1/14/2006
I've just gotten started with this monster piece All the casework pieces have been glued up and sanded flat. I decided to start the jointery with the bottom so I could iron out the process before doing the visible top dovetails. Being and engineer and having an available plotter is nice. I was able to plot my dovetail layout, tape the template to the piece and transfer the layout using carbon paper. I laid out the tails first and cut them out. I did the bulk of the work with a jig saw and cleaned up with a chisel coming from both sides. That was the easy part. I didn't grab my camera yet, but I'll add pics of that process when I dovetail the top. Here is a pic of the template.
Next I attached the template to the board and used carbon paper to transfer the dovetail lines. I used one of my dovetail templates to ensure my lines were straight and accurate. The template is a huge layout time saver.
Next I jig sawed the lines and cleaned out the bulk of the waste.
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The next step is to use a chisel to come in from both sides to clean everything up. One thing that comes in very handy is a dovetail chisel. I don't own one, but I do have an extra set of bench chisels ready to modify. A little grinding and honing gave me a terrific dovetail chisel.
Finally after a little bit of chisel work I had some nice clean tails.
With the tails cut I layed out the sockets by using the tailboard as a template. Since the sides are so tall I used my adjustable height assembly table to raise it up to where I could slide the side under for marking. This assembly table has proven to be very useful. Once they were laid out I used a router to take out the bulk of the wood. For this operation I used a 1/4" spiral bit and freehanded the material removal. A dovetail bit could be used to eliminate even more of the cleanup required.
Here is a pic of the sockets cleaned up with a chisel. I clamped a board to the work piece to act as a guide as I chopped out the bottom of the sockets.
Here is a close-up of the sockets to show the chisel work.
The first side I did have to to a little paring to get it to fit, but the second set went together the first time perfectly. This is my first experience doing half blind dovetails. I will admit that 22" of dovetail is a lot of work. It took my about 6 hrs to do the bottom two joints.
Here is the bottom and sides all jointed together. The joints come together great and I'm ready to move on to dovetailing the top. You may have noticed that a good part of the bottom is poplar. No sense in wasting mahogany where it isn't going to be seen.
1/21/2006
I finished up all 4 dovetail joints and now it was time to do the sliding dovetail jointery for the dividers. To do this I constructed a simple jig. It just had a pair of sides with some supports to square it up to the case.
The joint I'm using is a dadoed sliding dovetail. I wanted the dado for the side member of the dust frame to really keep it flat. This is tough because you have to be sure the dovetail is centered on the rabbet. I tried a few things and found the best way to do this was to use a pair of PC 690 routers. I ran a number of trial cuts and figured out the exact orientation I needed the routers in to run a perfectly aligned joint.
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Once I completed one side I clamped the two sides together and used a marking knife to locate the other side so it matched the exactly. It worked perfectly.
Horizontal Router Table - In order to do long sliding dovetails I had two options. I either had to hand cut the sliding dovetails or build a horizontal router table. I weighed the options and decided to build the horizontal router table. It will ensure accurate joints and will have uses later on. Here is a quick sketch of my design. It is very long because of the length of rails I need to cut. I can always reduce it down to 24" deep after completing the chest.
On thing I had to figure out was how to lock the router securely. I decided to use simple bolts and knobs and to construct this table with materials I already had in the shop. Since I already had some T-bolts I mortised those into the router plate. The router plate is 1/2" baltic birch. It will be attached to a 3/4" mdf backer that will have slots for the bolts.
After about 2 hrs of work here I am testing the table for square. I had a Frued 3.25 HP router I never use so I figured it would be perfect for this horizontal router table.
Here you can see the back detail showing how it all ties together.
Since I had some extra 14" full extension drawer slides I figured I'd put them to use and make a sliding table. A sliding table will really make running those long dividers a breeze.
After all that the proof is really in the pudding. Did it come out square? Does it really work? I think so.
1/22/06
Well, here is the beginnings of the chest really taking shape. I glued the dovetails of the case with PRG, squared the case, and left it sit to dry. Yes, no clamps were used or required. If your dovetails fit well all you need to do is square it and let it sit.
I decided to process lumber I had and make the molding for the bracket feet. I bought a set of knives for my W&H molder and processed the stock to 1.25" thick. This worked out to be the perfect thickness for this molding. This was my first time using the molder. I was impressed.
With the feet molding complete it came time for me to think about the scroll work that will be done to the feet. I sketched for about an hour on the molding itself trying to find the right shape. Once I was happy I transferred the sketch to tracing paper and made a cardboard template.
I wasn't happy with the above design so I asked a few questions of some fellow woodworkers and revised it. Here is the new scroll design.
I think it is much better now. Here is a quick pic of the top dovetails cleaned up with a No 4 1/2 smoothing plane.
Well, I've been working on it for a few days doing the jointery for the frame. This involves lots of sliding dovetail work, mortise and tenon work, and very precise layout. So far everything is dead on. I just have to to half lap the long cross members and a M&T a few more supports.
Here is a quick detail of the entertainment center part of the chest. I had to take into account the movement of the frame members relative to the movement of the solid wood pieces. This is what makes solid wood construction so much fun to me. The sides sit in a sliding dovetail and will be glued to the front and rear frame members. The tenons on the stretchers are only glued to the front member so as the case or vertical members expand or contract they the members go in and out on the tenon in the back.
I've moved on to the most critical stage of the frame assembly, the half laps for the vertical to horizontal members. The placement has be right on or the draw boxes could be out of square. I started by marking the uprights by referring to the side dovetail slots already cut. Once I marked them I dadoed the vertical uprights about 1.25". That leaves me a notch to cut in the horizontal member of 0.75". This keeps me out the tenon area for the front to back support. After lots of careful layout and doubling checking each and every cut I totally completed the bottom frame assembly. Here it is dry fitted.
Here is a detail pic of the half lap joint. I custom cut each member to match its mate exactly. I had about 10 thousandths variation between members, due to different planing session, so I adjusted the dado width accordingly.
Once I was happy I moved on to cutting and dovetailing the horizontal members for the top section. You'll note I already had the verticals cut and fit in earlier photos. If you'll look at the drawing you'll notice that the members on each side of the entertainment cabinet are actually 1.5" wide. This is so I can use an overlay hinge and have clearance for the surrounding doors. I could have used inset doors, but since the drawers will be overlayed I wanted the doors to match. In order to do that I sized the cabinet sides 3/4" short and will glue on the wider visible vertical member. This member has the sliding dovetail for the top horizontal drawer box members. You can see it in the above picture, but here is a detail photo.
Well, the bottom of the chest is totally glued up and drying as I type. Here is a quick picture of it. The jointery for solid wood casework is challenging. You can see the jointery if you look closely at the pic below. Since the case itself is solid wood it will expand and contract while the frames will not. In order to accommodate the wood movement you have to have joints that move with the case. In this case the front and back horizontal and vertical dividers are glued into the case. They are connected by a M&T poplar rail on which the drawers will side. These rails are glued into the front mortises and the back tenons are left floating in their moritises with a 1/4" gap between the shoulder of the tenon and the rear rail. This 1/4" gap allows the case room to move while the frame remains stationary. This was explained a little above when I showed the entertainment part of the chest. I constructed the entire case in this fashion.
It is common for the back to not have the vertical dividers that match the front. The runners placed on each side of the drawer take care of the drawer guiding. The construction of the back of the mimics the front. This gives me total support front and back and ensures the drawer openings remain square from the front of the case to the back. You can see this in the pic below. You can also see the runner jointery a little better.
The chest glueup is complete. Here is a pic of the complete case. Now you can really see all 24 drawer boxes.
I had an inquiry about the jointery at the 3 way intersections. This joint conisists of a mortise and tenon with the horizontal memebers being joined with half laps. Here is a detail photo from one of the back intersections.
Well after a few days of jointing, planing, and sanding stock I had what I need to start on the drawers in terms of maple. Now I had to layout the drawer front from the remaining stock. I bought a couple boards special for this purpose. Here are the drawer fronts layed out on the raw stock. These boards have some beautiful figure.
I went back and forth on how to cut the dovetail jointery for the drawer boxes. Handcutting gives a wonderful look, but is really not practical for this many drawers so I decided to use the Leigh. The drawers are going to be rabbeted with a bead detail around the edge. A very traditional chippendale feature. I won't get into how to cut rabbeted dovetails here because Leigh does a wonderful job in the manual. There is one detail about rabbeting the drawer fronts and sizing the draw stock. I'm fitting these drawers for a piston fit using and English method. I first rabbeted the drawer fronts to fit each opening one at a time. The fit is just a nice sliding fit and no loser. The sides were cut so they have a nice sliding fit in and out of the case with no swaggle. Here is what the drawer front dovetail jointery looks like for the bottom two rows of drawers.
Here is the first row of drawers dovetailed and fitted into the case. At this point the drawer has just sides with no back or bottom. Some fine tuning will be done at this stage to ensure a perfect fit. Using one board really gives a wonderful affect to the drawer fronts.
I'm not to the thru dovetails of the back of the drawer fronts due to other work that needed to be cranked out of the shop this weekend, but all the drawers have been dovetailed in the front and fitted. All turned out great. The grain matching is pefect. Here are a couple pics of all the drawer fronts and an example of the grain matching.
I love the look of the grain matching.
