Thread: embroidery box with 13 drawers

The first row of sliders are being glued in position with drawers holding the slider in place whilst PVA glue sets. Epoxy glue was not used in the finish in case there was a 24 hour handling period involved. The PVA I know from experience means I can put on another drawer set hopefully after 1 hour if fitting setup is OK.
This part of the build is slow going because if everything goes right first time there is 5 hours plus involved, longer if drawers are going to need adjustments to their base to allow a clean slide at each row.



A closer view:



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Originally Posted by jow104

Does anyone know how long after using those two part epoxy glues you can go back to work on a joint without upsetting the glues set?

I've got those 26 sliders to put in and they cannot be stuck in at one session because of fitting.

Exactly what Zenwood said. I use the fast-setting epoxy and leave it 24 hours, especially in the cold weather.

Thanks alexs & zenwood. I went the pva route after all.

Three rows of drawers now fitted and hoping the remaining 4 pieces do not give me any stick. The atmosphere here in Britain is that type of weather that comes about after heavy rains followed by cool temperatures. The dampness is rising but its a cold damp, which I suppose is the opposite to experienced in Australia when the damp rises it gets sticky with humidity.
So the gluing was restricted to the evening session again, and just afew minutes in the workshop machining up the handles for the drawers, which will again have to be done in the warmth of the kitchen later in the week.

However I am feeling very relaxed knowing that I must be approaching the last round up.


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All runners and drawers together with fitted lids are now complete, this only leaves handles and compartments inside boxes .

Two of the runner strips snapped owing to wild grain but were easily replaced by breaking off runners at glued point and then cleaning out remaining strip left in rebate. The runners were cut from some reclaimed teak timber. I reckon good old English oak like the first piece of furniture would have been more suitable with hindsight.

The three photographs attached today show a front, side and rear view and the next insertion to thread should show the completed project apart from the finish which on my past history will be some time forthcoming. I dont mind making pieces but the finish of a piece never grabs my immediate attention and sometimes in the past it might be some weeks before that stage happens.
However it will be a number of coats of shellac and then wax polish applied, no staining is anticipated.
front view


side view


rear view






I did also have a further mishap and severe warning yesterday, I set up my mitre/chop saw to start cutting the 13 handles all to a uniform length of 66 mm and put a stop block on the right hand side of the saw table, in addition I clamped down the lefthand end as my usual practice, when I pulled down the saw the right hand end shot off and has not been seen again. It went off with such force it could have gone through the concrete block walls of my shop.
I want to use the chop saw and not my tablesaw because the cut is much cleaner. Comments and advice on correct usage of chop saw for this kind of cut much appreciated.

I see you have tiled yer workshop John,
pity theres that much condensation in yer shed.

Yes Bob, and cups of tea are so much more convenient.

You need to feed the chopsaw down as slowly as possible.

Originally Posted by jow104

I want to use the chop saw and not my tablesaw because the cut is much cleaner. Comments and advice on correct usage of chop saw for this kind of cut much appreciated.

If you get a crosscut blade for your tablesaw, you will get endcuts that are almost of polished smoothness.

Went out to the workshop this morning and it felt cold, around 1c and frost all around so left it until after lunch and went back in again and then found the frost was thawing off the underside of the roof at around 4c. So what did I do? , I took the day off and went flying. Got out the Cesna and did a flight .

However the day was not wasted because I have solved my problem of crosscutting with the chop saw as per pictures below.





A fixed stop is fixed on the right hand side and then the correct size spacer (cut by hand) is placed against the stop, the length needing cut to this spacer size is then placed against the temporary stop, finally the temporary stop is removed and cut can then be made which will not be trapped. In addition a British member of the woodwork forums recommends a false fence be put across the machine thereby stopping any cut timber sliding into that treacherous gap. By the way the flying trip was made using Microsoft flight sim.

The temperature reached double figures in the workshop today and forcast the same for next few days.

Very messy sort of day which also involved a force start. Handles were eventually cut OK using the setup mentioned previously.



I then proceeded to drill a hole for screw support after handles were cut to both the drawer front and the rear side of handles.



However the wife called in the workshop and said the handle alignment was making her feel giddy. They did not go up the furniture in a straight vertical line.
So the drawer hole was left at its original setting but the handle was top and tailed so that the hole no longer aligned. I then put a bearing stick each side of the handle position,



and put in some old engineering feelers, placed at each handle position to avoid handles sticking to each other and to provide some space between each drawer



Posting a further thread to accomodate more pictures.

Follow on from above thread

screwed a temporary bar across and pushed in a wedge to keep the handle in place whilst glue set.




I did have to resort to the kitchen for the gluing process and a bit of light woodwork like cutting the wedges and screwing on the temporary crossbars so I have shewn the disgraceful mess the kitchen finished in for the evening.



Seeing that the glue takes one hour to set and there are three colomns this is going to mean a second visit to the kitchen again tomorrow evening.

The wife did pop into her kitchen later in the evening, and she said,
“Bluddy H ell” but fortunately the commercial was just finishing on the TV and she was again fully occupied by the boys in blue.

Nearly there

Well the project was started I see the 29th October and 40 days hence I call the project finished, I know, I know, I know it has not had a finishing coat applied or compartments fitted but the woodwork is complete. So I will leave a little while in situ to acclimatize and if drawers continue to operate smoothly I will apply shellac and polish without any stain.

The finishing touches involved a couple of hiccups, two of the handles finished up around 1mm short, but I was able to cut a slice off an waste offcut with the bandsaw and glue on to the top of each offending handle.



In addition two more sliders have snapped (the grain of this teak does not seem to run the length of a strip and consequentially seems to have no guts) I have some oak offcuts purchased from the last Yandles show that was intended for small jewellery boxes so sometime I will cut out the rails and afix new oak runners.

So here are a series of photographs showing different angles of the embroidery box.









Its resting place will be here:



The original box will reside at the other end of the furniture line.



Thanks all for looking, together with all those helpful comments. These all made me stick at the job and committed me to producing what I consider a successful outcome.

looks great John,

what's the next project?

Thanks Bob.

A picture frame for the Kingfisher


and then ...................... the list is never ending.