Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Drawer fronts...

I've been busy gathering the right wood for the drawer fronts, sides and bottoms. Drawer fronts will be Sapele, a fine-grained wood in the mahogany family. As part of the drawer front fitting, I cut the fronts oversize in thickness, width and length and then proceed to shoot the ends so they fit the drawer opening just right. I follow the same process with the width of the drawer front, handplaning and tuning it down to size. Prior to this, I had planed the thickness of the drawer fronts to fit the opening. The drawer front of the upper right hand set will overhang the divider providing a seamless look, I designed the divider to be shorter than the drawer opening by the thickness of a drawer front. Next, I begin dovetailing the drawer sides into the fronts and then create the grooves for the drawer bottom, in this order. Important to position the groove correctly over a tail so the groove doesn't exit through a pin in the drawer front. This would preclude using a stopped rabbet instead of a through rabbet.

I'm glad to have completed the stand as the cabinet has been occupying a cool rolling cart I built a few months ago. I now have access to my rolling cart once again, which by the way I'm kicking myself for not having made earlier. These things are great in the shop, allowing me to wheel components around to different benches and assembly tables, etc. Also, I haven't decided on the drawer pulls just yet, preferring to wait a few more days and examine some options in the meantime.

I'm also going to install a short divider between the sets of drawers creating more of a delineation between the left and right sides of the cabinet interior. The area above each of the drawer compartments is to be used to display an art object , the divider perhaps will separate the styles of art objects? It just feels right.

I'm still not sure how to work the area below the left hand drawer compartment into the mix. The design of this has been up in the air for a while, and I'm thinking once the drawers are in along with the divider it will make more sense and a a spark of imagination will occur, an "aha" moment. I'm leaning towards a hidden compartment at the moment. Or I might leave it open, in the spirit of "dynamic design", a philosophy I coined a few months ago.

2 comments:

Angostura Bitters said...

The design looks great! Very well balanced and proportioned.

I'd love to see a detail photo of how you do your rabbets for the drawer bottoms negotiated around the dovetails because it seems like an important point!

Thanks!

Adam

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