I’m sure I’m not the only woodworker who enjoys creating something that’s relatively simple and challenging that will serve a purpose. I love the challenge of making furniture and picture frames but this had some techniques not usually used and would be useful — enter the bathroom drawer tray! I have some leftover Beech which was resawn from furniture projects that required 8/4 material, the pieces were approximately 3/8″ and 3/16″ thick.
The first step was making the tray, it measures about 1 1/2″ x 7″ x 12″ and is 3/8″ thick. Hand cut, dovetailed construction and the bottom was rabbeted for a 1/4″ plywood bottom which was glued into place. No pictures on that but same process I always use. To house the lapped dividers the first step is making mitered pieces that fit snugly; these will eventually be slotted for the dividers. Begin by cutting them on the miter saw but slightly over-sized. They are fine tuned for a snug fit with my Donkey Ear miter jig. If you’ve never seen or used one of these I really like it. Unlike a typical miter shooting board this allows you to hold the piece on either edge so that should there be any tearout you can plan for it to be on the bottom. Some time ago I posted a blog about it — here’s a link to that post.
After those mitered pieces fit snugly on the inside of the tray it’s time to cut the slots and ends so the dividers slot together. To figure out how to space them I made a full size drawing and laid the items out on the drawing and took the measurements from that. This picture shows the tools I used. First off was a Japanese Dozuki saw that has an adjustable depth. I used that during my Kumiko building phase — much cleaner. accurate, and quieter than a tablesaw! The depth gauge was set to the thickness of the wood which is slightly less than 3/16″. The 1/8″ chisel was used to remove the waste. A line was first drawn to locate the divider. Next, a scrap of the divider material was lined up to the line with a small square so the other side could be penciled in. Those lines were cut to the depth set on the Dozuki saw and the waste was chiseled out, any needed fine tuning was done with chisels.
Holding and cutting these thin and small pieces isn’t easy. I took a scrap piece of wood and cut in a notch. The notch is slightly deeper than the needed depth and is wide enough so the the depth stop has room. It was clamped between bench dogs and the pieces are held firmly while sawing. As you can see, adjoining divider members are taped together to be as accurate as possible. After all the pieces were cut and dry fit they were lightly sanded and given a coat of Osmo #3043.
There’s a number of parts and they need to be assembled in a specific order. I don’t use glue, if your mitered perimeter pieces are tight it’ll hold together without any problem. To start place #1 in first and lock it into position with #2. Next, slide the short divider #3 into #2 and lock them in place with #4. The #5 piece locks across #1 and now the mitered piece #6 locks everything into place. Follow this with #7 and finally #8 is what could be called the Keystone which locks the entire assembly into the tray. When you put in numbers 6,7, and 8 you’ll find you need to push them into the tray evenly. This is where getting a good tight fit with the miters is important.
That’s about it, fun project to make and helps to maintain my hand tool skills. Used the table saw and planer to rip to width and surface to thickness. I aways use hand planes to remove planer chatter marks. The miters began with a miter saw but were fine tuned with the Donkey Ear shooting board.
Woodworks by John 