Oak Filing Cabinets

Frank Pellow

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2,332
Location
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
(post 1 of 3)

This is a project that I have been working at on and off for a long time and want to complete soon. My hope is that if I start a thread and report on progress regularly it will encourage me to stick to the project and finish it. As usual, I will document progress with extracts from my journal.

2008, Nov 30:

This week I got started in earnest on building some Christmas presents. I'm making two small oak filing cabinets for our office as a present for Margaret. This week, I cut all plywood for the carcasses and started gluing them up:

Oak Filing Cabinets 01 -Routing rabbets and dados in carcass pieces -small.JPG Oak Filing Cabinets 02 -Carcasses being glued up -small.JPG

The plans for these cabinets came from issue 179 of Woodsmith magazine.

2008, Dec 21:

I got back to the oak filing cabinets this week, but decided that I was not going to attempt to finished them by Christmas. The new objective is to have them ready to present to Margaret as a birthday gift on January 1. Even then. there will probably be some work remaining to do on them.

First of all, I cut the plywood for the carcass backs using my Incra cross-cut sled because I couldn't be bothered to clear the mess off the MFT:

Oak Filing Cabinets 03 -Plywood for cabinet backs cut using cross cut sled on tablesaw ... -smal.JPG Oak Filing Cabinets 04 -...because I couldnt be bother to clear off the MFT -small.JPG

It's nice to have the alternative.

I finished the inside of the carcasses with a coat of Old Master?s Special Walnut gel stain followed by two coats of Minwax Wipe-On Poly:

Oak Filing Cabinets 05 -The inside of the cabinets were stained before attaching the back -small.JPG

I made a prototype drawer out of fir plywood to test the fit:

Oak Filing Cabinets 06 -Prototype drawer -small.JPG Oak Filing Cabinets 07 -The prototype fits -small.JPG

And, as you can see, the fit was good.

2008, Dec 30:

I got a bit more work done on the file cabinets after Christmas. Here are some pictures with captions beside each:

Oscillating spindle sander used on file drawer sides: Oak Filing Cabinets 08 -Sanding the curved edges of the drawers with oscillating sander -small.JPG

File drawer glue-up: Oak Filing Cabinets 09 -Gluing up the drawers -small.JPG

Oak strips being glued to cabinet front: Oak Filing Cabinets 10 -Gluing quarter  inch oak strips to the carcass front -small.JPG
 
(post 2 of 3)

2009, Jan 4:

I worked quite a lot on the filing cabinet in the early part of the week, but I still did not get it completed in time for Margaret's birthday. In the picture to the left below, you can see how the false fronts of the drawers are constructed. First a plywood piece was cut and surrounded with glued quarter inch strips oak. Then shallow groves were routed down the middles of both planes of the doors. Then strips of oak were glues into the grooves -leaving about 1/16th of an inch within the grooves on each side of the strips. Four small library file false fronts were then cut to fit each of the quadrants and their edges were rounded with a Cove bit.

Oak Filing Cabinets 11 -Library filing cabinet false fronts tested for size on plywood base -sma.JPG Oak Filing Cabinets 12 -Sanding rounded coves of the library file false fronts -small.JPG

One of the rounded hand-held sanding profiles from Lee Valley proved to be perfect for sanding within the rounded coves of the library file false fronts (as seen in the photo to the right above).

The technique I used to install an assembled false front onto a file drawer is simple and effective. First are a couple of pictures followed by a description:

Oak Filing Cabinets 13 -Installing false front -1 -small.JPG Oak Filing Cabinets 14 --Installing false front -2 -small.JPG

First the false front is positioned, using shims where of help, in the opening in front of the installed drawer. Employing a couple of the holes that will eventually be used by the drawer handles, the false front is temporarily screwed front the front onto the real drawer front. Then the drawer is opened, the false front is clamped to the read front and permanent screws are driven into the false front from behind. I can't take credit for this technique -I read it in one of Danny Proulx's books.

Installing the handles presented some problems. The bolts that come with the handles are quite short (about 1 inch) and they have a non-standard thread meaning that I was unable to obtain longer ones of the same thread size at a reasonable price. By the time all the components of a drawer front are put together, the wood behind a handle is 2 inches thick, even if you don't include the real drawer front the material is 1.25 inches thick. So, I had to drill a wide hole part way through the material from the back from which the bolts (2 per handle) could be screwed in. I first tried drilling the holes with a hand held drill using a drill bit stop but I was not accurate enough which resulted in some crooked handles (more on that later).

Oak Filing Cabinets 15 -Drilling larger hole on back of false front -small.JPG

A coat of Old Masters Special Walnut Gel Stain was applied:

Oak Filing Cabinets 16 -Gel stain on a false front -small.JPG

then wiped off after 10 minutes. This gel could not reach all the small spaces, so I simply applied Watco Dark Walnut to these cracks with a fine brush. The handles were then screwed on from behind.

Oak Filing Cabinets 17 -Applying stain to the cracks with a very fine brush -small.JPG

As I said above, a couple of the handles were a little crooked, but I went ahead and presented a single drawer false front to Margaret on her birthday.

Oak Filing Cabinets 18 -False front presented to Margaret as a birthday present -small.JPG

She was quite taken with the library file drawer simulation and likes the idea of the filing cabinets along with what I have managed to build so far.
 
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(post 3 of 3)

2008, Jan 15:

I got back the filing cabinet project yesterday.

The first thing that I did was fill the erroneously place holes with auto body filler:

Oak Filing Cabinets 20 -Filling a couple of holes with auto body filler -small.JPG

Then, I re-drilled the holes, this time using my drill press. Even then the holes were not as accurately placed as I would have liked because there is no room at all for error -the two holes for the screws for each handle must be dead on. The next time I need to drill pairs of holes like this I will do so using a template.

The four false fronts have now had three coats of wipe-on poly applied and rubbed off. Two of the false fronts have been permanently installed and work is underway on the other two. I took this picture a couple of hours ago:

Oak Filing Cabinets 21 -Installing false fronts on all drawers -small.JPG
 
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Very nice so far!

Regarding the non-standard screw size, something that has helped me figure out screw / bolt sizes and threads is my Harbor Freight tap and die set. It comes with a pitch gauge which helps with one of the more difficult to measure parts of screws.

Failing a determination, the taps could just be used to rethread to something more commonly available.
 
Very nice so far!

Regarding the non-standard screw size, something that has helped me figure out screw / bolt sizes and threads is my Harbor Freight tap and die set. It comes with a pitch gauge which helps with one of the more difficult to measure parts of screws.

Failing a determination, the taps could just be used to rethread to something more commonly available.
Thanks Mark, it was not that I do not know the size and that the longer bolts were not available. I have both Imperial and Metric screw guages and was able to determine the size. It's metric (I forget now just which size) and very expensive at the suppliers that I found.

I never thought of rethreading. It's something I have never done and, if something like this comes up again, I may try re-threading.
 
Hey Frank. :wave: Your ears must have been burning...I was thinking about you the other day and wondering what you were up to. I see you've been busy. The file cabinet is looking nice. I really like the false front idea. :thumb:
 
January 19 Update

Some progress has been made, but I am not getting enough shop time these days and, when I do, progress on the cabinets seems to be unusually slow.

The false fronts are now installed on all four drawers, but not without some difficulty. As shown above, in order to align the false fronts, I temporarily screwed the fronts to the drawers through the handle holes. One should avoid doing this used cheap made in China screws into oak which has not been pre-drilled. I made this mistake and this was the result:

Oak Filing Cabinets 22 -Screw broke off.JPG

When I tried to remove the screw, it broke. And, to make matters even worse, I did it twice. After some effort, the screws were drilled out and the handles accurately installed.

My next mistake happened when routing the trim for the base of the cabinets. The cabinet trim has a fancy profile combining boards edged with a Roman Ogre bit and boards trimmed with a Cove bit. The grain on the oak boards that I am using is very irregular and I experiences both tear out:

Oak Filing Cabinets 23 -Tear out when routing base molding -small.JPG

and cracking:

Oak Filing Cabinets 24 -Tear out and cracking -small.JPG

Eventually, I created a sufficient number of properly edged boards for the base. They were installed first with glue from the outside:

Oak Filing Cabinets 27 -Installing base molding -2 -small.JPG

and then augmented with screws from the inside:


Oak Filing Cabinets 29 -Base molding layers screwed from the inside -small.JPG

I even managed to use most of the wood that I had damaged with the router. Here, for instance is the section of tear-out shown earlier now on the interior bottom of the base:

Oak Filing Cabinets 28 -Most of the wood with tearout was reused -small.JPG

Here are the cabinets as they look right now:

Oak Filing Cabinets 30 -Base molding installed -1 -small.JPG

Similar trim will be applied to the top (when I get the time to do so).
 
January 25th Update

The construction of the cabinets has now been completed. All that remains is to sand the wood to a finer degree and to apply the finish. I should be able to find the time to that this week.

Carrying on the picture essay from the last update:

The cabinet tops consisted of three different layers and the trim was routed to match that of the base.

The first layer, whose edge had been routed with a Roman Ogee bit, was glued into place then further attached with screws from underneath:

Oak Filing Cabinets 33 -First layer of trim on top -small.JPG

The second layer, whose edge had been routed with a Cove bit, was glued into place then further attached with screws into the first layer:

Oak Filing Cabinets 34 -Second layer of trim on top -small.JPG

The top layer consisted of a piece of plywood with a tongue cut into three sides edged on those three sides with oak into which I cut matching grooves.

The prepared wood for the top layer: Oak Filing Cabinets 37 -All the tongues and grooves have been cut -small.JPG

Gluing an edge: Oak Filing Cabinets 40 -Gluing edges to the cabinet top surface -small.JPG

About to glue the top layer to the middle layer: Oak Filing Cabinets 41 -About to glue the top layer into place -small.JPG

Glued and clamped: Oak Filing Cabinets 42 -Gluing the top layer into place -small.JPG

Here is a picture of one of the cabinets in just about the place that the cabinets will occupy when they are finished:

Oak Filing Cabinets 42 -Cabinets have now been built -small.JPG

And here is a closer view of a section of the top edge:

Oak Filing Cabinets 43 -Close up showing top molding -small.JPG
 
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Thanks Vaughn, Frank, and Royall. Here is a picture of the two cabinets, still unfinished, in what will be their home:
 

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