What I did on my Summer Vacation

By Bobby Neal Winters

If you want a Bible verse to go along with this column, I suggest Judges 17:6.

Yesterday I finished a side table that I made for my recliner.  I designed it for that very purpose.  I designed a little drawer in it specifically for the purpose of putting the remotes for the TV into.  I know that they will wind up either on the love seat or stuffed between its cushions, and I knew that when I created the design, but I made it as I made it anyway.  After I’m dead, my children and my grandchildren can say that I made that drawer for the remotes as they laugh and stuff the remotes in between the cushions.

But who knows?  Maybe they won’t have remotes then.  Maybe everything will be voice activated.  Maybe the ability to control electronics will be wired into our brains.  

Maybe television will have passed away along with electricity and electronics, and instead of watching TV they will be watching the fire they built to keep the predators away, and my little table will be there to use for fuel.

You never know.

Like I said, I designed this “table” myself.  I put quotes around that because “table” doesn’t quite get it. It’s got drawers in it, so it could pass as a cabinet.  But it’s got a table top on it.

When I say I designed it myself, I am kind of bragging, but if any professional furniture maker looked at it, he would recognize “kind of bragging” translates to “taking the blame.” 

It is a simple design. I started out by making four one-foot by one-foot squares.  I used half-laps to join together wood that was about two inches wide and about one inch thick.  I say “about” because I didn’t measure any of it.  I’d cut the wood from two-by-four studs I bought from Home Despot [sic].

I took two of these squares and made a cube out of them by joining the top square to the bottom square by four 12-inch spindles I’d turned out of the same sort of wood.  This was one of the factors driving the project: I wanted to turn spindles and use them in a piece of furniture.  

I can now take that off my bucket list.

I took the remaining two squares and connected the top to the bottom with four 12-inch stretchers. I cut half-lap dados in the squares and half-lap rabbets in the stretchers, and did the joining that way.  

At this point, there were two cubes with one-foot sides.

I then glued the top one to the bottom (or the other way around it that works better for you).  

Then--and this is very important--in the bottom, I put in my wooden drawer slides.

At this point, every piece of wood I’ve used has been taken from two-by-four studs.  There was possibly ten dollars worth of wood in it.

It then got put aside for a while.

I got involved in making lean-tos for my potting shed.  I learned a good deal more about turning. (Using a wood lathe is addictive.  To me, joinery is to woodturning, as drinking wine is to taking crack cocaine.)

After a number of weeks, I got back to the “table,” and put some side panels on it.  I made my side panels from the six-foot fence pickets you can get for $2 from my favorite DIY store. I milled them up in my planer and on my table saw. They are cheap, but I find them to be quite pretty. 

I glued them into panels and glued them to three sides, leaving the third side open for drawers.

Remember when I said it was very important to note I’d put in my drawer slides?  When I did that, it determined what should be front and what should be back.  

“Should” is such an important word.

When I glued on the panels, I left the wrong side open for the drawers.  I’d set it aside and had forgotten about it.

At this point, everything was glued in place.  There was no going back. On one hand, I had possibly as much as $15 tied up in this project, and I am including glue in that estimate. On the other hand, I saw a way to fix it. 

So I did.

I put in some more drawer slides but in a different way. Not quite optimal, but it pleases my client.

I built the top using some recovered wood given to me by a dear friend.  I don’t remember which dear friend, but I remember the dearness.  Then I made the drawers out of wood I took from a construction grade yellow pine two by twelve. That is to say, except for the bottoms of the drawers which come from plywood that had been part of the shipping package around my new Grizzly bandsaw. (Yes, I am bragging again: I have a Grizzly bandsaw.)

If I have more than $25 worth of wood in this project, I don’t know how that happened.

The tung oil and shellac that I used to finish this project might have cost more than the wood.  They might be worth more than the finished project, but as I said, the client is pleased, and that is what matters.

For those of you who didn’t look up the Bible verse: “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.