Night Stand with Compound Angles

The design for this project kind of came out of thin air. I needed a nightstand and started drawing.

I wanted to break away from the traditional box shape of most night stands and dressers. Additionally, the arches on the legs were inspired by old cathedrals that I’ve visited.

I started with sketches then moved to a carboard prototype. Once I was satisfied with the angles, I built the shell. I used a jigsaw the cut out the drawers on the inside, and a track saw the get the sharp angles on the outside. I mitered the edges to 45 degrees using a routing table.

After I glued up the frame and the top, it was time to make the drawers. These by far gave me the most difficulty and really made my head spin.

In order to have the bottom of the drawer be parallel with the ground, I had to counter act all of the angles of the shell. At the same time, I had to carry the angles into the drawer to make them flush with the front of the piece. The result was drawers with a flat bottom, sides that matched the shell, and a whole lot of compound angles and headaches.

Once the drawers were assembled, I needed to mount them to sliders. The problem was, I had mount the sliders to something. I cut out a flat piece of plywood and secured it for the bottom drawer.

For the upper drawer, I cut out two strips of plywood for each slider and attached them at the back of the shell and along the center divider.

The sliders themselves had to be modified because they were too long. After a little bit of time in the metal shop, they were cut down to size, the ball bearings were replaced, and they were ready to go.

After a lot of shimming to level out the drawers and some polyurethane, I had finally finished.