Building for Engineers 101

KUBISK Night Stand

After finishing the dining room set for the eldest, it was time to start on the bedroom suite for the youngest. I threw out the question and the design discussion started with a trip to the local furniture stores. They had some general ideas of what they were after, but it was not clear enough for me to sketch anything out. Coming back from the furniture store gave me an idea and it was refined by sifting through hundreds of Google images and emailing ones I thought were close. We finally had a design theme and I had settled in my mind on construction techniques. Then a small casual question came out of nowhere - "Can you cantilever the top?" Wait, what?


This really should have been no surprise, as we all know, engineers are put together a little different than the rest of us. Being one to never walk away from a challenge I set about designing a cantilevered pair of night stands in the cubic design theme we had chosen.

Metal brackets to support the top, with
slotted holes for top wood movement.

The key challenge obviously was how to support the top and make it as invisible as possible, joining end grain, even with dominos would not be strong enough to support even a short 5/4 cherry top. Enter my friend Joey - the machinist. I went to him with my idea and we designed a bracket that would sit under the top and inset into the side. They showed up a week later and as usual they were perfect, I cleaned them up and painted them black to match the hardware and installed them in the base.

Festool Domino Changes woodworking in small Bedford shop...

A test fit-up with Dominos.

Another test fit-up for the top,
 looks pretty level!

To me this entire bedroom suite project was going to be a big one and I have been thinking about the Festool Domino Tool for a while; this project with its rectilinear joinery suited the domino perfectly so I picked one up.

What do I think of it?

In short, why did I not do this years ago? While traditional mortise & tenon has its place, this type of joinery has no peer. It has clearly picked up where biscuit joiners have left off.

As the first pieces of the set, the night stands were for me a chance to work out the joinery on the rest of the pieces, and as such it was a design-build project. The dominoes made test assembly and rework a breeze. Compounding with the top design and making most of this up as I went along, this was a very challenging project - my favorite kind!

Time too valuable to spend it dovetailing twenty large drawers...

First drawer side

Another tool/jig I have been eyeing since it came out last year was the Leigh RTJ400 Router Table Dovetail Jig. Unlike router dovetail jigs of the past  which require the piece to be held in the jig and the router moved over it to create the dovetails, this jig uses a table mounted router. In my view this reduces the chance for driver error tremendously and is much easier to setup and use. I made one of the old style jigs 20 years ago and used it a couple of times, found it too finicky and relegated it to the shelf. I toyed with using it for the drawers for this project but abandoned it in favor of buying the Leigh jig. With only a few hours of fussing I was making drawers like a pro...

Drawers for two nightstands

Of course the drawer design I chose was not straightforward, and this jig is designed to do full height drawer sides and I wanted to have drawer side shorter than the front, allowing clearance for my joinery behind the face of the cabinet. In the picture above you can see on the cherry front the dovetails do not go all the way along the edge. This took a while to figure out, but worked perfectly. I will transfer this technique to the 12 drawers in the chest and dresser.

Building these two stands has allowed me to test out my approach for joinery, drawer construction and design cues, I feel very prepared to build the remaining pieces to complete this set. I think that these two little stands will be as much work as the dresser - with all the sketches and test cuts it took.

In acknowledgement of the square-ish shape, design and joinery combined with the elegant simplicity it brings, we are naming this set KUBISK, which is Scandinavian for cubic - appropriate don't you think??

The Requisite Beauty Shots - after letting the cherry bake out on the deck for a week or so.

KUBISK Night Stands with black edge pulls and change caddy in top drawer.

Another look at a fine set of KUBISK Night Stands