Chest of Drawers wip - slow hand tool project

[AndyT]

The next thing to think about is the back. (Can you tell that I'm putting off the harder jobs of making drawers that fit and a smooth top? :wink: )

I've got suitable wood put by for several options, each of which would fit in that 3/8" deep rebate. I could use some old pine tongue and groove boards. I could make some new T&G from some other oak. But I've done T&G before, so I fancy the idea of a framed back. It will test me a bit, as I will make the frame out of the same thin 3/8" oak as the drawer supports, so the mortices and tenons will only be 1/8" thick.

There are still options though. I could fill the panel with plywood, and I have a suitable sized bit of ash veneered ply which would be fine, but again, I've done ply panels before. I fancy a solid wood panel. I thought I had a quick and easy option with some old thin softwood which had indeed been the back of a cupboard but my one remaining piece was too short. Time to find some more thin wood.

This will do:

It's an old drawer front and I think it will yield enough, after some more sawing and planing.

So I was sawing the board in two, when I heard a knock and suddenly the saw didn't want to move. I'd found a remnant of an old screw from one of the handles. Fortunately it was a brass screw so did not damage the saw. All you need to get it out easily is a shell bit and a brace:

The semi-cylindrical shell bit will drill a hole round the old screw, digging down so you can get it out with pliers.

and then it's a bit more rip sawing which produced two thinner boards in need of a lot of planing

which makes enough to cut two boards to edge joint for a panel. Here they are, trimmed a bit to remove the gap where the lock was

and showing a bit where my sawing went adrift, which I should be able to work around

I don't know what this wood is. It's soft but doesn't have distinct summer/winter hard and soft growth. The sawdust was quite a vivid yellow. One side has a bit of a greenish tinge. The good thing is that it's got the growth rings at 90° to the surface so it should be stable.

Having spent quite some time planing these two boards thinnish and flattish, it was time to cut off two smaller bits and glue them together. To do this I used a really cheap old technique from back when I couldn't afford sash cramps: battens and sliding wedges.

Made from scrap, but they work really well.

More soon, when the glue has dried!

 

[Graham Orm]

Excellent stuff, a great read Andy.

 

[AndyT]

With the glue dry, I did some more planing, to make the back panel thinner and flatter. One of the challenges of this project is that everything is smaller and thinner than I have worked on before. I'm aiming for the back to be about ¼" thick, so it can be thinned down at the edges to go into a ⅛" groove.

I trimmed the panel to size, doing what I could to avoid the flaws in the old wood, then gauged all round at ⅛".

trimmed the far end with a chisel

and then rebated with a moving fillister

That worked, but looked a bit plain, so I tried running a round along in the corner to ease the transition a bit:

followed by some more fiddling about with several essential tools from the "alternative planes shelf" (and a little bit of sandpaper)

Now, I've since read that the 'correct' way to do this is to gauge the central part with a cutting gauge, then work vertically down along each line with a round, held against a batten, cutting down as far to the previously gauged ⅛" line. Then remove the batten and rebate the external parts to fit. That would have been more efficient, but one of the ways hand tools are nicer is that I feel I can just attack an edge freehand like I did - something I would not attempt with a power router.

Meanwhile, I had prepared the frame for the back panel to go in.

This is a conventional grooved frame, with haunched mortice and tenon joints at the corners. Standard approach for mortising, with the rails left long and clamped to avoid splitting:

Tenon cheeks sawn, ready for grooving

But here's a problem - the 405 fence is too big - it can't clear my clamping plywood. (The rails are only 1¼" wide.)

The solution is clear - swap to a smaller plane!

and indeed, stop messing about with plywood and wedges and nip the wood in the vice:

leaving a kit of parts.

Saw off the tenon shoulders

mark the haunches one way

and the other (using a handy 3/16" chisel as a gauge)

assemble and test in position:

then check the edge of the panel with a "mullet"

and insert into the frame for a trial assembly in place

It fits! Good enough for a dark corner where nobody will see it :lol:

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Nice result. Almost a shame it won't be on display more ! I've not yet done raised panels by hand before but "cheated" with the router. I have a project on the drawing board (literally) that will give me a chance to have a go though, so I'm collecting tips.

Getting things in the right order can make life easier, can't it. I so much like playing with plough planes that I usually dive in and cut the grooves, then struggle sawing the cheeks of the tenons without the saw being led astray by the side of the groove. Must remember to do it in the right order next time.

On the subject of plough planes - it looks like your 043 is working OK with the 1/8 cutter; on mine the clamping screw comes down right on the edge of the blade so that the little clamp pings out sideways when tightened. I decided it was intolerably fiddly, left it fitted with the 1/4 cutter and only use it for that size. Perhaps I should give it a closer look.

 

[AndyT]

The next thing I tackled was the top.

Right back at the beginning I had sawn some bits of yew square and satisfied myself that they would do to make a top for this chest of drawers. I had roughly brought them to the same thickness and then put them to one side. I now needed to get a smooth flat surface and joint the edges.
I'd not worked with yew before. These pieces are quite small and have various challenging places where the grain reverses around knots, so it was a good planing test. I could not have done it without this anonymous toothing plane that I bought for a few quid on ebay.

It really is possible to go at it in any direction - even scrubbing round in circles if you want - and get a flat surface without tearing great lumps out. Obviously, although the surface is flat, it is not smooth:

So I spent quite a bit of time just filling up the mouth of the plane

emptying it out and starting again. Then scraping with a Stanley No 80

After some time, I had a set of smooth-ish pieces of nearly the same thickness that I could arrange together and number in sequence.

I then spent quite a lot of time doing the same sort of thing to the edges, holding them up to the light in pairs, squeezed tightly together, making sure that there was (almost) no light showing between them and that the edges were reasonably square to the faces.

So it was then time to start gluing them together, one by one, to allow maximum adjustment and minimum stress on me.

After some more additions it looked like this:

and here is the whole top, with the glue thoroughly dried, clamped on the bench so I could remove any little variations in level that remained, again using the toothing plane and the scraper.

Yew does scrape satisfyingly well:

I then sanded with Abranet

and an electric helper

Having got the back smooth as a practice, I repeated the process on the front, and then sawed down to size. Rather than get a Workmate out to cut this on, I just knifed a long line and used a tenon saw

but unfortunately there is not enough depth under the handle on this nice old one!

giving you a chance to play 'spot the difference' as I switched to this Disston instead which has a bit more steel left on its blade:

Phew! Having a 'selection' of tools proves worthwhile yet again!

To mark out for the bevel, I just positioned the cabinet upside down on the top, equally spaced from the edges, and drew round it. (At this point I also made the holes for the screws that will hold it in place from below.)

I then marked the chamfer on the edges with a pencil gauge

and planed freehand, starting on the end grain. For most of this I used this Chinese style plane from one of those tempting sales at Rutlands - it has the big advantage of having a very long toe ahead of the blade, which is ideal for balancing on an angle.

I cut away at the ends first

then joined them up. I do like the way this yew planes!

But just to show it's not all easy, this is what happens on reversing grain

so here it was back to the magic toothing plane

and the scraper

Here it is posed in place

closely followed by its first coat of Tru-Oil, as recommended by Jimi

Next time, there will be the rest of the story of the back panel and we get close to the start of the drawers...

 

[Paul Chapman]

Looking good, Andy. Very effective use of the toothing plane.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Graham Orm]

Extremely satisfying read Andy. It's all looking good. What's the purpose of the toothing plane originally? I don't know much about them. How did it help you here?

 

[AndyT]

Extremely satisfying read Andy. It's all looking good. What's the purpose of the toothing plane originally? I don't know much about them. How did it help you here?

As far as I know they were made and used for veneer work which would have often needed to flatten difficult timbers such as burrs by planing and scraping. (This would have been with fairly thick sawn veneer not the paper thin knife cut stuff used now.)

Toothed planes and veneer go way back, to Roman times and probably Egyptian.

There was an often repeated assertion that a roughened ground provided a better surface for gluing veneer to but some close studies of how glue works say that this is a fallacy. (In gluing the top I did my best to get a glass smooth surface on the edges. I will let you know if it falls apart! )

 

[Graham Orm]

Good stuff keep up the good work!

 

[mouppe]

Andy, the chest is looking terrific.

As far as I know, there are two types of toothed blades, one for roughing up a surface prior to gluing veneer work and the other for tackling difficult woodsprior to finishing the job with a smoother or scraper.

This blog post explains it better than I can.

https://pegsandtails.wordpress.com/2012 ... veneering/

 

[John15]

Continuing to look really good Andy. The pics are brilliant, showing every step along the way.

John

 

[AndyT]

Ok, I can now show you the rest of the work on the back panel and I will cautiously approach the actual drawers...

I thought it would make sense to put some finish on the panel before gluing up the frame, so gave it a couple of coats of some shellac that I had in the cupboard. It's hard to judge, as my pictures don't show the same colours I saw, and will be different again on your screens, but trust me, the combination of the yellow wood and the shellac looked horrible:

It had to go!

I still had many options. I could fix this panel; turn it round to the unspoilt side; cut some more wood for a new raised panel; use a piece of quite nice ash veneered plywood which happened to be the right size, or use up some old pine tongue and grooved boards instead.

So I first tried fixing this panel, by removing the shellac with wire wool and meths. This worked, but you'll have to trust me, as I like to keep the camera away from solvents. :wink:

I gave the panel two coats of Tru-Oil instead and although it is still a bit yellow, it's not as nasty as it was, even if it's hard to see the difference or the problem in the photos.
I omitted to take photos of the exciting stage of cramping the frame together while the glue sets, so you'll have to imagine that, but here I am trimming off the 'horns' at the end of the stiles. Holding a wide, thin, fragile piece brings it own puzzles, but a Richard Tomes holdfast is generally the answer.

The panel is held in a rebate at the back of the carcase by brass screws. These were spaced out (using dividers) and then just because I felt like it, I drilled the pilot holes with an Archimedean drill. It was actually quite practical - the length helped me see the angle and it was light weight.

I then enlarged the holes for clearance in the panel, countersunk them, inserted a steel screw and checked all was ok with a brass one.

That probably took an hour - but I'm not keeping a tally.

Meanwhile, I needed some little bits to make into drawers.

Just as my planing speeded up, so does the recording of it all - so I'll mostly leave it to the photos as it should be pretty obvious what I am doing.

I'd already cut the wood for the drawer fronts. For the sides and backs I used the backs from three old drawers. These were in a chest of drawers my parents had. They were bombed out from their London home and I'm pretty sure that the bedroom suite they kept for the rest of their lives dated from then and was supplied secondhand by the WVS. Stylistically it's probably from the 1920s. The dovetails were machine cut, but there are pencil marks suggesting that it was put together by hand. The wood itself is lovely - I've already made a little side table from some of the thicker parts and have one whole top board left for something else. I'm really glad I hung on to this wood a few years ago when we were clearing their house.

After much measuring and thinking, I found that I could get all the parts from these three boards if I made the drawers half an inch shorter than planned, cutting three pieces from the length of each board, so that's what I did.

I did use my little bandsaw for the rip cuts, for several reasons. Partly to take the smallest, least wasteful cut possible; partly as workholding small bits to rip by hand is not great, and partly to show that I work the way I feel like doing! (I hope you will agree that this does still count as a hand tool project.)

These bits are all about 7/16" thick

but I wanted 5/16" for the sides and 3/8" for the backs, so it was just a matter of jackplane, smoothing plane, straight edge, winding strips until I had a face side and edge.

This is up against a strip light, showing that no light shows between the wood and a straight edge

I do like the old style marking gauges, with the pin simply filed to a knife edge.

I find this gives a really good clear line.

I've never used a wheel type gauge - are they any better?

So the result is a pile of pieces the right thickness

I had wanted to make the drawer slips by leaving the drawer sides over width, ploughing a groove near the edge of the wide board, then sawing off each strip. This is the recommended way for easy workholding, but it didn't fit with getting all the bits out of the wood I had, as I needed to get two full widths from each one.

I had a good tidy up and arranged sets of two sides, a back and a front, ready for each of the five drawers. This was a sensible thing to do. A more sensible thing would have been to do it sooner, before I made the blunder of ending up with one back too many and one side too few!

Luckily, I rummaged around and found an old drawer side from the same source. Although the wood is thinner on the sides, there is just enough left for my planned thickness. Phew!

So, next time, it's dovetails, grooves, slips and bottoms!

 

[custard]

I've never used a wheel type gauge - are they any better?

Swings and roundabouts, they're great for rolling a gauge line around an edge, but the "fence" is a bit small if you're striking a mark any distance inboard, and it's harder to make a really gentle scratch of a mark, it tends to bite fully from the very first moment, which can be disconcerting in hard, open grained woods like Rosewood or Wenge.

Good work with your build, it's coming along nicely!

 

[Graham Orm]

I've never used a wheel type gauge - are they any better?

Swings and roundabouts, they're great for rolling a gauge line around an edge, but the "fence" is a bit small if you're striking a mark any distance inboard, and it's harder to make a really gentle scratch of a mark, it tends to bite fully from the very first moment, which can be disconcerting in hard, open grained woods like Rosewood or Wenge.

Good work with your build, it's coming along nicely!

I was going to answer the question with 'infinitely better'. But you make some good points there Custard. The great advantage is that they don't follow the grain and wander, they cut through it and stay true. I use only the wheel type but have not had cause to come across the circumstances mentioned by custard.

Superb stuff Andy, this thread has become an automatic go-to for me when I log on. Bandsaw......forgiven ;-)

 

[AndyT]

I've been away from the workshop for a while, so unable to post any updates. There will be similar interruptions later in the summer. Meanwhile here are some more pictures from before I went away.

Following directions in Charles Hayward's "Cabinet Making for Beginners" and Robert Wearing's "Essential Woodworker," I started making the first drawer.
The sequence is to fit the front to the opening, fit the sides, cut the back to length, then cut the dovetails. I gauged the sides so that there will be a touch of long grain planing to bring the sides flush with the ends of the front.

The old salvaged oak for the fronts planes nicely

and as a bonus, makes a high fibre breakfast cereal!

Here's the front fitted

and here is a side being squared on my shooting board. I've still not got round to making a posher one but it works just fine.

I worked out the dovetail spacing on my paper drawing, then marked out on the work, using dividers. I pinned a pair of sides together, using fine moulding pins in the waste. I held them in my Coates™ Vice so I could see what I was doing and sawed the tails.

I marked the pins by setting up square and pulling the tip of the dovetail saw through.

To saw out most of the waste, just for fun, I used my old Trump Brothers treadle powered fretsaw. (It needs to earn the floorspace it takes up!)

This works well on the flat for the square cuts but also works fine for the slanting cuts on the through pins, using the simple method of holding the wood up off the table at the right angle. Not something I'd try with an electric saw.

After that it was the usual chisel work as posed here

And here's the result

Obviously that's before gluing up and planing to exact size so I can't test anything but I'm still hopeful.

I still need to sort out the bottoms, plough a groove on the front, round over the back and make the slips. More on all that soon.

I also want to decide about the handles in case I need to drill holes in the fronts before gluing up.

 

[Graham Orm]

Good stuff Andy, taking shape. ;-)

 

[AndyT]

Bottoms!

Here's what I have done so far. Some time ago, I was deep ripping some cedar to use for the bottoms, which came out very nicely. I put the pieces back on the rack where they stayed straight and flat until needed, which was welcome!

So I jointed the edges of two boards (and yes, that is a Preston jointer, like Sunnybob's but without any worm or rust - sorry!)

To cramp them together I decided to use the same simple board and wedge arrangement as I had used on the top, but wanted some extra help so I pulled out the old sash cramp heads that go on a wooden bar. These are relatively light in use, probably about the same as those cheap ali bars. In this case I needed a new hole at the right spot on the bar, so I lifted down my Weetabix powered drilling machine and set to - these things aren't just for decoration!

Here's an exciting action shot of the glue drying:

and here's another with a special patented high-tec way of holding things flat:

What does not show in the pictures is that the cedar is resting on a couple of little battens so that any glue squeezed out does not stick them to the cramps.

To get the full depth needs more than just two widths, but the extra needed is less than a full board. As this is soft wood and quite thin I had a go at cutting it with a cutting gauge, taking several passes and working from both sides. It worked well.

I then shot the edges and repeated the gluing up, which looked much the same as before, only wider. I also cross cut the boards and planed them down to about ¼" thick.

 

[AndyT]

Drawer slips

Drawer slips make sense on drawers this small with thin sides. Books describe two styles. The commonest pattern is quite high - about ½" or ¾" tall - with a quarter round on the top edge. They reduce the space in the drawer by their thickness. The other pattern is just a square strip with a groove in it, generally with a tiny bead on top.

I've decided to go for the second type. It does bring an extra challenge - for the common type the drawer bottom goes into a groove and so will always disappear neatly; on the second type there will be a rebated edge to the drawer bottom, which will show.

I had originally hoped to be able to leave the drawer sides wide, groove for the slips on their edges, then rip them off. This would have made it easy to hold the work. As it happened, I could not do this, as my wood for the sides was only just wide enough to cut two sides from. So I needed to find a way of holding these fiddly little bits to plane and groove them reasonably accurately.

I knocked up a sort of small sticking board from another bit of oak, then modified the design until it worked ok.

First I cut a reasonable rebate

and made sure it was accurate for 3/8" depth so I could plane down to the top and no further.

At first, I left the higher part at the back and put a screw at the left hand side, as you would on an ordinary sticking board for window mouldings. I found it difficult to hold the work firm enough into the rebate and ended up with strips that were trapezoid in section where they should have been square.

I decided to add some little tabs to hold the work, by chiselling a couple of little housings in the side and fixing them loosely with screws. The idea was that they would tighten up in the vice and grip the work. I also added a couple of dowels to stop the whole thing dropping down when I loosened the vice.

This worked ok for planing the strips square. The final pass was with the edge of the plane on the top of the jig so it could not cut down too far - as in an ordinary shooting board.

My big breakthrough was when I realised that it made sense to reverse the whole thing and have the fence at the front. This was just as good for holding the strip tight but it meant that rather than trying to run the fence of the plough against the work, I could run the fence of the plough against the deeper jig.

I used my Record 044C for this - it's bigger and easier to handle than the tiny 043. You'll see that it has a wooden handle instead of the blue plastic. It's nicer to use but I may have made it a bit too chunky, so there will be a rasp-based digression some time soon.

This worked ok, so now I need to get the drawer bottoms to fit neatly in these tiny ⅛" grooves.

I also need to decide on the shape of the drawer pulls before gluing up the drawers, so that I can drill holes in the fronts in the right places and countersink them on the inside.

There will probably be a bit of a slowing down in the post rate on here, as I shall be away a few times in the summer, and I don't intend stopping to photograph all the steps in making a drawer five times over! But people seem to like this level of detail, so I shall try to record the pondering and the experiments and the choice of tools as much as I can.

 

[lurker]

But people seem to like this level of detail, so I shall try to record the pondering and the experiments and the choice of tools as much as I can

We want details !!! (hammer)
Wonderful post =D> =D>

 

[Graham Orm]

You should print this thread of and stick it to the bottom of the bottom drawer in a plastic sleeve for someone to find in years to come Andy..