Five by Five

Wednesday March 29th was another really mild day in Nordegg.  The sun was shining, and the temperature got up to around +10C.  In the evening I went over to the rink in town to see if anyone was going to show up to play hockey.  The ice was really soft along the south facing boards.  About 15 skaters showed up and we managed to play for about three hours... though we had to stay away from the soft edge and played on about three quarters of the ice.  This was likely the last outdoor hockey game of the year.

Earlier in the spring I bought a five foot by five foot sheet of 1/2" baltic birch plywood.  This will be used for fabricating all of the drawers for the cabinets in the guest cottage.  Normally plywood is made 4 feet by 8 feet, but this stuff is made in Europe and I'm told that the 1.5M x 1.5M size fits better into a sea can for shipment.

At the time I bought the sheet I didn't have all my drawer sizes figured out.  I suspected that one sheet would not be quite enough, but didn't see the point in buying two, as the stuff is rather costly... around a hundred bucks a sheet.  So I only bought one, and it has been sitting in the guest cottage until now.

On Thursday March 30th it again made it up to +10C, so I dug out the table saw and went to work on cutting up that five by five sheet of plywood.  I have most of the drawer sizes figured out now.  There are three drawers in the main L-shaped kitchen cupboard, plus two more in the separate section where the microwave oven will be situated.  There is also a sixth drawer, in the bathroom vanity.

I cut up most of the sheet to make the bodies of the drawers.  These strips all needed to have dados and rabbets cut into them, so I was on the table saw for quite a while.  Once these were all done, I used the large offcut to make the bottoms.  As it turns out I had one little scrap left over, and a few offcuts of the body parts, and also managed to cut four of the six drawer bottoms.  I am short two small pieces of plywood for the remaining two bottoms.  But I know I have a few cuttings left in storage in the shop in East Coulee.  These were leftover from the cabinets I built for the main cottage.  Next time I'm down there I'll root around and see if I can scrounge up enough to finish the job.

These are the only pieces of waste I had leftover after cutting all of the parts for all six drawers.  I don't know the exact final size of the drawer for the bathroom vanity yet, and there will probably be a couple more small cuttings once I cut up the last pieces for that one.

While I had the tablesaw out, I also cut up some hardwood.  I had some 1/2" thick maple stock that I used to cut the rails that the drawers will run in.  These can be seen in the photo below, standing beside all the drawer parts.  The next step in the process will be to glue plastic laminate to the drawer bottoms, and then start assembling the drawers.  I have to sand out all this plywood a little, particularly the cut edges, as I want to finish them with lacquer... not paint like the rest of the cabinets.