Jane and John's RV pages
Pull-out table project, page 2
Planning and measuring and more planning and more measuring, etc.
Sometimes in woodworking or metalworking you don't need a high level of precision (depending on the project of course) but this one needed a fair level of accuracy because I was building a box to closely fit into an existing space and I was incorporating drawer slides. So, let's have a look (note: picture descriptions are below the picture.)
And here's our target space
I've learned the hard way to spend a bunch of time in this phase of a project. For really complicated projects, I'll make a cut sheet. For example if I'm building say a cabinet from $60 a sheet of maple plywood, I'll lay out the pieces I need on a sheet of graph paper to minimize material waste. Since I was making the table top and support rails from expensive cherry hardwood, I did take some time to figure out how to cut up my two cherry boards.
The plan was to make a box that will exactly fit into our target space from 1/2" thick MDF (medium density fiberboard.) MDF is a very true and stable wood so it's a good choice for the box and not as expensive as birch plywood.
Box parts are cut and ready for trial assembly.
Here's what the box looks like. There's not much room for error when screwing together due to the 1/2" MDF so I marked for the screws.
Oh well, it was a bit snug. Good fit for part of the way in but the opening wasn't exactly parallel.
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