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: