My next small woodworking project is making removable drawers to organize my dungeon tiles so that I can start using miniatures in our bi-weekly Dungeon World game. I currently have my tiles in various sized boxes on this very messy kallax shelving unit. Within a single cubby I will create dividers from 1/4″ MDF to accommodate five 2″ deep drawers. Because the drawers are not very big I am confident I can get away with a 1/4″ MDF bottom (floating in a dado 1/8″ from the bottom of the 2 3/8″ high sides, leaving 2″ of depth inside each drawer). I will make the sides from hardwood which I will mill to 3/8″ thickness from the birch or maple stock I have on hand. Really the deciding factor will be whatever species of wood I can get around 25′ out of. I should have enough leftover hardwood to mill 1/4″ thick lengths for the dividers inside each drawer. I’ll notch the front and back of each drawer for easy handling and I plan on making some jigs for all this so that if it works out I’ll do a similar hack for storing my miniatures.
Tonight I sketched out my idea roughly on several pieces of paper and made a cutting/material list. I am going to do box joints on the drawers so basically all my drawer side pieces need to be the full length. This will be my first try with box joints but they look simple enough and I can cut the majority of the material away with the table saw, in fact my dado stack has a pretty flat kerf so I might be able to do them completely on the table saw. I can use a hole saw with a sacrificial block to cut the notches and then router their edges round. That also should be quite simple although it would be better if I had an actual drill press, oh well jigs to the rescue.
For finishing I’ll try to match the brown-black of my kallax for all the MDF pieces, I will pre-paint them before I assemble anything. I’ll simply do a clear coat (rub on poly) on the hardwood. I figure I can attach the inner dividers with glue using pin nails to hold them in place, so I’ll be careful not to finish one edge and tape off the drawer bottoms where the dividers go so that the glue properly adheres . In fact I need to make a cardboard mock-up of the bottom of a drawer and work out how I will organize all the various tiles so that I know exactly where the dividers need to go. I also need to make sure that I can get my fingers into the drawers to easily pull the tiles out.
I plan to do a few build videos along the way. I’ve been itching to try out a video camera on a boom mic stand so that you can see what I’m doing this time. Much as I’d like these drawers in time for our next game night, I think it might take me a few weeks to get them completed. I’m eager though because I think this is going to be a good solution for my miniatures as well. I have a lot of miniatures!
Let me know your thoughts...