An advent calendar in Proofgrade Medium Cherry Plywood (mostly).
I accidentally used one of the sheets of cherry I’d been saving for this project, so I ended up making the drawer bottoms out of Maple Ply instead (and using every scrap of cherry I could scrounge up to make enough drawers). The much-improved camera alignment I’ve been seeing lately was a huge help in getting the most from my scraps.
I really wanted a clean look on the front with a continuous grain pattern, so the drawer fronts and face frame are cut from a single piece of plywood. The face frame hides the dark edge of the cubby dividers and the drawer fronts hide the details of the box construction.
The drawer fronts are glued to the front of the boxes. I had originally planned to put a “false back” on as well, so that the drawers could be reversed day-by-day to reveal a scene or design, but as I prototyped it, full-size backs didn’t slide in & out well and smaller backs didn’t look good, so I abandoned that idea.
Your attention to detail with the front really paid off. I love how it has the continuous grain pattern! Plus, the font you used is really fancy, but still simple. How is that possible?! Nice job.
Great design, and details are perfect! I really like the cherry for that.
My Daughter is asking me to make her a ‘tea box’, which will be very similar to this. I have taken your lesson on continuous grain and the face to cover edges.
Thank you for sharing that fine piece of work!
It’s amazing how much difference a font can make. The very first thing I did in designing this project was to mock up the front and try it with a bunch of different fonts. I narrowed it down to about eight and cut drawer fronts from draftboard to see how they’d look (at the same time, I tried multiple “decorations” around the numbers, from completely plain to elaborate scrollwork). It was evident immediately that the showy font/simple decoration combination would be the winner. This font is called Algerian. I’m not a particular fan of the font as a whole, but those numerals are gorgeous.
Yes, this design is all mine, though it’s a pretty straightforward boxes-within a case design. More of a “simple plan, well executed” thing than anything groundbreaking. In my opinion, that beautiful Proofgrade Cherry is the real star of the show.
Did you ever do the scene on top? I’m looking for a pattern to make an advent calendar for my grandson! Is the template available to share or purchase?
