Started: mid-December 2003.

Goal: a low, wide dresser with plenty of drawers.

Materials: mostly solid maple (hard and soft) with maple plywood panels. I found a beautiful piece of curly hard maple for the top. I purchased some incredible quilted maple veneer for the drawer fronts.

Finish: I'm planning to use a finish that highlights the figured maple. As a secondary goal I'm trying to use relatively non-toxic finishes (no solvents, no metallic dryers). I'll start with a very light aniline dye stain, just to give it some color. Then a coat of pure tung oil to really bring out the figure. That has to dry for at least a week. Then I'll seal the oil by spraying on a couple of coats of water-based shellac. Finally, I'll top it off with several coats of water-based spray lacquer. Once that's completely dry I can wet-sand and rub it out to a semi-gloss finish.

Tools: Check out my tools page

Plans These plans were made using a program called SmartDraw -- it's a good program, but it has a couple of weird bugs (I have an official bug report in with the developers). The colors represent the different major parts, shown below.
Ends The two ends of the dresser consists of vertical posts of 1 3/4 in. hard maple and frames made of 1 1/2 in. soft maple. The panels are 3/4 maple plywood. I found a very nice plywood sheet with some curly figure in it. On the inside you can see the major joints: mortises for the back and the front beam.
Back The back of the dresser is a frame-and-panel made from 3/4 in. soft maple and maple plywood panels. The dados on the inside will help align the internal vertical dividers.
Bottom The bottom is also a frame-and-panel made from 3/4 soft maple and maple plywood, and the dados will support the internal dividers. It seems like kind of a waste to make the bottom a frame-and-panel -- I guess I could have used a single plywood plank.
Top web frame This is not the actual top of the dresser, but rather the top of the dresser case. It is a web frame with no panels and it serves to hold the case together at the top. As such I chose to use dovetails to attach it to the case, which provide good mechanical strength and don't require clamping.
Internal dividers The internal dividers will support the drawer runners. There will be three rows of three drawers, so we need two internal dividers. They also provide structural support so that the case doesn't rack. Also note that they are set back from the front of the case and will not be visible.
Front beam This 1 3/4 in. hard maple beam provides almost all of the structural support at the front of the case. It is attached to the ends with a double tenon. It also has a shallow rabbet to hold and align the bottom panel.
Initial dry assembly These three pictures show the first dry assembly of the case. This initial attempt identifies any joints that don't fit well and helps me figure out the best order of assembly. I found I needed to trim the internal dividers to get them to fit.
Dovetail joints The initial dry assembly shows me where I need to make the dovetail joints on the case. I mark them using the top frame itself and then chop them out using a chisel. The second two pictures show the final joint -- not a bad fit!
Final dry assembly This picture shows the completed case. Now I just need to glue it up!
March 14, 2004
Box joint jig I constructed a jig to make box joints on the table saw. It consists of a large extension to the mitre guage that holds drawer pieces vertically. I set this jig up with a 3/8 inch dado blade so that each "finger" of the joint will be 3/8 wide.
Using the jig The key that sticks out of the front is 3/8 wide and is set 3/8 to the right of the blade. After each cut I move the board over so that the most recent cut straddles the key. This ensures the proper spacing between each finger.
Trial and error Getting the spacing just right is tricky. Here are a bunch of test pieces that don't fit.
Assembly One trick with box joints is making sure that the two pieces line up. This test piece looks good -- I'm ready to make the drawers.
One drawer Here is a completed drawer. You can see the importance of having a good jig -- there are quite a few fingers on a deep drawer.
All twelve drawers Cutting all those joints took several hours.
May 4, 2004
Veneer My plan is to veneer the fronts of the drawers with a really nice figured maple -- preferably quilted maple. I got the veneer from a company in New York called Certainly Wood. They sold me four sheets from the same log (also known as a flitch) that are very nice. They are about 1/32 inch thick. Each sheet is long enough to cover a row of drawers, so I cut it into sections that roughly match the drawer widths. Once it's glued I'll trim the veneer flush.
My helper Ringo provided moral support during the veneering process.
Gluing veneer I can do two drawer fronts at a time with this set-up. I cover the drawer front with veneer glue, then sandwich two of them between two pieces of melamine. The melamine helps flatten the surface while the glue dries.
Drawer fronts done Here I've stacked the veneered drawer fronts in the front of the dresser to get a feel for what it will look like. I alternated the veneer from one row to another so that they mirror eachother -- also called book matching.
Top The last glue-up job is the top. I chose two long pieces of curly maple that look like they're from the same tree. I cut them into four pieces and edge-glued them into a large panel. The clamping process was pretty crazy -- the vertical clamps are holding cauls that make sure the boards are flat. At first I was annoyed by the large knot in one of the boards, but now I think it looks cool. The figure is looking good too.