My first hand cut dovetail drawer

[OneStaple]

Thanks for the encouragement, all!

I agree with Philip 150 per cent. The look prefect to me. Very very well done.

Tom

Tom, the Moxon vise that I built with the hardware that I purchased from you has made a huge difference in the ease and workflow of cutting these dovetails. I'm really glad I took the time to put one together (especially with a bunch of drawers to do yet).

Looks good. Little London style. Typically, when drawers had what we call London style pins, they were only in the front of the drawer, not the back. My theory is that the intention was to cover the maximum amount of drawer front end grain. With full DTs I think the intention was to match the exposed end grain so the pieces would move together.

Another nice 18th c feature that might have worked well here is keeping the drawer sides a bit lower than the front. Almost always in those cases, the sides are planed with a hollow plane to round over the top of the side. It’s a thoughtful elegant feature.

Not sure what you did at the back?? Looks like you trapped the bottom in? 18th c bottoms were very often nailed up from underneath, often back and sides. Front was grooved. My advice would be, if you are going to groove the sides and front, hold the back up so you can slide the panel in from the rear.

Thanks Adam! That makes sense in terms of the exposed end grain in the back. I'll consider that for the future drawers, especially as they get deeper and will thus have a greater amount that they expand/contract.

Regarding lower sides, I've never liked that feature for shop drawers. I want to know exactly how tall I can stack a tool in the drawer without hitting when I close the drawer. Sides that match the front are helpful for that. It's a little detail, but one that I prefer. Is there any reason other than aesthetics to do this?

Yes, I trapped the bottom in the back, using a groove on all sides. Since these drawers are about 20"x30" and will hold tools, I wanted as much support as I could get around the edges without sacrificing depth for the sake of installing a thicker bottom. The bottoms are 1/4" baltic birch. I left some room for expansion/contraction of the bottom. Is there a structural reason for leaving the back open and nailed from underneath, or just to match 18th century approaches?

Lipped (rabbeted) half blind dovetails is pretty advanced stuff. Most starting out would have made through dovetails and glued on a front. So well done again!

No problems with the dimensions of the drawers for a tool cabinet. For house furniture I would make the drawer sides 1/4-3/8" thick (erring on the thinner side), and I would not use slides (but in the shop they make perfect sense).

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks Derek! I thought about the approach of doing through DTs and gluing on a front, but wanted to challenge myself and try the approach that I'm doing. No better way to learn than by doing something, especially if you do it a bunch of times.

Wow, you would go as thin as 1/4" for drawer sides? Going that thin scares me a little, especially if there's a groove to catch the bottom (I could see the approach mentioned by Adam above being more critical for very thin sides/back). I guess the thickness is, of course, dependent on the expected use and loads. 1/4" sides for a small jewelry drawer would be much more appropriate than for shop tools. And I absolutely agree that I'd use something other than exposed slides for a house furniture application, whether that be under-mount commercial slides, something more like a piston-fit approach, or wood slides. You'll also notice on the picture showing the drawer front in the cabinet that I left a gap (~3/32") around all the edges. I would make this much tighter for furniture.

Tyler

[Derek Cohen]

..
Wow, you would go as thin as 1/4" for drawer sides? Going that thin scares me a little, especially if there's a groove to catch the bottom (I could see the approach mentioned by Adam above being more critical for very thin sides/back). I guess the thickness is, of course, dependent on the expected use and loads. 1/4" sides for a small jewelry drawer would be much more appropriate than for shop tools. And I absolutely agree that I'd use something other than exposed slides for a house furniture application, whether that be under-mount commercial slides, something more like a piston-fit approach, or wood slides. You'll also notice on the picture showing the drawer front in the cabinet that I left a gap (~3/32") around all the edges. I would make this much tighter for furniture.

Tyler

Hi Tyler

1/4" thick drawer sides look especially elegant when the front in 3/4" thick. Add to this "London" dovetails, and you get a sophisticated aesthetic (to my eye). 

To use 1/4" drawer sides, you no longer groove them for the drawer bottom, but use slips. Slips attach to the sides to hold the panel, and also add bearing surface to the thin sides.

This is the intersection behind a (curved) drawer front. You can see a bead down each side. Those are the slips ...



Below you will see the slips being glued on. The join is like a tongue-and-groove ...



This is from behind ...



... and the London dovetail on the side ...



Link:  http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furniture/D...Slips.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

[adamcherubini]

They typically nailed the bottom into the side at the back to both hold up the bottom and to keep it from sliding out. Lots of us use a couple flush head screws. Derek probably did something. Could be helpful to remove the bottom later. I’ve seen bottoms run long (as Derek did) to possibly serve as a stop. And lots of fine 18th c pieces had bottoms’ grain running front to back not side to side. Reason is probably the groove at the front and no groove at the sides, so sides were often glued and nailed. The nail heads wore the dividers at the front and were subsequently covered with slips. Properly grooving the sides came later but didn’t really solve the problem. The sides were thin, often oak in Europe, and wore the dividers badly.

I can only speculate as too why they rounded the tops of the sides. Textiles were often stored in drawers and were very very expensive. Bottoms were often lined with paper or cloth to protect the contents and possibly to prevent insect ingress when the bottom inevitably split? So one possibility is they sought to prevent a splinter from catching something being removed. A hollow plane is fast and produces a fine smooth surface, better and faster than chamfering. Sometimes only the inside edge is rounded. This would work for you (tho it’s too late on this piece). These are the details I see on masterpieces, not workaday pieces.

Last, I question how 18th c chests of drawers were used. I think it’s possible the drawers were designed to be fully removed and set on a table or bed for access. Lots of indications of that including the little chamfers Derek has to ease the drawer into the opening. In a similar fashion, I sometimes remove the top till of my toolbox and place it under my bench for access. Maybe think about drawers as a collection of storage boxes. That paradigm might work best for tools.

Oh, if it’s not too late, try placing your drawer pulls golden section up from the bottom of each drawer’s height. Just don’t tell Aram because he think GS is boring! (I think that’s a joke) You can use .618 if you don’t want to do the divider trick.

I’ve thought a lot about drawers and spent a lot of time looking at them and making them. I think some of the 18th c features are nice and can make our work nicer. But I think plywood drawer bottoms are gifts from the almighty carpenter in the sky.

Your dovetails are as nice as they need to be. Derek’s are kinda next level artistry. The best furniture Ive seen has at least a few wonky dovetails, over cuts etc. I don’t think they were symbols of quality or sources of pride for workers. I think they were after speed and functionality.