Hope everyone got their toilet paper
But seriously, hope everyone is healthy. Neither my wife or I are able to work from home yet due to the nature of our jobs (although my company is working on a solution).
Despite that, I've been busy!
BOOM!
I've been able to get the top on, and get all the drawers mounted. After a LOT of repetition and steps, this feels like a big accomplishment to me. I still have a ton left on this build but looking back I can hardly believe I've made this thing during evenings and nap times.
Before sealing it off I added some cleats in the middle cavity for some future shelves:
Take a square to the top or look inside and you'll see some dirty little secrets:
Spoiler alert... all my drawer slides are working well, but these pics illustrate exactly why I'm making this bench. Building square cabinets is hard. Especially without an accurate means of squaring the cuts, or repeatability. I feel like if I had this bench to make this bench, most of my errors would be eliminated.
Drawer pulls are cut with crosscut sled for repeatability:
And fastened with the mighty pocket screw:
Not sure anyone is interested but this is my process for drawer slides. Start at the bottom, and use a combination square to get the slide aligned with the front of the cabinet (or set it back a bit if necessary). These I went flush.
Each slide sits on spacers to ensure level and exact spacing both sides:
Then with the "height" and "depth" set I hold it in place and carefully mark the screw positions with a scratch awl, and then pre-drill and screw in place:
1/2" plywood as a spacer to set the height of the next drawer:
Attaching the slides to the drawers, I clamp a stop block to the drawer face so the slide has something to register to to get it flush:
And then same thing, awl, drill, and screw in place. Slide the drawer out further, and repeat on the middle holes. For the rear holes, I remove the drawer at this point and put the last screws in on the workbench.
All these spacers are a bit tedious to calculate, but it makes the end result/process fairly easy.
And yes, the Systainer lids open fully while in the drawer, but just barely!
So that's where I'm at! Hope you enjoyed this little update.
