# Nail Cabinet



## BigBadBuford (Jan 13, 2012)

Here are a few pics of a nail cabinet I recently built for my shop. This was built based on the "Roy Underhill's Nail Cabinet" plan that was featured in Popular Woodworking last year. 

I made mine primarily from reclaimed floor boards - my brother-in-law picked them up from an 1860's farmhouse they were remodeling. I believe they are some kind of fir or pine. They took a decent amount of work to clean up - they had a few layers of orange and black paint on them in addition to years of dirt and crud. After removing the nails I used a drawknife to remove the tongues and grooves and then hand jointed the edges. I then went over to the bandsaw and sliced off about 1/16" of each face to remove the layers of paint - I figured this was the safest way to remove the paint without disturbing it since it probably contained lead. After this the boards were resawed and planed to final thickness. 

The main case was hand dovetailed and then shiplapped boards were nailed on for the back. After the dividers were added the next step was to cover the outside of the case with battens to make it look like a crate. It was tough for me to do this since these were some of the nicest dovetails I've done so far. 

Next up were the 21 drawers. Only the fronts were the reclaimed wood, I ran out of wood so I used white pine to make the rest of the drawer parts. I ran into a few problems at this stage. I scored an Osbourne EB3 miter gauge off of Craigslist and started using it - I checked that it was square to the blade at first but didn't notice there was slop in the miter gauge slot. The slop was just enough to throw off the cuts on all 105 drawer pieces. I was going to use a shooting board to trim the parts for fitting - but since everything was cut slightly off it took a lot more work and the drawers ended up slightly short after being squared up. After being fitted the drawers were assembled with nails and glue. This is one thing I would change if I built one of these again. Trying to edge nail into 1/4" knotty pine was tough - even with careful measurement I still managed to blow out a few drawer sides. If I did it again I'd use thicker drawer parts so I could use more traditional joinery.

Finally the mitered door was added. I took the suggestion in the plan to make the case 2 inches deeper so tools could be hung inside the door, but I still need to add the tool holders. The door is pretty light weight only being 1/2" thick so I'm not sure how it will hold up with hammers hanging off of it. 

The cabinet was finished with two coats of amber shellac and a coat of paste wax. I was originally going to use library pulls, but after pricing them out I decided to use the old knobs I salvaged from our kitchen cabinets. 

Now I just need to figure out where to hang it and finally clean up all those boxes of nails and screws I have laying around the shop.

Thanks for looking!

John


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## Mort (Jan 4, 2014)

Looks way nicer than my old divided drawer. And with those big white knobs you can write what is in there with a Sharpie.


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## mako1 (Jan 25, 2014)

Looks very nice.I love that style of cabinets but it drives me nuts going thru the drawers looking for what I need and a label maker or Sharpie just does not get it with that nice of cabinet.
Think I would woodburn some markings on the drawers.


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## bauerbach (Mar 25, 2012)

blackboard paint on the inlays and some chalk. I think it would go well...


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## Travico (Dec 25, 2012)

Hey, that is a pretty good job there!! Nice detailed info also.


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## curtisschafer (Mar 17, 2015)

Looks really good. I think some brass label holders would be a good addition. You'd still know what's in the drawer and it would match nicely.


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## BigBadBuford (Jan 13, 2012)

Thanks for the comments. I'll have to see how it works in practical use, if it ends up being hard to find things I'll probably break down and pick up the card catalog style pulls for the drawers - I figured I could always add them later since they would cover up the holes for the knobs. Since I had the white knobs laying around I figured I'd give them a try instead of shelling out $70 for the other pulls. In the article it said Roy wrote what was in the drawer on the drawer fronts with pencil, but don't think I could bring myself to write on it even though it is just a shop cabinet.


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## mako1 (Jan 25, 2014)

curtisschafer said:


> Looks really good. I think some brass label holders would be a good addition. You'd still know what's in the drawer and it would match nicely.


Good option I did not think of.Like the old library file drawers.That would be the ticket for me.


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