Kyle's Blog at LumberJocks.com

Sweet Chest of Drawers Build #10: Biggest Blog Yet--The guts: part 2- Drawer runners/kickers

Kyle — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 05:21:52 GMT

To start off, I wanted to let you know that I’ve tried to put this blog together so you can read the words above the pictures and look at the picture at the same time. I’ve certainly come a long way since the beginning. Now it’s time to work on the drawer runners, as the title suggests. For me, this is where things are a bit more complicated. I decided to do mortise and tenon to join them to the front and back drawer dividers. I honestly can’t remember all the thought processes that went on in my head to get to where I ended up and it took a while for me to commit but I’ve committed.
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Here I’ve layed out all the pieces of poplar that will end up being the runners/kickers. The vertical drawer dividers are what make this a little tricky but I figured out how I want them to be. One thing I’ve had to think about are drawer guides; Since this is a frame and panel piece and not a solid case, my plan is to make some guides that will be under and inside the drawer sides. I know there has been talk on this site about how Charles Neil makes them, and if you know what I’m talking about, that’s my goal. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I can’t remember the link to where I saw them. Anyways, I’m not a big fan of drawers that have the routed groove on the sides of the drawers, so that’s the reason I’m doing it this way.
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I took a scrap piece of poplar and kind of showed my dad how I wanted the runner to look but since the I’ll be assembling the carcass and then the inside, I’m not sure it would be possible for it to look this way along with the mortise and tenon. My original idea was to put the drawer guides on the outside of the drawer, but that’s when I found the stuff on how Charles Neil did it.
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Gosh, I think that looks so good…
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Really good… But it’s not how I end up doing it.
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My intention is for the tops of the runners to act as runners, and the bottoms to act as the kickers. I’m pretty sure that’s an acceptable method. With that being said, the very top drawers need kickers as well but since there are no drawers above them, I need to make kickers for them, which will ultimately attach to the top. I think a lot of us on this website are picture people and not so much wordy people. I don’t know if anyone really reads any of the stuff I type or they just look at the pictures but I’ll continue to type my thoughts and hopefully I can satisfy both types of people at least a little bit. :)
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Note the sliding dovetails for the drawer dividers and how they recess into the rails. This was one reason I wished that I did stopped sliding dovetails. I’m really not worried about it because I’ll be conscious of them come glue up time to prevent them from recessing like that. I just wish I could glue them, hammer them home, and then move on. Oh well, lesson learned.
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So, as you guys can see, these pictures are mostly just layouts that help me get to where I want to go. Sometimes I wish I had plans for this, but I really enjoy doing it this way. I know my dad does too, “it’s a build-as-you-go,” he’s said to me before. I sometimes wonder how many of you lumberjocks are build-as-you-go people.
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On the right side (as well as the unseen left side) of the picture below this, there will be kickers that will be butt jointed to the sides since, dovetailing them to the front and back rails wouldn’t be possible during glue up. This is going to be over-engineered and the order of glue up of this puzzle would make it impossible to do it that way. You will see what I’m talking about when it comes to the blog about the glue up.
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So, while I thought and pondered and pondered and pondered on how I’m going to do these runners exactly, I disassembled the whole piece and routed a groove on the bottom and threw a bottom in there… Looks pretty, but unless I drop something under the dresser, I’ll never see it.
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Time to commit. Below, I slammed a bunch of mortises into the back rails without disassembling the piece…
Just kidding. I took all the rails out but still slammed the mortises into them where the runners will be. Note on the very bottom, there are no mortises and that’s because the rails were a lot easier to just take out and mortise. Unlike the bottom parts which are part of the carcass, I’ll have to disassemble the whole thing and make the mortises. For now, we’ll just stick with the easy stuff.
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Just a bunch of mortises.
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After all those were done, I made the tenons for the back part of the runners, and slid them on in. Nothing like a good fitting tenon.
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Yep…
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It looks like the bottom two are off angle but I assure you, they’re not, they’re just sagging. Those were a little on the loose side but I’m really not worried at all. The tops of the runners are under a 1/16” above the perpendicular rails, so the drawers will ride on the runners and not on the rails.
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After I made all the tenons for the back rails, I cut the runners to length (accounting for the front tenons) and made the front mortise and tenons.
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Yeah, I’m happy with that.
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Really happy…
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The reason I made the double tenon wider runner here is because, I thought it would be easier to put three drawer runners in at a time during glue up, rather than four and trying to line things up.
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Little by little…
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What looks like a runner on the top right will actually just serve as a kicker for the drawers below it.
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Looks all fancy.
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Still no screws in this baby.
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Now I need to make kickers for the top drawers since all of the other drawers have them so far.
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My goal is to make a double wide kicker just like the other ones just for ease of assembly. Since I can’t do mortise and tenon because of how the front and back top rails will be locked in with the vertical drawer divider’s sliding dovetails, I decided to do a half lapped double dovetail (terminology?).
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Cut the tails, then mark them out.
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Bang out the dovetail mortises. You may have noticed how the vertical divider below where the kicker is going to go is a little proud. I just cut a notch into the divider so the kicker can fit in there.
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See?
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Then I did it to the divider for the front.
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Tap it in place, stand back and admire.
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Same with the front. In the picture below, the divider looks recessed but I assure you, it’s not. This whole thing is still dry and for the pictures sake, I just put it in there so you could get the idea. Throughout this whole process of making the parts, I’m assembling and disassembling over and over again. It’s flush for sure in real life.
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The kicker and rails are the same thickness and I needed something for the kicker to fit into. Doing it through wouldn’t work for obvious reasons so that’s why they’re half lapped(?).
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Rafters…
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Dovetail-o-mania…
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Another shot of some of the joinery that no one will ever see (after assembly) besides these pictures.
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Remember when I said I didn’t make the bottom runners because I’d have to disassemble the whole carcass in order to make them? Well, it’s time to do that. I busted out some mortises in those rails and took another glance at another unseen joint.
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And here it is… the bottom runner. Imagine what the glue up is going to be like for this bottom portion. I’ve got the corner mortise and tenons, a bottom to fit into the groove, and the mortise and tenon drawer runners. We’ll see how that turns out when the time comes.
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I couldn’t get any more anti-climactic with this last photo. It’s just the glue up of the top side frame rails to the kickers. Unfortunately at this very moment, I forgot to take some pictures after assembling it all. Sorry guys.
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So maybe I’ll leave you with a little recap of this blog…
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Thanks for reading and/or looking.

Sweet Chest of Drawers Build #9: The guts: part 1

Kyle — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 07:05:34 GMT

Woke up and ate some more ding dongs this morning. Since I’m figuring this out as I go, I thought I’d work on the inside of this chest of drawers. I decided to copy the image of the drawer dividers that you see looking at the front of the dresser, and transpose it onto the inside back of it and make the drawer runners mortise and tenon.. I don’t know why, but here is the beginning of the process. Time to bust out the poplar…
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The inside drawer dividers are also sliding dovetails but since the back is finished with raised panels, I couldn’t do through sliding dovetails so they had to be stopped.
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On top of that, the panel dividers come in a little ways so, I had to come up with a solution to combine the panel divider, with the drawer divider. That solution was…
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Dado the drawer runner into the panel divider. When it comes time to glue this baby up, I’ll probably glue the stopped sliding dovetails but leave the dadoes dry.
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Overkill I know, but so what? This is fun.
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Next is to work on the vertical drawer dividers.
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I had to think about things over night and I saw this when I turned the lights off.
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Man that looks cool to me.
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Okay, necessary? Probably not. Good thing there is more than one way to build a chest of drawers.
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Well, that’s it for now. Part 2 coming soon.

Sweet Chest of Drawers Build #8: Drawer dividers continued...

Kyle — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 23:52:41 GMT

I couldn’t stop at just making big drawers. I had to get all fancy and divide the top drawers into smaller drawers. I don’t really have as much to say about these pictures but I hope you guys enjoy them.
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This first picture is really blurry but the rest are okay.
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Lengthwise, they are divided into thirds.
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Same steps as before… Plow the dovetail groove with a router by hand, then make the sliding dovetail part on the table, just like the last blog.
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Ta daaaa!!!
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One more divider to go on the top right…
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And here’s where the tires screech…
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Yyyyyyyuck! Someone’s dog could have chewed better dovetails than that. Two reasons these ugly dovetails happened: Biggest reason #1) I said, “one last divider to go,” and not so big reason #2) I used that dovetail bit too much without sharpening it.
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I contemplated ignoring them but I couldn’t… I’ve worked too hard to get this far. Just a little sharpening with one of those little diamond sharpener things and it was good to go. Luckily, I made an extra divider just in case I messed something up somewhere. I knew I would eventually.
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And here you have it, fellas… Just a couple of excessive pictures to show you a couple different angles and things.
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Sorry if anybody has been consistently following these blogs. I’m going to be taking a final in the next couple of days and I need to make sure I do a good job. With that being said, I hope I’ve given you something good to look at until I post the next one. I’m not sure when that’ll be but it will be somewhat soon. Plus I probably have about 2 or 3 more blogs left before you’re all caught up to me so I need to get back in the garage to make more progress.
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Have a good week, everyone.

Sweet Chest of Drawers Build #7: Sliding dovetail drawer dividers

Kyle — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 02:58:30 GMT

Now for the drawer dividers. One thing I wish I did different for this was to do stopped sliding dovetails rather than through sliding dovetails. It probably would have been better to do it that way when it comes to glue up time and probably with wood movement too.
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I just used my P/C 4212 dovetail jig for my sliding dovetail guide. I know people make better jigs but, I had this and jimmy rigged it to work. Test cuts are the key for sure.
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I did each leg individually with sacrificial pieces on both sides instead of pairing them up. I wanted to make sure both legs were exactly where I wanted them when I plowed through them.

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One pair of them ended up being off just a little bit but that won’t matter. As long as they’re the same on both legs, I’m good.
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The rest were spot on.
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Spot spot spot…
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Next was to make the rails using my router table. I made about 50 test pieces until they fit perfectly… Not too loose and not too snug so I can put some glue on there and slide them in.
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Check out that grain…
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Gorgeous…
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That looks good enough for me. I mean, this is the first time I’ve ever made something like this… It’s definitely good enough for me.
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You can slightly see gaps in the photo below but I’m confident that once there is glue in there and I clamp the sides, those gaps will be gone.
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The other side.
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You can’t see the dovetails in this picture but the dividers are there.
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Front shot…
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No flash with the garage door open.
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Well, that’s all for now. You guys will be caught up with me in no time with the pace I’m going with this blog. I should be in the garage working on it right now instead of doing this blog thing… No wait… I should be doing my homework instead.
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Have a good one.

Sweet Chest of Drawers Build #6: Why the heck would I do this to myself?

Kyle — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:49:31 GMT

Ever hear the expression, “you are what you eat?” Well, the day I decided to do this, I must have eaten a whole box of ding dongs. For some strange reason, I decided to figure out what I wanted to do with the back, before I started with the front. Why? Well, I don’t know.
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Instead of doing what any sane person would do, I chose to make the back, just like I made the sides… Frame and panel. Seriously… I know it’s going to be up against the wall but, maybe I’ll showcase this in the middle of the living room for the first couple of months when this is done. Just kidding about the showcasing part. I think I just did it to bump up the challenge. It certainly will increase money for more wood, time to do this, and difficulty when it comes to doing the glue up and making the drawers as well. I figured if I messed this up, I could always default to putting a regular back on it. I mean, it’s going to be up against the wall anyways.
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I hogged out some mortises for the rails that will separate each panel.
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The top tenons will be through tenons since there will be a top to conceal this. It’s 4/4 wood up there so I thought it’d be better to make them through rather than a really shallow mortise and tenon. We’ll see how that works out.
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Not too shabby so far.
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Now to make the center panel. I did have a picture of the glue up so here it is. Nothing special on this one.
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I wanted to make sure this is what I really wanted so I did a little test thing and looked at it for a couple of days. Notice how this is reversed from how I built the side panels. For the side panels I made the panels first, and then built the frame around it. Now I’m building the frame and then panels. I’m not sure which was easier because it was all difficult. Either way, you have to calculate in how deep of a groove you have to make for them to fit into.
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This might actually turn out okay. I decided to keep going and make the panels, and make the groove for them.
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Before….
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and after…
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Those rails are a little bit darker than I wanted and the center panel is quite a bit lighter. I’m hoping I can even it all out when it comes to dying and finishing this. Even if I can’t, at least it will be up against a wall.
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Happy December 1st.

Sweet Chest of Drawers Build #5: Bottom front and back rails

Kyle — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 23:43:24 GMT

The last blog was about joining the sides on the top and now this one is about joining them from the bottom. This part is going to be a little more tricky. This is my first indication that I’m actually building the beginning of what will be a giant puzzle when it comes to glue up time.
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If you’ve read the blogs before this one, you’ll remember that I made a triple mortise and a double mortise on each of the legs. If you don’t remember or didn’t see the blog, this was a picture of what the triple mortise looks like. I already made the double tenon and now it’s time to make the triple tenon.
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Mark those triple tenons out…
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Cut them…
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Cut cut cut…
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Now the formula here is to have two short tenons, and one long tenon.
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The outside tenons will meet the perpendicular rail’s tenons and the middle tenon just fits in the mortise. Well, you’ll see what I mean.
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Now all the tenons bottom out on the mortises, so I had to get creative and come up with a solution for the perpendicular tenons, and that solution was to miter the tenons.
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That last picture is the only evidence of that joint.
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As neat as it was to make, it’s completely concealed and nobody will ever know what kind of joint is in there. Oh well, I know, and you guys know it’s there.
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Tight, perpendicular, and plenty of glue surface. That should hold up, shouldn’t it?
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Then to do it three more times and assemble to make sure it all fits and looks good.
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That was fun.
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Any questions or concerns?

Sweet Chest of Drawers Build #4: Joining the sides on the top

Kyle — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:53:06 GMT

I don’t know if it’s a mistake or not to do it this way but, I decided to join the sides together just like I did on the sides themselves. I’m not sure this will create any kind of ultimate weakness or not but, there was enough stock in the legs to do dovetails for both of the rails.
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Here’s the first cut. Tail first…
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These look pretty good to me.
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Now to chop out some the housing for the dovetail…
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chop chop chop…
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Very snug fit on all of them.
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Here is something I wanted some insight on from the veterans here though.
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Does anyone think it’d be a good idea to slam a dowel through the dovetail and into the leg for some extra long grain on long grain action, or do I not need to worry about that?
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I’d like to avoid screws for this project unless I desperately have to. I just don’t want these rails to pull out if someone picked this heavy thing up wrong by the top.
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Will glue be strong enough or not?
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Too bad this is going to be covered up with a top.
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And here we are, the sides are now joined.
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Looks good to me so far. Now onto the bottom rails.

Sweet Chest of Drawers Build #3: The frame and panel sides

Kyle — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:42:58 GMT

My Dad came and visited me back in June and he helped me get started on this. I bought the porter cable router 7518 and a nice big raised panel bit to go with it. I thought I would start by building the panel first and then the frame around it. The reason I did it this way was because I didn’t want to go and buy more and more wood without using what I had so I took two of my more wider boards, cut them in half lengthwise, and edge jointed them to make two panels. I don’t have any photos of that process.
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I do have photos of the router bit and the profile it made on the panel though.
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Once the panel was made, I knew how big I had to make the frame. Off the top of my head, I believe they ended up about 17.5” wide, but honestly, I’m not exactly sure at this moment. I squared up and made the legs to their final dimensions. Then I got started on the top rail that will join the front and the back legs.
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This is a photo looking from the top of the leg down.
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It’s a nice fit. I wasn’t too careful on beauty since it will ultimately be covered up by the top.
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Here are the two side tops, side by side.
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These are the mortises I marked out on the legs that will be for the bottom sides, as well as the front. The side with 2 mortises are for the rails for the side panels, and the 3 mortises are for the rails for the front (under the bottom drawer) and back (structure to be determined). I used my mortiser for these.
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Now the inside mortises meet and the outside mortises meet, but the middle of the three doesn’t meet anything…. If that makes sense. It’ll make better sense in the next part of the series.
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Next was to mark out the tenons.
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Then cutting the tenons..
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All the tenons for both sides… Along with the starret my Dad bought me for my birthday while he was here.
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Now because of the way these tenons are going to meet the adjacent tenons, I had to make these ones different lengths.
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There’s a teeny tiny gap there that I can assure you, is no longer there. This joint is nice and tight.

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So I test fitted my work, and here’s the frame without the panels. Now that I know they’re all square, I routed a groove for the panels to sit in, leaving some room for movement but not enough to make them too loose. This probably took more thought than I needed but I had to make absolutely sure what I was doing was going to be good enough… I don’t want to start over or waste anything at this point.
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And here are the sides together. Nice big beefy panel sides and frames.

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This is just coming out of my brain. So much of this was done over time and not in the hour it took me to create this blog. If I were to make this chest of drawers for someone, they’d be paying me to stand there and stare at this stuff for hours before I make any cuts. It’s kind of funny because I’ll think I’m going into the garage to slam a couple of things together and get a ton done quickly but I always end up doing one or two things instead of the thirty I had planned.
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It’s coming together though and I’m happy with it so far.

Sweet Chest of Drawers Build #2: More wood and some rough dimensioning

Kyle — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 04:59:50 GMT

After that initial batch, I knew I needed to get more and more sapele. So I ran to Hardel’s and bought a bunch of 4/4 boards and a couple 8/4 boards. Going off the really great plans that I wrote out, I cut things to rough length leaving about 2” long to be safe from any snipe from planing and also to make sure that I wasn’t missing anything and undercutting something. My mentality was that it wasn’t a waste to over cut anything by 2”, it was a waste to undercut and have to buy more.
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I then marked out approximately what pieces will be the drawer dividers and parts of the carcass. The 8/4 pieces were going to be the legs. The two 8/4 boards I bought had very different grain patterns so I decided to make the two back legs match and the two front legs match, since I’ll be looking at the dresser most of the time head on.
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You can sort of see it in the 8/4 boards here that the top one has a waterfall type grain in it and the bottom one is more of a ribbon flow to it.
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You can see what I’m talking about a lot better in this picture.
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I wanted to sink my carbide teeth into this stuff so I ripped the legs with my really really nice ryobi table saw.
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I also knew that the bottom two drawers would be between 9 and 10” so while I was at Hardel’s I grabbed the widest sapele boards they had. I think they were about 11” on the narrowest part of the boards.
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Knowing that I was going to make the inside drawer runners/kickers with poplar, I bought an arbitrary amount of 4/4 (probably more than enough) and put it on the back burner. I could have waited to buy this since it’d be a very long time before I even thought about using it. I mean, I literally just milled the legs. Having it though, was one less half hour drive to the wood store and then back for when I would need it.
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I just want to make sure these pictures are big enough for you guys. If they’re too small or not right, let me know and I’ll see if I can try a different way of doing this. I’m basically just uploading them straight to lumberjocks.com. If I need to do the photobucket thing then I will. I’ll just have to figure out how to do it. I know GaryK posted a blog on how to do it somewhere. Some feedback would be appreciated. Thanks for viewing!

Sweet Chest of Drawers Build #1: In over my head?

Kyle — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 03:11:55 GMT

I’ve been living in Washington since 2008 and when I moved out here, I bought a crummy little dresser from a garage sale. That dresser is falling apart and it’s about time I got something to replace it. I wanted something solid, heavy, beautiful, and made of real wood. Since I’ve started woodworking the only piece of furniture I’ve built is a coffee table and a couple of smaller projects that aren’t furniture. Why would I take on the challenge of a chest of drawers when I’ve never built anything like it and have no experience building anything like it? Why, because I’ve never built anything like it and have no experience building anything like it, of course. I bought the initial batch of wood and began building back in April of 2012 and it’s now November 25th, 2012, today.
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The reason it’s taken this long to get to where I am is because I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m 30 and going through college to get my Nursing degree with a full time job in an operating room, and time to play with fun tools is minimal. I’m not done with this chest of drawers yet and I decided to start this blog because I’ve been itching to share the build with the community that has been sharing with me. I’m pretty far on this project but there’s still a ways to go and I plan on catching you guys up.
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I bought a bunch of sapele from a hardwood store in Olympia, WA, called Hardel’s. That’s the best place to go for me without driving over an hour away, so they get all my business when it comes to exotics. Throughout this process, I’ve made a couple trips because I don’t know how much wood I’ll need for this. As of today, I believe I have enough. I have a whole bunch of sapele for the carcass and a bunch of poplar for the inside. I’m not sure what I’ll do for the drawer sides at this point but I do have some stuff that I’ll share with you in the future.
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This first batch of pictures is what I initially bought. It’s certainly not enough for what I plan on building but it’s a good start. The boards with the best figure will obviously be used for the drawer fronts.

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I made a really silly drawing of what I’m after and tried to make a cut list. The funny thing about the cut list is that it’s so far off in measurements that all I really look at is the picture. I made the cut list and the day I made it was probably the only day I ever referred to it. This has a been a, “figure it out as I go,” kind of project. I know what I want it to look like, and now I have to figure out how to make it look like what I want. At this point, all I know is that I want it to be about 4’ tall, 18” deep, and about 36” wide. We’ll see how this turns out.
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Can you read it clearly? I can’t really either. It’s more of a poster in the garage rather than a plan. The dimensions are very very very rough.
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So up to this point the plan is to build this baby frame and panel style with sliding dovetail drawer dividers and everything else are just details. How I’m going to accomplish this is probably more of a mystery to me than you guys since you all have a lot more practice than me. Being my second piece of furniture, hopefully I’m not throwing my money away and ruining some gorgeous wood. We’ll see how this goes. I can confidently say that I will definitely make this harder than it should be. Are you guys in?