Helical Drawer Cases (Finished)

[Chet]

This is a project that I have had on my mind for several years.  Having a lot of thought as to how I wanted it to look and how to do things to get the desired results.  I wanted it to require techniques that I hadn't really tried before on a scale like this.

I am using Cherry for the build.  There will be 5 cases with one drawer in each case.  The cases will be 15 inches wide, 5 inches high and 12 inches deep outside measurement The material will be about 5/8 " thick.  The cases will be stack on top of one another with each one being canted about 10 degrees from the case below creating a helical appearance.  The front edge of the cases will have a 60 degree bevel and the drawer fronts will be bowed.  Because of the helical shape of the cases some of the backsides will be visible so I am going to do a detail (yet to be determined) other then just a flush surface.

There are a number of things I plan on prototyping with poplar before doing the actual task.

First up a mock of of the case design with the drawer front.

 

I milled everything to a little less the 3/4" and even though it is kiln dried I stickered it for a few days to give it one last chance to go goofy on me. The long pieces on the far left are for the tops and sides because I want the grain to run continuously on the top and sides.  The pieces on the right are for the bottoms and the shorter ones in the center will be the backs.

After this, I milled to the final thickness and glued up the panels.  No pictures of the massive clamp usage.  After things dried, I sand everything to 150.

 

[Ron Swanson Jr.]

This sounds like a hell of a project and i look forward to seeing the build. 

While it's not exactly the same thing, check out the work of Henk Verhoeff if you need a little inspiration or get stuck.

I've always admired his off the wall creative projects. 

 

 

[Chet]

On 8/4/2025 at 10:51 AM, Ron Swanson Jr. said:

While it's not exactly the same thing, check out the work of Henk Verhoeff if you need a little inspiration or get stuck.

I have seen other furniture makers doing things like that.  That takes some serious planning.

[Von]

I'm looking forward to this build because to be honest I cannot get my head wrapped around envisioning what you are building. I just know it sounds cool :-)

[wtnhighlander]

I like the beveled recess and bowed draw front design. Looking forward to seeing how you create the drawer fronts.

[Chet]

On 8/4/2025 at 4:08 PM, wtnhighlander said:

Looking forward to seeing how you create the drawer fronts.

I am planing on doing a bent lamination with my vacuum press bag

[Coop]

Haven’t seen many of your projects that I didn’t learn something. Looking forward to this build! 

[Mark J]

@Chet, you've got my attention,  too.

16 hours ago, Von said:

I'm looking forward to this build because to be honest I cannot get my head wrapped around envisioning what you are building. I just know it sounds cool :-)

I remember that Chet had a picture of a scale model he made, but I don't remember where that was posted. 

[Mark J]

Here it is @Von .

 

[Chet]

In the scale model the first couple of drawers canted on direction and then the top two canted back the other way.  When I started working with full size mock ups from card board it didn't look right so now they will all be going in one direction.

[Chet]

First thing I did after the sanding was to cut a groove in all the pieces for the backs.  No action shot, just the final results.

 

After that I cut a 60° bevel on the front of all the pieces.

 

Next on the to do list was to cut the left and right sides of the cases from the tops.  I did this by cutting one side off with what will be the inside of the case facing down on the table and the other side was cut off with the inside of the case facing up.  I choose this method because even though my blade is clean and sharp, if I ended up with any little tear out I would prefer it to be in the back not the beveled edge of the front.

 

Next I cut a groove in the sides for the drawer runners.  I did this on the router table with some stop blocks because it is a stopped groove.  I cut all right sides front to back and then after reseting the blocks a little, I cut all the left sides back to front.  Doing it this way ensured that even if my router bit set up was a fuss of center,  all my grooves are the same height up from the bottom of each case.  Hope this make sense.

 

So this is were we are at so far.

[Coop]

And how will you connect these three, wait, there’s a top, so four pieces? Ok, I’ll sit back and watch. 

[Chet]

Time to do a little catching up.

I need to cut 45° edges on the cases for the joinery.  I am going with the 45° so that I will have a continuous grain pattern on the cases.   Before I did this I wanted to sand the front bevel of the cabinets.  I wanted to do this first so that when I cut the joinery it will clean up anything that may have gotten rounded by the sanding.  I made a jig that had a front edge that was the same 60° as the bevel fronts, this gave me a wider surface area for sanding in hopes of keeping all the edges crisp looking.    

tops and bottoms.

And the sides.

 

I built a sled to to help cut the 45° joinery.  First I did all the tops and bottoms

And then the sides.

 

I am constantly forgetting to take photos of some of the steps.  I did a dry fit of all the cases to see how things are lining up.  Because of the design of this piece some of the backsides of the cases may be seen in its final destination.  Because of this I decided to do something other then just flat back panel.  I went with something that stands proud and has a chamfered edge.  Making these panels is something I failed to get pictures of.  The other thing I didn't get photographed is the front of the cases during the dry fits but you can sort of see a couple in the back ground.

 

[wtnhighlander]

Looking great, Chet!

[Mark J]

17 hours ago, Chet said:

I am constantly forgetting to take photos of some of the steps.

Me, too.  I take photos as I progress through a project as a "how I did it diary".  When I go back, there's always some step I missed.

Love the project.

[Chet]

I stepped away from working on the cases to do the drawer fronts.  They are going to be bow fronts so I am going to do a bent lamination.  I will be using a vacuum press and bag.  Each one will go in the bag for 8 hours.  This is why I stepped out of line on the case work, I have some To Do's that I need to catch up on around the house so I got the laminations all prepped and I will stick one drawer front in the bag each morning and then work on my chores.

This is the milled up stock.  the drawer fronts will be a finished thickness of 5/8" I will get 4 laminations out of the 8/4 stock and then on lamination for the very front out of the figured stock on the right.

 

I set my bandsaw fence to just the heavy side of 3/16".  After taking a slice off I go back to the jointer and re-dress the face that goes against the bandsaw fence. As you can see, it is also helpful if you turn the dust collection on when you start the whole process, not half way through the task.

 

Next I ran everything through the drum sander to get to my final thickness of 1/8".  After this I wrapped each bundle in stretch wrap so they wouldn't go all wonky before the glue up.

 

When I glued a stack up I would put a couple of pieces of blue tape on both edges to keep them from sliding around.  When I placed it on the form I would put a couple more pieces of tape to keep the center line of my drawer front lined up with the center mark on the form as the bag compressed everything.

 

Then in the bag and turn on the pump.  See you in 8 hours.

 

When they come out of the bag, I cleaned up one edge on the jointer and the other edge on the bandsaw.  This is still a rough dimension.  I don't know what the two ridges are for on my jointer (yellow arrows) But they make a good reference point when jointing curved work to make sure that you are flat against the fence when you are going over the cutter head.

 

I was real happy with how they turned out is hard to make out the laminations.

 

I made an extra front out of poplar and one layer of cherry to use in my setups for the other steps.  Just as a precaution, I wrapped them in shrink wrap until I get back to that part of the project.

 

For anyone interested, the glue I used was Unibond ONE.  I get it from Vaccupress.com.  It's not good for store bought veneer work because it has water in it like PVA but it is great for this kind of thing because it dries with a hard line so you don't have to worry about creep.  It is all premixed and has no formaldehyde.  You can also use it for your regular woodworking glue ups.

 

 

[Coop]

Beautiful pieces! 

[Ron Swanson Jr.]

@Chet I know next to nothing about this process but find it interesting. Is the plastic sheeting just regular sheeting, or is it specific to this use? I would think it would be prone to tearing on corners, but clearly not. 

Also, if i had to guess, i would say that those ridges on your jointer fence are there to show where the cutterhead is, but that's a guess. 

[Mark J]

1 hour ago, Ron Swanson Jr. said:

i would say that those ridges on your jointer fence are there to show where the cutterhead is, but that's a guess. 

That's my guess, too.

@Chet, you seemed to have a lot of stock available in your first photo.  Did you need to use all of it to make the drawer fronts?

[Chet]

On 8/27/2025 at 4:10 AM, Ron Swanson Jr. said:

Is the plastic sheeting just regular sheeting, or is it specific to this use?

It is a purpose built bag.  Mine is 4' X 4'.  They have a couple different thicknesses that you can get.  I bought the heavier one just because as careful as I would be, I would find a way to rip the light weight one.  They are seal one three sides and opened on one end so you can get your project in place.  You fold the open end over a length of PVC pipe and clip it off with a "C" channel piece that is the same length.  Some of the longer bags you can get with opens on both ends.

 

On 8/27/2025 at 5:10 AM, Ron Swanson Jr. said:

Also, if i had to guess, i would say that those ridges on your jointer fence are there to show where the cutterhead is, but that's a guess. 

On 8/27/2025 at 6:03 AM, Mark J said:

That's my guess, too.

I think you guys are probably correct.  The ridges are 3/4" farther a part then the open for the cutterhead

 

On 8/27/2025 at 6:03 AM, Mark J said:

Did you need to use all of it to make the drawer fronts?

No, but I wanted to be prepared in case something did go as planned.  The left over 8/4 stuff may get used for the parts of the legs and the figured stuff will go back on the lumber rack for the future.

[Chet]

I am using furniture bolts to attach the cases together in their stack.  I wasn't smart enough to come up with this on my own it was @wtnHighlander who suggested it.

Along with this I am using 1/4" birch plywood to create the space to give the appearance of the cases floating.   I originally was going to cut the ply in a rectangle smaller then the cases themselves and band it with cherry but somewhere along the line someone suggested painting them flat black,  I wish I could remember who it was so I could give them proper recognition.   When I started to mess around with the size of the rectangle and the 10° cant of the cases there was always a part of the rectangle peeking out somewhere until it became to small to support the cases.  So. I came up with the idea of an oval shape and landed on a 9" X 7" size.  The can of paint said it was flat black but when I brushing it on it became evident that it was closer to a satin finish but it still works.

To drill the holes for the furniture bolts I created a template.  Hopefully I can explain this so it is understandable.  First I cut two pieces of plywood in to the size of the  cases,  12" deep. and 15" wide.  I placed the template of my oval, the non painted one pictured above, in it's proper location and drilled four tiny pilot holes in to my case sized plywood.  I removed to oval template and with double stick tape I placed the second piece of plywood in it's proper orientation on top of the first.  Then I flipped the whole thing over and drilled the pilot holes through to the top piece.

From here I take the top piece of one of the cabinets and line it up with the bottom panel of the template and drill the pilot holes.  Next I take the bottom piece of the cabinet that is directly above and line it up with the top panel of the templete and drill those pilot holes.  When I got each piece lined up with the template I put a couple clamps on it to keep things from sliding around.   Pro Tip: The bottom of the bottom case and the top of the top case don't get, nor do they need any holes so to make sure I didn't do anything stupid I took those two pieces in to the house and out of sight.

After this, I used a 3/4" Forstner bit to drill the counter sink holes for the furniture bolts.

Then at the drill press I drilled a 7/16" hole all the way through.  The female portion of the bolt is 5//16" but I wanted a little wiggle room.

And this is where we are headed.

[Beechwood Chip]

On 9/2/2025 at 10:07 PM, Chet said:

[...] someone suggested painting them flat black,  I wish I could remember who it was so I could give them proper recognition. 

It was me!  

It's looking great, Chet.  Nice concept and nice execution!

[Coop]

This thing is looking cool! Looking forward to what it fits into. 

[Chet]

On 9/2/2025 at 7:07 PM, Chet said:

somewhere along the line someone suggested painting them flat black,  I wish I could remember who it was so I could give them proper recognition.  

I found my contributor, it was @Beechwood Chip

[Beechwood Chip]

I like your idea of making the spacers oval.  In addition to fitting in the weird space, a hard corner might create a shadow line that would catch the eye.