Chest of drawers for (impending) son


bgreenb

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My wife and I have a son coming to us at the end of April.  When we first found out she was pregnant, my mind went wild thinking of what I would build for him.  My daughter is almost three, and building a toy chest for her was what initially got me into woodworking, so that build has a special place in my heart, and I wanted to do something similar for my son.  I had initially settled on a crib, but my wife wasn't crazy about the idea (not for safety reasons, but for stylistic - she has very strict ideas of what a crib should look like apparently), and I kind of came around to the fact that I wanted something that would be in his room for all of his childhood (and eventually in his adult home), rather than a crib that would be in his room for a couple years and then in our attic.  We didn't have a dresser for him yet, and I have never done a case piece before, so I thought doing a chest of drawers would be a fun build and a learning experience for me.  I'm very excited about this build for all the sentimental reasons you'd expect and for all the woodworking reasons you'd expect.

 

Anyway, after searching online for sample chests of drawers and some discussions with the wife, I decided to build something very similar to the one featured in this FWW article:  

 

http://www.finewoodworking.com/woodworking-plans/article/cherry-chest-of-drawers.aspx

 

(subscription required for the article but you can at least see a picture of it there).

 

I'm altering a few things.  First, I'm using curly maple instead of cherry.  I've never worked with curly maple before, so I'm pretty excited about that.  Second, I'm doing five drawers instead of seven - the top row will have two drawers and the bottom three rows will be one wide drawer per row.  Truthfully this is because I hate making drawers and don't see the use for all seven.  Third (and this is only apparent if you read the article), I'm going with a center drawer guide system, similar to what Marc does in his chest of drawers guild build(s).  The reason for that is that this will be a heavy use item as opposed to a "show piece", and these drawers will see a lot of action, so I'd like to make sure the drawers have a little extra engineering built in to make them run smoothly (rather than relying on a perfect fit in the drawer pocket).  

 

I'll also probably make a few stylistic changes along the way, with profiles and whatnot.

 

This project will have a number of "firsts" for me:

 

- First case piece

- First web frames/drawer guides

- First use of curly maple

- Going to try experimenting with a new finish (more on that later)

 

I am actually already a few weeks into the build, but it took me a while to start getting photos uploaded and whatnot, so I'll be breaking the build down into a bunch of posts as I get pics uploaded.  Sorry in advance for the crappy quality iphone pics (and for my wordiness - I tend to use a thousand words to say what could be said in like 50).  

 

The main purpose of this journal is that it's a formal way for me to catalogue the build in hopes that my son will actually care to read it someday (if woodtalk is still around, god willing!)  If others follow along and enjoy it as well, all the better!

 

On to the build:

 

I ordered (most of the) curly maple from Bob Kloes at Kloes custom furniture (http://www.bobkloes.com/) at Ace's recommendation here.  The ordering process was a pleasure - Bob is a great guy and we went back and forth quite a bit about getting the best bang for my buck.  The one downside is that it wasn't cost effective to ship 8' boards unless I was ordering 500bdft, so I ended up having him cut them shorter, which has led to a lot of waste.  I probably wouldn't do it again unless I were buying enough board feet to justify the 8' boards.

 

Anyway, I got the wood stickered and stacked right away and gave it a couple weeks to acclimate to my shop:

 

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Next, I rough milled everything and stickered it again overnight (the poplar is for the case bottom and "sub top"):

 

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Then I started setting up for the case panels.  Here's a pic of one of the sides dry arranged:

 

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I jointed the edges on my power jointer and then cleaned them up in pairs using my brand new lie nielsen low angle jack plane with a 50 degree bevel blade.  Man this tool is a PLEASURE to use (you'll see that as a running theme in this build).  The edges came out smooth as glass and mated perfectly to each other.

 

 

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I cut slots for dominos for alignment.  The dominos I'm using here are much bigger than necessary, only because I was too lazy to change the bit from the last time I used it.

 

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All case parts arranged and ready for glue up:

 

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This really going to be a neat build and you're on the right track with some great looking lumber. It looks like you have a plan, but if you need some pointers and are a guild member, Marc is currently building a chest of drawers and a night stand. Looking forward to following your project.

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Thanks bushwacked - I've been following your dining room table build - I hope this journal is half as entertaining and informative as that one!

Haha well thanks. It wouldn't be if all these amazing members wouldn't have contributed their knowledge! Plus I like to ask a lot of questions

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This really going to be a neat build and you're on the right track with some great looking lumber. It looks like you have a plan, but if you need some pointers and are a guild member, Marc is currently building a chest of drawers and a night stand. Looking forward to following your project.

 

Thanks a lot KC.  I am a guild member and I've reviewed the videos from Marc's previous chest of drawers build (and am co-opting the drawer guide system from that build).  The guild has been invaluable in every build I've done.  

 

Congrats on the family addition! Great start on the build!

 

Thanks TIODS!  I'm hoping that my son (as well as my daughter) will want to spend time with Dad in the shop eventually.

 

I'll be following this build! i can't wait to see the curly maple with finish.

 

Thanks Pat.  I'll get into it later, but I plan on a lot of experimentation with finish here.  I keep going back and forth between just throwing on old faithful (Arm-R-Seal) and trying something new.  Definitely gonna do some test boards with popping the grain before putting down oil/varnish.  I'm also considering experimenting with lacquer as a topcoat to give the piece a little more repairability given that I expect the "client" to be rough on it.  It also unfortunately kind of depends on the weather.  If I do lacquer it will be sprayed, which I can't really do until it gets a little warmer around here - which at this point seems like it might happen around the fourth of July.

 

Wood this beautiful will hopefully look great no matter the finish.

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After milling up, domino-ing, and dry fitting the main case panels, it was time for glue up.  This was kind of a good news/bad news situation.  The bad news was that the average temperature around here has been something like negative infinity degrees, and my shop is not insulated or heated.  The good news is that I am in the midst of re-doing the finished part of my basement, which is insulated and heated, and I haven't yet torn up the old carpet.  This means that I can use that room as a glue up room without worrying about making a mess or incurring the wife's wrath.

 

There were four main panels to be glued up.  Two side panels, a bottom panel and a top panel.  The bottom panel will obviously never be seen other than the front edge of it.  The top panel will also never be seen (other than the front edge) because I'm using this top panel as a "sub top," with a real top to be built later.  I'm deviating from the plans in this respect, as the plans allow the case dovetails to be seen from the top, whereas I didn't want visible joinery to interrupt from the beautiful curly maple.

 

So the top and bottom panel each have a curly maple board for the front edge and poplar for the rest.  I actually over-used curly maple here in terms of width (I really only needed a small strip for the front edge), but I didn't buy enough poplar to make up the whole width of the panel, so I had to use 4" or so of curly maple on the front.  Bit of a waste, but I used the most unattractive pieces I had.

 

So here are the four panels being glued up in my basement:

 

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One of the side panels:

 

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That side panel fully glued up and back in the shop:

 

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I squared up the ends of the boards using my new (reconditioned) TS55.  Another tool that is a complete joy to use.  As an aside - I fully recommend the festool reconditioned sale.  I bought my track saw at 30% discount, which implied heavy use of the tool, and it was basically brand new.  I look forward to picking up a sander and dust collector at this year's sale.  You can see here what I was talking about above in terms of "over using" curly maple because I couldn't make up the whole width of the panel with poplar.

 

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After cutting the panels to final size, I cleaned them up and flattened them using my new drum sander, the supermax 19-38.  Another incredible tool.  My mind has run marathons thinking about all the ways to bring this tool into my work flow.  For now it just helped with cleaning up the glue lines and taking these curly maple panels down the last 1/32" or so of milling to clean up the tearout from the planer.  Awesome tool that I highly recommend.

 

IMG_5280_zpsp29a6htx.jpg

 

Panels cut to final size, stickered and stacked:

 

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(You can see the baby monitor in the bottom left corner of that pic...my daughter did her job and took a nice long nap so daddy could finish his case panels).

 

I'm happy with the way the panels turned out, and three of the four didn't move at all after milling, but one of them cupped by a solid 1/8", which is annoying and something I've been dealing with while cutting joinery and gluing up.  Ideally I'd cut the panel joinery and get it glued up ASAP, but with a day job and other responsibilities I'm wondering how others deal with this issue.  It's nearly impossible to complete a project without some downtime forcing you to leave panels/parts sitting around like ticking time bombs waiting to move.  Ugh.

 

Anyway, next up case joinery.

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When we left off I had all four case panels glued up, cut to final size, and ready for joinery.  There were two stages here.  First I had to cut the case dovetails.  The top and bottom would be joined into the sides with half blind dovetails to create a clean look on the sides.  This led me to my first "hand cut vs. machine cut" internal debate.  I have a leigh jig, which is probably one of my biggest regrets in terms of tool purchases.  Don't get me wrong, it's an awesome jig, and I think it's by far the best of all the commercially available jigs, but it was probably one of the first five tools I bought, because I wanted to dovetail some drawers in a hall table, and I can now think of 10-20 ways I wish I had spent the $600.  I should've just made myself learn to cut them by hand.  But I was impatient, had nothing in the way of decent hand tools (saw/chisels), and wanted dovetails, so I pulled the trigger.  

 

Anyway, I decided to go with machine cut for the case dovetails because there are a lot of them and they won't be seen anyway.  Looking back I wish I had done these by hand for exactly that reason - it would've been good practice, and who cares if they didn't look pretty?  As always, I'm an idiot.  It would come back to haunt me later as I attempted hand cut dovetails on the bracket base and it was so disastrous that I cut new parts and went back to my leigh jig.  More on that later.

 

But anyway, I'm prepared to accept my penance for going machine cut.

 

The dovetails went pretty smoothly with the leigh jig:

 

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And a dry fit revealed a perfectly square case:

 

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At this point I moved on to the internal case joinery.  The drawers will be supported by traditional web frames.  The side pieces of the web frames will be supported (unglued) in shallow 1/8" dadoes in the case sides.  They will be tenoned (glued) into the front rails, which are sliding dovetailed into the case sides (also glued).  They will also be tenoned (unglued) into the rear rails, which will also be sliding dovetailed (glued) into the case sides.  So as the case sides expand/contract, the tenons connecting the short rails to the rear long rails will be able to move in and out (insert innuendo here) freely.

 

I was very nervous about this internal joinery because there are so many parts that all need to fit together seamlessly to create a perfect drawer pocket.  And the fact that the rear tenons would remain unglued meant that I had to get the fit dead on so they weren't rattling around.

 

In any case, after a bunch of layout, I created this jig out of scrap plywood to act as a series of straightedges for my router:

 

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I then set about routing the shallow dadoes.  I used a brand new 3/4" straight bit, but even with the brand new bit I got pretty fuzzy edges (it was a simple 2 flute cutter, not a spiral) that I had to clean up afterwards.  I then used a dovetail bit to do the dovetail sockets on the front and rear without moving the jig.  Here's the result:

 

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And a side view:

 

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Very happy with how this part turned out.  Next up, web frames.

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Looking good!  You may want to run a router plane through those dadoes if your panels are cupping.  Not as necessary as if you'd cut them with a dado stack on the TS, but even the base of a router can prevent them from coming out dead flat.  You don't want no bulge in those case sides! :)  And that makes your panel flatness issues moot...as long as your joinery is all flat and square, everything will be pulled together flat and square during glue-up.

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Looks great so far. I use router cut dovetails myself, no cause for shame ! If you have the time to practice and hand cut them that's great.

 

Thanks Steve!  Yeah quite honestly even if I had time to practice I'm not sure I would.  I can't think of anything more boring than drawing 20  lines on a board and trying to saw to them.  That probably says something about me as a person, but so be it.  My shop time is so limited that when I'm in the shop I want to be building something.  Still, wish I could do hand cut dovetails...maybe someday.

 

This is coming together really well. You do nice work. Im sure this piece will be in your family for generations!

 

Thanks shaneymack!  I certainly hope so!

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Looking good!  You may want to run a router plane through those dadoes if your panels are cupping.  Not as necessary as if you'd cut them with a dado stack on the TS, but even the base of a router can prevent them from coming out dead flat.  You don't want no bulge in those case sides! :)  And that makes your panel flatness issues moot...as long as your joinery is all flat and square, everything will be pulled together flat and square during glue-up.

 

Thanks Eric.  Do me a favor and walk me through this though, I'm not quite sure I follow.  Since the side rail of the web frame won't be glued into the dado, how would it do anything to pull the case side flat?  (As an aside - I don't own a router plane but it's definitely my next hand tool purchase...)

 

As it happens your advice was prescient and I wish I had posted this build sooner.  I'm about a week ahead of what I'm posting here (will probably get this journal caught up to real time today or tomorrow), and the case is fully glued up.  Sure enough, one of the case sides bellies out in the middle.  It's a tiny amount - probably 1/32, so I'm planning on just taking it down with my jack plane to get it flat on the outside of the case.  Inside shouldn't matter because the drawer will be sized based on the front opening anyway (and the guide will make it stay true).  What a pain.

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With the interior case joinery done, I set about building the web frames.  There were two stages of joinery here.  First cutting the tails for the sliding dovetails on the ends of the front and back rails, then cutting the mortise and tenons for the side and center rails.  

 

First I clamped up a dry assembly from which to take measurements:

 

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(You might notice that that the bottom of the case says "top" - After futzing around with the dry fit I decided to swap the top and bottom for aesthetic purposes.  That's one nice thing about using the dovetail jig - all the parts are interchangeable.)

 

I then set up to cut the tails on the rails.  Clamped a wide piece of MDF to my router table fence and made it into a zero clearance insert, then added the featherboard to keep the workpiece tight against it since the workpieces are so narrow there isn't much room for my fingers.  I also used a marking gauge to slice the fibers where the shoulder will be - I've found that this is necessary to avoid the "fuzzies" along the shoulder.  After a LOT of test cuts I got the fence in the right position.  I've been salivating over the Incra LS system and might end up buying one in the future solely for this purpose.  I love using sliding dovetails and find it incredibly frustrating and difficult to get the fence in the right position.  Otherwise I love the JessEm setup, but I wish they had some kind of microadjust feature built in to the fence.

 

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All the front and back rails fitted and in position:

 

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I then cut the parts for the side and center rails (all poplar) and marked out the mortise locations on the front and back rails.  An eagle eye might be able to spot my first major screwup about to happen in the second photo - it will become more obvious later in the post.

 

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In cutting the mortises I had first intended to use my new used Powermatic 719 mortiser.  Got it from a neighbor a while back and hadn't had the chance to put it into use, so I decided to try it here.  Unfortunately I got through two mortises before deciding that I had to spend some more time tuning up the machine.  The mortises were coming out pretty ragged and the bit was definitely deflecting (some of that probably due to the hardness of the material).  So I ended up just widening those mortises by hand with a chisel (that's why you'll see two mortises wider than the others in this photo).  No big deal but something to keep in mind for cutting the tenons - I'll need two different setups there.  I cut the rest of the mortises in my usual manner - router table, spiral bit, square up with a chisel.

 

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Here's where my screw up becomes obvious.  Sorry for the blurry photo.  If you look at the two rails on the left (these will be the top rails, and they have two additional mortises because there will be two drawers side by side), you'll see that the second set of mortises (when moving away from the viewer) is much closer to the end than they should be (they should be centered between the end mortises and the center mortises).  Really not sure how I screwed that up when marking them out.  The funny thing is that I didn't even notice until I went to do a dry assembly.  As I'm assembling everything, moving from bottom to top, I'm thinking to myself "wow, this is the smoothest dry assembly I've ever done - everything is fitting together perfect...oh sh*t!"  Easy fix though, I just cut pieces to fit them, glued them in, and re-cut the mortises in the proper locations.  Nobody will ever know except me and the Internet.

 

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I cut the tenons on the side/center rails using my table saw and a dado stack, then I put some work in with my brand new LN rabbetting block plane.  My god what a great tool.  I finally understand what people mean when they say "piston fit tenons."  I've never had tenons that fit this perfectly.  I used the dado setup to get the tenons so that I could almost but not quite push them into the mortises, then I took one pass on each side of the tenon with the block plane (two in a couple cases) and they fit like a glove.  Here they are:

 

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At this point I sanded all the interior surfaces up to 180 to get ready for glue up - once again three cheers for the drum sander.  These are all flat and straight parts so I just ran everything right through up to 150, then did 180 with the random orbit.  Not too bad.

 

Next up case glue up.

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Since the side rail of the web frame won't be glued into the dado

 

Sorry, didn't realize that...clearly it makes no difference at this point anyway since you're all glued up.  The dovetailed stretchers should have been enough to pull flat any bow in the case...the router plane would have eliminated that bulge...or you could have left the web frames just shy of full dimension to be sure it didn't push out the sides.  Since they're only captured in the dadoes it wouldn't have made a difference structurally.  You're doing a great job...carry on. :)

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Sorry, didn't realize that...clearly it makes no difference at this point anyway since you're all glued up.  The dovetailed stretchers should have been enough to pull flat any bow in the case...the router plane would have eliminated that bulge...or you could have left the web frames just shy of full dimension to be sure it didn't push out the sides.  Since they're only captured in the dadoes it wouldn't have made a difference structurally.  You're doing a great job...carry on. :)

 

Thanks for the encouragement!

 

I see what you're saying now.  If I had been gluing the rails into the dadoes, then as long as the dadoes were consistent depth, the clamping pressure would've forced the bow out and the glue would've kept it that way.  Oh well, live and learn.  Shouldn't be too bad to take the belly out by hand.  I probably need the exercise anyway.

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Next up was cutting the drawer divider for the top row.  I don't have any pics of that but it is sliding dovetailed into the sub top and the first front rail.  I used the same setup as all the other sliding dovetails.  The tricky part was the length of the piece - I had to make very sure that the rail (only a 2.5" wide piece) wasn't flexing at all such that I would make the divider too long or too short.  I ended up being very cautious about it and I cut a scrap block of length matching the distance from the rail to the top on each side, then I clamped that block between the rail and the top in the center, ensuring that the distance between the rail and the top was exactly the same across the whole length.  Then I took measurements directly between the bottoms of the sliding dovetail sockets.  Hopefully this paragraph made sense.  The scrap block probably wasn't necessary but I learned this lesson the hard way when cutting a similar drawer divider for a desk I built in the past that ended up a bit too long because of a bowed rail.  Ugh.

 

Anyway, this led to my final dry fit before glue up.  Shockingly everything came together very smoothly.  The tenons on the side rails fit right into the mortises on the front rails, and then the back rails slid right in, mating with the rear mortises on the side rails.  Easily the smoothest dry fit I've ever had.  Almost no adjustment/fine tuning was needed.  Yes, I'm breaking my arm patting myself on the back.  Anyway, final dry fit:

 

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So then it was back to the basement for glue up time.  This was very stressful.  It was an incredibly complicated glue up, and I decided to do it all at once because the front and back rails contribute to keeping the case square, and I was worried that if I glued up the case without the rails it might end up slightly out of square and I would have a hard time getting the rails in.  Then I was worried that if I glued in the rails without all the other web frame parts, something would shift a little bit and make it harder to get everything together later.  I know I could've just dry fit the rest of the parts while only applying glue to certain parts, but I was worried that the more I kept banging this thing together and apart and together again the more likely it would be that I would screw something up.  So here are my supplies - lots of clamps, lots of glue, some persuaders, a couple squares, and some acid brushes.  I organized the web frame pieces by row for easy access.

 

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The dry fit was a nice dress rehearsal for order of operations here.  First I applied glue (very quickly) to all the case side tail sockets.  I was very generous with the glue.  Then I just put a quick brush stroke in between each set of tails on the case top and bottom.  Then I clamped the case together, making sure that it was dead square as I applied clamping pressure.  Next I applied glue to the front sliding dovetail sockets and a little bit to the tails and slid the front tails in.  I was very careful to make sure no glue got into the side dadoes.  I then applied glue to the front tenons on all the rails and slid the side rails and drawer guide supports into the front rails.  Finally, I slid the rear rails in.  I didn't apply glue to them at this point because I wanted to use clamps to apply pressure to the side rails so that the tenons were firmly placed into the front rails, but I didn't want to lock the rear rails in yet.  I glued them up later so that I could leave a small gap at the shoulders of the rear tenons just in case the case sides want to shrink a bit more (very unlikely given that it's like 10% relative humidity here right now, but better safe than sorry).  Here's a pick of the clamped up monstrosity:

 

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And a final picture of the glued up case after a bit of glue cleanup.  For some reason the photo makes it look like the top of the case is bowed or something but it's just the picture - everything is dead square.

 

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The edges of the rails and case are already kind of shimmery.  Can't wait to see what they look like with some finish.  We are now essentially up to date, and I'm hoping to build the bracket base and start milling drawer parts this weekend.  

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I made some good progress on the chest this weekend.  I figure I have a few major stages of work left:  bracket base, drawers, top, back, and finish.  This weekend was mainly the bracket base and starting to mill drawer parts.  The bracket base has through dovetails for the two front corners, and the plan calls for half blinds in the rear corners, but I ended up using domino-reinforced miters.  For the dovetails in the front, I initially decided to try my hand at hand cutting them, since they're small parts with a pretty easy layout.  Long story short, that was a disaster.  I never even got to the point of cutting pins, because I couldn't get the tails done properly.  I went through three tail boards (I left them long thankfully so I just kept clipping the crappy tails off) before giving up and going with the jig.  My problem was I could saw the angled lines just fine, but I couldn't seem to get the saw square to the face, so the tail would be slightly narrower in the back of the board than in the front.  This might be ok if they were half blinds, but in through dovetails it would be visible (and gappy).  I tried to clean it up with a chisel but I kept ending up with mangled tails.  Oh well, the machine cut ones took me all of 5 minutes and look great.  

 

Anyway, here they are:

 

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Next I set about making a pattern.  I made a bunch of different patterns to run by my wife, including some more complicated ones with queen anne style curves, one with an ogee, etc., but she ended up just liking the one in the plan, albeit with a slightly more pronounced fillet.  I made the pattern out of some scrap 3/4 MDF that I had lying around.  Here it is:

 

702E99DE-526D-43AE-ADF0-101AA931CFE4_zps

 

I traced the pattern onto the three sides, roughed it out on the bandsaw, flush cut it using my big daddy flush trim bit at the router table, and cleaned up the fillets with a chisel.  Here's what I ended up with:

 

2BC7D154-2611-45C4-8FD3-F97D99DE7078_zps

 

The plan calls for two separate small (6" long) back boards with 45* diagonal cutouts instead of one long backboard connected at both sides.  As I said above, I went with mitered corners in the back, using dominos for reinforcement.  I kind of regret not going with a full back board because it would've made clamping a lot easier - it was very hard to clamp up a mitered corner without having an opposite corner to clamp from (or four corners to use a band clamp).  So I had to cut some cauls out of scrap 2x4:

 

 

2B48A7BC-C13C-4FAC-A6E3-E5D58CFB27D3_zps

 

So I did the base glue up in two stages.  First I clamped the two mitered corners, then I clamped the front dovetails (since I could then use the back mitered corner to clamp the front dovetails.  Again, if I were to do this again I would just make a full rectangle for the base.  But anyway, here's a pic of the base all glued up and then one of it dry fit to the case:

 

24133EB1-5ABD-49A0-A7F8-A264153BC25E_zps

 

9D01BEB4-A127-42C9-A21E-B042508EA64B_zps

 

Note that there will be a moulding at the seam between the base and the case - the plan calls for the moulding to be integral to the base and the case to be rabbeted into the base, but it complicated things too much for me since I was using the dovetail jig (if hand cutting the dovetails, you could hand cut the mitered corner for the top part of the joint where the moulding is).  So in my version the case will sit on top of the first 1/4" of the base and then a moulding will wrap around it and be glued to the base (but not to the case to allow for movement).  Hopefully that made sense.  

 

With that completed, I cleaned up the shop and set about milling some drawer parts.  I'm using regular soft maple for the drawer sides and backs.  I haven't decided what to do about the drawer bottoms yet.  The easiest option would be to use 1/4 ply, especially since then I won't have to deal with the cross grain movement between a solid wood bottom and the drawer guide attached to the drawer bottom - I could just glue the drawer guide to the ply and be done with it.  But ugh I hate using plywood, even for drawer bottoms.  Might just have to get over that one.  

 

Anyway, I rough milled the drawer sides and backs to about 3/4" thick (final thickness will be 5/8"), stickered and stacked them:

 

D45895DE-34E1-43DC-94C2-53BAFC4CED44_zps

 

Not sure if I'll get much shop time tonight, so I might just spend the time filling some knots with epoxy before I mill all these parts to final dimension over the next couple of days.  I'll probably try to do a bunch of little things this week after work and then tackle the drawer construction this weekend.  The journal is completely up to date at this point so updates probably won't come every day.  I know you're all on the edge of your seats :)

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Not a huge update today, but I did cut the drawer fronts to final dimension and got my first look at them laid out in what will be their final positions.  I can't wait to see these bad boys with finish on them.  The figure is just beautiful:

 

90EC21A3-3C6E-4285-BA69-AF9F42525018_zps

 

I won't be able to get in the shop tonight, so the next update will likely come Monday morning.  The next step is to cut the rabbets in the drawer fronts and cut the drawer sides/backs to final size.  I hope to take care of that on Friday, and then Saturday will be a long day with my Leigh jig cutting all the drawer joinery.  

 

I hope to be reporting back on Monday with fully assembled drawers.  Hopefully it all goes smoothly (it never does...)

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Damn - how'd I miss this thread up until now.

 

1. Great job so far

2. The side/edge grain of flame/curly wood can be under-appreciated.  Yours will look AWESOME.  You can already tell.

3. Seems you and I both have a boy due at the end of April....I don't plan on showing my wife your progress.

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404’s the wrong tool for the job – if you need a bulking agent to fill knots, use one of the faring fillers… You’ll probably get away with it if you scrape back before it cures… Once fully cured, it’s about as hard as cement… At that point, risk of damaging surrounding stock rises greatly…

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404’s the wrong tool for the job – if you need a bulking agent to fill knots, use one of the faring fillers… You’ll probably get away with it if you scrape back before it cures… Once fully cured, it’s about as hard as cement… At that point, risk of damaging surrounding stock rises greatly…

 

Good to know, i haven't used West, but even with box store epoxy I have killed a lot of sanding discs (with festool discs it ads up $$$$) trying to sand it back.  I do mask off the surrounding area with painters tape, that way I can score the cured epoxy with a utility knife, peel the tape, and have less to sand/scrape.  On my last project I used ebony tinted timbermate for small knots and it looks similar (more like gunmetal than black) and sands easier. 

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