A slow chest of drawers

[Mike G]

Lovely stuff Stephen. Thorogoods? You travel down to near Colchester, do you?

 

[AndyT]

That's looking great and it sounds like it's very satisfying to build.

 

[Dr.Al]

Looking great & it's nice to see the handle being used

:text-bravo:

 

[johnward]

Excellent work Stephen.

John

 

[NickM]

Great job.

 

[spb]

Lovely stuff Stephen. Thorogoods? You travel down to near Colchester, do you?

Thanks Mike. With my cordless workshop situation, my planer/thicknesser and bandsaw live in my mother's garage just outside Bury St Edmunds, which is inside Thorogood's delivery area. I get it shipped there, dimension it, then bring it back here to put together.

When ordering this lot, they said they weren't doing self selection at the moment, otherwise I would have been down there to pick it out myself.

 

[Cabinetman]

Going well Stephen, not easy to get the drawer glued up so that the front is exactly flush with the surround all the way round.

 

[Woodbloke]

There's still a bit of work to do on the front - it's a little proud on the right hand side, but overall I'm pretty happy with that one. Of course, despite having made the slips first of all, I've still not fitted them. I'll get to that at some point, but overall I'm happy enough with the process for that one to carry on and do the rest.

Good first stab at lapped dovetails; not an especially easy joint to get to grips with. If the drawer front is proud as you say on the rhs, it may be because the drawer is ever so slightly rhomboidial, where one diagonal is slightly longer than t'other. When fitting the drawers to the opening, I usually set the front back a mm or so to create a 'shadow gap', or small step between the frame and the front; easy to do by just positioning the drawer stop in the appropriate place. Any small errors are then more difficult to spot 'cos of the shadow gap - Rob

 

[AJB Temple]

That's a good idea.

 

[spb]

That's a good shout Rob - I was wondering about putting a tiny chamfer on the drawer fronts as well to enhance that effect, but haven't really decided.

I think you're right about the box being slightly rhomboidal - it slides in and out smoothly enough, so I think the sides are nicely parallel, the front is just slightly angled to one side. Maybe for the next one I'll make some proper pinch sticks instead of trying to measure the diagonals with a ruler.

 

[Mike G]

........When fitting the drawers to the opening, I usually set the front back a mm or so to create a 'shadow gap', or small step between the frame and the front; easy to do by just positioning the drawer stop in the appropriate place. Any small errors are then more difficult to spot 'cos of the shadow gap - Rob

This is a good tip. I do it routinely now, but any visitor to my kitchen who looks at one of the drawers in a dresser I made, top-lit to highlight the error, will see a drawer where I very much get it wrong. It annoys the hell out of me, and one day, when everything else is done, I'll sort it out. Having the drawer front ever-so-slightly further out at the bottom than the top shows up like a dog's doodahs because of the shadow.

 

[Woodbloke]

.... will see a drawer where I very much get it wrong. It annoys the hell out of me, and one day, when everything else is done, I'll sort it out.

Without fail, these things always do Mike. It probably wouldn't bother anybody else who might not even spot it, but you as the maker know it's there and know it's wrong, so it's gota be fixed I had exactly the same scenario recently with the stand on a display cabinet; the first one I'd made too small and as a consequence it didn't 'sit' correctly with the cabinet above - Rob

 

[spb]

Well, it's been a while since any real progress on this, for a variety of reasons. When we last left off, it looked something like this...



...that's the carcass made, the bottom drawer finished, the rest of the drawer fronts fit to the openings, and drawer #4, as I'd numbered them, had the front lapped dovetails cut.

At that point, health problems kept me out of the workshop for a while, then a new job, and then when I came back to it I found that this had happened:



I discovered that around last November and got a bit demoralised, so decided to do some easier, smaller, things before figuring out what to do about this. However, this piece sitting in the workshop is both a constant reminder that I need to finish it, and also takes up enough space that I really can't take on anything else of any size until it's out of the way. So, a week or two ago I decided to bite the bullet and get on with it.

It wasn't just the pieces I'd cut tails on that had cupped beyond rescuing; about half of my planed stock for the drawers had done the same, if not to the same extent. As things stand I've got enough flat-enough stock for the top pair of drawers, and the back panels for two of the other three. Time to start on those top two while I order new material and wait for it to arrive. With that said, I'm going to do as much as possible in batch making mode, so I started by making up all the slips I'd need - that's five pairs.

Last week sometime I rifled through my narrow oak offcuts and found enough to make 11 sticks, each a relatively exact 10mm wide by 15-25mm high - they'll all be planed flush with the bottoms once fitted, so for now I'm just leaving the height oversized on each of them and restricting my efforts to the other three faces.

Next it's time to dig out the very rough-and-ready sticking board I made for this purpose nearly two years ago, and the plough plane with a beading cutter:



Now, I'm going to be ploughing on both adjacent faces and necessarily going in opposite directions for each cut, so it's not possible to cut with the grain all the time. However, I quickly decided to make sure I arranged things so that the bead - which is the part that'll be visible in the end - was cut with the grain, because of what happened when it wasn't:



...I'm not sure how obvious it is from the photo, but that tearout has basically taken off the entire bead. Good job I made a spare piece. Soon, planing the right direction, I had a set of ten sticks with a bead on them.



Next, I swapped out the cutter for a 1/8" straight one, and set the far edge of the cut to match exactly the thickness of the 1/4" birch ply I have for the drawer bottoms.



Now, working on the other edge means they're too wide - in the new orientation - to put on the same sticking board, so I threw together another one.



And of course, I'm now planing in the opposite direction, so almost all of these are being ploughed against the grain. Luckily, this is the part that'll be hidden by the drawer bottoms



As you can see they're quite scrappy straight from the plough, but a quick swipe on each with a shoulder plane quickly cleaned that up. It was also at this point that the batteries gave out in my worklights, which was a convenient place to leave it for the night and also meant that the final photo is under very different lighting.



The bead section does look a bit fragile here, but it's never going to be under any sort of stress so I'm pretty confident it'll be fine.

Next up, make the two small top drawers. Once those are done, the new material has arrived, and we're back from an upcoming trip to India, I'll have to wrestle with the problem of how to mark a new set of tails from a lapped pin board, with no access from the outside of the joint.

 

[AndyT]

How annoying! I feel your pain.
But it's good to see you back at it and determined to get on with your build.
Grain direction really makes a difference, doesn't it?!

 

[Cabinetman]

Those drawer sides might not be wasted, kept in a garage piled up, the moisture level has varied from one surface to the next. I would put them in stick in the house with some weights on and see what transpires. Fingers crossed.

 

[Mike G]

I'd definitely take those cupped boards inside and see if drying them properly saves the day. If not, have a look at ripping them length-ways then gluing back together. Would this save remaking them?

 

[Woodbloke]

Those drawer sides might not be wasted, kept in a garage piled up, the moisture level has varied from one surface to the next. I would put them in stick in the house with some weights on and see what transpires. Fingers crossed.

I'd do the same but even try an bow them a little bit the other way and see if they recover flat

I'd definitely take those cupped boards inside and see if drying them properly saves the day.

Agreed - Rob

 

[spb]

I didn't mention initially, but when I first saw the cupping I brought the whole stash indoors to the warmest part of the house and it sat there with all faces open to airflow all summer - another delay while I sat and hoped they'd flatten out. Those two sides also now have large splits down the middle after I decided at some point in the process to try clamping them flat.

I'm not throwing them away, but I've given up on them for this project; they'll sit until I need some narrower pieces that can be flattened without planing the whole board away.

 

[spb]

If not, have a look at ripping them length-ways then gluing back together. Would this save remaking them?

I did think about this as well, but with both halves of the joint already cut, I'd end up needing an infill the width of a saw kerf down the middle. In the grand scheme of things re-cutting two sets of tails didn't seem too bad for the sake of getting a better end result.

 

[NickM]

You did say it was going to be slow! I'm glad you're back at it.