Sharpening Station starting to look like a cabinet on wheels

 I got surprising little work done on the sharpening station considering I had a long weekend. I ducked down into the shop Thursday night and got the panels sanded before I had to make dinner. It went pretty quick and there weren't any surprises. When I was sanding the plywood - the case top and bottom - I hit the faces where it joins to the side pretty hard with 80 grit sandpaper. This solved my problem with the tight fitting joints. They fit perfect.

Since everything was fitting I added glue to the joints and clamped everything up. Good joinery is awesome and everything came out perfectly square without any fiddling.

Friday I had to work and Saturday I had a lot of errands to do so I didn't get any shop time in. I did however get to Home Depot Friday evening to pick up some lag screws and t-nuts to help fasten the wheels onto the cabinet. Saturday I worked on putting my trailer back together - and promptly broke it again, had a doggie play date, mowed, stopped by a friend's house to help him identify tools he'd pulled out of his dad's basement... I did stuff...

Sunday I got started by routing a lip in the back of the sides so I can fasten a plywood back later. I left room behind the top, bottom and middle divider but I forgot to put a stopped rabbet in the sides. I threw a rabbeting bit into my router and started routing it out. I found the 7/8" edge a little challenging to keep the router balanced on so I added a scrap piece of poplar to give myself a little wider of an edge to follow.

The rabbeting bit didn't quite make it into the corner but a little quick chopping with a chisel made the corners all pretty.

After getting the rabbet for the back done I marked and drilled holes for my wheels. I thought about using t-nuts but realized I'd bought the wrong size. I'd bought 1/4 inch t-nuts but the mounting holes were 5/16 inch. I had 1 inch bolts so since they were going to stick through the bottom anyway I mounted the wheels with 5/16 inch x 1 inch bolts and nuts.

Yup, pretty ugly. I don't remember if I showed the wheels before but those are the wheels I am going to be using in the above photo. Yes, they are light weight and cheesy but this is a small cart so they should be fine. The entire cart probably weighs 20 pounds right now and even loaded up probably wont be over 100 lbs.

Unfortunately I had a surprise while adding the wheels. I was using my socket wrench to tighten down one of the nuts and when I bumped my hand into the side it moved. Gently knocking it with my hand popped the entire joint loose. Apparently I forgot to glue one of the joints in my rush Thursday night. 

Fortunately my glue is pretty runny so I was able to separate the joint just a little then squeeze a lot of glue into the back and let it dribble down to the bottom. A few clamps to bring everything back together and problem solved. Unfortunately I had a lot of glue squeeze out and it kind of made a mess I am going to need to come back and clean up.

This was the end of my working on the case for Sunday. I made some progress but not as much as I had envisioned.

Today (Monday) I went back to Home Depot and picked up some shorter 1/4 inch bolts. I figured I'd try the 1/4 inch t-nuts. On the first t-nut I drilled out holes for the prongs but on all the subsequent ones I just pounded them in. I know I've had problems before with the prongs bending over in the past but that might have been hardwood vs plywood. I was careful and had no problems. I even had almost enough lock washers for all the bolts. I was only short by two and if I remember and it is convenient I'll pick up more and add them before the cabinet gets full.

The inside looks much better with the t-nuts versus the hex nuts. I didn't get any good pictures of them but I'm sure they'll show up again when I start working on the inside of the cabinet.

I'd thought I would use some leftover cutting board to make runners for my drawers. Cutting the first one went fine. I cleaned up the little burrs and the cut edges with my low angle block plane. Unfortunately things started going sideways at that point. The blade started getting hot and was melting the cutting board rather than cutting it. Eventually my Saw Stop detected something wasn't right and shut down. It's a couple of hundred dollars if the brake fires so I figured I'd stop and switch to wood runners. Very sad but they should work fine.

I thought about calling it a day at that point but then I figured I should at least get something glued and clamped so I can have something drying overnight. So I picked some scraps of white oak to make the front trim from, planed it to thickness and ripped and cut it to width and length.

This stage worked okay but it again pointed to my sloppy job gluing the case Thursday night. The top/bottom setback wasn't consistent in all the corners.

It is sad but also relatively easy to fix. I might try using a hand plane or maybe I'll just sand the heck out of it.

This is where I left it for the evening - had to stop to make cheese steak sandwiches for dinner. I'll probably not be able to find any time tomorrow night but maybe I'll get back into the shop Wednesday or Thursday this week.