Initially, I planned to use sapele for the cabinet. Unfortunately, it’s 60% more expensive than maple, so I opted for the latter, knowing that I’d have to darken the wood later. Even the maple ended up costing almost $300. Sometimes I wonder how long it’s going to be before this hobby is too expensive to continue.

At least I was able to find the lumber I wanted easily. That wasn’t the case for the drawer pulls. I found some I liked on Pinterest and assumed I could easily find similar ones at Amazon or other online sellers. That wasn’t the case. I found a few U.S. based suppliers, but they sold the pulls only in packs of six or ten, which made them impractically expensive. I did find them at Etsy in the size and quantities I needed, but the seller was in Hong Kong. I had never ordered from overseas and was reluctant to do so. I worried about long delivery times and tariff fees, but I had no choice.

It worked out better than I expected. Shipping wasn’t as fast as it is from Amazon, but it was still less than two weeks. Shipping was cheap ($3), there were no extra fees, and the pulls were very well packed and of high quality.

The story for the legs is similar. I found the perfect set, but they were sold by an English company. I thought I saw that shipping was going to be in the $30 range, which was a lot, but I really liked these legs. Their elliptical cross sections contrasted with the straight lines of the cabinet, and I liked how they were rotated 45 degrees (from vertical).

Unfortunately, our friend (and my wife) thought that 6” legs were too tall, so I needed to find shorter ones. I knew I’d be able to find something similar, but shorter (around 4” tall), but I was wrong. I couldn’t find anything anywhere. Eventually, I found a set of rectangular legs that were also rotated 45 degrees. They were as close as I could get to my first choice, but the seller was in China. I wasn’t quite as apprehensive this time, and the result was similar: reasonable shipping costs and delivery time, great packaging, and good quality.

(As a non-political aside, I placed these two orders before the latest tariff changes. The situation may be different now, for both cost and delivery times.)

For the wing disks, I initially had no idea what to use. It took a while, but I ultimately learned about stamping blanks. They’re thin metal disks in various shapes (round in my case). Jewelry makers use them for pendants, charms, etc. They polish them using tumblers (like rock tumblers) and use a hammer and hardened metal stamps to press letters and graphics into the blanks.

I turned to Etsy again and found a shop named Bopper in California that sells blanks in a variety of metals, shapes, and sizes. Bopper is a husband-and-wife team, and I can’t recommend them highly enough. I ordered 5/8” diameter, 16-gauge (about 0.05 thick, close to the thickness of a U.S. dime) brass stamping blanks. They shipped the blanks the next day, and they are perfectly round, clean, and free of major imperfections. They have the slightest burr on their bottom edges from the fabrication punch, and some have minor surface scratches, but I didn’t sand them or deep-clean them up before use. I just wiped them with a cloth and used them as-is.

For door hinges, I used Blum self-closing Euro-style hinges. For drawer slides, I used Rockler Centerline full-extension 75-lb. slides. They seem comparable to the Accuride slides I’ve used in the past.

Finally, for shelf pins, I usually use 1/4” dowels. This time I found 6mm diameter metal shelf pins with a flange in the center. (I learned about them from RyanGi’s Router Bit Storage Upgrade project.) I don’t have a 6mm drill bit, so I used a 1/4” bit. The pins are slightly loose in the 1/4“ holes. Some finish always makes its way into the shelf pin holes, and I thought that would be enough to make the pins fit snugly.