Nightstand for my grandson, No. 2

This build is a second nightstand for my grandson, to match one I made for him 4 years ago. Of course, this project should be as identical in appearance to the prior as possible.

I went to the sawmill for cherry wood where I secured lumber that I was very happy with. This mill had S3S cherry for just a little extra cost per bd-ft, saving me time and effort. I was able to pick through boards that were 15” to 16” wide, at the usual 8 ft. to 9 ft. long.

I rough cut all the components, then final dimensioned all similar parts simultaneously for accuracy.

Next I made the rail and stylus grooves to mount the back and side panels, after creating the mortises, through grooves on the top and bottom rails were easy to make with a plow plane. The 6 stopped grooves on the 4 corner legs were going to mean a lot of chopping between the mortises at about 25” apart, so I decided to try something. I used the plow plane from mortise to mortise, creating the groove in an inverted arc between mortises. The plow's skate couldn't drop completely down due to uncut ends, except for the middle section at about 15”. This left a short distance, about 4” to 5” each end to chop. After chopping I used an Old Womans's Tooth router to ensure the required depth was the full length.

I then cut and test fit the tenons, and some were too thick, so I used a wide rebate plane to shave the sides. Rather than hold the plane, because I have a tendency to round or hump the tenon this way, I mounted the plane inverted in a vise, and held the rails and pushed them across the plane. It worked well.

The three side & back panels were single board fabrication using the 15” boards. However due to the S3S from the mill’s planer, there were visible scallops that needed to be removed. This I did somewhat with a smoothing plane, but the highly figured grain required using a Stanley No. 80 scraper as well.

Next, to avoid a full cabinet glueup in one go, and ensure the full assembly is square, I glued up the sides individually. In doing this, I made sure each side came out perfectly square. I used my bench dogs and a board in my vice as a 90° reference. My main objective here is to prevent potential cabinet rocking.

Using the same reference edges, I drilled shelf mounting holes in the sides with a jig to make certain that all holes will be in a perfect plain after assembly. It worked, when finished the shelf doesn't rock due to misalignment.

This build was fun and relaxing, taking my time and experimenting with methods of work, like the plow plane for the stopped grooves.

Some of you may have noticed a couple of differences between these two nightstands, the shelf mounting methods and the 3 panels construction. Looking closely at the first two photos you can see in number 1 the shelf mounting had vertical members & clips, while number 2 uses small L brackets that fit into the holes mentioned earlier. Don't know why I did this, but my grandson said he likes the second method better.

As for construction of the panels, number 1 has glued up panels at about half inch thick, and the new second unit used the full 15 inch wide by three quarter inch thick boards with rebate all around as can be seen in the glue-up photo. I resawed the less wide boards for No. 1 prior glue-up, and for this build I was able to make a one board panel using the extra wide boards @ 15”, which are too large for my bandsaw.

Applied finish is Minwax Polycrylic semigloss, easy to apply and clean up. Finishing is not something I enjoy.

Thanks for viewing.