Thread: 18th Century Dresser - or - The Jobs you Don't Want in the Early Joiner's Shoppe

Thanks, artme. I'm glad you appreciated it. I often wonder if my posts are too long and deter people, but the deterring of the deterred has yet to deter me from deploying deterrent.

Ian, I'm showing my experience, or rather lack thereof here, but I didn't even know about mortising the drawer runner into the divider. That's a great technique and makes complete sense. Mine are just nailed into the side of the carcase with cut nails. Joining the two with wood would eliminate potential for sag at the front, which is huge.

It seems to me that you could also use a dovetail in lieu of a mortise and tenon in that join. Would you say that's true?

Cheers,
Luke

Luke, my method for dividers and drawer glides varies slightly form Ians. Not more right, just different.

I run a sliding dove tail to about 5 -8 mm shy of the front of the carcase. The front divider is glued in place to the carcase. The drawer glide tenon is glued to the front divider. The rear divider is glued to the carcase. A gap is allowed for at the rear mortice and tenon. Sliding dovetails are on ALL three components. I think I end up with flatter cabinet sides seasonally and can use thinner more delicate looking cabinet sides. I like 14mm. But that's just me.

Exceptional work I must say and brilliant use of my countries beautiful resources. I tips me hat.

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

.....I didn't even know about mortising the drawer runner into the divider. That's a great technique and makes complete sense. Mine are just nailed into the side of the carcase with cut nails. Joining the two with wood would eliminate potential for sag at the front, which is huge........

Luke, as always, there are many ways to remove the pelt from the proverbial moggy. "My" way and "your" way are both time-honoured techniques. Down here, nails were used more often & more 'generously' on the furniture built for the less well-heeled, or so it seems to me. Ironically, some of the nailed-up stuff I've come across has survived better than some made with more 'sophisticated' joinery. Much of the old Hoop Pine and cedar furniture from the early 20th C that I've had close associations with was put together entirely with nails & hide glue, not a M&T, let alone a dovetail, in the entire piece! Also, on most of these pieces, the sides are too thin (circa 3/8") to nail the runners onto directly, so either several short blocks, or a solid strip, are glued to the side and the runners nailed to that. Of course, gluing a solid strip cross-grain with good 'ol non-yielding hide-glue is asking for this: 3.jpg

This COD belongs to my better half & was acquired, with side-splits & severely-worn drawers & runners, during the bicentennial year when anything "Australian" was highly sought after (& expensive!). After avoiding the job for a very long time, I finally got the round tuit earlier this year. It was clear that closing those cracks would require a complete dismantle and revised construction - a daunting prospect. The pieces glued to the thin sides were still very firmly attached, and the cracks have been stable for a very long time, so to avoid the possibility of doing more damage, I simply levered out the worn runners and screwed new ones to the still solidly-attached strips glued to the sides: 5.jpg

I persuaded LOML that the cracks were an 'authentic' feature & should be preserved . Not the most elegant of repairs, but she's happy that all drawers now work smoothly, and if anyone in the future feels they should do something better, my work will be very easily undone.

One of the nicest old pieces I've ever worked on was a cedar bookcase/cabinet that was superbly made, using all the 'right' techniques - carcase dovetailed together, absolutely no cross-grain glue-ups anywhere, and all joints still solid & sound 90 years after it was made (most likely in Brisbane). The only 'mistake' the builder made was to use Hoop for the runners for the single wide drawer at the top of the cabinet. But he clearly knew they were going to need replacement down the track, so he did something I'd not seen before. The front of the runners was tenoned into the front divider as per usual with a short, but very neat & and firm tenon. The back of the runner also had a stubby tenon that fitted into a scooped groove in the rear divider. A single nail held it in place at the back, & it had been left conveniently proud, so it was a very simple matter to extract the nail, then pull the runner towards the centre along the groove, as I eased it out of the front mortise. Brilliant! The old runners had slightly over-run gauge-marks, so it was child's play to set a mortise gauge to exactly replicate the old tenons. Never fixed a pair of worn runners as easily or quickly as those.

I've tried Bevan's method of using full sliding D/ts to fit drawer-frames on a small piece. It's a very thorough & a very solid method of construction, but time-consuming & exacting work. My lazy-man's reasonng is that widish dividers D/tailed into front & back gives plenty of insurance against sides bulging, so fully dovetailed drawer frames is probably overkill. But if you are making something you hope will last for generations, & you've got the time, use any technique you think will help.

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

.....It seems to me that you could also use a dovetail in lieu of a mortise and tenon in that join. Would you say that's true? ....

I'd say it's true, but both unnecessary, & possibly undesirable (think of the difficulty of replacing them, should it ever be necessary!). Also likely to be more difficult to get the joint spot-on. This is one I always make very carefully - it obviously needs to be dead flush, and if you get it wrong, it's a heck of a position to try & get a plane into. DAMHIK!

Cheers,

Concerning methods of construction I guess it's a case of whatever works for you, given that rhe method is sound.

I looked over a lot of furniture in Brazil and what surprised me was that on most of the stuff I saw there were no dovetails.

Drawers the were 150 or so years old were simply rabbeted, glued and nailed. I guess the fact that they were 150 yrs old proves a point!

That's a Lovely piece you made there Luke .
The thing that I think is cool is how you took all that wood over there from here and are building from Aussie timbers in the US. Ive never heard of any one doing this before ! Do the local woodies pay any attention to that ? Id imagine they wouldn't give a hoot ! Its cool from here though.

The construction details are an interest Ive followed for a while , in the English school of woodwork , which is where the US and Aussie evolved from. It changed the further back you go , and went through some amazing stages.

The tenon of the runner into the back of the divider with the runner glued at the front only and nailed at the back was one late way .
What is interesting is what this evolved from . Quality stuff before this had the runners sitting in a dado or trench , approx 1/4 inch deep in the chest sides , tenoned at the front into divider, a little glue at the front , and the runners had been ploughed with a groove in the middle that took the dust board, the grooves faced each other for a pair of runners and the dust board slid in from the back holding the runners apart tight into the dado in the chest side. Every thing except the front dividers and front of the runners were allowed to move around , expand and contract . A work of art .

And that above evolved from the 18th century way of divider dovetailed in left and right . Dado like before after the dovetail left and right down the chest sides ..But in the dado sat a thicker dust board . The drawer ran on that. This sat high in the dado's in the sides and fitted to the back of the divider in a rebate , glued in . A long wedge was tapped in below the dust board into the dado of the sides tight pushing it up tight but still allowing movement of chest sides. A hard one to repair when the drawer wears deep into or right through the dust board. But another work of art in the way it works and allows for movement.

This last way as far as I know was the way it was done from around 1680 on wards roughly yo 1800 .
Before that it went back to more basic ways. Starting with thick sides of drawers with a 3/4 " dado / trench down the drawer side that ran on a nailed in 3/4 " rail , nailed to the chest sides.

Rob

Well, one thing is for sure... my way is definitely the least technical and probably the least strong of the lot. I guess that my thought process was that it would be easy to install, easy to replace, and very good with regards to seasonal movement, so, as opposed to digging for better ways I just went with it. I may end up replacing them in 5-10years, but if that happens I can formulate some kind of way to do it better. I'll certainly step it up for the next case I build.

As far as the Aussie wood in the US, I get mixed responses among woodworkers. I get a fair few "excessive jubilation" responses for sure. The stuff I have is of a very high quality regardless of the species, so just that alone gets some heads turned. The fact that it's such large dimension, quartersawn, and 30yrs air dried is enough to excite most, regardless of the figures, exotic nature. I have some people asking questions, etc. There is one person in particular who is obviously going out of his way to not care, but he's a notoriously jealous and passive aggressive type in general, so that's kind of a compliment (or is it a complement?).

End of the day, unless I fall on financial hardship and need to sell it, the wood was for me, so, even if it never helps me sell a piece of furniture (it kind of already has...) then it was worth the money. Hell, by the time I got it here it was only about the same price as cherry or walnut anyway.

Cheers,
Luke

You will probably find they last for ever . Nothing wrong with doing them that way . I had an Oak chest of drawers from around 1750 with the runners done in a basic way , just nailed into the sides, and they were doing fine . Another thing I always remember seeing in an antique was a nailed up drawer that was easy 300 years old . Extremely well worn but still working away fine.
Rob

Luke, as Rob says - I don't think your construction will cause you any grief at all, those runners are likely to outlast you by a good margin. And simple is probably a bonus, because if & when they do need replacement, it should only take moderate skill to do the job. That's just as well as the number of people capable of fixing anything at all seems to diminsh yearly!

Rob has probably seen the guts of about a thousand times more pieces of furniture than I ever will, but in the small sample I have worked on, I'd say each was different in at least a minor, of not major way. It's as if every 'provincial' cabinet workshop evolved their own way of doing it.

Dust boards are an interesting detail. My impression is that they were more common in British than American CODs, but I may be wrong on that. They do seem to be rare to non-existent in Australian-made chests, and seem to have fallen completely out of favour over the last 80 or 90 years. Can you comment, Rob??

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Dust boards are an interesting detail. My impression is that they were more common in British than American CODs, but I may be wrong on that. They do seem to be rare to non-existent in Australian-made chests, and seem to have fallen completely out of favour over the last 80 or 90 years. Can you comment, Rob??

Cheers,

I have no idea on American stuff further than what I see in a few books I have Ian , but those details are mostly not shown.
You see them in a lot of Aussie chests , the earlier the better made they were and the later typically 1870 Cedar Chests had them , you quite often see the ploughed grooves for them but the dust boards are gone . What did happen was they started doing them thin with visible circular saw marks left in , and they didn't last well . Or the chest was so used the drawers wore through the runners and when the runners were replaced the dust boards were thrown out . I have a nice 1845 Aussie Red Cedar chest . I restored the runners and drawer sides because they were well worn .The nice thing is that this sort of work isn't that hard to fix . Once the back is off the dust boards just slide out backwards. The runners then just almost fall out of the trenches in the sides. The small amount of Hide glue up front usually gives way with a wiggle . Sometimes they are flipped to the other side to use the never touched under side for the drawer to run on . New guides added. But on this one I sawed out and added matching Red Cedar and put them back the way they were with the dust boards for an invisible repair. Re did the drawer sides and hardly touched the polish job . Its to precious and original. Typical pre 1850 / 60 stuff like this here was full Red Cedar. To add to the problem of thinner dust boards in post 1860 stuff was that they were not Full Red Cedar but thin Red Cedar Sided with secondary timbers of lighter pines . Down in Vic a lot of Californian Red Pine was used as secondary then in drawer sides and dust boards. Super soft stuff. If your talking about what happened after 1890 in Aussie chests ?? I try not to look
If I were doing some chests for a price and to last Id pretty much be doing them how Luke put them in but with the tenon at the front , its fast and easy to put in with a slot cutter these days and it makes locating the level runner to divider you need at the front easy and quick . I did make some chests years back , period copies and did all the early dust board 18c method . Nice fun work when your getting paid to do it .

Here is the Red Cedar 1845 chest and its innards .

Interesting.

So, to clarify, a dust board is basically a drawer divider which spans the entire area of the case. It provides a full seal between adjacent drawers, as opposed to there being an open void between the two, right?

I recently visited the Yale University furniture study and this was among the topics discussed. I got to open and inspect a 17th century COD which had these, and they actually said that it was one of very few pieces they had which had them. It's my understanding that, at least in US furniture, this tech went by the wayside fairly early on. They did mention that some more regional furniture shops in dustier areas may have used it, but I think it was perceived as unnecessary?

Thats literally just info I picked up in an hour though. Far from the voice of experience.

Heres a question I meant to ask in the first post... Would you guys consider this a chest of drawers or a dresser? And where is the line drawn? I also had someone call it a bureau, but that seems like a reach...

Yeah it spans the width of the Case if it's just one drawer across its width or they are divided up between runners if there are more . There called dust boards but we're not put there because of dust , though they work well at that. They evolved from the board on top into a board in the middle of runners , holding them in trenches sides like my Cedar chest . Then later they went thin , then ply ones . I wonder if at this point they got the name dust boards because that's all they did then . They were no longer a quality structural part really .
Here what you made is called a chest or chest of drawers , same in the UK . A dresser here is a kitchen piece withva top section for plates . In the antique world the name dresser is divided into two , or four actually. Pretty sure it goes like this , An enclosed low dresser or an open low dresser , An enclosed high dresser or an open high dresser. Open is on legs with space between , enclosed is full of doors or drawers down low . Googlecthe four with the word Antique in front and the pictures will make it clear . What the meaning of Dresser in the US is im not sure . Is it the same as a hutch ?? I'd have to google it .
Rob

As I've suggested elsewhere, I could never understand how 'dustboards' were supposed to keep dust out of drawers- surely that gets in from the drawer openings? I like your suggestion, Rob, that they evolved from a simple shelf to support the drawer, becoming more sophisticated as the furniture itself did, then degenerating into thin partitions with no real structural purpose, and finally disappearing altogether.

Apart from possible structural contributions, I do think dustboards can serve a very useful function in CODs, even thin ones. They prevent the clothes in over-full drawers from being pushed up & jamming the drawer above. The cedar COD I made for myself suffers from this problem, particularly the two bottom drawers where I stuff my 'winter' clobber. I had intended to include dustboards, even ploughed the grooves on the top frames, but laziness & shortage of suitable material caused me to change my mind. Wish I'd stuck with them, now!

And Luke, my impression that dustboards were not common in Nth. American CODs seems to be borne out by what you report. As to terminology, I'll go with what Rob says, but there are regional variations in furniture names here ('chiffonier' in the south vs 'sideboard' in Qld. is just one of many), let alone between countries. Best to back up any reference to a piece of furniture with a picture......

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

As I've suggested elsewhere, I could never understand how 'dustboards' were supposed to keep dust out of drawers- surely that gets in from the drawer openings? I like your suggestion, Rob, that they evolved from a simple shelf to support the drawer, becoming more sophisticated as the furniture itself did, then degenerating into thin partitions with no real structural purpose, and finally disappearing altogether.

Apart from possible structural contributions, I do think dustboards can serve a very useful function in CODs, even thin ones. They prevent the clothes in over-full drawers from being pushed up & jamming the drawer above. The cedar COD I made for myself suffers from this problem, particularly the two bottom drawers where I stuff my 'winter' clobber. I had intended to include dustboards, even ploughed the grooves on the top frames, but laziness & shortage of suitable material caused me to change my mind. Wish I'd stuck with them, now!

And Luke, my impression that dustboards were not common in Nth. American CODs seems to be borne out by what you report. As to terminology, I'll go with what Rob says, but there are regional variations in furniture names here ('chiffonier' in the south vs 'sideboard' in Qld. is just one of many), let alone between countries. Best to back up any reference to a piece of furniture with a picture......

Cheers,

I have absolutely no experience apart from glueing a few pieces of square timber together... but I’ve been reading up a lot on COD construction and I think the dust panels are to catch the “dust” from the wear of the timber drawer on the timber runner? Btw I love this piece! I have a bucket load of Vic ash flooring and joists etc I just picked up from a demo recently and a COD is on my to do list.. just waiting to buy a table saw so I can rip the boards! So plenty of reading in the mean time


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by Damon90

I’ve been reading up a lot on COD construction and I think the dust panels are to catch the “dust” from the wear of the timber drawer on the timber runner?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep , that's what Ive always thought.