Thread: Small 5 drawer jewellery cabinet

I'll have to watch this one

Looks very interesting indeed.

Nothing like what I make, which is why I am so interested.

Watching with interest.

Regards
Keith

Intrigued

Have seen this design before and have always thought of giving it a go............ but i'll see how yours turns out first.

Now that the external frame is complete, it's time to start on the drawers. They will be made from Qld silver ash, with fronts of hairy oak.
The sides were dressed to the calculated size, with no clearance allowed. Then, about 0.1mm was taken off the top of each. As the humidity is about 60%, the sides are likely to expand a little, so I'll take some more off later.
The runners are 3mm thick, so they will run in a 3.2mm table saw cut. Starting from the bottom drawer I marked the position of the cut, then being careful to position the saw fence accurately, made a cut 0.5mm deeper than the runners. I set the sides in place and resting the side above on it, repeated the procedure. As expected, I had to plane a little off the top drawer sides.

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Looking great Alex.

Last week I made the backs for the drawers from silver ash, and the slips that the bottom panel will sit in from jarrah. I'm using 'Sturt' style drawer bottoms, where the bottom panel sits in slips that are glued to the sides. If you'r not familiar with them, all will be revealed later.

I've decided to use hairy oak for the drawer fronts, a decision I may regret. I have several reasonably sized boards, but they have so many splits and rotted sections that it was difficult to get the necessary sections out of one. It is extremely hard on tools - when cutting a length off one board sparks came off the table saw blade, and the first pass over the jointer put a small nick in a newly sharpened set of blades. Attempting to pass them through the drum sander resulted in burn marks, not from burning sandpaper, but from inclusions in the wood. Nonetheless, it came off the jointer, with quite a good finish, and a light touch with a scraper had it looking pretty good.

I've sawn the fronts to slightly over height, and will plane them to height before cutting them to length.

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No photos of today's work I'm afraid. I planed the drawer fronts to height, sanded them then cut them to length. The last job today was marking out the dovetail pins. (Yes, I'm one of those people who cuts the pins first.)

Today I started cutting the pins on the drawer fronts. First, I establish a cut line on the end, then cut at an angle down to the marked line.
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Next step is to hog out the waste between the pins using a router. I try to go as close to the lines as possible.
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I then chisel out the remaining waste. First I pare away the small pieces next to the pins, then setting the chisel in the marked lines, chop out the remainder. The last step is to tidy up each recess.
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When doing this, you need to be very careful not to use too much force. If you do...
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I've attempted to repair it. Tomorrow will reveal if the repair has been successful.
Today's progress...three down, two to go.
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I had to re-make one of the drawer fronts as there was a bit of crumbly sapwood on it. Then I cut the pins on the remaining drawers and started on the tails.

My reason for cutting pins first is that I like very thin London pins, and it would be difficult to get get the awl in to mark them if I cut the tails first.

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I managed to get three drawers done, and hope to finish the other two tomorrow.

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I finished dovetailing the fronts now, so all the drawer frames are complete. Next step is to make and install the drawer bottoms.

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Today I made the bottom panels and dry fitted the bottoms.
The bottom panels are 5mm thick Western Red Cedar, and they sit in slips of 7mm Jarrah. 😳The sides of the panels are machined down to be a sliding fit in 3.2mm (1/8") slots in the slips, so that the top of the panel is flush with the top of the slips. The front is machined to be a similar fit in the same sized slot in the drawer front. The machining on the sides is on the top of the panel, while that on the front is on the underside.

The machining of the panel is such that there is a slight clearance between its edge and the bottom of the slot, and its width is such that when the slips are in place, the assembly is slightly too wide to fit inside the drawer sides. The outsides of the slips are then planed down until the assembly is a tidy but not tight fit.
Tomorrow I will glue the slips to the inside of the drawer sides.

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Front top

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Front underside

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Assembly from underneath

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Assembly from top

Wow, that is an awesome design Alex. Well done, it looks terrific. And thanks for sharing your WIP photos and explanations.