Card Catalog

[JohnnyEgo]

My son loooves Pokemon, a trading card game that teaches children it is ok to let your pets fight your friend's pets until one of them is unconscious or dead.  He probably has about 10,000 cards which are kept in the corner of chaos in my dining room:





In what has been the most complicated, and 2nd longest project I have ever completed, I decided to make him a card catalog:


I thought I would have scads of spare time during the pandemic, and then we had the 16 busiest months in the modern history of my employer.  So this one took a while.  I had fond memories of card catalogs in the library as a kid, but it had been a long time since I've seen one in person, so I ended up googling images for inspiration, and then I winged it.  Learned a lot of things about mitered beading, the Domino 500, and box joint making during the process, as well as becoming very familiar with my motley assortment of hand planes and chisels.

Anyways, this thing is made of cherry and sized so it will fit the Pokemon collector boxes and 11 year old fingers will easily be able to get them out.   The bottom drawer holds placemats and card shufflers and the various accoutrements of a semi-pro Pokemon Trainer.  The best news is that even with all drawers open under load, the cabinet is stable and doesn't want to tip.  My son tends to pull the drawer he wants and bring it over to the table, so they slide in and out easily and all the edges are rounded over.

[JohnnyEgo]

Probably the most needlessly complicated part of this was the beaded front.  I had no idea how to do this 'properly', and I still don't.  What I settled for was loose tenon (Domino) jointery and hand carving the miters with a chisel with varying degrees of success.  

I Domino'd all the cross pieces as deep as I could go, and then carved off a substantial chunk of each end on the table saw with a Dado blade.  That got me here:


I've mentioned a time or two before that I do everything possible to avoid taking my sawblade off of 90 degrees.  So the 45 degree donkey's ear jig came out.  I have a brand new blade in with a flat top profile.  Even though it is a ripping blade (few, far spaced teeth), it is new and sharp and I figured it would be clean.  It ended up cutting so clean that I didn't need to cut wide of the miter and trim the chip out away with a hand plane.  Very happy with this.








Then punched a lot of holes with the Domino.







And then the point of no return; chiseling out each joint with varying degrees of success.  The first couple were not great, but I definitely improved with practice.

[MarkSingleton]

That is a VERY cool project.

Your son will treasure that for the rest of his life.

Good on you.

[fredhargis]

Turned out very nice. Just a curiosity question, were the tenons really needed?

[JohnnyEgo]

Not sure, to be honest. My concern was sag over the long unsupported span of bottom drawer once it was fully loaded with cards. I figured the extra gluing surface might help bear the load a little better over time.

[lincmercguy]

Looks nice. Have you finally learned to stop worrying and love the Domino? I've been using mine quite a bit, but have to do some glue ups before I start posting the project.

[JohnnyEgo]

I developed a grudging respect for it over the course of the project. When I couldn't think of another way to achieve what I wanted to with the frame, it did the job. I didn't really like it for the mitered case work. For whatever reason, I found using the fence at a 45 degree angle to be really unwieldy. Harder for me to be sure of where the mortise would be positioned within the thickness of the board, and I liked the ergonomics a lot better when I bolted a 45 degree cut off to the fence. Having said that, I've never really been satisfied with any miter joint I can recall making, and the Domino'd ones at least came together fast and held up good for dry assembly. I'd say our relationship has progressed from pending divorce to begrudging acceptance of reality until the kids are gone.

Yay!




Meh:

[Martin S.]

Well done!

Good dad!

[Halfathumb]

smart idea and you're a great dad. Another heirloom goes in the books!