Doll House Furnishings – Phase 16

Continued from:  Doll House Furnishings – Phase 15

I started building the three large drawers first as I planned to add them from the bottom up.  I took this approach on this handmade prototype just in case the last drawer front was too tall to fit the space left.  I could then shave it off slightly.

 My only concern with using hidden shelves was when I went to glue them in, excess glue might get on the drawer below and glue it also in place.  But then I had one of those aha moments.  To prevent that from happening, I would attach a piece of wax paper to the bottom side of the hidden shelf using a glue stick.  I thought it might be hard to get the wax paper back out after the shelf dried but then I realized if I just left it in place, it might make for a more resistant-free sliding of the drawer (hidden shelf is on top of drawer).

In the photo above, you will notice that my back piece is split in half.  At the time, I did not have a 1/8” piece of basswood wide enough to make the back a single piece.  Instead, I used two 1” strips of 1/8” basswood.  Serendipitously, I discovered with the gap, if a drawer got stuck (like it did while building this prototype), rather than trying to pull it out from the front, it could be pushed out from the back with a small piece of wood.  Just another creative scientific discovery by accident!

The next two drawers of the same size went well but when I got to the two smaller drawers, they seemed to not go so well.  In fact, I had to sand the top drawer just on the right to get it to fit which made it look “woppy-jawed” (how’s that for a technical non-scientific term?).  While this is a handmade prototype, with a bit of imprecision, it should look much better when my sister precision cuts the parts with her laser cutter.

The last part to figure out was the legs and brace.  Again, it took trial-and-error to find the right angle and length to cut the four legs.  But once I had them cut and glued in place, I had the finished chest.

While this prototype looks less than perfect, it allowed me to validate the 1/12 scale dimensions that I calculated from the photos online.

These I provided to my sister so she could input them for her laser cutter.

When I went over to my sister’s house over Memorial Day weekend, I discovered she had been quite busy.  Not only had she cut out all the 1/16” cherry wood pieces, but she had applied polyurethane as well.  And she had cut all the drawer pieces from 1/16” basswood.  The only additional pieces we needed to cut were the four legs and the two leg braces which we cut from 1/8” cherry to make them sturdier.

She also showed me her 45° hand sander she had made, and I was most impressed.  She thought it would work great on sanding rigid 1/8” wood but she had concerns trying to sand such thin wood as 1/16” since it flexes so easily.  Prior to cutting out the chest pieces, she made the wise conservative decision to forgo the use of her sander and modified my chest dimensions to use the alternative approach of having the top and bottom overlap the sides.

When I got home and once, I had finished building the bed, I was ready to assemble the chest of drawers.  I still needed to sand off the char and polyurethane the edges where I had sanded.   I also needed to apply polyurethane to the 1/8” cherry pieces.  But having most of the cherry pieces already finished with polyurethane simplified my steps.

As on the prototype, I first glued the top to the left side of the chest.  Once the glue was dry, I set in the drawer fronts to confirm the height of the side lined up with the height of all five drawer fronts.  I could immediately tell I had a problem—the side was too tall.

When I laid down a ruler, I could tell the side was about 1/4 of an inch too tall.

I could also see that the drawer fronts were about 1/16 of an inch too long as they lined up with the edge of the top.  I texted the above photo to my sister detailing the problem.  I pondered what could have happened for the rest of the day and then overnight (when I seem to do my best thinking), I realized I could add up the heights of all five drawers together and compare that to the height I had told my sister to cut the sides.

The summed height of all five drawers came up to 3.50” but looking back at the dimensions I sent my sister, you can see I listed the height of the sides at 3.75”—exactly the 1/4″ extra length.  I had made the mistake.  While estimating the heights on my computer screen, I either overestimated the height of the sides or underestimated the height of the drawer fronts.

The good news was, I could cut the extra height off the sides and cut the extra length off the drawer fronts and make everything fit.  I would also have to cut some off all the drawer bottoms, drawer backs and hidden drawer shelves but these were made from easy to cut basswood.  I proceeded to make the cuts, capturing the new lengths to update my dimension page for my sister.

The day before, while I was pondering my problem, I decided to go ahead and attach the two leg braces…

… and then the four legs to the bottom.

In the above photos you can see I sanded off the glossy finish to ensure a good glueing surface which also allowed me to make the necessary pencil marks to center the braces and legs on the bottom.

Now I was ready to finish building the chest.

     To be continued after a short break…