Put a Lid On It - Shaping the Top of a Chest of Drawers

The first step in shaping the underbevels on the top is working the top to it's finished dimensions and fairing the curves on the front edge.

Before any shaping can begin, layout lines are drawn to define the finished  geometry.

How did I shape the underbevels on this top?  Hand planes.  I take pretty aggressive cuts at this point, but will begin to work more precisely as I get closer to the layout lines

That's me, in the orange shirt, planing away.

Working it closer to that layout line...

...and we're there.

The finished bevel.

Shaping like this creates lots of hand plane shavings.  But I'd much prefer these wispy shavings to the dust and noise of trying to do this with machines.  Plus this is a whole lot safer. 

Shaping the underbevel on the front edge - the edge with 2 curves - is done in much the same way except I start by hand sawing down to the layout lines.  I'll then remove the material in between kerfs, starting with a chisel and mallet, then switching to a drawknife, spokeshaves and files.

Close-up of the saw-kerfed edge.  Notice the layout lines - they are so important in achieving the final shape.

All of the edges on the top of the chest of drawers are shaped with an underbevel.  I love this edge detail and have used it on quite a few pieces in the past.  Besides the aesthetics of this detail, I love it because the shaping is done completely with hand tools.  A tedious process, but definitely worth the work.

The top of this chest of drawers is a bit different in that the front edge has two curves which reflect the two curves in the drawer fronts and base.  The first two images below illustrate these curves.  Shaping the underbevels on the ends and back edge (the back edge is straight, no curves) is straightforward.  But shaping the under bevels on the two front curves required a slightly different approach.  If you skip ahead to the last 2 pictures (the first 8 show how I work a more typical bevel) I started by hand sawing down to my layout lines.  These angled saw kerfs define the material to be removed, and they act as a kind of "safety" as I use a chisel and mallet to remove the chunks in between the kerfs.  Without the kerfs, it would be fairly easy to remove too much material whether through an errant swing of the mallet or uncooperative grain.  Once the bulk of the material is removed with chisel and mallet, I switch to a drawknife, then to spokeshaves and files, continually refining the shape until I hit those layout lines.  Notice the progression of the tools used - roughing material away is done with tools suited for that task - a drawknife and mallet-propelled chisels (yes, chisels can do really fine work, but in this instance it was their brawn that I needed).  Then the switch to spokeshaves and files reflected the need for more precise final shaping.

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Back to Bases

The base started with a drawing...

...because if you can't draw it, you can't build it.

The base, before adding the bead.  The corner gussets are Douglas-Fir, with spruce glue blocks to stiffen everything.  It took a lot of shaping of wood with rasps, files, chisels, spokeshaves to get to this point.

The mighty little scratch stock.  A piece of steel and a piece of cherry.  Cut a shape into the steel.  Insert it into the cherry, and we're ready to scratch beads. 

Sometimes the biggest challenge is holding the work.  The rosewood bead stock is too small to hold comfortably.  Temporarily held to the pine board with double sided tape, I can now clamp it in my vise and easily work the rosewood.

Scratching a bead in rosewood.

A rosewood bead.  It still needs a little cleanup: sanding and hand planing to thickness.

Gluing the bead to the base.  Miter, glue, clamp and nail.  Repeat.  A slow process.

The finished base with rosewood bead.  

The chest of drawers is coming along swimmingly.  I have posted some images to illustrate how the base was made.  Unfortunately there were media blackouts during the process, so images of some steps are missing.  Many steps, actually.  And there wasn't really a media blackout.  I just forgot to take pictures.  I find that I really have to think about photographing the process, or else I get completely immersed in the work and forget to stop and take pictures.  Sometimes I also forget to stop and smell the roses.

What I am able to show here is how making the base started with a full size drawing.  At this point, any existing drawings are pretty much useless as I have to work off the reality of the piece.  So I placed the case on a sheet of paper (from a discarded roll of plotter paper) and traced the outline. This gave me the footprint of the case, with no measuring, no transferring dimensions or angles. Pretty quick, simple, and accurate.  From there, I drew the footprint of the base, including the joinery to connect the aprons to the legs (free tenons) and the joinery to reinforce the miters (splines).  I could then use the drawing to determine the lengths of the aprons, location of mortises, etc.

What I didn't provide photographic evidence of is the process of creating the bubinga base.  In a nutshell, I did as much work to the legs and aprons as I could when they were still rectangular parts - milling to size, routing mortises, cutting miters, roughing out the flare in the legs.  Then I glued together the leg-apron-leg sub-assemblies and cut the curves where legs meet aprons. Then it was a lot of shaping with rasps, files, and spokeshaves to fair the aprons into the legs. Then assembly of the the entire base (the splined miters), adding gussets and glue blocks, a bit more shaping of the legs to refine the miters, and shaping of the top edge of the base, where it transitions into the bead.  From there, I think the photos can take over.

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A Finely Constructed Case

Clamping the half-blind dovetails that join the side to the bottom.  The vertical divider has already been assembled to the bottom with a tapered sliding dovetail.

Here are those half-blind dovetails, viewed from the bottom.

Dovetails, again.  You can also see the rabbet on the front of the side which will accept a vertical stile.

Assembling the horizontal dividers to the sides/vertical divider.  The horizontal divider is half-lapped at the vertical divider and has a dovetail tenon on each end that fits into dovetail mortises in the case sides.

A little tough to make out, but you can kind of see the dovetail tenon on the end of the cherry horizontal divider (which has been inserted in the dovetail mortise on the case side).  There you have it, a sliding dovetail.

I'm using clamps to pull  one of the rear horizontal dividers into position.  Again, sliding dovetails and half laps.

One of the rear horizontal dividers awaiting it's turn with the clamps.  You can see the tenon on the end of the runner, which fits into a corresponding mortise in the divider.

The chest of drawers is starting to take shape as I begin to take the individual parts and assemble them to create the case.  Up until now each part represented a lot of work – milling, sizing to dimension, joinery, more joinery, smoothing, fitting – but hadn’t yet been assembled into something recognizable.

I always design and build case pieces with wood-to-wood joinery, and this piece is no exception.  The sides join to the bottom with hand cut, half-blind dovetails. The off-center vertical divider joins to the bottom with a tapered sliding dovetail.  Horizontal dividers join to the case sides with sliding dovetails and to the vertical divider with half-laps. The benefit of all of this tight-fitting joinery is a case that will be more than adequate to resist the loads it will see over the span of its life – no bowed sides or sagging dividers. And that’s extremely important because a case that is not rigid will lead to drawers that don’t slide in and out sweetly. And what’s the point in a chest of drawers you can’t use?

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Curvy Drawers

One of two bending forms needed for this piece.  It is made of MDF ribs with 2 layers of 1/4" plywood glued & stapled over the ribs.

Same form, different view.  Here you can see the ribs.  The entire form is wrapped in packing tape to prevent the adhesive from sticking to the form.

Pressure is applied with clamps and cauls.  For this piece, I used 3 layers of 1/4" plywood, with solid maple cauls attached to the topmost layer of plywood. 

Another view of the same glue-up.  The triangles drawn on the maple clamping cauls illustrate how the force exerted by each clamp transfers through the caul to create even clamping pressure.  The row of clamps on the right side are offset a bit because this drawer front is not the full width of the form - it is for a shorter drawer.

Clamps have been removed, showing the clamping cauls.  Notice how the plywood cauls have sprung back from the form.

The top layer of 1/4" plywood/maple cauls has been removed.

And here is the curved drawer font, after all cauls have been removed.  The fronts did spring back consistently from the form, maybe 1/16" at each end.  The tan thing at the edge of the form is adhesive that squeezed out during clamping.  I used Unibond 800, a 2 part urea resin glue. 

Ten drawer fronts and here are nine of them.  The finished chest has only 8 drawers, but I made an extra drawer front for each side, just in case.

The curves are much easier to see here.

I’m working on the chest of drawers and have been sawing laminations and building forms for the curved drawer fronts.  In a nutshell, the fronts are made by sawing maple into thin slices, called laminations, which are then glued together over a curved form.  The adhesive, in this case a 2 part urea resin, prevents the laminations from slipping past each other and returning back to their original (flat) shape.  Here are some pictures showing the process. Click on any image at right to open up a full screen slideshow.

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