Dual Front Half-Blind Dovetail Drawers - 318

hey folks how you guys doing hope you're all having a great day today this is my krenov inspired coffee table somewhat based upon a design he came up with for coffee table years back and it's my most favorite thing that I've ever made it's it was the most challenging thing that I've ever made but challenging is a matter of perspective I guess because while this looks a little bit complicated at first glance it's just a bunch of simple processes repeated over and over again so the topcase construction here the the corners are a through dovetail that is proud and chamfered throughout the entire length of the corner or the edge of the case that's that's continued on all four corners and the center divider has a through mortise and tenon connection to both the top and bottom the bottom is planed nice and flush the top is left proud to match these dovetails over here the top case construction is all made out of mahogany and the base is all made out of Ambrosia maple and on the base there are through mortise and tenon joints as well as a little bit of a compound curve on the front and back long rail like I said it sounds a little bit complicated but it really is just a bunch of basic concepts just repeated over and over again and the end result in my opinion looks pretty cool when I made this I said that I was going to pick up with making the drawers at a later date because I wanted to switch gears and work on something else and that later date is today I'm gonna make the drawers for this if you are interested in making this coffee table I do have a set of detailed plans available on my website there's a link in the description below if you're watching this on YouTube but other than that it's it's time to get started on making these drawers to break down rough lumber I always start at the miter saw station to make all of the rough cross cuts first but in this case I can't make all of the rough cross cuts just yet due to the way that the cuts are laid out then any rough with ripping can be done at either the bandsaw or the table saw and in this case I have a few rough edges that need to be trimmed so I chose the bandsaw and also if the boards are cuffed at all the bandsaw is always the much safer option then it's back to the miter saw to make the last few rough flank cross cuts one white face is jointed flat at the jointer the opposite face is planed flat and parallel with the planer and finally one narrow face of each board is jointed flat with the jointer once again and the reason to do the narrow faces after the planer step is that this sequence allows you to allows you to choose which of the wide faces goes against the fence so that you can make sure that you're cutting in the downhill direction and the minimize tear out the close to final width is established at the table saw with the jointed narrow face against the fence and I didn't want to go for the final width right at the table saw and that's because I wanted to sneak up on a perfect fit with a hand plane it's much more controllable that way before cutting the pieces to their final length I needed to determine the overall length of the drawers and as you can see here the case is a little bit more than nineteen and three eighths of an inch wide so I'm going to aim for my drawers to be about 19 and a quarter of an inch long the reason being is I don't want them to be the exact size of the case with due to expansion and contraction of the case if I make the drawers too the exact width of the case and the case shrinks in the wintertime then the drawers will be sticking out of the case I'd rather err on the side of caution by making them not as long so that means the assembled dwarfs side length is to be 19 and 1/4 of an inch long which means I can subtract one eighth of an inch twice for the setback on both the half-blind dovetail joints to give the final length of the drawer side piece that's 19 inches long now all of the drawer sides can be cut to their final lengths and all of the drawer fronts can be cut to again really close to their final length I'll get the exact fit for these with a shooting board the final width of all the drawer pieces is established with a hand plane making sure the fit is tight enough that there is no slop or rattling round of the pieces but also loose enough that they can be easily moved it's also a good idea to label all of your parts when you get this far for consistency's sake finally the fronts can be trimmed to the exact size with a shooting board and it's important to make these pretty tight at this stage once the drawer is assembled the sides they're gonna be planed once again so they are loose now then well they're never gonna be tight after assembly if that's the case the joinery can begin and here you see me setting the marking gauge to the incorrect depth I have no idea why but I set the marking gauge to the full thickness of the pieces to mark the cutting depth for the tails which means I'm marking for through dovetails on the tail boards and not half blind up tails I didn't catch the screw up at this stage so I ended up having to make the drawer sides twice which I'll get into that in just a second to mark the pins I set the marking gauge to leave about 1/8 of an inch on the front of the drawer and marked the end grain of all of the pins I laid out all the dovetails per the dimensions on my plan with a pair of layout dividers and laying out dovetails with dividers is incredibly easy and foolproof if you have a pair of them I won't go into detail here but I have a link in the description to another video where I break down that process I'm using this magnetic dovetail guide for all of the joinery cuts it's the same one I used on the case construction it's an easy way to make sure all of your cuts are at the exact same angle and straight where they need to be one of the great things about this guide in particular is that you can use it with a western-style saw that cuts on the push stroke as well as an Eastern or japanese-style saw that cuts on the pull stroke it also has a face to make perpendicular cuts which is nice the center waste can be completely chiseled out if you prefer but an inexpensive fret saw like this allows you to easily remove the majority of the waste then any cleanup work can be done with chills being careful not to damage at the side of the tails and here's where I realized I cut the tails too long and needed to remake all of the drawer sides which was really frustrating the pin boards can now be put in the vise at the same height as a hand plane and this allows the tail board to be placed across both the pin board and the hand plane allowing the tails to be easily marked into the pin board to make the pin cuts I only used the magnetic guide to establish the angle of cut on the endgrain face and then the backside of the saw can easily be dropped to establish the vertical direction of the cut now there's a lot of ways to remove the waste but I prefer to secure the piece to the workbench with a holdfast and then just chop in two directions with the chisel it's it's super easy to stay ill inside the cuts and marking gauge lines and it's relatively quick doesn't take much time now because the magnetic dovetail guide was used there shouldn't be any test fitting so long as you cut on the appropriate side of the line and use a square to make sure that nothing is sticking up and out of the way to make sure the drawers fit into the openings perfectly I wanted to glue them up and let them dry in place and to prevent any minor glue squeeze-out from locking the drawers into the opening I waxed the areas where the glue could potentially get then the drawers are glued up making sure not to go crazy with the glue and then slid into place to sit overnight because the maple I'm using for the drawers is much harder than the mahogany I used for the case I feared that the drawer sides would dig into the mahogany overtime so to eliminate the possibility of this I decided to cut a rabbet on the bottom of the drawer so that the drawer bottom could be glued in place and be flush with the bottom of the drawer sides this now means that the sides cannot dig into the mahogany case at all as all of the weight is distributed along the bottom of the entire drawer and of course the round corner from the router bit needs to be squared with a chisel and debated on what to use for the drawer bottom and ultimately I settled on quarter inch MDF now it may not be a I guess a traditional material for a drawer in a project like this but in this application where the bottom panel will be glued in place and doesn't have room for expansion and contraction it just makes sense after verifying the panel's fit they're glued in with a minimal amount of glue and once the bottom panel was dry I did the final cleanup of the drawer sides then I made any final adjustments necessary for a smooth operation one final detail is to use a block plane to cut a small chamfer around the perimeter of the drawer to even up the gap all the way around the drawer now there typically isn't a gap at the bottom but adding this chamfer makes the drawer visually appear perfectly centered in the opening and it's a great way of hiding any imperfections you may have had in fitting the drawer front then the drawer fronts can get a few light passes with a smoothing plan and if the grain is cooperating and not going in several directions you can get away with a really nice surface finish right off the smoothing claim and eliminate sanding altogether I actually did not have to sand any of the wood on these drawers at all I normally would have applied the finish last but I had a limited and sporadic shap time during this whole build so I went ahead and finished the drawer fronts only at this stage and I didn't have much of the same finish that are used for the case so I just made sure that it was at least on the drawer fronts and the poles the sides inside and bottom all that will be finished with shellac now speaking of the drawer poles I went with this piece of wing II that has been hanging out in my shop for quite a long time evany is another good choice for the poles but I thought that the I guess the solid black uninteresting look of ebony would just be too plain for this project to me the 1ye fits this project much better because it's grain is visible and has enough contrast to flow with the rest of the wood at this point I decided to change the drawer pole shape from a round shape to a long dovetail that would be about much better match for this project the round shape just it looked good when I designed the project in Sketchup but not so much when I thought about it you know actually looking at the piece here in my shop the dovetail poles are shaped to match the dovetails in this build so I used the same magnetic guide to set the blade angle on my table saw and then ran the board through on both sides to establish a dovetail now I did this on both the sides of the board so I can experimenting with two different height poles and each side of this board was long enough to get all four poles from it I cut the first side to result in a three-quarter inch high Pole and the second side to result in a 5/8 of an inch high pole and of course these get a slight chamfer just like the rest of the proud dovetails on the case and it's much easier to get a consistent chamfer on the long edges of all of the poles before cutting each pole then the stock is cut to four oversized pieces establishing one angled cross cut and a stop block is added to cut the opposite angle face and establish the length of the poles with all the poles cut I thought the taller or the I guess the thicker drawer pole it would just stick out too much so I went with a shorter or thinner pole now these are all sized the exact same the outside face and the angles are the same on both poles just the thickness or the height is different I made a simple jig to locate the holes on both the poles and the drawers first a scrap of MDF was ripped to the same width as the length of the drawer pulls and then the width of the poles was transferred to the bottom edge of the MDF then a hole was drilled halfway through the width of the drawer pole and what looked to be an appropriate amount away from the edge of the pole a stop lock on the drill press fence was set for the first hole then the MDF was flipped over and the same hole was used to position the second stop lock on the fence this gives two stop blocks that are the exact same distance away from the drill bit so that you can drill both holes without flipping the pole around and risking the holes not being centered along the width and in this case it's okay if the holes are not 100% in the center of the width as they will be off by the exact same amount and still mount horizontal the chamfers on the ends needed to wait until after the holes were drilled because the chamfers will change the length of the pole just slightly and then a quick coat of finish is applied to the poles to locate the screw holes on the drawer fronts a square is clamped to the jig so that the holes are centered vertically on the drawer then the jig is centered left to right and the face of the square is taped to the face of a case this is just enough to keep it stationary while the holes are located and what the jig removed the holes are drilled all the way through again a little bit of finishing out of order as I added collec to the rest of the drawer inside and out and next the poles are installed with a couple of screws and the shellac is drive by this time so it's knocked down with a little bit of 320 grit at 320 grit sanding sponge I should say and a liberal amount of wax is applied to the inset of the case and to the drawer bottom and sides and finally this project is done so with this project done there's two things to note first the drawers slide effortlessly in both directions with no problems I'm actually I'm actually a bit concerned at how well they slide considering the fact that my daughter should be walking and pulling herself up on everything in the next few months so we'll see how that goes the second thing is that I wish I would have had the wood grain flow from one drawer front to the next like you typically would see instead I chose to have the most amount of Ambrosia and the most amount of curl on the Front's which i think is a mistake I thought it would look good with us with a lot of figure going on but the drawers they look great independently but the fact that the grain doesn't flow from one to the other is distracting to me and maybe that's just a woodworker thing I don't know but oh well don't really care too much I'm still very happy with the piece and I'm glad that I took on this project if you'd like to make one of these tables I do have a set of plans available it's it's a great joinery practice project and it's actually a lot easier than what the final results may appear to be it's just a bunch of repetition on basic joinery get it get it down once and then just knock out a bunch more it's basically all there is to it but that's it for this one you guys take care and I'll catch you in the next video [Music]