Rachel's been wanting to organize this space a little bit more
and we both figured a tall dresser with a lot of drawers
would really help that.
All those drawers unfortunately required a lot of wood.
So I gathered a whole lot of material from the garbage.
And hopefully that'll be enough.
Seven drawer fronts. Now I just need backs and sides.
Seven backs. Seven fronts. Fourteen sides.
And I was able to cut fairly efficiently so I have very little scrap.
And some material still left over.
I need to join the sides of the drawers to the front somehow
so I have a bit of overhang on this side for the front of the drawer.
To kind of hide the sliders.
And traditionally this is often done with a sliding dovetail joint.
Like so, where it slides into the bottom. But
This is very vulnerable. Because this part here can break off easily.
So, the way I'm gonna join these is with a multiple dowel joint
like so, except these aren't separate dowels.
These are actually integral to the drawer's side.
And we're gonna cut these with a pantorouter.
I first cut these cone dowel templates round on the band saw.
And then I made a jig to precisely sand them on the belt sander.
And now I'm going to screw them to the back of my multiple dowel template.
It took a bit of tweaking but now I have my dowel template set up
to cut 4 dowels on the end of the stock.
Next I need to drill some holes in the drawer foots for these
dowel ends to fit in, like so.
And for that I've made a drilling template plus another piece of wood
to help me position that exactly where I want it from the edge.
And now I just need to clamp that in place.
I have it set up to work from the very corner of the Hillcrest table
because these clamps can get in the way and this way I can barely
clear the clamps and drill in here.
The alignment isn't perfect. But with a few taps of the hammer
it goes in anyways. Here is one of my drawers
test assembled so far. I've got the front and the sides.
Now I just need to join the back on here somehow.
And I'm going to keep this relatively simple.
I'm just going to use a box joint, like this one to join the back.
I'll be cutting the box joints on my pantorouter XL and
I've got a box chart template in here, which allows me to make a
vertical series of cuts with the router byte following these slots here.
And I've got a sacrificial piece of wood here
to prevent chipout on the bottom.
The stock goes on top of that. And I'm gonna use the plunge backstop
as the stop on how far the stock needs to go back on here.
And I've got another sacrificial piece of wood to go on top of here.
to rent chip out on top.
Couple of things about using a pantorouter.
A variable speed router would be much better. This unfortunately is fixed.
Because doing side-grain cuts for stuff like this or tenants
the bit cuts really easily and if you slow it down it doesn't make as much noise.
and it doesn't make as much dust in the air.
Also, when cutting these box joints, it's much better to cut from below because
that throws all the dust down.
So I have a big pile of shavings in here right now.
Before starting to assemble the drawers, I need to route a groove in the
bottom of the front for bottom to fit into.
You'll see how that fits later.
Got my 7 drawer fronts and sides glued together.
Now, I've just got to make the backs.
Got my drawers fronts backs, and sides all glued together.
And before I start making bottoms for them.
I'm gonna try and make some veneers from the front
using this mahogany that used to be an old desktop.
The yield from that desktop wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be.
Partially 'cause it was reinforced with dowels where the boards met.
And it was warped. And then
Some of this has got the slots cut in the bottom.
And it wasn't quite long enough for 2 lengths.
So I'm gonna have to do a lot of splicing.
But I cut into 3 layers instead of 2. So hopefully I'll have enough
for all 7 drawers.
I took the varnish off the front of the drawer with a hand plane.
For gluing the veneers on.
And I also smoothed the back of the veneer with a hand plane.
Just to smooth out the band saw cuts.
I use a piece of carpeting to make sure I get pressure...
on the whole face of the drawer.
I have 2 drawers left to do. And I have 1 piece of paneling left.
And that's enough for 1 drawer.
But if I put it on there like so.
And then if I join another piece of scrap on there.
Then I've got enough width on here to make 2 drawers.
Some of my veneers unfortunately have some screw holes.
And I can use a plug cutter like this to make plugs
like this to fill those in but
The smallest one I've got is 3/8th of an inch in size.
And I'd rather keep these plugs small to keep them inconspicuous.
I used my pantorouter to make some 1/4 inch plugs.
So using these plugs should be very inconspicuous.
Got my 7 drawers made.
Hopefully making the rest of that dresser
won't take quite as long.