The case is made from birch plywood, trimmed with alder. The drawer fronts, top, and my first attempt at feet are solid alder. The side-hung drawers are 5/8" thick poplar. I used half-blind dovetails in the fronts and through dovetails in the backs. Notice that the drawer sides are cut slightly shorter than the drawer fronts from both the top and bottom; I cut the dovetails with full-height sides and then trimmed the sides. The drawer pulls are from Restoration Hardware.
The drawer boxes are finished with a coat of Zinsser Sealcoat shellac followed by two coats of Daly's satin CrystalFin, a water-base acrylic polyurethane. The exterior finish involved numerous steps: I started by spraying a coat TransTint honey amber dye to even out the differences between the plywood and solid alder, and then sprayed a coat of SealCoat to lock in the dye. Next came a coat of fruitwood WoodKote gel stain, applied by hand, followed by another application of SealCoat. I sprayed four topcoats of satin CystalFin: the first and last two were clear. For the second coat, I added some TransTint brown dye to darken the color slightly.
August 2004.