Chest of drawers for (impending) son


bgreenb

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My approach to popping curly maple is one wet coat of natural Watco then wipe after 10 minutes, spray a sealer coat of blonde shellac after 24-36 hours, and finish w a sprayed waterbourne satin finish. Least amount of yellowing but still makes the grain stand out.

Your project is looking great !

An osselating tool like the Fein Multimax is handy to sand those sides with the Half blind dovetails. I use the applied drawer fronts whenever possible.

 

If that's your possible choices the last 2 are winners.

 

I settled on the fourth for this particular gift box, but I'll be the first to admit that it is entirely a matter of opinion and will certainly vary with each given project.

I'm going to try Steve's variation too...see what it does.

It's always fun to try some experimentation...see what the options look like on off-cuts from the project.

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Age and experience trumps youth and enthusiasm most of the time ! <GRIN >

Light pressure and medium to fine grits gives the best results. I pencil mark the low side of the joint and then sand till the marks are gone, switch to a finer grit and go back over everything.

Don't forget to sign and date your chest of drawers, he will appreciate it one day !

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Man bgreenb you seem to get alot of shop tim you lucky duck! I guess that will change once "impending son" is born! Project is looking awesome! Im enjoying following

Thanks Shane! I am lucky my wife gives me a pretty long leash and my daughter still takes long naps and goes to bed early. That means shop time. But yeah I think it's gonna be drastically cut down soon enough :)

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Thanks Shane! I am lucky my wife gives me a pretty long leash and my daughter still takes long naps and goes to bed early. That means shop time. But yeah I think it's gonna be drastically cut down soon enough :)

I hear that....im going from 3 kids to 4 in 5 weeks! Impending daughter
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I hear that....im going from 3 kids to 4 in 5 weeks! Impending daughter

 

That's great, congrats! A daughter and a bunch of sweet new tools too. Not too shabby

 

Brian, fantastic looking. Know what I would have done differently, not a darn thing. In fact, I'm taking notes!

Thanks I really appreciate it! Glad to see people are following.

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In every project I've ever done, there has come a time when I got so frustrated that I wanted to give up and light the damn thing on fire.  For this chest of drawers, that time was this weekend.  My daughter was at Grandma's house and my wife had other things going on, so I had basically two uninterrupted days of shop time.  And that's how long it took to get the drawer guides built and installed.  Now that it's done, I'm glad I took the time to fine tune them all and get them dead on, but man what a terrible time.
 
Anyway, here's what happened.  Hope you don't object to my quoting myself:
 

Not sure whether I will end up going with the bevel or not.  I'd like to have something to keep the drawer from cantilevering, but I also worry about the excess friction this will generate on the drawer guide as the drawer "wants" to cantilever out and the male and female parts press against each other (heh).

I decided to split the difference.  For the three large drawers, I went with a sliding dovetail mechanism to prevent cantilevering.  For the two smaller drawers I went with a standard groove, given that these drawers are deeper than they are wide and are less likely to tip given the weight distribution of the drawer contents. Yes, I way overthought this.
 
For the female portion, I used some leftover soft maple from the drawer sides/backs.  I roughed out the grooves using my dado stack and then I used the router table with a 14* dovetail bit to hit each side of the groove.  I actually had to think for a few minutes at the router table about feed direction, as I had to feed the stock the "wrong" way given how the cutter was going to hit the side of the groove.  Feeding it right to left would've turned it into a missile.  The slot came out nice and clean:
 
90F2520B-0987-4276-9604-79E22B02FF38_zps
 
For the male portion, I wanted to go with something quartersawn to stack the cards in my favor in terms of future problems with drawers binding.  I had a short offcut of riftsawn walnut from a previous build that was perfect for this purpose.  I suppose it's a bit weird to use walnut for internal case parts, but  it was the only non-flatsawn stock I had.  Now my future son can never saw I skimped.  I milled the piece square and then "sliced" off pieces from the right side in the first photo to end up with straight quartersawn pieces:
 
36B1DB52-2106-42F2-90B3-C248C94AA9D0_zps
 
 
C0F244CD-B0DB-4390-A327-768D8328B4BC_zps
I used the planer and drum sander to thickness these pieces to just shallow of full depth of the grooves.  I then used the table saw with the blade tipped to 14* to cut the bevels on the sides.  I used the table saw instead of the router table because I find it a little easier to dial in the fence on my table saw, at least until I finally bite the bullet and drop a few hundy on the incra RT fence.
 
Very pleased with the fit:
 
E929AC7D-12B0-4D4E-A742-C5A07512AC8B_zps
 

Feel like I should've dubbed Barry White over this video.

 

(spent a half hour trying to embed a video of the drawer mechanism sliding back and forth but couldn't get it to work so I gave up.  Wasn't that compelling anyway.)

 

At this point it came time for installation.  I started by cutting the male portion to length and using centerlines to line it up in the center of the drawer pocket, made sure it was square to the front rail, and pinned it down with 23 gauge pins.  Luckily I didn't screw it down at this point because this ended up being a mistake.  I then used centerlines to install the female portion on the bottom of the drawer, again making sure it was square to the front of the drawer, and pinned that down.  But every time I did this I just couldn't get the drawer to glide without binding.  It was driving me absolutely crazy, and I went to bed Saturday night thoroughly frustrated.  Obviously something was out of square somewhere (not surprising with all these parts) and causing it to bind.  At first I thought I should just leave more play in the mechanism, but that seemed silly, just compounding a problem with another problem.  Then I realized a better way to do it.  I left the runner stock long, lined up the front with my center line on the rail, and pinned down just the front.  I fastened the female portion to the underside of the drawer nice and square.  Then I pushed the drawer in, letting the male portion go wherever it wanted to go as the drawer glided in.  Once I had the drawer all the way in, I pinned down the back side of the male portion, then pulled the drawer out, screwed everything down, and cut off the excess with a handsaw and chisel.  This allowed the drawer itself to account for any "out of squareness" in the case.  Now the drawers slide in and out just as they should.  Here's a pic of the final setup:
 
6301D1B1-CCAD-4516-B158-96054AB350BF_zps
 
24F2C8DE-8351-4037-888E-3356C0F29EBF_zps
 
At this point I didn't have a ton of time leftover, so I spent some time doing a bunch of the "little things" that needed to get done.  I cleaned up and sanded the outside of the case to 150 grit, which is where I'll leave it for now.  I also fine tuned the front rails with my jack plane so that the drawers sit flat against the case.  This was another challenge with rabbetted fronts that I didn't anticipate - since they have three sides "engaging" the case, you need to make sure that the entire front case is all in the same plane.  With flush drawer fronts it's much easier to adjust for minor differences here.  I didn't have to make major adjustments, but it took a decent amount of time to get it perfect.
 
Finally, I turned the case upside down to get it ready for applying the base and treated myself to a (few) delicious domestic macrobrew(s).  Behold the "Eric":
 
F22329C7-5FE7-4FB2-8B68-6822D3ADBFE6_zps
 
Probably take tonight off and then get started on attaching the base tomorrow.  Then it's moulding time.

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Thanks guys!

 

Vinny - hard to explain without visual aids but I'll give it a shot.  The way I had the fence set up at the router table, the bit would bit cutting the "inside" edge of the existing groove (i.e., the side of the grove closest to the fence).  I arranged it that way because I was more comfortable having the bit closer to the fence (and thus further away from my fingers).  

 

So if you think about the bit spinning counter clockwise when viewed from above, the majority of the bit is sitting in open space (i.e., the existing groove) and the part that's cutting is contacting the inner wall of the groove.  So if I were moving right to left like normal, the bit would also be wanting to push it right to left, and it would take off.  So instead I had to move left to right "against" the motion of the bit.

 

Hopefully that made sense.

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Thanks!

I was actually talking a bit in the chat room about this yesterday. I'm going to start doing some test boards next week to make final decisions. Here's what I'm thinking:

1. Regarding popping the grain with dye, I'm going to do some test boards and see what it looks like, but I doubt I'll end up doing it because I just see so much potential for my screwing it up and having it look bad, plus it complicates the process and I need to get this thing done before the baby comes. But if the test boards look good enough it might convince me.

2. I'm definitely going to put at least one coat of oil based finish on it, probably arm r seal satin. I really think nothing compares to an oil based finish in terms of looks.

3. As a final top coat, I had originally wanted to try spraying lacquer or shellac. I don't have a sprayer, but thought about using this as an excuse to buy one. I like the idea of having a nice repairable finish, given that this piece will be in a child's room. A hall table I built a few years ago and finished with Arm R Seal has a few scratches in it and it drives me nuts because I know I can't really fix it without stripping. It would be nice to just rub a little lacquer thinner/DNA on it and recoat. But I think Eric convinced me yesterday to just let it go. "Character." And something to the effect of "you'll spend your whole life refinishing if you worry about every little scratch."

Plus I only have a month and change to finish and I'm not sure I really want to try to dive in and perfect a whole new technique in that time frame.

So, bottom line, in all likelihood I will end up just using Arm R Seal satin. It looks great, it's easy, and I'm comfortable applying it :)

For the inside of the case and insides of the drawers I will probably use a rattle can of shellac, just because I don't want an oil finish off gassing into my kid's clothes.

(I know you didn't ask for a 1000 word essay, but you got one.)

Are you doing a build journal on the desk? If not I'd love to check out the final product pics. Love to see what another local guy is producing.

Don't be afraid to try using some dye to pop the grain. Check our Marc's video on popping the grain.

Basically, you just mix some Transtint Dark Vintage Maple wit shellac, do a few coats and then sand it down. It's a little more work but it is actually pretty forgiving If you make a mistake.

Here's a curly maple box I made with the above method and finished with Arm-R-Seal Semi

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Don't be afraid to try using some dye to pop the grain. Check our Marc's video on popping the grain.

Basically, you just mix some Transtint Dark Vintage Maple wit shellac, do a few coats and then sand it down. It's a little more work but it is actually pretty forgiving If you make a mistake.

Here's a curly maple box I made with the above method and finished with Arm-R-Seal Semi

Thanks Chuck - did you attach a picture of the box? I can't see it and Id love to check it out!

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The shellac soaks into the "end grain" of the curl, so as you sand it down the face grain lightens because the shellac is stripped away. It does build up a little in the figure, but you want to sand it so that the face grain is bare.

With an ROS it goes pretty quick. If you are a overzealous with the sanding, reapply a little shellac and resand

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The shellac soaks into the "end grain" of the curl, so as you sand it down the face grain lightens because the shellac is stripped away. It does build up a little in the figure, but you want to sand it so that the face grain is bare.

With an ROS it goes pretty quick. If you are a overzealous with the sanding, reapply a little shellac and resand

Awesome. How much dye did you put in the shellac? Just a few drops? I will go back and watch Marc's video as well.

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