Bedroom Dresser Part 3

At this point in the build, I have constructed the basic cabinet and filled it with drawers. The next part of the process is to make the "frame" structure which supports the cabinet. It is helpful to look back at the inspiration piece here - the cabinet sits within a darker frame and only the frame touches the floor. 

I'm making the frame from African mahogany. I've got a lot of experience working with oak and walnut and I've used teak before. The last time I came near mahogany was back in the 80's when I worked in the carpentry shop at a funeral directors....and even that was limited to "puttying up" and sanding. This project is the first time I've bought what you might call expensive material. I began by cutting the stock into pieces that are a few inches longer than I need:

The material was then ripped into sections which are approximately 1-1/2 inches square. 

There was a satisfying dark band in the dust collector when I was done with the sawing:

I spent the next few weeks - or more accurately parts thereof - working on other aspects of the dresser. The mahogany was left to warp, twist or bend to its hearts content....except it really did not; every piece remained perfectly straight, and milling the material down to the final dimensions was a piece of cake. The upper front rail measures 1-5/8" x 1-1/4" and all the other pieces are 1-1/4 square. This task was made a lot easier with a really nice digital caliper.

The "cage" or "frame" consists of four corner posts, four side rails and two front rails. There is also a central front-to-back rail below the cabinet which is invisible when the structure is assembled - so eleven pieces of mahogany which will be built into a frame with mortise and tenon joinery. The rough tenons were cut on the cabinet saw. This was bit laborious since I had to use the regular saw blade - I still don't have the correct insert for the dado stack.

The tenons require careful refinement with a file:

Rinse and repeat a total of thirteen times...

The upper front rail is recessed 5/8" into the cabinet which means it is constructed from wider material. The fitting of this rail followed the "little and often" mantra....

....which resulted in a perfect fit - the rail stays in place without clamps or fasteners!

The four corner posts - or legs - were taped together and cut to the final length of 31-1/4". 

The taping also makes it much easier to mark out for all the mortises at the same time. The side and front rails meet the corner posts at the top and at around three inches from the base. In addition, the front corner posts mate with both the front and side rails, so a double mortise is required at these intersections. 

I used a piece of scrap mahogany to set up the drill press. I bored 5/8" diameter holes with a spade bit to remove the bulk of the material: 

All holes bored!

Excess material is cut out with a chisel - this process is known as making a square hole out of a round hole.

Test fitting components:

The tenons were all cut a bit longer than needed to allow for any variation in the depth of the mortises, so some trimming was required.

One down, another twelve to go:

Part way through the mortise and tenon refinement process I took a break to work on the cabinet. I've been working through the wood filler/final sanding/more wood filler/more final sanding routine in the background and now I'm ready for stain. The cabinet needs to be stained before the frame is attached because the mahogany will be stained much darker.

I'm looking for something close to the inspiration piece, so I made up a quick test palette out of some scrap material using wood stain I already have:

There was no good match, so I took the two closest stains and mixed them at various ratios:

The best match was a 1:1 ratio of English chestnut and gunstock. This mixture looks pretty dark when it's going on:

And dries like the picture below:

Back to fine tuning the mortise and tenon joints. Where two tenons plug into the same front corner post/leg....

...both tenons must be trimmed at 45 degrees. The upper front rail is also recessed into the cabinet by around 3/8" which means 100% concentration is required for these cuts and the painstaking micro adjustments.

Checking the fit at the bench:

The frame I'm constructing will raise the cabinet exactly six (6) inches off the floor. I made some blocks by milling scraps of 4" x 6" lumber (which is really 3-1/2" x 5-1/2") to exactly 5-1/4" thick and stapling on pieces of 3/4" plywood. This allows me to build the frame on top of the table.

Dry fitting the fame to the cabinet:

At this point the frame is (mostly) constructed from 1-1-4" square mahogany. I will be rounding of some of the corners prior to glue up, and the frame also needs to be sanded, stained and attached to the cabinet. After that I have twelve (12) false drawer fronts to make and install. Stay tuned!

Bedroom Dresser Part 2

In part one of the dresser build I assembled the basic cabinet. The next stage of the project is building and installing the drawers. I made some very careful measurements, but I've learned to build one drawer first before cutting the parts for all the other drawers. There is a 1/2" gap at each side of the mockup drawer to allow for the slides, and there is no base panel at this stage.

There are going to be twelve (12) drawers, which means 48 front, back and side panels need to be cut. I'm making the front and back panels from 1/2" Baltic birch plywood, and the sides from 3/4" thick plywood, and there are two variations of drawer depth, which keeps things interesting.

A 1/4" x 1/4" groove to accommodate the drawer base was cut 1/4" from the lower edge of each panel:

Test fitting the first base panel:

Cut another eleven (11) base panels from 1/4" Baltic birch plywood:

The base is cut 1/16" undersize in both dimensions, and then I planed a slight bevel on all of the edges, which makes assembly of the drawer a lot easier.

All of the parts were sanded to 220 grit all over:

Pocket holes were bored in the fronts and backs:

The drawer parts were deliberately cut one 1/8 of an inch narrower than desired, to leave room for  veneer at the top edge. As previously mentioned, it has been deemed vital to make sure there is no visible plywood. The veneer was cut into a mixture of 1/2" and 3/4" wide strips...

...and was installed with a mixture of glue and pin nails and clamped overnight. I had to complete this process in two batches.

While I was waiting for the glue to dry, I worked on the drawer assembly setup which I adapted from a jig I made for building the doors for the router table cabinet:

This is how the jig looks when loaded with drawer parts: 

First two "drawer halves" constructed:

Rinse and repeat:

After that it's a case of two halves plus a bottom panel makes a whole and then I aligned the first drawer with the cabinet and installed the drawer slides to prove the concept:

I took a couple of victory laps around the workshop, and then went into mass drawer production:

The positioning of the slides is somewhat arbitrary, but they do have to be level and at the same height at both sides of each drawer. This is most easily achieved by cutting spacers from scrap pieces of plywood:

There are a number of methods to align the drawer body before attachment to the slides. One way is to install spacers above the first drawer and use them to set the height of the next drawer. This method requires cutting just one set of spacers and can give excellent results if all the drawer bodies are exactly the same dimensions.

I've obtained more consistent results by setting the location of each drawer body with respect to the base of the cabinet. This method takes longer since it requires cutting a new set of spacers for each drawer:

The top four drawers were set with respect to the stretchers at the upper section of the cabinet: 

All drawers installed and operational. 

Top down view where you can see the maple veneer at the upper edges of the drawer:

I still need to make the false fronts and the framework that the cabinet will sit inside....