Modern Woodshop

I’ve been busy lately working on the doll wardrobe project.  As I discussed in Episode 52, this project is a wardrobe designed to hold the clothes and accessories for my daughter’s American Girl doll.  It’s going to be a Christmas present and I’ve still got a lot of work to do.

A quick peek at my sketchbook will give you a frame of reference on what the finished piece will look like.  (Yes, that’s the extent of my artistic abilities… stop laughing.)  The finished piece will be approximately 28 3/4” tall and it will double as a nightstand next to my daughter’s bed.  The three main subassemblies are the top, the main carcass, and the base.  The main carcass will have two frame-and-panel doors.  Inside it will have three cubbies on the left-hand side for removable drawers to store loose items and two rods on the right-hand side for hanging clothes.  The main carcass will be attached to a base with moldings that run around the entire piece, and I’ll attach a top with a slight overhang.  I’m planning to paint this piece: sage green for the exterior and a cream color for the interior.

This afternoon I completed construction of the main carcass.  I’m trying to keep this project inexpensive, so I built the main carcass with some Home Depot birch plywood that was taking up space on my lumber rack.  The box itself is built with 3/4” ply and joined together using rabbets.  The vertical and horizontal dividers are made with 1/2” ply and are joined to the box with stopped dados (they are set back about 3/4” from the front edge).  The back is also 1/2” ply which sits inside a rabbet cut into all four edges of the box.  The back itself isn’t permanently attached yet; I want to remove it to make painting the interior a little easier.  I edged out all the plywood with 1/4” thick poplar.

The glue-up process for this guy was a complete nightmare.  No matter what I did, I could not stop this cheap plywood from warping and twisting.  I broke the glue-up process down into five separate sub-assemblies and I glued them together one step at a time.  In the end I managed to wrestle the plywood into submission.

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how I wanted to attach the dowel rods in the right-hand side.  In the end, I fabricated some wooden brackets (made from some soft maple in my scrap bin) that are glued to the plywood.  The dowel rods can be easily removed if they get damaged or if my daughter decides to repurpose this piece later.

The next step is to prime, paint, and clear coat the interior while I get started on building the base.  After that, I still need to build three drawers, two doors, a top, trim out the main carcass, and prime, paint, and clear coat the exterior.  Yikes, I better get back to work.