Thread: Half Blind Dovetails with Proud Drawer Fronts in the Solid

Hi Luke, I did lipped drawer fronts on my Shaker Sewing desk build. I found the Tim Rousseau's tips for cutting the half blind dovetails with a hammer worked well.

Cheers,

Hi Luke

The term used is "overlay", to describe the style of drawers. Some will use a planted front to achieve this, with through dovetails front and back. Bloody amateurs! In the case of the work done by Doucette and Wolfe (and this must be their best video to date!), they have gone the traditional route and rebated the drawer frint first.

Essentially, what is done is to create the overlay, and the line this is taken to is what you would leave for the half blind baseline.

There are different types. Today I plane to make a drawer like this, which is similar to the drawers I built for the Lingerie Chest: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furnitu...heDrawers.html

I would call these 'insert-overlay' because they do both.







The alternative method here would have been to rebate the overhang, but the drawers have bow fronts, and so this was not an option. Instead I recessed the drawer blades.

Will we see photos of your progress?

Regards from Perth

Derek

Interesting video Luke . They did a rebate to the lipped front on the left, right and upper side only , only three edges and not the four edges of the drawer front . I think I remember seeing it with three edges on some original period pieces but most of the time its seen on the four edges. Ive not seen any written instructions on how to do it .

When I needed to do it I made the fronts and left them a few mm thicker than needed , This is good practice when in the solid and 100 % the only way if you were to be veneering the front later.

When making
You make a carcase all square and as true as you can , then lay in drawer runners as square off the front of the carcase as you can. You then make drawers as true and as square as you can and the day you slide the drawers in they rarely sit in flush and true all around the front to match the carcase. It never happens, the drawer front then needs matching to the carcase front after the drawer guides have been fitted.

So when doing the rebate for a lipped front, do it on a slightly thicker front . Hold the front in a vice and lay out your sides with the tails to mark dovetails onto the rebate. Its a bit harder to mark them out because of the rebate. Grind a fine blade to suit to help with marking . Cut what you can with a saw and remove the waste for the dovetails. When the drawer is together and you slide it in for the first time you now have to see the lip match up with the carcase front . Adjust that in until it sits well. Then you plane the front back to suit and then do the lip mouldings.

In that video, the tiger maple is astounding.

Such skill.

Thanks everyone! Just knowing the term lipped drawer front is a huge help. That'll get me headed in the right direction.

I'm not sure how best to rebate the end grain... But I'll figure it out.

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

Thanks everyone! Just knowing the term lipped drawer front is a huge help. That'll get me headed in the right direction.

I'm not sure how best to rebate the end grain... But I'll figure it out.

Were not in the hand tool section now Luke
If I was doing it by hand I think a hand saw cutting across the grain and just tap it off with a hammer , then finish off with a rebate plane or a shoulder plane.

I just cut them on the table saw though and clean up with a hand plane .

Rob

Luke

Firstly, what Rob said.

There are other power tools you could use, such as the bandsaw, and cleaning up with a shoulder/rebate plane.

Another alternative is to resaw the drawer front, leaving the lipped/overlay area to be glued back.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Luke, I agree with Rob & Derek that resawing & glueing the fronts is the sissy way....
Depending how wide the lip is, it's not as difficult as it might look to cut the pins. Make the rebates by your preferred method. Like Rob, I'd almost certainly use the tablesaw (unless there was some compelling reason not to!) & clean up to my layout lines with a shoulder/rebate plane. Mark the pins off the dovetails (awkward, this is one situation where I use a finely-tapered awl with a slightly 'chisel' point rather than a marking-knife), then saw as much as you can (very carefully so you don't hit the lip). You won't get as deep a cut as you do with a non-lipped half-blind D/T unless you over-cut to blazes (& to me, over-cutting is disgustingly-poor practice, anyway ), so there's a bit more chisel-work involved, but depending on how contrary a wood you're working with, you'll probably find it goes quicker & easier than you anticipate.....

Cheers,

A past contributor (Woodwould) had interesting insight into the evidence of overcutting in Georgian furniture. I guess it's a matter of time and cost in production .vs. unseen aesthetics. On principal I can't see that it would be any worse overcutting by hand than using machinery to cut rebates. In fact telltale overcutting would leave more evidence of handmade than otherwise? Check out figure 4 in his blog on mid 18thC drawers (i think the pics in the threads he contributed here might have disappeared). I'd still recommend trying the blade chopping method to see if it works with your wood of choice for the build

You won't get as deep a cut as you do with a non-lipped half-blind D/T unless you over-cut to blazes (& to me, over-cutting is disgustingly-poor practice, anyway ), so there's a bit more chisel-work involved, but depending on how contrary a wood you're working with, you'll probably find it goes quicker & easier than you anticipate.....

Totally agree, Ian. Over-cutting is certainly a time-honoured aid, and used by many over centuries. However, it is a time saving operation and not a mark of good technique. It may have been accepted practice all those years ago, but is unnecessary now (unless you are churning out drawers every day).

There is another way of deepening the socket kerf. Tage Frid used a bandsaw blade, hammering it into the kerf. Some use a scraper blade. I built a "kerf chisel" several years ago for this purpose, and it gets used on every socket ...

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMad...erfChisel.html




With regards the overlay, if you saw and plane this evenly, it should be easier to transfer and chisel away the pin waste as the overlay/lip will act as a fence for the tail board.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

A past contributor (Woodwould) had interesting insight into the evidence of overcutting in Georgian furniture. I guess it's a matter of time and cost in production .vs. unseen aesthetics. On principal I can't see that it would be any worse overcutting by hand than using machinery to cut rebates. In fact telltale overcutting would leave more evidence of handmade than otherwise? Check out figure 4 in his blog on mid 18thC drawers (i think the pics in the threads he contributed here might have disappeared). I'd still recommend trying the blade chopping method to see if it works with your wood of choice for the build

Hi Franklin, our posts overlapped.

My opinion is that this method is really only applicable today if you are emulating 18th century drawers. Otherwise, by todays standards and expectations, this would be considered sloppy work. We have more tools at our disposal today than in years of olde. Our speed comes from machines that prepare the boards and then leave the joinery for hand tools. Overcuts were accepted practice in the 18th century, but times move on.

I always smile when I read of tool marks being left deliberately to indicate that a piece was made by hand. I try and avoid any tool marks - which is impossible. There will always be some, even though I am careful to minimise them. The designs I build, typically devoid of ornate mouldings, are not improved by markings. In spite of this, I rather doubt that my work will fail to be recognised as hand made. The use of handtools, and the subtle irregularities they create, will ensure that this is so.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks, everyone. Good advice. End of the day, you've mostly just reaffirmed what I was originally planning to do with them, so that's great. I'll remove the bulk of the waste with the Table saw and then do the rest by hand. I'll likely build a scratch stock scraper for the bead around the lip.

I've sawn dovetail sockets against a stopped surface before on the sockets at the base of a spindle table. It's a pain, but not to the point that it's not doable. I welcome the challenge.

I've been looking at a lot of Queen Anne furniture in US Maple recently, and I have decided to use polished QLD Maple for this build. Derek, I likely won't do a WIP. I do that deliberately, because I've always been worried that some of the commentary may derail me. I'll probably do one of my long, recap posts instead.

I'd look for it some time in late August or September...

Cheers,
Luke

Yes, I've seen over-cutting on some very old stuff too, (and on drawers made no earlier than the 1930s), but I've seen as many pieces in which the dovetails were very neatly cut, with perhaps a very slight 'slip' on one or two in an entire set (we all have one of those, occasionally! . No doubt it was done for speed, but I still think it sucks! Not everyone did it, so I'll quietly keep to my opinion that it was used by the less-skilled or less fussy.

I tried the Frid method of deepening the saw cuts after seeing it in his book (or was it a FWW article?), and succeeded in splitting the end off the piece I was working on. So I went back to the way we'd been shown at school, which is to use a chisel that fits the narrow dimension of the socket, alternately chopping down a mm from the shoulder line, then removing a thinnish sliver by cutting in from the end. This gets rid of most of the waste fairly quickly, especially in clean-cutting woods. When all the sockets have been 'roughed out', I turn the drawer-front or whatever it is upright, and pare out the rest of the waste with appropriately-sized chisels. The sides can be registered from the saw-cuts, so as long as your saw-cuts were accurate, they aren't much of a problem, except in very hard or curly woods. The back of the socket is as critical as the sides, imo, it should be a clean & straight to make a firm fit & help 'lock' the D/T in its socket. I select a chisel that fits the back of the socket as accurately as possible, & carefully pare off the last little bit that I deliberately leave til last, until they all fit nicely. On some woods, I use a pair of skews to clean out the corners, but some can be cleaned as easily & neatly by taking small slices & twisting the chisel slightly when it hits bottom, which saves scrabbling round the bench top for the left or right skew. I know, a fishtail or diamond-point can do either side, but I've not gotten around to making any, and the pair of teeny skews I made a few years ago get into all but the tiniest D/T corners..

A caveat here: I'm lucky enough to usually work with woods that pare & cut very nicely - I'd probably have to re-think my approach if I used Jarrah or Marri regularly!

On the subject of deliberately leaving tool marks to 'show it's hand-made', it's something we hear a lot, but I'm with Derek in thinking it's a bit of a conceit, really. Unless you go to extreme lengths to imitate machine work (as he did with his Wegner chair! ), there are usually tell-tale signs such as details that are difficult to impossible to replicate by machines. Even on that tour de force of hand work, a close look by someone who knows a bit about the game would probably spot a paradox or two that would give it away. I've also heard the argument that if the joints fit soundly & well, does it rally matter how they were made? I know I've shed a lot of sweat in manual labour of all sorts over the years & as far as I can tell, it doesn't contain any particular magic...

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

......I've been looking at a lot of Queen Anne furniture in US Maple recently, and I have decided to use polished QLD Maple for this build....

The Qld. Maple should be at home in that role, Luke, though the stuff you've got has probably got a quite different appearance from the fiddleback Maple in the video you pointed to! Anyway, it's usually one of the most delightful woods to work with, so I hope your batch doesn't disappoint. It certainly should respond magnificently to French-polish. As you know, it's a relatively porous wood, & some people use grain-filler prior to polishing, but I prefer to 'fill' with the shellac itself. It means a few extra rub-overs when you are 'bodying-up', but it avoids the risk of filler changing colour or texture enough to show as it ages.

I'll look forward to seeing the final product, & reading about the ups & downs of the build.....

Cheers,