Sawdust on the Floor

Today I hope to make some real progress on our two “L” shaped nightstands. So far we have cut the rails and stiles for the sides of both nightstands. We also cut a total of 8 intermediate stiles, four for each nightstand. We also made the panels for the sides by resawing 4/4 stock down to 3/8″ and then planing it down to 1/4″. So I think a good place to start today is by assembling the sides of both nightstands.

When you are making cope and stick doors or panels, the assembly is quite easy. There are only a couple of things to keep in mind. The first is that we NEVER glue the panels into place. These need to be free to move. We only glue the connections for the rails and stiles. The second thing to remember is to check for square as you assemble, glue and clamp the door or panel. It is very easy to rack the panel as you glue it up. So I will say it again. Check for square several times.

When applying the glue to the joints, make sure that you get glue on all of the surfaces of the joints. One of the benefits of the cope and stick joint, is the number of surfaces that can hold glue, so why not make use of them. The best way I have found to get glue on these surfaces is to use a small paint brush. From my experiences the best brushes for this purpose are those inexpensive disposable brushes sold in the plumbing department of the DIY stores. They are intended for applying flux to plumbing fixtures, but work really well for our purposes.

It really doesn’t matter in what order you assemble the rails, stiles and panels, just as long as you end up with a panel that is flat, square and the panels are free to move within the tracks. There are really only two reasons that the panels would not be free to move, either they were sized incorrectly or you got glue into the track for the panel. Keeping glue out of the tracks is so important that I will go to the extra step of actually inserting the panels into the tracks after the rails and stiles have been glued and then removing the panels to check for any glue that I may have missed. If there is any glue present on the panels then you need to get back into the tracks and remove this squeeze out. Remember the panels must be able to move within the rails and stiles.

You will want the panels to fit snuggly into the tracks of the rails and stiles. But how snug is a good question. Too tight and the panel can crack when they expand with changes in humidity. Too small and it will rattle in the tracks when the panels contracts. So we are looking for a happy medium. My rules of thumb are that the panels should NEVER bottom out in the tracks, conversely the panel must have at least a 1/4″ of insertion into all of the tracks. This seems to work for me.

Sometimes I will install what are known as Space Balls into the tracks of the rails and stiles. These are soft compliant rubber balls that are designed to compress and expand as needed to keep the door panels centered in the door or panel. The use of Space Balls also can help eliminate the problem of the panels rattling when the wood shrinks. The picture here at the right is a little misleading, the Space balls are inserted into the track, not on top of the panel as shown. While I have used this product in the past, I don’t normally use them on flat panels. The expansion and contraction rates of a flat panel is less then a raised panel door. Thinking about it now, there have been a few occasions where I cut a panel a little too short or narrow and the Space Balls saved me from having to cut an entire new piece.

Once the entire side panel assemblies were glued and clamped and I was sure that they were square, I used a couple of small brads from my nail gun to help lock the joints. If you do this, be sure that the nails are set far enough away from the outer edges of the panel, in case you later have to trim the edges. Then the panels were set aside to allow the glue to set.

In the mean time I cut the base for both night stands from some 3/4″ cabinet grade plywood that I had in the shop. When the side panels are totally set up they will be attached to this plywood platform. I will connect the side panels to the base’s with glue and screws from the underside of the plywood. The outer edge of the plywood base and the outer edge of the side panels will align. The exposed edge of the plywood will be covered later with some decorative trim. But before I get to any of this, I need to fabricate and install feet under the plywood.

The feet are made from 6/4 stock, they are 3″ long by 1 1/2″ wide. Both inside edges are tapered. I used a combination of my miter saw, band saw and sander to make the feet. Once these were done, I connected them to the five outside corners of the base with glue and screws driven from the top side of the plywood base. You maybe wondering why I didn’t use six legs, the answer is simple. I did make six legs, but when I installed the one in the very back corner ( next to the corner posts of the headboard) it looked …. well stupid, so I removed it. So my “L” shaped nightstand stands proudly on five legs.

Back to the side panels. Before installing them, I took the time to give them a good sanding. Paying particular attention to where the rails and stiles met. This surface must be 100% flat for the project to look right. I prefer to use a good random orbital sander for this operation, because This style sander will not leave scratches in the surface when you sand across or against the gain, which happens at the intersection of the rails and stiles. I like to start out with about an 80 grit paper and work down to a 150 grit paper. One more operation on the side panels. I used my Kreg Pocket screw jig to cut pocket screw holes into the stiles that will connect directly to the front face frame. Then I was finally able to connect the side panels to the plywood base.

The next step was to make the face frame for both cabinets. Of all the steps in making these nightstands, this may have been one of the easiest. The top, bottom and two intermediate rails were all connected to the end stiles using Kreg Pocket screws. Once the face frames were assembled, they were sanded smooth and the attached to the side panels, using more of the Kreg screws that ran from the front stiles of the side panels into the backside of the face frame.

Normally when I build a cabinet, I will use a piece of 1/4″ plywood for the back panel. This 1/4″ plywood would be sat into dados cut into the base, and sides during fabrication. However, on this cabinet I wanted to use center mounted drawer guides, instead of the more popular side mounted drawer guides. Center mounted drawer guides are bolted to the cabinet frame in two places. The front edge of the drawer guide is mounted to the top of each rail, while the back end of the guide is bolted to the back of the cabinet itself. I knew that a piece of 1/4″ plywood would not be sufficient to hold the weight of the drawers, so I installed a piece of 3/4″ plywood as a back panel. This piece of 3/4″ plywood was glued and screwed into place along the base of the cabinet. The sides of the back panel was simply glued into place, a couple of 1″ finish nails were shot into it through the side panels to help hold them in place while the glue set up.

Well I’ve got a lot of pieces glued up and a lot of clamps on this thing now, so I think this is a good place to stop for now.

Related posts:

1. Woodworking Project – Bedroom Nightstands Part 1
2. Woodworking Project – Bedroom Nightstands Part 2
3. Woodworking Project – Bedroom Nightstands Part 3 Resawing Panels
4. Woodworking Projects – Hidden Bookcase
5. Woodworking Project – Circuit Breaker Panel Part 2 – Raised Panels