Designing and Building A Modern Credenza – Woodworking

All right, this is going to be a big one, so let’s just get right into it. Strictly speaking, in 99.9% of situations, a trapezoidal box is probably going to be less efficient than a rectangular box. There’s always going to be inaccessible spots within the cabinet itself, and it’s pretty unlikely that it’s going to make the most efficient use of the space in the room, and yet here we are. So after I had all my pieces of plywood for my carcass cut to their approximate final dimensions, I started cutting the bevels on the casework. You might remember the video I put out a couple months ago where I went over how I achieved this, but I’ll go over it again here.

Hmm.

Basically, I’m going to want to end up with a trapezoidal cabinet where the sides England at 15 degrees off of 90 so 105 degrees or 75 degrees, depending on how you’re looking at it. I achieved this by setting, my blade wants to 37 and a half degrees and making half of the cuts with the work piece of vertical like this. Oh [inaudible] and the other half as you normally would with the piece flat on the table. If it’s not making sense, check out that other video. I go into more detail there. I’ll link it below.

One of the problems that I ran into was it the bottom piece of my cabinet, which is about 55 or 56 inches long, is actually more than my table saw can handle. So to solve this, I cut the bottom piece in half, made the bevel cuts and then glued it back together. You’re never going to know that I cut the bottom piece in half unless you were looking at the finished piece from the back, the underside or the inside after removing the bottom drawer box. So pretty much unless you share your dirty little secrets on youtube, you’re the only one who’s ever going to know

good.

Once I had all the pieces perfectly cut to size, I moved on to a bit of joinery in the case where it before gluing the whole thing up, I used the hand router to cut to data’s into the bottom piece. That will eventually hold vertical partitions for support and for a couple of drawers

then I use the data blade to cut a rabbit along the backs of all four pieces for an eventual back panel

Finally, I tilted the data stack to 15 degrees to cut a data that we’ll end up holding a shelf everything ready to go? I moved on to the glue up to get things started. I use the tape method too to hear the top and two side pieces. You can see that I was gonna use Domino’s at one point for this, but I didn’t like the way that things were lining up, so I abandoned the idea

next, I used a few band clamps to put the bottom on and really pull everything together tightly

Once that was dry enough, I moved on to the vertical partitions. Now you remember that I cut data’s in the bottom piece, but not in the top. The reason is that it’s actually really tough to precut those datas and get them to line up perfectly once the case is assembled. When you’re working with a trapezoid. I’ve done it in the past, but I wasn’t using drawers, so it wasn’t as important that they’d be perfectly aligned. There was a little more wiggle room. Instead here, I tried out something new. I glued my partitions into the bottom Dado and then made sure that they were at a 90 degree angle and clamped everything down. Then I just got a few little pieces of scrap walnut and glued them in to the front and the back on both sides to prevent the partition from being able to lean one way or the other. Again, these are only going to be visible from the underside because there’s going to be a face frame that’s going to cover them eventually. Speaking of the face frame with the case, totally out of the way, I turned my attention to the hardwood portions of the building, namely the face frame in the base.

Once I had figured out where I could get all my pieces from, I started cutting things into oversize blanks. I started out the Microsoft

then jointed rep, and a whole lot of planning. The holy quadrennium of milling stock.

Okay.

For the face frame I was basically cutting those same angles that I’d used on the case only now instead of bevels I was cutting miters which is actually quite a bit easier. So I dialed in my angle on the table, saw cross cuts line and basically just worked my way around the entire unit. Cutting an angle marking the opposite end cutting yet going on that piece and then moving on to the next one and repeat it.

Okay.

Next I started working on the base. The base is made of four legs and two cross braces. All of the pieces are joined together with half laps. I’m sure I’m going to have trouble explaining it here, so hopefully having this drawing will help you kind of keep things organized and understand which parts I’m talking about. I started by cutting out the four legs. The angle, the outside of the leg is 15 degrees, but the inside is kind of unknown angle. I wanted the leg to go from an inch wide at the bottom to three inches wide at the top

so I marked down a line and then put my work piece on this tapering Jake. Basically you just line up the marks he made with the outside edge and then you’re ready to go. So here you’re literally watching me use this Jig for the first time ever. I’ve had a bunch of people comment on my past videos saying that I needed to get a tapering Jagan I got to say they could not have been more right when I used to make legs, I would refer them out on the bandsaw and then clean them up either on the edge sander or the joiner. I would conservatively say that this method has cut my production time in about a third and the results are actually better and more repeatable. Next I roughed out the shape of the cross braces by cutting them to length and leaving them with a 15 degree angle cut on their ends.

so with the six pieces that make up the base cut to shape, I started laying out the joinery so I found that the best way to do this is by actually clamping the pieces together and marking out where everything hits rather than trying to base it off measurements. It’s also a really good idea to make some kind of mark that distinguishes what side needs to be cut and what side doesn’t. For cutting my half laps, I started with the leg because that’s the easier cut to make. I pretty much just set my miter gauge to 15 degrees and it was ready to go because the leg is going to end up at an angle of 15 degrees and this leaves a half lop. That is parallel to the ground for the cross brace to rest it here I’m just double checking things as I go. Then I moved onto to the half laps for the cross brace. This part’s a little tougher. The angles that afer mentioned, unknown angle that was created by the inside taper of the leg. So what I do here is lineup. The marks that I made with the miter slot in my table song. Then I clamp it down and put my miter gauge fence up the workpiece to match the angle and lock it all down so that I can just repeat this cut four times.

The last thing that I had to do before I could assemble everything was probably the hardest cut of the whole base. That’s the half lap that joins the two cross braces together. You guys know that I’m a big proponent of marking things out, so whenever I’m confused on a cut, I kind of just start drawing as many guidelines as I can on it. I find that the solution usually reveals itself to me while I’m doing this. That’s kind of what you see me doing here so that I can get the pieces to join as closely to their centers as possible. I worked it out and figured that I was going to have to run it across my dado blade at about 60 degrees, which is a pretty steep angle as you’re gonna see.

No.

Then once I felt confident in my marks, I made the cut

after I test fit the cross braces and knew everything was good, I could kind of breathe a sigh of relief and let my guard down a bit.

Okay.

Keira, Morty, sing out some spots for figure eight desktop fasteners. You guys just see me use these before about like a hundred of them about a year ago, which should last me a good long time. Funny Story. So after all the attention to detail that I paid and making the base actually got careless here and installed the clips on the opposite side from the one that I had wanted to. Now I could’ve just as easily switched up my game planning using what was going to be the front as the back, but I really liked the side better. And again, you can’t see the clips unless you’re laying on the ground, so I just went with it. I guess the repeating theme of this build is don’t look at it from below. Also don’t let your guard down too early.

Okay.

I want to take a second to acknowledge all my patriarch supporters new to the list this month. Art Allen, Steven Mutable, and the five js, Jim, Justin, Jason, James and Jack. I know I say it every month, but seriously janky. If you want to find out how you can support the show too. There’s a link in the description and as always, no pressure

if you’re not already, make sure you hit that subscribe button so you can stay up to date with all the new videos that I’ve put out. You had some really big stuff planned for this year and you’re not going to want to miss it. So give it a click. Next week gets thrown around pretty often is that form follows function roughly meaning the look of something should be dictated by its purpose. So then is a trapezoidal box contradictory to that sentiment? I’d say no it isn’t and here’s why furniture can serve all sorts of different purposes, but at the end of the day, the best pieces should do more than just offer a place to put your things or rest your legs. They should say something about who we are and make us feel something when you look at them. In other words, an object’s primary purpose or function. Does it always have to be about maximizing utility? Sometimes it can simply be looking good. See you next time. Special thanks to Rottler for sponsoring this video. In the description, there are links to all the products that I used. Check them out and see what they can do for you.