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