Drawer Glueup and Final Fit

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. 😅