Sanding, Dyeing, Gluing

(I'm going to try to catch up on logging the work I've done over the past month today, hopefully that's not an April fool's joke).  

So, first the boring stuff.  Sanding took the majority of a weekend and nights during the week.  It was really tedious and monotonous and any other -'ous' word that really just means boring.  There's not really any pictures worth posting on that.  The edgebanding is also complete, the edges are noticeable (or rather no longer noticeable) in the upcoming pictures. 

After the sanding, I decided to pre-fit the drawer slides.  I figured it would be easier to work before everything was glued together.  

Attaching the drawer slides

It turned out, unfortunately, that the drawer was just slightly too wide.  It pressed the wheels of the slides against the rails making it very hard to move the drawer.

Wheel pressed right up against the rail

So to fix this problem I decided to route out a groove where the slide would sit on either side of the drawer.

This groove was less than 1/16" deep but it was enough to fix the problem

Once the grooves were done I re-fit the slides and the drawer moved much smoother.

On to dyeing.  Much like sanding, dyeing took several days to complete.  I used much more dye than I thought I would need and had to go buy more.  (Here's an earlier post about the dye I'm using.) 

Getting ready to dye

The most tedious part was probably trying to get the dye into the vents on the side pieces.  I still need to go back and touch it up.  I chose to dye before I glued anything because I wouldn't have to worry about getting the rag into tight places and, because the dye is water based, it wouldn't hinder the glue joints.  

On to the gluing.  It took me a few days to work out a gluing strategy.  I wanted to break it up into steps so I wouldn't be frantically trying to fit the cabinet together and position all of the clamps before the glue dried.  I should have written the list down because towards the end I forgot one of the steps and ended up doing just that:

First:  Gluing the inner walls to the bottom

Next:  Gluing the outer walls to the bottom

Finally:  Gluing the inner back and top to the walls and bottom

That last picture is when things got frantic.  Trying to fit all of the pieces into the dadoes and clamp it all together while looking out for dripping glue was difficult.  As a result I did end up making one mistake.  One of the inner walls and back did not fit exactly into their dadoes.  I was able to fit them in after the fact using some clamps but because everything else was glued together I couldn't re-glue that joint.  So, begrudgingly, I used a bracket to hold that joint together.  It was the easiest and safest fix at this point and luckily it's in the back of the cabinet so it won't be too noticeable.

The next step would have been to varnish the cabinet, however, I decided I needed a break in the monotony and decided to build the doors instead...