Lateral File

It’s been a long time — over a year, I know. My excuse, if anybody is actually reading this, is that I had a stroke and it took me this long to get my body able to woodwork again.

The project was chosen, admittedly, because it is simple to construct. I needed to make sure I could safely do everything before I commit to something more elaborate. So I decided to get rid of the crappy-looking metal file cabinet in my office and replace it with one that looks like my computer desk.

The materials were an identical sheet of laminate to the computer desk, cherry (of course, since the desk is cherry), and baltic birch plywood for the non-visible areas and drawer boxes. This is a lateral file, so as originally conceived the two file drawers hold the files left to right, giving me more file space than was in my original 24-inch-deep file cabinet (more on this later). The topmost drawer is not for files; it will hold printer supplies for the printer that will sit on top.

Prep went uneventfully, which was a good thing. I had no problem running the 8/4, 5/4, and 3/4 cherry boards through the planer or putting good edges on them. The table saw reduced them to pieces of the right dimensions. and it all felt pretty good. Yay! A little glue-up work and I had a carcase.

(Okay, I didn’t have drawer slides yet; give me a break!)

I also needed a top, of course. Like the desk, I wanted to create an identical edge profile and make the front piece curved. I cut the front piece wider then the sides and then bandsawed the curve into it, For the profile I used the same raised panel router bit that I used for the desk, but instead of using a flush trim setup to trim off the “flat” a went for my low-angle jack plane instead. The work went smoothly, felt a lot safer, and probably took close to the same time as the router would have. I was happy.

Now it was time to make drawers. These are basically baltic birch plywood boxes, of course. The false fronts are cherry. And it was here, in doing the drawers, that I changed up the design a little.

My original plan was to make a classic lateral file. But I realized that if I did that I’d be wasting 4 inches of space at the back of each drawer. My drawers were wide enough that if I ran the files front to back instead of side to side I actually could get more files in rather than waste that space — and until it was full, I could use the space for other things. Hmmm.

With the facilitation of an online driving school, one really buy cialis online doesn’t need classroom teaching for the lessons. Order and select the desired mode of payment Prescription medicines are easy to cialis discount generic come by on the internet, these days. The results suggested that there is no difference in buy cheap tadalafil the effect of both is because they both constitute the same ingredient that helps in the process of impotency curingWORKING :Apcalis comes under a group of medicines called phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors. Night Fire and Mast Mood capsules offer the best ayurvedic remedies to prevent ED in buy cialis line men, improves power and energy levels.

So I grabbed some spare cherry and made inside rails, and grooved the sides instead of the front and back, like this:

Cool. I now have room for 66 linear inches of files in a cabinet that’s only 32 inches wide. Quite a trick.

Next came fitting the drawers to the carcase, which was straightforward. and then applying the false fronts so there was a nice even gap around the edges. I cut my fronts a little large on purpose so I could plane them down to fit by hand.

Then I fastened down the top and applied 4 coats of Arm-R-Seal. When that was dry I applied my hardware and it was ready for the front room.

I was disappointed by the hardware; the pulls I used on the desk were nicer, I thought, but they aren’t made anymore and I only had two left. These will do, but it’s not even close to a match.

Neither is the color, yet. After all, I built the desk 5 years ago and it’s been living in a room that gets lots of sun, so of course it is several shades darker now. It’ll take the file a few years to catch up. But it will.

Aaaah. It’s nice to be back in the shop.

Comments are closed.