Today we're making a valet tray with hidden wireless charging
and a secret drawer
I loved figuring out the hidden drawer on the nightstand
I just built
oh yes yes yes yes yes
oh it's not locking
today i'm scaling things down and i'm gonna make a locking mechanism that
takes two moves to get it open this one's gonna be a lot of fun and hard
i'm starting my way from the inside and
working my way outward since i'm not exactly sure how everything will fit together
and the exterior and secret drawer will
be walnut but i'm using poplar for some of the inner parts
mainly because i didn't have wide enough walnut pieces for it
and while i'm milling the poplar to size let's take a quick look at the design of
the valet tray it's made specifically for my everyday carry
and it has a spot for my phone my knife my wallet
and a miscellaneous tray
now the left side has a wireless charger
and the hidden drawer is going to be on the opposite side
and it'll have a special locking feature all right we're starting with the
wireless charging portion of the valet tray and this is what we got here
the wireless charger is going to go right in there into it and i'm going to
cut that little recess out on the cnc and also some places for the wires to go
and how to mount this i'll have a link below to this and all the other stuff
i'm using down below in the description so if you want to check that out
but i'm going to take some measurements
and then we can go to the cnc
and get it started
i used the measurements to draw up a
cutting path to perfectly fit the charger and the cords
now the easel software from inventables makes it a snap to do these layouts and
i was cutting them on my x-carve cnc in just a matter of minutes
and maybe i went a little too fast all right guys i just
stopped the car because i am ahead of schedule
and that is the schedule of making mistakes
so if you look down at the piece
it started carving i thought why did the
wire chase not go all the way to the edge
and that's because i centered the design i'm used to carving things
in the center of a design this needs to be offset and cut
exact i'm going to reset it up we're going to have some little marks in here
to remind me that i made a mistake and then i'm going to execute it the
right way mistakes were made early cncs are great machines but
they're only as smart as the operator i relocated the design and i set up the
workpiece correctly and it made short work of cutting out
the recesses for the charger and wires and now that i knew the final size that
interior piece i could start milling up the walnut for
the exterior of the box
the trim pieces came out great and they fit perfectly flush
when i have the bottom quarter inch panel as well as the little
insert there so i'm going to miter those around but what i just realized is that
i need to go ahead and pour the epoxy so that it will be dry tomorrow when i
go to work but i'm actually going to pour two
to two different colors and see which one i like best
i cut down some leftover melamine to make the forms it's nothing fancy here
just a bottom piece and some sides with a divider that's
tall enough to keep the epoxy all in place
just to make sure that it doesn't stick the epoxy doesn't stick
i'm gonna put some paste wax on there before just to help it release because
it's gonna be a lot of surface area so i'm gonna bust into this
and it smells delightfully toxic
but it smells like my grandfather
not that my grandfather was toxic
but you know what i'm saying
so i'm just gonna put it on here and then basically buff it right off
the epoxy pour is only going to be about an eighth of an inch thick
and there will be almost no force on the mold so i decided to use
hot glue and oversize the sheets so that i could cut off the rough edges
to get to my final size i jumped into the pour
using some maker epoxy by my friend jess crow in total boat
and i used that nice light blue color and some orange for another option
go vols
now the next day i jumped into making the pieces that would hold the secret
drawer and define the right side of the valet
box i used some of the leftover pieces from the charging side and i cut them
down to size i marked the middle of the small parts
and i ran a quarter inch groove down each one
this is going to hold a couple runners attached to the secret drawer
and let it slide in and out these turned out really well
the little strip that i'm going to use which was just an off cut of the walnut
fits nicely and slides in there so i'm not exactly sure how this is
going to all go together but i'm going to go ahead and start cutting the miners
to go around the base that's going to hide the secret drawer
and it's also going to be the face of the drawer front so let's see how
that looks i made all the cuts on the miter saw and i used a sacrificial back
piece taped to the fence for clean cuts
i did a lot of test fitting and cutting to get everything just right
and then i glued the trim around the charging section and the secret drawer
guides
and that my friends is what a glue up should go like
next i moved over to the other half of the walnut board that i milled earlier
i made a few quick cuts on the table saw and miter saw
to get all of my parts now i could move on to the rest of the valet tray
all these pieces are going to be for the top frame so i've got a little
mitered frame right here that's going to be the outside i'm going to go ahead and
glue that up here in a second and then pull out the epoxy and start
fitting it all together the glue up of the top frame was super
fast and i just held it together with blue tape
and now that i had a few things drying i could cut down one of the walnut pieces
and carve a monogram on it because monograms
i jumped back over to the x-carve and i let it do its thing with a 60 degree
v-bit and it took less than a minute to carve
this out and it gives me a customized look for the tray
and then i could fit the inner dividers and pour some epoxy into the monogram
and once the base was dry i cleaned up the joints and glue squeezed out with a
chisel this is a wood river socket chisel from
woodcraft i love these chisels and the wooden handle feels great in your hand
now you can get these in thousands of other woodworking tools and supplies
from woodcraft including all the jet machinery that i've been using to mill
up the wood now the planer joiner and bandsaw were a
great combo to get me these walnut parts and i'll be busting out the drum sander
a little later i've got links below to all these tools and thanks to jet and
woodcraft for being amazing sponsors of my channel
and next i cut the bottom for the valet tray from a quarter inch walnut plywood
panel this little panel is going to cover the
entire bottom and conceal any evidence of the secret drawer from underneath
i got the bottom piece cut and that fits in nicely so now we can see how much
room we actually have to work with for the drawer
i am a little worried a lot worried honestly
uh because the room to fit this little spring mechanism for the lock
is gonna be like a quarter of an inch actually even less than that so
i'm i'm i'm a little concerned but i think we can make it work
let's see now this tiny little drawer was another exercise in miter joints
and i didn't do anything fancy for the bottom i literally just sandwiched it
between the pieces and secured it with
glue
all right the box is dry the quick set glue is great and it is a
nice fit check this out
ah but i did have a change of plans because i initially said i was gonna do
a half inch and i was gonna do the spring underneath
but what i realized was that the drawer would literally be
a quarter inch deep so now i have to make the spring mechanism on the back so
i'm kind of turning a little bit on that but i think i've got an idea i'm going
to grab some brass here after i put these on
and we'll start jumping in to figuring out the spring i cut the runners on the
table saw and before fitting them i also secured the bottom panel to the base
now that way i could know how high the drill will sit on top of that panel
but what i should have done is put a playing card or some type of shim
underneath the drawer to lift it off the bottom and making it flush with the
bottom panel caused me a lot of adjustments later so that i
could make it slide smoothly without rubbing
now while those are drying i'm gonna go ahead and move over to the spring
i got some brass this is actually 22 gauge brass
so i'm going to lay out a little like three inch by half inch piece cut it out
and i've never worked with this so i'm gonna see how it works and how much i
can bend it because for the idea i need i need a
little hook in it to come back i hammered the brass flat and then i
used a combination of the hammer again and some pliers
to put a small hook on the end this brass worked really well i was able
to flatten it out as well as get this little hook
and i'll show you why i did it here i'll give you a little close-up of this of
what it looks like but the idea is that i'm going to have
the drawer i'm going to have a little piece i'm going to put on the back
so that it will have a little place to catch on so the drawer will come in
catch on to the spring and then i can hit the spring from above
the release and it'll shoot the drawer out
that's the idea at least but now i need to shape this piece as well as the base
and find out the angle of the spring i'm thinking this is going to work though
i used the brass hook to estimate how big the cutout needed to be
on the small locking piece and then i started chiseling away
i didn't like my first attempt so i switched to the other side of the strip
and it turned out much better when the brass hook fit well in the cutout
i stopped and then i chamfered the other side and cut it to size
now i can position the brass piece on the charging side and put the drawer in
place to figure out the angle i needed to mount the brass at
after i got that i chiseled out the spot for the release and glued on the locking
strip to the drawer
i switched back to the epoxy and i had some issues with the pores
on the first one i didn't mix the maker epoxy per the directions
and it didn't cure hard like it would have if i had mixed it for five minutes
versus two and on the report it cured hard but i realized they didn't use
nearly enough pigment to actually hide my secret drawer
yes you can see my hand right through it so i mixed the third batch and this time
i bailed on the orange because i didn't think it would be dark enough
and we probably won't have a football season anyway so
we're gonna de-mold this and see what these look like
i can already tell this is way darker oh man
that is super super dark i think that is that is
completely opaque yes all right this is going to work you just have to dump a
ton of pigment in uh if you don't want to be able to see
through it at only an eighth of an inch thick i cut the epoxy sheets down to a
bit larger than the box and if you thought my epoxy struggles
were over you're wrong
i mean seriously i might just turn this into a fail channel but after i settled
down a little bit i was able to glue the little piece back
after sanding it down and putting some epoxy on it now but let
me know down in the comments are your projects as big of a train
wreck as this one has been for me so far before attaching the epoxy i needed
to get the brass release and drawer spring squared away
all right this drawer is not quite attached to the front yet so i'm going
to butt it up against the front and then slide the spring in and see
where it catches which is basically right there at the
end just do a little hole here and drill in
place
now the release wasn't engaging at first ooh does
not lock but after a few adjustments i got it working
all right here we go
oh yeah all right i've got the little brass catch in there adjusted where i
think it's going to be just right and i'm going to grab a spring
this is what i think i'm going to use i'm not going to quite attach it yet but
let's put it in here just to give it a little pressure
and see if it locks yes it locks now locking is the easy
part let's see if it unlocks so this will
you'll see more about the unlocking in a minute but hopefully if i press down on
this it should just pop
out yes yes yes yes yes okay perfect now
before i mounted it i saw that the drawer was racking because the spring
wasn't centered so i grabbed a few different springs
from the assorted pack that i bought and i tested them out using one on each
side now some of these would be great for launching the drawer into
lower orbit but i found a couple that were less aggressive
i didn't want to bury them too deep and reduce the spring power
so i hot glued them in some shallow holes that i drilled on the base
with a few adjustments and some wax runners this will be
exactly the right amount of force perfect i locked the drawer in tension
and then i glued on the false drawer front to complete it
and while it was drying i prepped the epoxy sheet which i went for the bright
blue as you can see here now the pore wasn't exactly level so i
ran it through the drum sander to get it consistently flat
and then i finished sanded it up to 220 grit after that
all right at this point now i can attach the epoxy top this thing is all ready to
go and then we'll sand everything flush and
attach all the top pieces but before we do that we want to make
sure that the wireless charger works i'm going to go ahead and hook this
up i've got a little recess in here so i'm going to put this on top and
there's a little piece underneath that's actually holding it up against the top
so moment of truth
all right fast charging perfect excellent yes all right the wireless
charging is gonna work uh so now i feel comfortable attaching the epoxy top
and i'm going to do that with epoxy i used a slow setting epoxy to glue the
blue top onto the wood and i made sure to leave it a little
proud around every side so that i could sand it back flush
after a night in the clamps we were in business there was a little rubbing on
the drawer as it opened so i cleaned it up with a card scraper
to hit any high spots then i sanded the epoxy flush with the
sides and i also scraped down the monogram while i was at it
i attached the top frame with ca glue since it would cure fast and it's going
to let me continue to work and not have to wait overnight
after 15 minutes in the clamps i flushed up all the sides using a block plane
and as soon as i saw wood and epoxy come off together i knew i was flush
i got everything tuned up and flush is looking good
final sanding will take care of the rest of that so now i'm going to put in the
monogram and the pieces or at least two of them
then we can work on the release mechanism which is the final part of the
project i used a right angle square to attach
the monogram and dividers to match the layout that i designed but
i left the horizontal divider loose since it's literally the key to the
secret drawer all right this last part is going to require
substantial precision i'm basically going to be taking this little piece
and putting some nails in it and drilling holes through the epoxy
so uh one side of the nail will be longer and you pull it up
flip it around and when you push it down it'll release the drawer i got this idea
from dustin pinner he had a cool release on
his secret drawer that did just this so i'm going to try it and we'll
see if it works but i think we can do it i practiced getting these holes right by
hand and it was a mess to line up so i made a jig to help
me out and it fits exactly in the large opening
and it has a groove right where i want the divider to go
i drilled holes through the jig on each end of the divider and i used those
holes to guide my handheld drill bit through the epoxy
then i removed the jig and put the divider in there and drilled holes
halfway through the piece to hold the pins
if i'm being completely honest i was totally impressed with this solution
i feel like i negated at least one or maybe two of my earlier screw-ups with
this jig i took some finished nails and i cut
them down on my vise with a hacksaw to make the pins for the divider
after cleaning them up with a file i was ready to do a test fit
all right i'm gonna put the drawer back in here
all right now we're gonna go to the unlocked position first and well we're
just gonna see if this fits first of all i should have been sitting
at this seat the whole time this is much better oh come on come on
come on
all right oh it's a little tilted oh dang it it doesn't look perfect
but we're not perfect now i'm going to flip this around here's
the long edge the long one and when i push it down it
should open it should open
oh it's not long enough the pin is not long enough
all right i'm gonna make the pin longer uh and then we're gonna make it work
just a little bit longer hopefully it's not still too short all right let's put
this in here and here we go
ah yes oh okay let's push down so then to set it back you got to put it
in there and then i should be able to close this
oh my gosh that's hidden
it's hitting the drawer bottom all right i could do all right well
i'll put something on the spacer but this is working
or this is it we're going to call this a success i'm going to build up the spring
a little bit so that this can hit it without hitting the drawer bottom
but
and i'll probably smooth this out a little bit so it shoots a little bit
further because it's way cooler if it shoots further
i added a couple little pieces of wood to the back of the release to build it
up higher and it worked out great and then i did
some final sanding and applied finish the epoxy and walnut really came to life
together and i'm loving the look now this was really a fun project to
work through a release mechanism and locking feature that i designed on the
fly the double move key feature also means
you can't just unlock it by mistake poking around for a button
and now i have a valet tray fit for jason bourne
if you want to check out more videos with hidden features i got to play this
queue up for you right there let me know down below in the comments
what are some things that i should build i'm looking for ideas on my next hidden
project i want to give a big thank you to all
the folks that have joined the builders club and i'll catch you guys
on the next video