A slow chest of drawers

[spb]

I've been telling my wife I'll build a chest of drawers for the bedroom for about the last year, and have finally finished enough of the distractions-slash-excuses (workshop reorganisation, electrical work, under stairs storage, etc.) that I couldn't justify waiting any longer to get going.

She'd seen this on the Ikea site, and asked for something similar, in the same wood I used for her side table. That was sapele, which fortunately is what I bought for a previous iteration of this project last year. The design has a number of firsts for me, primarily traditional drawers and lapped dovetails. I'm a big fan of figuring things out as you go, though, so I'm sure it'll be fine. I hope so, anyway, as I've only got one spare board if it doesn't.

We start, unusually for me, with a drawing, dimensions and all...



...and (more usually) a stock of wood:



Luckily the colours are a lot more consistent in person that that photo suggests, otherwise I'd have trouble. Having laid out the components, I went to cut them down to length, and from force of habit reached for the handsaw. After cutting up one board at about 260mm wide, I wondered what on earth I was doing and got out the handheld circular saw instead. It went a bit faster with that, and soon enough I had a stack of pieces cut to length. Some of the layout is a little tight on the width of the boards, so I want a face and edge to reference from when ripping them.

While I do have a planer thicknesser and bandsaw, they're both at my mother's house for the last six months, for reasons that might turn into another project thread in due course. So, I set about it by hand, establishing a face and edge.





At the end of Sunday I had six of the smaller ones done, and 18 to go:



I was never exactly in good shape, but the two days since have shown me just how much worse I've got in the last year. This part is going to take a while.

 

[NickM]

This will be a great project to follow. Thanks for sharing it.

Doing all that dimensioning with hand tools is a very impressive effort.

 

[Dr.Al]

This is going to be an awesome thread, thanks for posting. As NickM said, doing the all the planing by hand is very impressive - I think I would have gone to get the thicknesser back!

 

[Phil]

This is going to be an awesome thread, thanks for posting. As NickM said, doing the all the planing by hand is very impressive - I think I would have gone to get the thicknesser back!

Agree. (By hand? Whats that?)

 

[Woodbloke]

This will be a great project to follow. Thanks for sharing it.

Doing all that dimensioning with hand tools is a very impressive effort.

Agreed, looking forward to see how this pans out - Rob

 

[Mike G]

Excellent! I've just worked with sapele for the first time, and I have to say how impressed I was. I'd always dismissed it because of those ghastly flat veneered internal doors from the 1970s, but it is actually a lovely wood. It is so reminiscent of Africa, too. The sawdust is the colour of African laterite soils. (Here's a thing, too........it hardly burns. I use shavings to start my woodburner in the lounge, and sapele shavings barely get going.)

The grain takes a bit of getting used to when planing. I think it's called "interlocking". You'll know better than me that you need a sharp iron, and now and then a close set cap-iron to deal with it, but planing leaves a beautiful finish.

Have fun with this one. I'm watching with interest.

 

[Malc2098]

That sapele looks gorgeous.

 

[Woodbloke]

Excellent! I've just worked with sapele for the first time, and I have to say how impressed I was.

I haven't used Sapele for years but recollect it was quite nice stuff and you're right; a finely set (high angle) blade is quite useful to finish it. I think I used a card scraper as well on the troublesome bits of interlocked grain - Rob

 

[MattS]

That design will really work well in sapele, very impressive sticking with the hand tools when you own a P/T even if not at your place!

 

[spb]

Excellent! I've just worked with sapele for the first time, and I have to say how impressed I was. I'd always dismissed it because of those ghastly flat veneered internal doors from the 1970s, but it is actually a lovely wood.

Funnily enough this house has those flat veneered internal doors on all but one internal doorway and all the built-in wardrobes. That actually played into my first foray into using it - while I'm not a big fan of the doors, and replacing them is on my list to think about if the projects ever run dry, the upstairs decor is stuff that doesn't clash with dark-ish wood doors, so dark-ish wood furniture is a safe bet, and sapele is also a lot cheaper than walnut.

The common advice to choose two or three species to work with initially, so that you actually use your offcuts and leftovers, has worked well for me, and largely by accident sapele turned into the third of those (after oak and redwood). I'm fairly happy with that situation, at least for now. As much as I'd love, on principle, to use exclusively native timbers, I don't have the money for that much English walnut.

The grain takes a bit of getting used to when planing. I think it's called "interlocking". You'll know better than me that you need a sharp iron, and now and then a close set cap-iron to deal with it, but planing leaves a beautiful finish.

Oh yes, and when it tears out it doesn't do it by halves either. Several times I've had the scrub plane just stop cutting, lift it up, and see half an inch of wood sticking out of the mouth. Both the jointer and the 4½ that I'm using as a jack plane are set with close cap irons and a light cut as a result, which is only making the whole process take even longer. You're right about the finish though; once you get your planes set up properly it's lovely, even as it is now when I've not attempted a final smoothing. Crown cut boards aren't so bad, but the closer you get to quarter sawn the more the interlocking comes into play. The trade-off, though, is that lovely striped figure. I'm sure once I finish I'll decide that makes it worthwhile.

 

[spb]

This is going to be an awesome thread, thanks for posting. As NickM said, doing the all the planing by hand is very impressive - I think I would have gone to get the thicknesser back!

I had the same thought, several times. However, I don't have a car, she only has a small hatchback, and manoeuvring even a small P/T into one of those isn't something I want to do any more often than I have to. Since the project going on over there involves 2m lengths of seasoned oak, I thought it's needed more for that than this.

Plus, it's giving me back some of the exercise I've not been getting for the last year. An hour or so of planing after work each evening is working up more of a sweat than I've done in months of staying home.

 

[AndyT]

That looks like a lot of fun and an excellent purpose for your jammy haul of planes last year.

Assuming you have plenty of time, that should be really satisfying, and a bit challenging too.

Do you have plenty of space? A significant challenge will be keeping track of all those components. You really don't want that sinking feeling when you realise that you cut down an overlong piece leaving yourself with one last bit of wood which is not quite long enough.

 

[spb]

Do you have plenty of space? A significant challenge will be keeping track of all those components. You really don't want that sinking feeling when you realise that you cut down an overlong piece leaving yourself with one last bit of wood which is not quite long enough.

A single garage that's shared with five bicycles and storage for anything that won't fit through the loft hatch, so I'd class it more as just about adequate.

I tried to avoid that by laying out everything and cutting to length first, working from the complete parts list. The design ends up with lots of pieces that are the same length, or nearly so, but in different widths, so that approach worked out fairly well in this case. At this point everything is (theoretically) within about 30mm of its intended length and all labelled - I'm not sure how visible it is on that first image, but each type of part has a letter next to it along with the number required, and those letters are on the rough-cut components, re-applied as they get planed. While a regular pencil isn't the most visible on this wood, as long as I know that every component has a label on it I can find them easily enough.

That's the theory, anyway. However, this is more parts in play at one time than any of my previous projects has had, by some distance, so we'll see how well it works in practice. As I think I said earlier, I've got one and a half boards left, and the only pieces not laid out yet are the drawer sides - I'm hoping I can put those off until the bandsaw is available for resawing - and the back panel and drawer bottoms, which I'm currently thinking will be 6mm birch ply.

 

[spb]

Well, here's the part I was trying to put off by doing the short pieces first:



That's up against my normal planing stop in the furthest-left set of holes I've got. I didn't want to drill any more too close to the end, because that top's only an inch thick and it's cheap pine, so blowing it out entirely is a distinct possibility. Fortunately, there's always a solution:



Another piece of crappy pine - this one an offcut from some shelving board - screwed directly to the end. It'll last long enough for this project, I reckon. Now the long pieces are only about 100mm longer than the bench, and fairly manageable. One plus side of interlocking grain is that you're already planing against it whatever you do, so flipping boards around to work one end at a time doesn't make things any worse.

Progress is now 18 down - including four of the large ones - and six large ones to go, just for the initial face and edge. An army of apprentices to do the grunt work would be handy around now; I assume that's how they managed it back in the day.

 

[NickM]

An army of apprentices to do the grunt work would be handy around now; I assume that's how they managed it back in the day.

I’ve often wondered the same!

 

[spb]

Well, having taken the best part of a week off to go and cook for Mothers' Day, I've got back to this in the last few days.

When we left off, I was planing one face and edge on everything. When I resumed, I was still planing. I'm sure I had a metre rule around here somewhere, I just put it down on the bench a few minutes ago...



Anyway, as of this afternoon I had a set of boards with a face and edge. These aren't exactly finished faces; they're flat enough to reference, but there's tear out and some remains of sawmill marks here and there. They'll get final surfacing once they're at their final sizes.



There was also a lot of cleaning up to do. If anyone knows how to fit an extraction hose to a No. 7, let me know.



At this point there are a handful of boards I've not surfaced. This one, for example, was significantly cupped and I only had parts laid out on half the width, so didn't see the point of flattening the whole thing. There were a few more that were going to be ripped into narrow pieces, so again I didn't bother taking the cup out first.



These ones got one good edge - without worrying about being square, because there wasn't yet a face to be square to, but straight enough to run a gauge down. Then I started ripping, planing a good edge on the remaining board, gauging a new line, ripping, planing, and repeating. This is rough work on rough-sawn boards, so the gauge is a cheap pin type (which I didn't get a photo of). For proper marking out I much prefer the Veritas wheel gauges, but they're nigh on invisible on a sawn surface, so the pin type and a pencil to darken the line further (not that a normal pencil helps much on wood this dark) works a lot better.



The saw is a recently-acquired birthday present, and both larger and more aggressive than anything I previously had. It's taking a bit of getting used to, especially in a cramped space at workbench height:



Wonky in both dimensions; not my best work ever. I might be making a saw bench before too long. Still, the scrub plane tidied it up soon enough.

At this point I was summoned indoors, with a handful of small pieces ripped to width and a few more large ones to go. It'll be more of the same for a while yet.

 

[Cabinetman]

Well I take my hat off to you, tackling what I consider to be a really difficult wood with just handtools and a plan to turn it into a chest of drawers is pretty wonderful, looks like it’s turning out well. Are you making the drawer sides and back out of Sapele as well? I think they would look nice in oak, fairly thin 10 mm max I reckon. Ian

 

[spb]

I was debating that myself - drawer sides aren't in that pile of parts, but I have a spare board of the sapele that will fit them if I do decide to use it. The other options I've got available right now are oak and maple, but at the current rate of progress I may be able to go out and buy something else by the time I get to making the drawers.

 

[Cabinetman]

Ooh yes, if you can get hold of Maple that would be super, I really love working maple it has a consistency a bit like nylon I always think

 

[Mike G]

Great effort, Stephen, and an exemplary one too. Flattening a face and straightening an edge is exactly the right approach. Are you using your scrub plane at 45 degrees-ish?

 

[Woodbloke]

I'd go even thinner with drawer sides; 6 or 7mm max. I used to make them with thicker sides (around 8mm) but to me they look very 'clunky'. Thin drawer sides will mean of course, that you need to make drawer slips as making a groove in thin 6mm stuff for the bottoms becomes a bit fraught - Rob

 

[spb]

Are you using your scrub plane at 45 degrees-ish?

On faces, which isn't much so far but will be a lot more when I get to thicknessing, I'm using it at a 45-ish degree skew but moving nearly square across the board. On a more cooperative timber I'd probably be moving at 45 degrees too, but here that results in the iron being square to the grain, and instant tearout. Plus, when it's a scrub plane tearing out, it goes 2-3mm deep and it's a hell of a job to clean up. For the edges, it's skewed much less, probably 15-20 degrees, and running straight along for obvious reasons. The grain's much more predictable on the edges, so it's easier to get away with things.

 

[spb]

I'd go even thinner with drawer sides; 6 or 7mm max. I used to make them with thicker sides (around 8mm) but to me they look very 'clunky'. Thin drawer sides will mean of course, that you need to make drawer slips as making a groove in thin 6mm stuff for the bottoms becomes a bit fraught - Rob

I'm curious now - would the choice of timber affect the thickness you'd go with, either for aesthetic or mechanical reasons? The only drawers I've made so far were for under stairs storage, so on a completely different scale with ~14mm sides and 9mm ply bottoms.

While I like the idea of drawer slips, I think they'll have to wait and see how adventurous I'm feeling when I get to that stage.

 

[Woodbloke]

I'd go even thinner with drawer sides; 6 or 7mm max. I used to make them with thicker sides (around 8mm) but to me they look very 'clunky'. Thin drawer sides will mean of course, that you need to make drawer slips as making a groove in thin 6mm stuff for the bottoms becomes a bit fraught - Rob

I'm curious now - would the choice of timber affect the thickness you'd go with, either for aesthetic or mechanical reasons? The only drawers I've made so far were for under stairs storage, so on a completely different scale with ~14mm sides and 9mm ply bottoms.

While I like the idea of drawer slips, I think they'll have to wait and see how adventurous I'm feeling when I get to that stage.

It's really the aesthetics. Thick drawer sides are the way our colonial cousins (sorry Kirk :lol: ) do them across the 'big wet' and I've had no end of 'discussions' with 'murrican makers on InstaG etc to try and persuade them to use much thinner sides, but it's a little like wading through treacle on the surface of Jupiter :lol: There's no difference in the strength and as drawer slips have to be used, the actual area that takes the weight of the drawer is almost doubled over a single thick (say 10mm) drawer side if you were to use a 6mm thick side and 12mm wide slip. As for material, you can use what you like, provided it's reasonably hard wearing (or not as the case may be) and provided the slips are made from something hard and nasty, say oak. In an ideal world the sides ought to be made from quarter sawn stock but whatever's used it should be very well seasoned with minimal chance of any movement.
Drawer slips are a piece of cake to make provided you've got the services of a router table - Rob

 

[AndyT]

Rob's right. It's a discussion that's come up before.
I own a few nicely made Victorian / Edwardian pieces and their drawers, even when quite large, have sides that are only about 7 to 10mm thick. That's in oak, mahogany or walnut. It can be a problem getting suitable thin timber (for those of us without machinery). I solved the problem on a few projects by re-using timber from old furniture - I found the drawers were a good source of nice stable material!

 

[spb]

Well, if it's a question of English versus American methods, that makes the decision for me. I have a bunch of long, narrow (1000+ by ~20) oak offcuts that would do nicely.

 

[spb]

Well, after some more planing of the smaller pieces, I had a few longer rips to make next. The piece is going to be around 350mm deep to fit the available space, and most of the boards I've got are between 150 and 260 wide. That means a few metre-plus lengths that need ripping in half to make the smaller side of an edge-jointed pair. So, off I go. How hard can it be?



Well, I need a bit more practice with this thing. I'm consistently pulling to the left, but my two pencil lines were 10mm apart and I could stay between them fairly easily just by flipping it around every now and then.



Half an hour later, we have two boards. Who needs power tools? I do. Please. Send help.



That looks wavier than it actually is - as above, the variation is within 10mm over the length.

Now, my motive for choosing this one first was partly a test. It's nearly 250mm wide and I need two pieces at 100 and 110 from it, so there was a bit of leeway if I wandered too much. However, I've got another piece just over 600 long by 260 wide where I need five pieces at 45 each. I decided to mark this one as if I needed two pieces of 120, giving that 10mm channel to cut in. If I can stay within that accuracy for this length (just over 1200), then I can be a bit more confident of doing five pieces with the same leeway but half the length.

At this point, I started getting hungry, so that was it for today.

 

[NickM]

Long rips with a handsaw is not something I’ve tried yet, although I intend to (need to get a saw for the job). I wonder if it’s easier on a low saw bench with the wood horizontal and sawing down into it? As I say, I’ve never done it so I’m speculating.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Woodbloke]

Long rips with a handsaw is not something I’ve tried yet, although I intend to (need to get a saw for the job). I wonder if it’s easier on a low saw bench with the wood horizontal and sawing down into it? As I say, I’ve never done it so I’m speculating.

Keep up the good work!

On the odd occasions when I've ripped stuff down in the vice, I've gripped the wood by the edges, not the face and tipped it through about 30deg. If the rip saw is then held horizontal, it then more or less replicates sawing with the wood horizontal on a pair of saw horses - Rob

 

[TrimTheKing]

If the saw is pulling left then either your technique needs practice, the angle isn't conducive to good technique, or the set on the saw is off and it's nothing to do with your technique.

Try ripping something shorter that you can mount horizontal (I mean in a more 'normal' sawing position) and see if you have the same issue with it pulling left.

If the set is off then either it needs looking at by a saw Dr or you could knock a bit of set off yourself with a stone but on a nice saw I'd be nervous of doing that myself.

 

[spb]

If the saw is pulling left then either your technique needs practice, the angle isn't conducive to good technique, or the set on the saw is off and it's nothing to do with your technique.

Try ripping something shorter that you can mount horizontal (I mean in a more 'normal' sawing position) and see if you have the same issue with it pulling left.

If the set is off then either it needs looking at by a saw Dr or you could knock a bit of set off yourself with a stone but on a nice saw I'd be nervous of doing that myself.

I was mostly assuming it was a combination of the first two, to be honest. The stuff I ripped horizontally was worse, but that was in a horribly cramped position (workbench height, so too high to be pointing a saw this size downwards comfortably, and with a wall behind it). I'll need to have a play around and see what other options I have for holding stuff at different heights.

 

[Mike G]

I don't think ripping is easy in a vice. It really is a saw horse job, with the sawyer kneeling on the workpiece. That said, I don't think that alone is enough to explain waving around 10mm or so from the line. That is way way more than you'd expect, and needs another explanation. Some old rip saws can be a bit floppy, and can flap about a bit as the harshly set teeth grab randomly at the wood. I learned ripping with plastic-handled site saws (hardpoint), which are "filed" (they've never been near a file) somewhere between cross and rip cut. The relative stiffness of the blade and slowness of the cut does mean you can correct any drift from the line in just one stroke.

If you are struggling with that saw, then buy site saw from a builders merchant. For only about £7 to £10 you'll get a very reasonable bit of kit, and will soon learn to control it. Applying the same skills back to the original rip saw will then let you know how much of the blame lies with the saw. I suspect that a less aggressive set would help you a lot....but I am absolutely certain that a pair of saw horses would help you even more.

It's a pity about...you know.........covid, given that you're only 30 or 40 miles up the road from me. I'm certain that half an hour together in a workshop and we'd have the issue solved.

 

[spb]

The saw I've been using for anything other than joinery until this last week is one of the orange handled Irwin jobs from Ridgeons, and you're right, it's a lot stiffer (and smaller) and easier to control side to side. I've been able to resaw 25mm stock (albeit only about three inches wide) into two pieces of 10mm with that one, but it's slow going at the best of times. I wonder whether a part of it is that I'd got used to being able to adjust as soon as it started getting out by a millimetre or less, and can't do that so easily with this one.

I've got a few more shorter pieces that want ripping next, so I'll see whether it gets better with practice. If not, then I'll see about throwing some sawhorses together and try it that way.

I don't doubt it about half an hour in the workshop, either - so often these little flaws in technique or posture are obvious when you see someone else doing it, but impossible to describe in words. For now, though, we have to work with what we have.

 

[spb]

Well, I got curious and took a set of callipers to a random selection of saw teeth, comparing the thickness reading at the gullets versus the points of the teeth - not an exact measure of set, but a related quantity. At the gullets it's around 1.2mm, the right-set teeth 1.34-1.37, and the left-set 1.37-1.4. Not sure whether that's enough to make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

 

[spb]

From left to right: Irwin, Irwin, Pax, Pax.

 

[Mike G]

Well from that sample board it doesn't look like you have a standard technique fault. It could be you are doing it wrong each time, but in a different way each time. It could be that there is an issue with the saw/s.

How is your cross cutting? If you used the Irwin (buy a Barracuda next time.....they're rather good in comparison) can you cross cut across say a piece of 4x2, or a 6x1, and produce a respectable result?

 

[spb]

If anything, I tend to drift rightwards with the Irwin:

 

[Mike G]

If the top and the back edge are square, then that might indicate a saw which is drifting rather than a technique fault. How new is the saw?

 

[thetyreman]

I love handtools but why not use a bandsaw for this? since having a bad back I've been forced to use it often.

 

[spb]

If the top and the back edge are square, then that might indicate a saw which is drifting rather than a technique fault. How new is the saw?

The Irwin is about a year and a half. The Pax arrived from CHT a week ago today.