El Ocho
Role: Design + Build
Stage: Finished furniture
Year: 2025
Born out of my interest in creating open, visually concise, minimalist furniture without sacrificing strength. Notably the right legs extend from the floor to the top of the cabinet whereby creating a partially open design. The cabinet body and drawer boxes are Baltic Birch plywood with custom 1/8” solid Birch edge banding, mitered at the corners. For easy leveling, the base has adjustable feet attached via threaded inserts.
Design + Parts
Building the cabinet body
The one thing this montage leaves out is the amount of work that went into not only making each piece but also aligning all of the dowel pin holes to create strong, tight joints.
There was a specific order to which this cabinet had to be built making it’s assembly more like puzzle.
61 dowel pins were used to build the cabinet body and it’s base. The dowel pins were glued into receiving holes and provide excellent shear strength between two pieces.
1/4” dowel pins
It’s All About the Base
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Each connection point has three-1/4” dowel pin holes which will make each joint more than strong enough for it’s intended purpose.
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Glue and clamps are applied.
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Notably, one side of the base is “missing”. This will serve as the attachment points to integrate this section of the base into the cabinet.
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Here you can see the “missing” base side was already built into the cabinet body.
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The base and cabinet body fully integrated.
