I built this chest for my son, out of Philippine mahogany using mortise and tenon joinery. We both like its vertical orientation. At 52 ¼” high it’s a tall dresser.
The original plans called for four smaller drawers topside, but per his request, I modified them down to only two. He also didn’t like the simple rabbeted wood drawer glides and wanted full extension ball bearing slides. This took a bit of internal design alteration but in the end, it all worked out fine. All that steel did add considerably to its weight.
Here is the carcass during an early dry fit.
The dedicated mortiser got a good workout on this project and the x-y vise improvement to this machine really paid off in speed and accuracy.
Here you can see the long stopped mortise that was routed into each of the legs. I got good advice from the forum on how to cut these on this thread. http://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/showthread.php?p=75418#poststop
I would have liked to have used full extension bottom mounted slides and concealed the mechanical hardware. The Blum Tandems in my kitchen drawers are silky smooth, a pleasure to operate and don’t sully the appearance of the drawer side dovetail joinery.
But alas, they would have added $200 to the total cost. I couldn’t justify their added expense.
Will I regret it? If it becomes a family heirloom, they’ll just have to know that grandpa was just trying to be practical.
I followed along with the simple lines of the Shaker style tradition to a point. But, understatement and lack of ornamentation can also get pretty boring. I went with this little 1/8” round-over edge treatment that I think dresses it up but still doesn’t violate any Shaker taboos. We wouldn’t want any purists to get their panty hose in a bunch.
A macro shot of one of the store bought Shaker knobs.
A bit of shameless self promotion.
Thanks for looking.
The original plans called for four smaller drawers topside, but per his request, I modified them down to only two. He also didn’t like the simple rabbeted wood drawer glides and wanted full extension ball bearing slides. This took a bit of internal design alteration but in the end, it all worked out fine. All that steel did add considerably to its weight.
Here is the carcass during an early dry fit.
The dedicated mortiser got a good workout on this project and the x-y vise improvement to this machine really paid off in speed and accuracy.
Here you can see the long stopped mortise that was routed into each of the legs. I got good advice from the forum on how to cut these on this thread. http://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/showthread.php?p=75418#poststop
I would have liked to have used full extension bottom mounted slides and concealed the mechanical hardware. The Blum Tandems in my kitchen drawers are silky smooth, a pleasure to operate and don’t sully the appearance of the drawer side dovetail joinery.
But alas, they would have added $200 to the total cost. I couldn’t justify their added expense.
Will I regret it? If it becomes a family heirloom, they’ll just have to know that grandpa was just trying to be practical.
I followed along with the simple lines of the Shaker style tradition to a point. But, understatement and lack of ornamentation can also get pretty boring. I went with this little 1/8” round-over edge treatment that I think dresses it up but still doesn’t violate any Shaker taboos. We wouldn’t want any purists to get their panty hose in a bunch.
A macro shot of one of the store bought Shaker knobs.
A bit of shameless self promotion.
Thanks for looking.
As always, the photography is superb - well done!
