While the cabinets were being installed I was hard at work making accessories for the drawers. Most commercially available drawer dividers had a few strikes against them. They were either plastic or bamboo (doesn’t match my maple cabinets), they weren’t very adjustable, and most don’t fit the narrow drawers next to my stove. So I made my own. The first trick is to take two thick boards and make four thin boards.
I resawed (cut standing on edge in the bandsaw) these two 3/4″ maple boards to make four slightly undersized 3/8″ boards. After a few trips through the planer to clean up all the heavy bandsaw marks they were all about 1/4″.
I could have tried to glue various thin pieces together to make dividers, but wanted to include 1/4″ plywood as a bottom. It would make the thin dividers a lot stronger to glue along those long edges. I pulled out some silverware and got to settings sizes.
Every edge got a few swipes from my lovely little lee neilson tiny block plane. That thing is perfect for knocking down sharp corners. Once I had all the dividers in place for a particular drawer I applied expert and professional clamps until the glue dried.
Drawers full of spatulas and cooking spoons needed backup in the rear to keep them from leaning, so I used a short segment to shore them up.
I had planned to divide out our junk drawer and a drawer full of odds and ends, but that doesn’t appear to be feasible. Entropy will reign supreme in those drawers for the time being. I did however get all the heavy use drawers near the stove well organized.
As a bonus I had extra thin cut maple left over. I want to use this stuff up quickly. At these sizes and with it being flat sawn, it will cup and bow quickly. At work we stretch regularly using a deck of cards with different stretch moves. The box the cards came in was complete junk. I thought having a two sided card caddy would make transport and use easier.
The cards are in a tray at an angle to keep them from falling out when carried. As you do a stretch the card moves from the face down side to the face up side. Eventually you get through all the stretches, shuffle everything and start over.
I took this as an opportunity to try two new things. The first was liquid hide glue. I have been hearing a lot about this (very old) product recently. Long working time, reversible and low visibility under finishes made me very interested. It was a fine glue, I will be using it more. The next was my new pin nailer. It worked miracles on my quarter round baseboard molding and did a great job sneaking pins into this thin stock. The pin heads are only somewhat visible on the flat sides. It wasn’t the best usage case, but I like them a lot. They kept it clamped and are much lower profile than brad nails.
I was 99% sure that all it really needed was a new hot end. Not sure what happened to the last one, but it would jam up no matter what I did. Monoprice of course doesn’t sell new ones, and I didn’t want some cheap knock-off. I didn’t realize it when I first had this problem, but it turns out E3D makes a “lite6” version of their famed V6 for half the price. It can only do PLA and ABS, but that is all I ever wanted anyways. Step one, remove old hot end with extreme prejudice.
Next a length of pipe acted as a down spout. I start with only this downspout, but the pellets came out too quickly from the drop. They would hit the bowl and go everywhere. The bunnies didn’t mind the game of 52 pellet pickup, but some pellets would escape the fence.
I could now work on the small pantry without any fear of getting in the way of cabinet installation. It would give us a place to put back some of our boxed junk and help out in minor cooking adventures at Kitchen Base Camp. I went with adjustable wire shelves and wired an under-cabinet light in the top that goes on with the lights over the stove. Some basic molding happened on the inside, but most will wait till I can do everything after the cabinets are complete.
Kilted Craft Works 