Thanks to everyone who voted for me and helped me win a
Deluxe Mobile Tool Cabinet Prefinished Ready-To-Assemble (RTA) kit, from
Western Dovetail.
The kit arrived in 3 boxes, with all the components very securely packaged.
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| Unboxed RTA kit. |
Once I removed the parts from their packaging the true quality of the components became clear. The prefinished Birch plywood components looked great and had very crisp and clean dovetails, and the Maple butcher block top looked amazing.
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| All Components unpacked. |
I started by assembling the cabinet with a hammer and a block of wood to protect the cabinet's surface.
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| Cabinet with all but bottom assembled. |
Once the cabinet was fully assembled, I used pipe clamps to securely hold it together while the glue dried. I placed cardboard between the faces of the clamps and the wood and under the pipe to protect the wood and the cabinet's finish.
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| Cabinet assembled and clamped. |
After the cabinet I began assembling the drawers, taking extra care to make sure they were square. The following picture shows the assembled cabinet and drawers.
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| Assembled cabinet and drawers. |
Next I installed the drawer lock strip and drawer slides into the cabinet. This was made particularly easy since the initial 2 holes for each drawer were already drilled.
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| Cabinet with drawer slides installed. |
Now I set about installing the butcher block top, the wheels, and the cleat for the lock.
I really liked the method used to install the wheels. First cleats were made of 4" wide birch plywood with holes drilled to accept the bolts for the wheels' brackets, then 2 of the 4 holes for each wheel were also drilled through the bottom of the cabinet, with 2 T-nuts for each wheel on the cleat and 2 T-nuts in the bottom of the cabinet. This meant that you attached the cleats and the wheels with the same bolts, and made this step an absolute breeze.
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| Installed wheels, butcher block top, and cleat for the lock. |
The top of the cabinet also had large diameter holes to attach the butcher block top using provided truss head screws and washers. The use of larger holes will allow the cabinet to deal gracefully with any shrinkage differences between the birch cabinet and maple top.
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| Finished cabinet with out drawers. |
Now I installed the drawers, making sure that they were aligned correctly and working smoothly before putting in the remaining screws into the drawer slides.
The cabinet is beautiful and extremely well made, and was very easy to assemble using the kit. Given the quality construction and easy modification (since it is made of wood) I can't recommend it enough.
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| Fully assembled tool cabinet. |
I would like to thank Max Hunter, the president of
Western Dovetail, for having the contest and congratulate him on making such a great cabinet.
