I did a little tweaking on the taper facets to make sure they line up. You can see here that the tapers start at a different point right off the bandsaw:

I made a pass or two on the jointer to get them to line up and start from the same point. Then I sanded everything to 150 grit, wiped on some water, then finish sanded to 220. Finally, I cut some chamfers on the bottom of the legs, which guards against any wood splitting out if you were to drag the table across the floor (plus they just look nice):

Then, applied a coat of finish:

I also flipped over the base and applied a coat of finish to the bottom. Then inserted the legs and made sure everything lined up as planned!

The table is free-standing! After a second coat of finish on the legs, I screwed them into place and, with the help of my wife, got it off the saw horses and onto its own feet. I also brought in a chair from the dining room to make sure I didn’t make a horrible mistake with the height of the base!

Got a piece of hardboard from Home Depot and cut it to fit the bottom of the vault. This’ll keep all the dust and debris floating around the shop from getting inside of everything! Eventually I’ll have some fabric wrapped around it to make a nice play surface.

I originally planned on cutting some dovetails for the player drawers. This would end up being 8 per drawer (4 front, 4 back) times 6 drawers for 48 total. That’s a lot of dovetails to cut by hand.

After thinking about it for a while (mostly about the amount of work it’ll be to cut that many dovetails!) I’m thinking of a design change. These drawers are super light and don’t really need the strength benefits of a real dovetail. So now I’m thinking of doing a simple rabbet, stopping 1/8” from the front edge, and then connecting the sides to the front with some handmade dowels driven through the sides and into the fronts. Here’s a before and after:

I found a neat technique for making dowels and I’ll use that to make these. I haven’t decided if I’m going to use the same joiner for the drawer backs, or an even simpler glued tongue and groove

I picked up some douglas fir for the drawer sides and backs. I found an 8” wide board of old growth with some nice wavy grain:

After jointing and planing I cut them down to a set of sides and back for each drawer:

The sides are fit to the drawer openings with a hand plane until they slide in and out with just about zero friction:

The backs were cut to match the size of the fronts. Six sets total and the drawer parts are ready to go: