no sapele dowels available at the local hardware store, so I had to make my own:

This involves using a dowel plate and pounding square stock through the proper sized hole (1/4” for these). Then I trimmed them to about an inch long. I glued the various pieces and finally pounded in the dowel pins before putting everything in the clamps:

After a few hours I took it out of the clamps and then went to the workbench to plane down the pins and take the last couple of shavings off the sides for a perfect fit:

I went back and forth between the table and the bench to make sure I snuck up on the fit and didn’t end up with them being too loose:

And after installing the spring latch in the back we have the drawer mechanism working!

Now to do this 5 more times with the other drawers. 😅

After several weeks of side projects, anniversary vacations and random around-the-house work, the drawers are finally done!

The two drawers on the ends of the table had a slightly loose fit: the left and right runners were 1/32” of an inch or or mis-aligned with the drawer opening in the front. This made the drawer bind up if you didn’t slide it perfectly straight. To remedy that issue I made a couple of “extensions” that I glued to the sides to effectively narrow the width of the opening:

They slide just as smoothly as the other four now and the fix is invisible, unless someone decides to pull the drawer all the way out.

Next up will be finishing the drawers and then building the play surface. The large panel I originally had for the play surface was only 1/8” thick, and is so thin that it sags slightly where the drawers are, causing them to scrape on the underside and not pop open nice and smooth. I think I’m going to go to a 1/4” thick surface instead and see if that prevents the sag. I’ve ordered the fabric for the top: 2mm neoprene as a cushion, and a navy blue microsuede for the top. The neoprene makes the surface have a little give so you can easily pick up cards or anything flat on the surface. I almost went with red microsuede for the surface, but thought it might be a little too bright for the room, so I’m going to use it in the drawers instead.

I put the first coat of finish on the drawers yesterday. I’m using my regular oil finish on the fronts to match everything else, but I went with a coat of shellac on the sides and back. While I love my oil finish on darker woods, it gives lighter woods kind of a sickly yellow color. So on drawers I like to do a coat of “clear” shellac, which still has a very minor yellow/beige tint, but hardly noticeable. The oil will also give off a smell for a quite a while afterwords, whereas the shellac is fairly odorless after a couple of days. I don’t mind the smell of the oil, but when you use it on a drawer then everything inside starts to smell like it too, which can be…undesirable.

Here’s two drawers, the shellac’ed one on the bottom one and an unfinished one on top. The shellac just sort of darkens the natural color of the wood:

The single coat of shellac leaves a rough surface so I went all around with 320 grit sandpaper and now it’s nice and smooth again. I haven’t decided if I want to do a second coat of shellac on the sides yet: they don’t really need to be protected from anything, but it could be nice to smooth out the color a little after the sanding. I’ll do the standard 3 coats of oil on the fronts. Two more to go!