I was looking for something to build my wife for Valentine's day, and came across the idea of a small chest of drawers (dresser) that she could store her yarn and crochet materials in. I ended up kidnapping the largest yarn package she had and what I came up with was a 7 drawer assembly, with the top drawer being much shallower than the others so it could be used to hold magazines and crochet hooks.
Material wise, it's a combination of spruce and fir. One of these days, Windsor plywood is going to have a big sale on hardwoods, and I'm going to get a trailer load of red oak, but for now, this will do. Since end grain doesn't absorb stain the same way the face grain does on a piece of wood, I always try to keep it concealed under something. This time I built a 1/2 x 1/2 veneer of fir and jointed it to the outer edges of all the spruce blanks to conceal the end grain. There's a 1 1/2 skirt at the bottom with a raised start for the first drawer. This gave me space to conceal a set of 4 heavy duty wheels that allow the unit to be rolled any direction with a gentle nudge. The drawer guides are made of 5/8" Ash (Canadian Tire for $2 per 3' believe it or not) with some very thin spruce shims to keep the drawers from slopping around.
Drawer construction was an amusing sort of procedure. I bought a dovetail kit specifically for the drawers, and despite the fact it was freezing outside the day I was working on it, the process went relatively smoothly. However I did run into one snag. When setting the depth guide on the dovetail plate that attaches to my router, the instructions say to set it at the thickness of the wood I'm working with. Easy enough I guessed, and dialed in 5/8ths. After cutting all of my joints I realized the problem however. The instructions fail to take one thing into account. when you cut a dovetail you get a set of grooves one one side, and the other has a set of cuts that look like the edges of a puzzle piece (hard to explain.. look up dovetailing if you want to see... they're tiny trapezoids). The catch is that the grooves are cut by a round bit, and the tip of that groove is round... ]]]]]]]]]]]) sort of like so... now, you try to slide the trapezoid into this, which has square edges by the way, and the furthest you can progress is the beginning of the curve at the end of the groove. Square pegs don't fit into round holes.. nuff said. The actual depth difference is about 3/16th of an inch, so it took a couple of hours with a very sharp chisel to alter all the dovetails to the point they would work. Very easy to put together however. They tend to naturally square themselves out when you assemble the drawers, so there was no trouble there. For the bottoms I threw a 3/8 rabbet bit into the router and cut a slot all the way around. A bit of tablesaw work with some 3/8ths plywood, and they dropped into place with a tiny bead of glue.
Finish wise I used the same stain as the sideboard (had some left anyways). What I wanted to do was the same sort of finish as was on the sideboard, done with the Tung oil, but I ran into a problem. Tung oil won't cure below 13 degrees Celsius. Working inside, that poses a problem because the fumes are also flammable as it's curing. So I have my wood room vented outside with a large fan and the duct to the furnace blocked off. Generally this suffices, especially since the room faces East and we have mostly West winds. With the sideboard it worked fine. However, we've had a primarily East wind for the last couple of weeks, and it caused all sorts of havoc. The temperature in the room at night was somewhere around 5 degrees, and while the first 2 coats cured fairly well, the third one was still a jelly after 36 hours. I warmed the room back up by closing the window, but the damage was done and the final coat never did cure fully. So the buffing with steel wool and paste wax became a sort of refinishing challenge. The third coat stripped off completely (Tung oil is a non stacking penetrating finish.. there should _never_ be a surface residue), but oh my God the time and elbow grease involved.. I was at it for 8 hours straight, and it would have been longer if Chris hadn't helped me with 2 of the drawers. But, in the end it had the same buttery soft finish the sideboard does, so it was worth the effort I think... Finally a bit of brass hardware, including 2 lion's head pulls Carrie salvaged from a piece of destroyed furniture (she really likes them), and some wax on the drawer guides, and we have a functional piece of furniture :) Next up, an entertainment stand (not what you're thinking I suspect.. you'll see :) )
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