Day 13, unlucky for some. Not so much for me, but more so for my poor colleague whose piece of work caught in the big machine router and got mulched. My own small project creeps on, and after today I only have two days left on the course, so need to get it all glued up at least. Today I’m trying to get things moving on the drawer that sits at the bottom of the cabinet.
The cabinet in on it’s back and I’ve got one drawer side in the vice, planing it down so that it slides nicely inside the drawer gap.Both drawer sides slide in really smoothly now, but are obviously way too sturdy. Next step, take them down on the machine planer, to get them down to around 10mm thick.I selected a nice piece of walnut for the drawer front and again have taken it down on the planer and thicknesser. There’s some nice grain here, so will crop the best bit for the drawer.Drawer front trimmed to size. The drawer front is a little thicker than the sides, which is the conventional way to do it, and means the sides can be dovetailed into the front with lapped dovetails, leaving a decent thickness to hide them.Finally got the chance to use the lovely Veritas dovetails markers my girlfriend bought me for christmas. This one is the 1:8 ratio, as the drawer sides are oak and have the strength to hold with the shallower angle reserved for hardwoods. If I was knocking up a similar drawer in softwood, I’d use 1:6 angles.
[important]Top tutor tip. If you’re cutting dovetails, set the cut square, it’s easier to keep a straight line in a cut, if it’s vertical. Nice one![/important]
Not too shabby. Must learn to stop at the lines though, I do get a bit over-excited and some of these you see here are pencil lines, but on the other side things went a little haywire. Should be ok though.Here’s the completed dovetails for the front on the sides. Next week I’ll need to cut these into the sides of the drawer front, using these pieces as templates. Then same sort of thing on rear corners, (easier as they are through dovetails), then, once I’ve sorted out the base, I should have a drawer.
