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: