This chest of drawers project has been in the works for a number of years. It began as a joint project with a friend. He wanted to have a place to store his large collection of CD’s. So we began building a pair of these chests. At that time he lived close by but has since moved over 30 miles away. Unfortunately that has made it difficult to work on this together in the evenings. I know he’s anxious to have them completed so after a long hiatus I continued the work alone.
The case is made of both solid maple and maple veneered plywood. Using both can be a challenge – mainly because the seasonal movement. The sides are 19″ wide by 1″ thick solid maple. The bottom shelf, made of plywood moves very little as the seasons (and humidity levels) change. To cope with this problem most of the joinery is sliding dovetails. You can see evidence of that in the close-up picture of one of the feet. I also used sliding dovetails to join the centered vertical divider is to the bottom shelf and top rails. This is a plywood-to-plywood joint but I still used sliding dovetails, this was mainly for weight bearing.
I added a large yet hidden foot centered under the vertical divider. Each of these cases is expected to hold about 400-500 CD’s, a substantial amount of weight to handle without sagging. The design has a very light look yet can easily support the expected heavy load.
The chests are fairly low being only 22 inches high. They’re 50 inches wide and 19 inches deep. There are 6 drawers in each chest. Each drawer face is 19 x 7 inches.
