Tool Chest Part 2: Drawers

This is how I began my Saturday at around 8:30AM. There is much to be done today. The major task is to build the drawers. Poplar should be nice to work with, but these are the first half blind dovetails I've cut since I first learned how, and my very first time building a drawer. Should be fun right?



I started by patching a gap that opened up in the front, right of the bottom board. Here the glue is setting and I'm trimming the patch flush.


I've modified Mario's original plan, by doing bracket feet on all corners. The plain ogee shape was replaced with what I think would be called a cove-fillet-bead in some naming traditions.



Though it looks like I'm hiding. I'm actually aligning the spacer blocks to ensure the till bottom seats level with the case.

Taking a very accurate measurement for the drawer front, these need to be tight to begin with, so sizing them correctly in the beginning is important.

Careful measuring paid off, the fronts fit nicely and the presence of the chest looks great to me. I'm really into the oval pulls which I'll write about in a separate post.

After the fronts have been set into the case, the next step is to orient the grain direction on the sides then mark and trim them to fit their respective openings. The plane here is a Stanley Bailey #4, I just had it surface ground by Tablesaw Tom, and I'm amazed. It looks, and functions like a NIB premium plane. Now I need to spend some time rehabbing the wood and fasteners on it. Give Tom a look, his prices are reasonable and his work is top notch.


Mario is a huge fan of dovetail templates, they certainly have appeal, but I'm still unsure if I like the method for everything. I'm using his here to mark out the side material so that I can gang saw the tails for the drawers. I'll get the work done faster this way, and the dovetails will be identical for both drawers. Two big pluses in my book.

There's that Veritas Gent's Saw again, the fine teeth has some trouble in the 1 1/4" of drawer stock, I should have used a carcass saw instead.

Fret sawing the waste.

After gang sawing the front and back tails (didn't I mention these were to be fully dovetailed drawers?) the sides are put into their respective openings. I still managed to mess one up forcing me to ditch that side and re-cut a new one.

Setup for pairing the baselines, the drawer sides are 5/16" thick and measure 2 5/8" wide.

Pairing the baselines with a James Swan 1/8" (possibly sash mortise chisel) it is very finely ground and very sharp. It's my favorite piece of steel in all of PFW, they will not part with it though. I tried, so if you've got one message me. This thing falls through the little bit of poplar remaining in the tails.

Marked out for the half blind pins.

That looks like a drawer doesn't it? I was very proud at this point. I had a few fit just off the saw too. I'm hooked on drawer making, it's a little fussy but really rewarding.



The next few shots are of the disassembled drawer, just prior to gluing.


I finished the first drawer at around 5:30pm or so. I finished the second drawer at about 8pm and then banged out this little sliding tray for one of the drawers. What a long day, but I can honestly say I feel really accomplished. I'm very inspired to work right now, resisting the urge to keep working was hard. The voice in the back of my head said "You finished the task you set out to this morning, go home and don't risk screwing anything up." I've never worked a 12 hour day on such work before, but it wasn't arduous at all, I loved it.

Arts and Crafts Tool Chest

If you're on dial-up, I'm sorry. This holds the record for my most picture laden post ever. I started a tool chest class at the furniture workshop last weekend. I've been acquiring some really nice tools and really needed something better than this wine box to store them. I've got one chest from my grandmother already, and I plan on racking a bunch of my tools in the new space. This chest just seemed too sexy of an option to hold some of my prized tools though.


We drew wood sets out of a hat, I had helped Alan pick and mill wood for these earlier in the week, I was delighted to find that my number won the set I'd been lusting after, with some dark brown stripes, cream and wormholes. What a good start!

This is the layout of the case, the sides, face, lid front, and drawers have been taken out of the same board sequentially. Milling is an exercise in cautious work, but it pays off.

Dilly-dallying trying to read some really worn marks. Okay back to work.

Dovetailing. This saw should look familiar, this was a breezy job compared to the blanket chest.


After sawing the tails, a fret saw knocks out the bulk of the waste. Note the twist in the blade, to allow the frame to clear the stock, the "back" end of the blade is twisted slightly (very slightly) more. This is so the blade will never dive under the baseline on the back side where I can not see. I've never undercut a baseline with the fretsaw by doing this. and I've started cutting it very close at times.

After the bulk is out paring commences, here the corner of the chisel is used to flick away material down to the scribe line, leaving a shelf for the chisel back to rest upon whilst paring.

Same thing for the front.


All of the tails have been cut, and I've started on the pins. This was the end of the first day.

Baseline pairing for the pins, there's a lot more room to see which is nice, it's a good contrast to the tighter confines between the tails.

After a test fit, some tweaking of the pins was needed. I'm borrowing Mario's Grobet detail file, which I like a lot. It cuts beautifully, and is perfect for fitting these parts. Weird grain direction can cause a chisel to dive or tearout the small amount of material needed to be removed for a good fit. While I'm mentioning files, Alan let me use his 7" Auriou modelers rasp... I want one. it's amazing, and the cut is so smooth. More penny saving I guess.
Smack them home.

Tight, mostly. I'm very happy for this being my third (second major) dovetail project. I can't wait to get my bench finished so I can do more of this.

Sexy hardware. These are Brusso knife hinges for the lid. My students laugh or giggle when I talk about hardware or details being sexy, they just don't know. Many of them just don't understand my Daed Toolworks desktop backgrounds, I can't figure that one out.

Part of the handwork involved with fitting the hinges. I really enjoy fitting hardware.
How's that? I will want to replace these with flat head screws. I'll dig through my hardware boxes and see if I have some.

A fellow student supervises as Alan leads a CA repair to a small crack in the tail due to tight joints and some over-eager smacking. Moisture expansion didn't help.


It came out pretty well I think. I get some crap for sticking with hide glue blindly. But I've really taken to heart what some people like Stephen Shepard have said about hide glue and furniture. I try to avoid it at all costs, even if it makes me an old timer (hoping it does).

We met last Wednesday night to do some more work, but I don't have pictures of that, I'll have another update this weekend when we complete the build. I'm excited to share a set of jigs I built specifically to make nice recessed pulls in the lid and drawers. So don't go far.

Veritas Gent's Saw Review

Last Friday I went to the Furniture Workshop, to finish the last few operations on my Pembroke Table. While there I eyed some new goodies just unpacked on Alan's bench, two pairs of Lee Valley's Veritas Gentleman's Saws. Alan liked how they handled, and the smoothness of cut, then invited me to test drive them.

The Arts and Crafts Tool Chest class was starting soon, and since I've not yet finished the dovetail saw kit my girlfriend gifted to me, it sounded like the perfect opportunity to test out the saw.


Layout for the baselines, on wide stock like this, I'm not a huge fan of the combination square, I find that it moves a bit. But a marking gauge is a little less than ideal.


Here is the 20 TPI rip saw in use, it's light and easy to control, and much more comfortable than other gent's saws. I had never liked a gent's saw grip before this one.


A little more drama, I've also started sawing English-style. By dropping the saw handle to establish the front kerf, then let that kerf guide the sawplate down the back side.


The saw is also thin and tracks well, but is still thick enough to fit a fret blade inside.


The pared tails...

And the wetted down practice joint.

I like this saw, it's affordable, and preforms exceptionally out of the box. If I didn't have a dovetail kit to finish I'd buy this saw for my small stuff dovetailer. That being said I think the crosscut version would be welcome addition to my arsenal. I'll have to work with that one some more too. I'm happy so see Veritas doing more great work, I've come to expect them to put out something built amazingly well, function to a high degree and at an affordable price.

As a matter of clarification, no I was not paid or coerced into writing this review.

Canadian Finger Joints

I had, had to share this. It's too funny.

Wooden Planemaking

An old illness has burned back with a fury. Planemaking. It's here to stay too. I've ordered a scarce copy of Whelan's The Wooden Plane: Its History, Form and Function and got a copy from New York on inter-library loan, because I was too impatient to wait. Between working on the bed I've taken moments to begin work on a miniature rabbet plane.


After final trimming it will hardly be 5 1/2" long. It will be 3/8" wide.

It's made of beech and boxed in Brazilian Cherry (at least that's what the scrap piece I had was supposed to be. Janka says it's very hard around 3000 if I remember correctly. Boxwood comes in at around 2900 so I think this will work, assuming it's stable enough to use. I can't wait to trim to fit.

Bed Project: Footboard

Here's the completed footboard, it still needs come shellac, but it's otherwise good to go. These are my first drawbored joints, even with a crazy slightly misaligned offset on the one side the pegs drove all the way in. These joints are tight, I'm a huge fan of this.

I'm also very pleased with the color.

Staining with WD Lockwood Dyes

The bed that I'm working on needs to look older. A few coats of shellac and a waxing wasn't going to cut it on this project. I also didn't want to get into the smelly gel stains and varnish combinations that look really awesome on oak, seeing as I'm locked in the apartment with this stuff now that the weather is cold.

While milling the lumber I spoke with a guy by the name of Les Katz, who is a really imaginative woodworker, and he suggested water based dyes. Some of the reasons for were inexpense, ease of use, water based, available in a wide array of colors, and the ability to layer and mix them for really cool coloring effects. I got on the phone with Lockwood and placed an order, which shipped and arrived Monday by the way.

Here's what I came up with...


Here are the two short legs, one is finished with the dye the other only has the base coat of yellow.