The birth of a drawer…

OK, so there’s no mummy an daddy stuff here. In furniture making, drawers are kind of their own entity. Elevated because there is a lot more that goes into making 4 sides and a base. It’s often an opportunity to show some continuity - for example, here, I’ve cut all the drawer fronts out of one piece of 3/8th” oak. Sequentially cut so that when all drawers are assembled, they become 5 jigsaw pieces that add up to the visual of the original board. 

In keeping too with the external corners of the chest that have the 1/16th” proud joints, the drawer side dovetails fly past the fronts by the same. It’s definitely the case that as the material gets thinner, the cutting and cleaning up of the dovetails gets quicker. It was about 16 hours work to get the 5 drawers cut out, organised, dovetailed, slotted, bases cut, parts sanded and pre-finished, glued and cleaned up. 

Let it be known, it is very satisfying having these components nicely cut and finished and then assembled into a solid form that pretty much instantly becomes useful. 

Interestingly (to me anyway) is how much you can get away with as the sizes and thicknesses of components reduce. Here we’ve got a 3/8th” (9.5mm) drawer front, 1/4” (6mm) back, sides and 3/16th” (4.5mm) base. The base has a tiny rebate and the sides have a tiny slot. Everything becomes really quite minuscule - but comparatively strong. Helped in part of course by the fact that much of the oak is between rift and quarter sawn at this point.

Anyway, 5 drawers made, I’ve found some small brass pulls from Brusso which should be arriving shortly, and I’ve routed a pull recess into the drawer fronts - like a bowl cut (picture tomorrow). We’ll soon see if the hardware matches the general aesthetic or not. It’s annoying that you can spend so much time on the woodwork, but the first thing people notice is little bits of turned wood or metal you’ve decided to put on the front of doors, drawers and whatever else. I’m hopeful though - which has to be half the battle!