12 Drawer Dresser

 

Along with the other projects I have been working on, I have been slowly designing new bedroom furniture to replace those we still have that I bought decades ago as a young single man with not much money. They have held up well despite being cheaply made and will likely still be of service to one of our children until they start obtaining those sorts of things. Although you can't really see the joinery, it is all there, the tenons, the dadoes, the figuring out how I am going to build it. 

When I was a working engineer with access to expensive software, this job was a bit easier but after retiring and losing access to said software, I spent about a decade mostly sketching things on paper in a notebook, making lots of notes and then still spending lots of head scratching while I was mid-build trying to figure things out. The end goal was usually accomplished but it wasn't a terribly efficient way to progress and mistakes inevitably get made along a way. 

"The difference between a good woodworker and a great woodworker is that a great woodworker is better at disguising their mistakes." - Unknown

During my project to build an altar for a church, I was introduced to a new to me free online software called OnShape which I have taken to like a duck to water. Unlike other free software that I have tried over the years, it is more intuitive to my engineering mind in how things get designed. It allows me to design things that fit and will grow or shrink as my design changes instead of hard and fast dimensions. I often don't know many of the dimensions until the day I print off a part in preparation of making it. Because of OnShape, I am creating a inventory of future projects to build so that when the weather is nice, I can make sawdust in my garage instead of scratching my head and trying to figure things out with a pencil and paper.

Above is the carcass design and below is the dresser with the drawers in place. It is undecided yet on the handle design though I think my wife wants me to make wooden handles out of wood. We'll see when we get there. Although the doors are considered "overlay" in that they will shut against members of a the carcass frame, they will appear "inset" from the observational standpoint. I am thus calling this sort of a hybrid style and not one I have seen before though I'm sure it has been done. It gives it a more modern look while still combining elements of arts and craft, which seems to be my go to style these days. Note the humanoid was just added at the end to give some sense of scale. The overall dimensions of the dresser are going to be 42" tall and about 64" long with 15" deep drawers.