Mahogany Curved Blockfront Chest Making the Drawers Step 7

When I was at Yale studying the piece, I took time to look at the dovetails on the drawers.  They were somewhat smaller than I normally make.

The pictures that I took are not real clear but you can see the dovetails below.  On the smaller drawers there are 3 1/2  and on the larger there are 4 1/2.  They are also not the same size but they fill the space.

I plan on duplicating these.

First I need to mill a lot of 1/2 inch pine for the the sides, backs and bottoms of the drawers.
While I was at it I milled pine for the back of the chest.

The drawer sides will be 7/16 and everything else will be 1/2 inch.

After I resaw all this pine from 5/4 stock, I am letting it adjust to the shop humidity by letting it rest for a couple of days before I mill it to final size.


I laid out the tails on the drawer sides of the smallest drawer. I leave a 1/2 on the bottom for the 1/4 inch groove for drawer bottom and the balance for the 1/2 in bottom with the bevel for the groove.
We will see this in detail later.

Chopping out the dovetails in this 7/16 inch pine sides is very easy.  I first saw out the shape, then chop out the balance of the material between the tails.

Pushing out the waste between the tails after chopping them free.

I traced the tails on to the back of the drawer and then saw and chop out the pins.  Here I am test fitting the sides to the back.

I use a dead blow hammer to bang the sides into the back.  They make a nice tight fit.

Looks like 3 sides are done, now for the front.

Sawing out the half-blind dovetails on the fronts is a little different than the through dovetails in the back.  I angle the saw to stop at the front scribe line but allow the saw cut to be much longer in the back.  This is normal for 18th century dovetails.  I make sure to cut on the waste side of the pin.

Now I chop out the tail shape leaving the pins.  If you do everything carefully they should fit right together.  The sand paper in the picture is just being used as a piece of paper as a filler between the curved front and the cutoff block underneath.

Using the dead blow hammer to assemble the drawer sides to the front.

I chipped one of the tails when I banged it in.  I will use a little super glue to fix it before final assembly.

Now I need to put a 1/4 in groove into the curved drawer fronts.  It will be 1/4 inch deep.  I use a router bit and large bearing to make this. The top of this groove is 1/2 in from the bottom edge.  Because I planned for this there is no material in the drawer front where the grooves exits the edge.  This will be hidden by a tail on the sides.

I change out the bearing for the drawer sides, since they are only 7/16 thick the groove should only be 7/32 inches deep in the side.

Now I have a 1/4 inch groove all the way around on 3 sides.  I cut the back off 1/2 inch to match the groove.

Now I make the bottom by cutting the 1/2 in pine it to size, cutting the curve on the front to match and putting a bevel on the edges to allow it to slip into the groove.

Again if I do everything careful it should slip right in.

Looks like a good fit.  I left the drawer bottom a little proud in the rear.  This is normal for 18th century drawers.

Normally I would nail the back and glue up the sides now to complete the drawer. But I want to stain the dovetails on the side with the front color.  So I will be doing the staining before I glue up the drawers.

So the drawers are complete except for gluing and nailing the bottom to the back.  Next I am going to work on the top of the chest.

Here is today's video:

Mahogany Curved Blockfront Chest Cockbead & Drawer Fronts Step 6

Time to get started on the cock bead around the drawer openings.

The strip of wood that I cut off of the side in the beginning will need to be glued on to create the recess for the cock beading.   But before I do that I need to put a 45 degree mitre on the edges of the drawer blades.

I have a block of wood that has a 45 degree mitre slope clamped to the drawer divider. Using that as a guide I pare off the edge of the drawer divider with a bench chisel flush with the guide block.  This creates the mitre for the cock beading to match.

This is how it looks with the cock beading installed after gluing on the front piece and  mitering the edges.

Now I'll show you how I made the cock beading

First I made a strip of mahogany 1/2 inch wide by 1/8 inch thick with a 1/8 inch round over on the front of it.  This is the cock bead.

Then using a flush cut saw and the same guide block I used on the drawer dividers I cut a 45 degree mitre on each end.  I made the piece a little long so that it could be shaved and  fitted to the opening exact.

Then using a shooting board with a jig to allow me to shave a little off at a 45 degree angle, I am able to creep up on the exact size.  If I go to far then I just start over with another piece.

Now that the cock beading is on,  the drawer openings are exactly to size.  It is time to start on the drawer fronts.  These are probably the most difficult part of the build process.

I rough cut 12/4 mahogany to the 4 drawer sizes.  There is a lot of waste in cutting these out but the original was made from solid wood so that is what I am going to do.
 
Doug Moulder had made me a drawing of the drawer edge, I am going to make a template from this drawing.

I milled the stock for the first drawer and fitted it into the opening.  I used a pencil to trace the curve of the drawer divider on to the bottom of the drawer front.  This is the exact curve that we need on the front.

From the template that I made I can check the curve as well as trace the back curve on the drawer front.  You can see the large amount of waste that there is in using solid wood for these drawer fronts. I would be much more economical to veneer them.

I cut out the front curve on the band saw, I'll get to the back cut out later.

Checking to see how it looks even before I cleaned up the saw marks.

I use my round bottom spokeshave to clean up the saw marks and get it to the correct dimension.  I left 1/32 extra above the line while cutting on the band saw.  I use a small square to check to see if the fronts are flat and square.

I use my block plane to clean up the flat part of the drawer front.

I am using a flat carving chisel to clean up the line between the flat and the curve, it need to be a crisp line.

I use my flat bottom spoke shave and the block plane to clean up the center flat portion of the drawer front.

Here are the 3 drawer fronts all together after they have been shaped.  I try to make them identical.  If they were not the same your eye would catch the error when they were in the chest.

Now that they are all shaped I trace the line from the template for the back of the drawer front.  Then I cut it out on the band saw to remove the waste.

Here is what it looks like with all the material removed.  I still need to clean up the saw marks on the back.

I did make a partial cut with the table saw to make sure I got a nice square corner for when I cut the dove tails.

Here they are all fitted.  They look pretty good.  Now it is time to start on making the drawers with sides, bottoms and backs.

Here is today's video: