Batching It Out

 

Because I intend for this dresser to be more than just an average one, it sort of forced my hand in the drawer construction. I just had to do dovetailed drawers and you can see all the pieces in the picture above. Fortunately I have a dovetail jig that works with my router and because I've used it before it was already set up and fined tuned so I cranked out all the pieces in short order.

Above you can see how the dovetails fit together and why the contrast is sort of beautiful and an indicator of craftmanship. I'm not saying that I'm a good craftsman but that most people who build drawers using dovetails likely are.

Once the pieces were done, it took me the better part of two days to glue them up because I only had enough clamps to do one at a time. I could have probably stretched it to two at a time using other bigger clamps but I find when I'm racing the clock (glue starts setting in a little over five minutes) and using heavy clamps that are hard to get in the right spot, mistakes are inevitably made. So I took my time and just set the clock for an hour which is enough time to let the current drawer box set up enough it could be unclamped. I then stacked them to let it fully cure while I glued up another one.

Once fully cured, I spent two full days sanding everything and then assembled the drawer bottoms into them. I use this method of construction mainly for my choice of drawer slide hardware which will mount to the bottom of the drawer. It also allows for them to be replaced in the future should my wife decide to store her gold lead bars in the drawers.

Above is a completed drawer box. It still needs a decorative face attached to the front along with a handle of some sort but this is how it will look when the drawer is open.

From there, I started attaching the sliding hardware. The orange bits in the picture above clip the drawer to the sliding part of the mechanism and allow you to remove the drawer if needed such as when one goes to move the dresser from one location to another. It makes a big difference removing all the drawers first.

Then I attached the sliding hardware to the dividers I made in an earlier step. With them installed, it became too heavy for my wife so I had to use the dolly carts I used in my altar build to move the carcass back inside where it will stay for the rest of the build while I build the top, drawer faces with handles and the dresser back. 

Finally, I could put all the drawers in place. The faces will cover everything and look nicer. My material that I'm going to use for the dresser top arrived and I think I will tackle that next though I won't get it done before I leave early next week. Thus you will have to wait a while to see how it turns out but I'm excited because it is a new to me starting point for creating a flat surface.