i'm Brad Rodriguez from Fix This Build
That and today we're building a nightstand with a secret drawer i've been fascinated with secret drawers
for a long time one of my favorite youtube channels is chris ramsay where
he solves puzzle boxes i just love all the little mechanisms
and moves there so this is the first of what i hope to
be a whole new series on putting hidden compartments concealment drawers and
other puzzle features into my projects now the nightstand is a pretty basic
piece so i'm going to blitz through a lot of the build process i'll focus on some tips and tricks but mainly the secret compartment
and you'll see some of the fails and struggles along the way as i figured out
my first secret drawer with a hidden release mechanism
i used walnut plywood with mitered corners and a dadoed center divider for
the cabinet it's very similar to the computer desk
that i recently made so you can get all the details on assembly over there if
you want to check that out but here's a little montage of what i
did to get to the glue up where i had my first setback all right i got all those pieces
together and i put the splines and everything to a test fit
you always want to do a test fit when you're doing something like miters that
have a lot of moving parts before you do the actual glue up
doing this pre-assembly is the way to go and as they say the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry the glue up didn't quite go as smoothly as the test fit no ahhh not a good time to come apart yes that was the corner clamp exploding
into four pieces now applying the glue also took longer
than expected and so it's setting up out of square don't do this to me
and i couldn't make it move back good thing i did that test fit oh i'm gonna cry on camera what is going on mistakes were made all right it's the next day and i took
this out of the clamps and it actually was not
as bad as i thought it was i was kind of having a little bit of a
meltdown don't do this to me to my credit it was after midnight and
uh you know that's what happens there are
some gaps down here luckily it's this bottom right here the
top does have a little bit of gaps but i
think we can close those up and be okay all in all i think we'll be all right
i used the screwdriver trick to close up the gaps as best i could
and i filled them with sawdust and wood glue until they looked passable
for the drawer fronts i used solid walnut i didn't have boards wide enough
for the fronts so i did a couple small glue ups to get the pieces
and while the panels were drying i also milled up some walnut trim to cover the
plywood edges i used my milling machines from jet the
sponsor of today's video and i can't stress enough how awesome it
is to have the right tools to take rough lumber
and turn it into any size or thickness that i want you can check the links
below in the description for all the jet tools that i used and a big thanks to
jet for supporting my channel i love the epoxy inlay on the computer
desk that i built and i wanted to use that same design
except scale it up a bit for this build the last time i didn't need the design
to be too precise but to make the hidden release button i
had to make it perfect so that would work and look seamless
i used sketchup a 3d drawing software to draw out a grid of intersecting lines
and then i overlaid the wallpaper design and i deleted the lines that i didn't
need until i had the design that i wanted now
from there i brought it into easel the software my inventables x-carve cnc uses
i set all the cut lines to an eighth of an inch deep for the lower drawer front
but for the upper drawer i chose one special diamond piece
a rhombus if you're fancy and i set it to cut all the way through the board
just leaving two little tabs to hold it in place i fired up the x-carve and i
cut the bottom drawer front while i went back and cut the edge banding to size the bottom drawer front came out awesome
so i set up the cut for that upper drawer front and let it go while i glued
on the trim the top drawer worked perfect too and
you can see the cutout going all the way through here now before i started on the
project i did make some small test pieces on the cnc
now i had no idea if a movable wooden piece would work or not with the epoxy
inlay or if i could keep it spaced correctly
so that you couldn't tell that it was there
so i tested several ways of wrapping and spacing the pieces
i poured in the test epoxy and i let it dry overnight to see what worked best now some of the inserts came right out
that actually moved nice and one it did not budge at
all wow that is not budging at all but i figured out the best approach was
to wrap the piece and tape and put eighth of an inch wooden spacers
in with no tape on them now i was ready for the main event with
that real drawer front these came out really nicely off the cnc
i did just a little bit of cleanup now what i'm going to do is prep
these for the pour i'm going to pour them both at the same time
i'm going to take this out i'm going to use the method from the testing earlier
i'm going to wrap it in tyvek and then put the spacers in there
to be buried into the epoxy and hopefully it should all go well
i'll get these prepped and then we'll get started pouring i started prepping
with a little rhombus wrapping it's got four sides all of equal length
no actually i i just put tape around the rhombus
one thing i did here i didn't before was to put some paste wax
on the outside of the piece to help it release easier
for the poor i use total boat high performance epoxy
with a slow hardener and some light blue pigment and while the epoxy was curing i
switched over to the base for the nightstand
i wanted a clean but sturdy look so i went with 14 gauge steel square tube
now it's a simple design with short legs attached to an apron on top
and after a few quick cuts and some grinding i was ready to weld
i've got a lincoln powermig 210 mp which makes adjusting for thinner material
easy with the push of a few buttons i
typically use thicker 11 gauge material because it's more forgiving to weld with
but i went ahead with a thinner 14 gauge material just to reduce the weight a bit
i'm still working on my welding but i feel like i'm getting better every time
i even added some feet caps to the square tube from some scrap plate that i
had instead of using plastic feet i ground down all my welds which still
took some doing and then i sprayed on a couple coats of primer
and metallic gold finish i love how the gold came out
and i painted the drawer pools the same color too it's a pretty cool look
the base is all welled up and painted i have been avoiding
working on these because uh honestly i am a little scared about how this whole
thing is going to come together in the button and everything
but it's time to jump in i'm going to go ahead and plane these down and then
start working on the mechanism fingers crossed i took off the tape and
i ran them through my planer and everything was looking great i was a
little worried that i was going to jar the piece loose so i did finish off
sanding by hand now to make the hidden button look
seamless i needed to make sure that it sat flush to the front surface
i decided to use the x-carve again before i removed the piece
and to route out an eighth of an inch deep recess across the back of the shape
extending to either side the idea was i could attach a small metal plate
and push that from behind to make it flush on the front
and after doing this part i couldn't wait any longer all right i've waited
about as long as i can let's see how this comes out we've got
the pocket in the back we're ready to go i'm gonna pop out the piece i'm gonna
use a little off cut from the test scrap to do it
oh it's not moving oh there it goes oh yeah oh man it worked it came
out and it is nice and smooth this went actually really well i'm going
to clean it up take the tape off i'm pretty happy and
if this works well i can move on to the drawers
i cleaned it up and it did work well though somehow i missed filming me
sliding it back in there again but it works and then i jumped into making the drawers i cut all the parts for the drawers and
we're gonna have actually three drawers in this we're gonna have a bottom drawer
that is just a normal drawer we're going to have a top drawer that is
gonna be this weird conglomeration of a thing that looks like a normal drawer
but when you push the secret button the secret door comes out
so i have not cut the secret drawer yet to size because
uh i'm not sure about it yet so we're gonna go ahead and assemble the bottom
drawer which will be super fast and easy and then i'll show you what's going on
on this bottom one that's going to make way
for the secret now pocket holes make drawers go together like a snap
i'm using a floating bottom panel in all these drawers which i kind of liked
i might go back to making them this way actually
and here's how the top drawer goes together it's laid upside down here and
you can start to get a feel for the depth of the main compartment versus the
hidden one now the lower parts will be the front
and right side of the drawer i cut the drawer fronts down to size to
fit my design which i'll tell you later why that was a bad idea
but i also cut a plywood front and attached it to the drawer first
i'm going to be using a mock-up this is just a temporary drawer front because
i'm actually mounting the drawer slides to the back
and if it all messes up i don't want to be drilling a bunch of holes in the
wall up front with the epoxy because i don't want to uh mess anything up that
way so i'm going to put these in here and
then build the drawer get everything working then we'll
transfer the real drawer front onto it i installed the slides for the secret
compartment onto the back of the drawer and on that temporary front and after
doing that i knew exactly how big the drawer needed to be
or so i thought i cut the parts to size and i assembled
the small drawer and did a quick fit i got the little hidden drawer in the
best way that i think to install this is going to be upside down because i really
don't have anything to reference off of the bottom
uh so if i put it in here on top of some scraps
this looks like it would work i'm gonna attach it then we're gonna
throw it in there and see how it goes but it's looking good after i attach the
drawer i added in a spring to the back the spring is going to shoot the drawer
out once that button is pushed for an extra cool factor
i just used a small piece of dowel drilled into the main drawer and this
holds onto a spring that fits perfectly over the dowel
and leaves enough room to compress and push that drawer out
all right we are now at the point where i honestly uh
not sure what's going to happen here the spring is working great
i might add another one just to give it a little more oomph but
um i only have this little space in here to make this button work
i'm going to work my way through this and bring it along for the ride see how
this thing works uh or if i can make it work because i'm
starting to doubt myself a bit but let's hang in there i think we got
this i grabbed a scrap of eighth inch plate
steel and i cut out a little piece to fit in the pocket on the back
of that drawer front that we had just cnc then drilled two holes in the back of
the plate and attached it to the button and while trying to figure out how to
push that piece back in flush maleki came in for the sake i was
texting with john and he suggested using magnets to pull it tight
versus the spring idea that i was wrestling with in my head that was way
more complicated i put a couple small magnets into the
walnut and it worked like a charm but i realized i needed a little more
space in that pocket on the back so i cut down the plate to make it a
little shorter i went ahead and mounted the slides in
the lower drawer which were very straightforward since it didn't matter
where they went in that opening but before i attached the drawer front i
realized i still needed to put finish on them
so i took a quick break and i finished sanded the fronts and put on some rubio
pure the blue epoxy really contrasted with
that walnut nicely and i'm really loving the look
and now i could get back to mounting the upper drawer slides which took
a lot of calculating now it's hard to explain here but basically i had to nail
the position of the slides on the cabinet the slides
on the drawer and the position of the drawer front all
within a sixteenth of an inch of total error
i did a lot of checking all right that'll do so i went ahead and
put the side drawer in for a test and we've got issues
i went with an inset drawer design and that was a huge mistake
for a lot of different reasons for the positioning of this
but also the bigger issue is the drawer slide is set back further because it's
an inset drawer and now it's hitting and it will not
come out uh which basically means i'm gonna have to put a shim in there and
remake this drawer so that it will be more narrow
it is also rubbing right here because i wanted to get it as close as i could
here to disguise that line and i'm going to have to also
reduce the height of it so yeah a few things to
work out but we'll keep chugging i
disassembled the drawer and i cut the sides and made new fronts and backs
and honestly this is why i don't glue my drawers i always have a fear that
something like this is going to happen and this little fiasco won't be helping
matters i cut and attached a half inch spacer
to move the drawer slide away from the back of the cabinet so that it wouldn't
hit it and then i assembled the new drawer and
tried everything out again all right
and now it was time for the big show i removed the temporary front and i
attached the walnut front i used the measurements from the mock-up
to position everything for a consistent reveal and by some
miracle i got it perfect on the first go no way oh yes yes yes yes yes i mounted the hidden slide onto the back
of the drawer front as low down as possible to leave as much room for that
button as i could all right that drawer front fits so nice
and now i'm doing the mock-up this is the spring
i'm looking at using to do the release trigger and it's just a very simple
uh strip of thin plywood at an angle dug into the side and what's gonna happen is
that's going to slide in and then you can barely even hear it but
now when it's pressed down that will oops that will no longer allow it to
move forward until that button is pushed it's going to make more sense when you
put it on here but i tried a lot of different harder
options and actually this simple option might work the best
so let's see if it works i laid out where the spring needed to go
based on the pocket location and i transferred that to the side of the
drawer now the spring sits at an angle that's
made by chiseling out a little indent in the side and screwing down the strip
of wood after a little work and some finesse
i had it ready to test fit all right guys this is the first go at
it and uh let's see if it locks in
okay it's pushing it's sliding friction against that which is good it locked it has locked in
so now i got to install it and see if it'll unlock okay the spring is not in there so uh
i'm going to fully extend this and then we're just going to push it and
see what happens okay i'm gonna put the spring in now
we're gonna lock it back oh it's not locking oh cause the thing's
out oh this is the problem the design i can't
get to the button i'm gonna have to oh dang it
how am i gonna reset this i don't think the pressure's strong enough to push the
button back out dang it or it's racking
all right let's see what's going on all right the button was racking back here i
made a few little adjustments it is now locked again now i'm gonna push it
comes out the button is pressed in a bit here
and now watch this yes it works i gotta do that again all right i'm gonna get another spring
so it'll shoot out a little bit more and see if i like that but
but this totally works oh i'm so excited now after i came down
off my rocky mountain high i made a false front for the secret
drawer i had to do a little bit of finagling to get it to fit nicely but
after a little work it looked seamless i finished the rest of the cabinet
installed the base and drawer pulls and this thing looks like
a million bucks the secret drawer is totally invisible even upon close
inspection and that hidden button isn't perfect but
if you're not looking for it you'll never know it's there
and now i've got a perfect spot to hide my most prized possessions
if you want to see more hidden project videos i've got one queued up for you
right there where i hid a wireless charger in my desk now let me
know down below in the comments what project should i build next and what
secrets or hidden things should they have in them
i want to give big thank you to all the folks that have been joining the
builders club and i'll see you guys on the next video
