| Blog series by Patrick Jaromin | updated 398 days ago | 8 parts | 3227 reads | 39 comments total |
Part 1: Designing A New Dresser for Our New Son
A few months back, we learned that we were expecting our third child. My wife, the youngest of five kids, is adamant that this child have their very own crib and dresser. Who am I to argue? A couple weeks ago we learned it was a boy – so, I set off to design and build a “masculine” dresser. Inspiration My first step was to review some of my favorite projects on lumberjocks.com. I’ve added references to these projects at the end of this post. They’re all exc...
Part 2: Legs shaped, sides assembled and Ouch!
Construction begins… In between trips to the zoo, the Children’s Museum and backyard “play dates” with the kids, I’ve logged some decent shop time on this project the past couple weekends. Last weekend I dimensioned the lumber and assembled the two cherry and walnut frame-and-panel sides. Due to a misaligned rip fence, I wound up with a mortise and stub-tenon joint that simply wouldn’t close. I decided to lop off the tenons and attach the rails to the st...
Part 3: Gluing up the Carcass
The Day Begins I started the day by marking out and cutting the slots for the biscuits into the inside faces of the sides and back. Following this, I decided to “rehearse” the glue up of the main carcass—the sides, back and bottom front apron. After yesterday's "flip" I have to admit to being a bit apprehensive about this step, but, lessons learned, I was watchful of the sides and never came close to dropping one this time. The green tape you see is there to protect the l...
Part 4: Face Frame Installed
OK, so I “cheated.” I typically assemble face frames with pocket screws. It’s simple, fast and strong enough. Since this face frame is composed of 1” x 3/4” members, pocket screws seemed a bit weak to me—I’d only be able to use a single screw in each member, which would allow it to “spin” somewhat. While this would be minimized greatly after gluing to the carcass, some “twist” could still occur over time. Since the drawers w...
Part 5: Drawers
Labor Day weekend my wife took the kids up to the family cabin for a couple days. I spent most of this time in the shop working on the drawers. For this dresser I had designed the drawers with large through dovetails. Since I don’t own a decent dovetailing jig that allows for custom size and spacing, I was going to have to do these by hand. Since I haven’t done many projects with hand-cut visible dovetails, I figured I’d better take my time with these. To make things a bit f...
Part 6: Dead Flat
I love my "new" drum sander. I purchased the used machine for the purpose of sanding shop-cut veneers and inlay woods. However, with a 23-1/2” capacity, it is capable of so much more. I first cut my teeth with this thing on the side panels. Now it was time to glue up the top—and I was really looking forward to seeing what it could do with the 21” x 64” x 1” thick part. Joining the top I started by rough cutting and gluing up two 5/4 boards. Jointing an e...
Part 7: Filling in the Blanks
One of my favorite features of the top, is actually technically a defect—a quarter-sized knot hole. While both my wife and I agreed that it added “character” to the top, I couldn’t simply leave it as it was; it was large enough to swallow up small objects whole and naturally not very stable. After some searching, I found a few references to folks filling holes like this using “Pour on” epoxy, of the type you might use to encase small chatchkis in a bar t...
Part 8: Dresser Finds a Home
I completed the baby’s room over the weekend and “installed” the dresser last night. Since this is more a remodeling project, I’ve posted the project page over at HomeRefurbers.com. While I designed this piece to last a lifetime, and not to compliment the room design, I think it looks reasonably “at home” in it’s new digs! More details at my personal blog: http://tenonandspline.com/blog/archives/155
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