My goal in the beginning was to make a giant spider with a thorax and abdomen that functioned as a chest of tiny drawers. I don't know why. The cavity for the drawers was central from the start, and I glued up a massive, rectangular cube of wood around it, leaving the cavity open in what would eventually be the front of the spider. I made a stand , about three feet tall, with a cleat that fit the cavity, so as to have some way of securing the cube at a workable height while I shaped it into something like a spider's body, and also to hold it in roughly the same position in space that it would occupy when finished.