Chest of Drawers: Done! (pics inside)
#21
WOW, just wow!!!!!
I started with absolutely nothing. Now, thanks to years of hard work, careful planning, and perseverance, I find I still have most of it left.
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#22
(02-19-2019, 09:11 AM)fredhargis Wrote: WOW, just wow!!!!!

What he said.  Got any construction photos or at least with one of the drawers open?  What finish schedule did you use?  Sure is gorgeous.  

John
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#23
Wow, it looks great.  Will this be for personal use or were you commissioned (paid or otherwise) to build it?
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#24
Beautiful! What did you finish it with?
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#25
Beautiful!

I love the jatoba.

What is the finish?
Peter

My "day job"
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#26
Looks awesome!!

Don't open the drawers though. Lol
Steve

Missouri






 
The Revos apparently are designed to clamp railroad ties and pull together horrifically prepared joints
WaterlooMark 02/9/2020








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#27
Awesome great job and what every one else has already said
I also would like to know the finish details
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#28
Love it!!! Nice work!
2023-2024 NFL Pick 'em
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#29
Very nice work!
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#30
First of all, it means a lot coming from you guys that you like the dresser! I'd love to go into more detail on the piece.

I'll include some pics below of some of the inner workings and drawers along with details of each as needed. I still don't know how to fix the orientation of the pics, though.

The first picture is of how I attached the base mouldings...what you see is part of one of the pieces of plywood (just cheaper grade stuff like you'll see on the rest of the inside for the most part), all of which had tenons on the ends which fit into grooves routed into the lower insides of the legs/corner posts. The outsides of those sat flush with the rest of the rails, posts, and in the case of the front, the lowest dust frame, so I simply glued the mouldings onto those as I'm not a huge fan of nails being everywhere in a project. I did, though, glue in a couple of strips under the lowest dust frame and nailed the front piece of plywood (which the front base moulding is glued onto) onto those just to counteract any bending or flexing that would take place towards the center of that piece. You'll see my finger pointing towards one of those strips in the second pic.

The third pic shows a closeup of one of the pieces of scrap plywood I glued in and routed a dado through to give extra support for the dust frames. Also, you'll see one of the drawer guides there, which I also used plywood for. I figured the inside doesn't need to look refined as long as it's structurally sound, which it is. Plus, the last time I used solid wood rather than plywood for drawer guides on projects, the drawers would start to become too tight and, at one point, almost impossible to remove from the main part of the piece. I'm sure this is certainly due to wood movement. I replaced those with plywood strips and haven't had the same issue on other projects, so I used plywood strips here as well.

The fourth picture is a bit more panoramic of the inner workings, and you can clearly see the other slides as well as the small strips I glued towards the back to act as stops for the drawers. Also, after experiencing some small gaps during my first glue up of this piece, I remade the dust frames completely out of poplar rather than using a solid piece of Jatoba for the front. They were slightly narrower than I needed. That way, when I glued up again, any gaps in the joints would be covered up by gluing a thin strip of Jatoba the exact needed length onto the fronts and then doing any planing and paring to get them flush. Worked great! I'm sure the gaps would not have been a problem if I had gotten a second person to help me with the glue-up, but I think there might have been a slight amount of difference in the depth of cut towards the outer parts of the supporting dadoes since I used a router rather than a table saw (since my table saw doesn't accommodate a very wide dado stack or very wide/long pieces). Still, I've lifted the whole dresser carcass up and carried it numerous times only holding onto the dust frames, and I can tell from that no structural issues are present given how strong modern glues are as well as the amount of glue surface area the dust frames successfully made contact with. Thus, the gaps in this case were purely an aesthetic issue, not a structure-compromising one.

The rest of the photos are of one of the drawers. One admission I have to make...I tried to practice doing hand-cut dovetails without any guides, and this took up A LOT of time. I eventually decided that I should take an easier route and practice more before I do those on a project. As you can see (and at the suggestion of somebody on this forum), I used simple glued dadoes, and as much as I hate nails most of the time, I reinforced them with some of those just to help them be a little bit stronger. The stain in the back right corner of the drawer is a little bit of water based finish and sawdust that got on the piece of plywood in the garage before I put the drawers together. However, the project is for me and not a customer, so I'm fine with blemishes on the inside parts. You'll see how the drawer frames were constructed and also how the front is a separate piece from the box rather than the front piece of the box. I figured it'd be easier to perfectly position the fronts in the spaces in the carcass and attach them after the fact rather than having them be part of the drawer box and not be able to make any adjustments. I also used some plywood strips (this time some scrap Baltic Birch rather than the cheaper stuff I used elsewhere since that was the first thing in sight) for some guides (given that the front and back of the boxes extend out past the sides of the boxes) and glued and nailed those so I wouldn't waste any clamps on them. I also glued on some thin strips to the bottom edges of the sides of the drawers. I found that helps the drawers slide much more smoothly than having all four bottom edges of the boxes sliding.

With the hardware, it was just some knobs I found on Home Depot's website that I thought looked nice. Very happy with those and how they work with the piece!

This may not be as clear in the pics, but I attached the top with screws. I glued some backup strips onto the top of the top dust frame and drilled elongated holes through them: 3 on the rails of the frames and 2 on each of the stiles, all with the elongation running perpendicular to the grain, and I made sure the screws were able to pivot in the slots to allow for movement of the top.

As far as those asking about the finish, here's what I did:

All the parts except for the top I sanded them to around 220 (400 grit for the end grain of the top's edges) and used a coat of Minwax oil-based stain (natural, of course) just to enhance the color a bit since I wanted to use a faster-drying water-based topcoat (which wouldn't enhance the Jatoba much on its own). With the top, I experienced quite a bit of blotching with the stain, so at the advice of someone on this forum, I used some spray on wax-free shellac to get the enhancement of color without the awful blotching. The topcoat was gloss Minwax polycrylic. With the Maple parts, I thought the natural "white" color of that species would contrast better with the rich Jatoba than a more golden Maple color, so I only used the polycrylic there. Not as much "popping" of the figure as you'd get with a deeper dye or something like that, but it's still more than apparent enough and the color scheme is exactly what I wanted!

I'm not gonna say the number of coats I put on it, as I often sanded through spots on the finish and had to put a few more coats on at least once or twice with certain parts. I will say, though, that if I had been more careful in my application and subsequent sanding and polishing (and hadn't experienced any sand-through). I would probably have ended up with around 10-12 coats of polycrylic. Some of that goes towards filling up the pores in the Jatoba, as I'm not big on pore fillers at this point in time. Although I sometimes put new coats on without sanding in between, I sometimes scuff sand as well. For the initial coats, though, I usually put two (or three, in the case of water-based) before doing any scuffing, as the first coat or so gets absorbed more deeply and doesn't form as thick of a film. I've found what works best as far as flattening the finish on the top is to sand with a long and flat piece of wood with eased corners (to reduce the chance of creating big scratches in the finish) and 400 grit paper, alternating between circular motions and sanding across the piece. I would do this after the first 3-4 coats, then again after the next 3-4, and then again after the last batch of 3-4 coats, though a bit more thoroughly before I polish.

I polished the entire piece by sanding the finish down and using micro mesh, but that was more for depth of color on the Jatoba. In the future, I might try using oil-based on everything but the top since that has more time to level itself, and there won't be any need to do such a lengthy process on the entire project. I also did it pretty much all by hand because I didn't want to risk sanding through even more. I stopped at 6000 grit with all project parts but the top. With the top, I went all the way up to 12000. To save some time on the top, I used my ROS with micro mesh pads and mineral spirits for all but the outer 3 inches or so. I've always found myself going through the finish on the edges in times past, so I did those by hand as well. After going through all those grits, I would always rub down the surface with a soft rag to really bring the sheen out. On the top, I went one step further and used some Meguiar's ultimate polish along with the soft rag. That was done by hand as well, but I have a buffer and if I would have had the right pad for it and used that with the Meguiar's, I'm sure the results would have been even better on the top.

As a last word, I think at some point in the future I should build some kind of mini-spray booth, as water-based topcoats, IMO, are better sprayed than wiped or brushed as they dry too quickly to level out ridges created by the brush or rag. I like the faster drying time, but I think I need to get some spray equipment sooner than later so that I can apply the finish more evenly.


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Near future projects:

-Curly Maple display case
-Jatoba and Quilted Maple dresser
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