As I said in an earlier entry, I was somewhat shocked that despite careful joinery the cases were quite flimsy. I guess I shouldn’t have been so shocked, because the sides are comparatively thin, as are the drawer blades, meaning the tenons are short and have no shoulders to speak of to resist racking. With that in mind, before any fitting of the drawers or doors could begin, the backs had to be made and installed.
On some of their larger pieces, the Seymour’s used a frame and panel back, so this is what I used. The frame and panel is ideal, because it provides considerable racking strength at a minimum weight. I’m not sure what configuration the back panels took on Seymour pieces, but I chose to go with three horizontal rails; top, bottom and one at the level of the lowest drawer blade. On the center section, the lower panel was divided in two, with a vertical stile.
To keep the weight down and save material, I re-sawed the panels from 4/4 rough sawn clear pine, which by time they were planed to thickness, ended up being about 3/8”. The frame was also made from clear pine, planed to 13/16” . Except for the exposed vertical edges of the flanking cabinets, which are rabbeted, the back panels overlap the edges and are flush with the outside edges of the cases. It may be a minor point, but I decided to size the rails and stiles so when viewed from the inside they are of a uniform width. I was coming down with the flu when cutting the stiles and rails, and I think I got one piece right; never work when you’re sick. I thought it would be cost effective, to use the table saw to make the cheek and shoulder cuts on the rails, but it proved no faster than using a mortise gauge and a tenon saw. I did use a router to make the mortices. I did find it a time saver to make the shoulder cuts on the table saw.
The inside faces of the panels were planed with a smooth plane for appearance, and the outside faces were planed with a scrub plane, also for appearance, that is to appear like period pieces. The beveled edges necessary to fit into the grooves, face the back, leaving the flat face on the interior.
I pre-finished the panels before assembly with a couple sprayed on coats of de-waxed dark shellac. Spraying shellac is not my strong suit, but these flat panels were within my capabilities. The dark shellac gives an aged appearance and seals in the pine scent, which in an enclosed space can be overwhelming.
The frames were glued together with hide glue, depressed with urea. I measured and remeasured the diagonals to ensure the panels came out square. After the glue had cured, I resisted the urge to belt sand the joints flush and planed them with a No. 3 smooth plane. With a joints flush, I brushed on a couple of coats of shellac on the stiles and rails. If I had to do it again, I would have masked off the contact points, so I could have glued and nailed the back on.
At the last minute, I decided to add a dust panel between the storage area and the lower drawers. These dust panels were also made as frame and panels. The dust panels were glued to the rear edge of the drawer blades. Since the frame and panels create a cross grain condition they were sized to leave about a 1/4” gap between it and the back, so if there is any shrinkage, the dust panel won’t force the back off or crack the sides. In all honesty, I think this is somewhat unnecessary, but better safe than sorry.
With the dust panels in place the back panels were nailed in on with hand forged nails; it is necessary to pre-drill in the hard birch. Traditional cut nails, are oriented with the long side of the head with the grain. The forged nails I make, tend to rotate as they are driven, so I keep a pair of pliers handy to align the head properly. See here for more information on making forged nails.
Before any fitting of the doors and drawers can begin, it is essential to have a stable, flat and level surface to rest the base unit on. I screwed together a frame from construction lumber. I believe I may have gotten the only two perfectly straight 2x4’s ever sold at Lowe’s, but I expected to have to plane them straight. I bought 12 footers but cut them to fit in the car, so they overlap in center. I hadn’t used a water level in nearly 15 years, but I dug it out for getting the frame perfectly level. I always liked using a water level for any distance longer than my longest level, because of its absolute precision. You’re probably thinking what is the chance, that the place where the breakfront will be used is so perfectly level, well it is slim to none, but I have to have some standard to build to. I’m certain where it will be placed will be more level than my garage floor, which it turns out slopes 1 1/8” in 8’. For repeatability, I marked the floor with a permanent marker, so the frame can be placed in exactly the same spot each time it is needed.
I started with the drawers in the flanking cabinets ( a later installment will discuss the center drawer). I made a DVD of the entire process of making the drawer from stock preparation to installing the hardware, you can see the details here. I also made a two part YouTube video on hammer veneering which you can view at the links below.
Hammer Veneering Part One
Hammer Veneering Part Two
The first step in the drawer construction is the installation of the drawer runners. The dust panels act as the runners for the lower drawers. The upper drawer and the pull out serving slides (also detailed in an upcoming installment) need to have their runners installed in such a way that they do not constrain the sides, but are still firmly attached. On the sides that won’t be exposed, this is a simple matter of driving screws through the sides into the runners. The screw at the front is driven into the standard hole, but those in the rear has to have an elongated slot to account for any expansion/contraction.
The exposed sides represent more of challenge, but a clever method shown by Norm Vandal in his book on Queen Anne Furniture, neatly addresses the shrinkage and solid attachment issues. A picture hanging bit, forms a T-shaped slot in the runner and pan head screw driven in the sides, engage the slot, allowing for movement, but firmly attaching the runner. It takes a bit of trial and error with the screws, to get the runners firmly in place, yet still allow the runner to slide in place. As with the dust panel the runners stop short of reaching the back by about a 1/4”. To keep the runner front sliding back, I toe-nailed it to the drawer blade, with a small cut brad.
Period drawers typically have fairly thick fronts, with comparatively thin sides. In the case of these drawers, I made the fronts 15/16” thick and the sides are 11/32” thick.
The fronts are made from cherry, which is a typical substrate material used by the Seymour’s. The sides and bottoms are of clear pine, re-sawn from 4/4 rough stock. I like to make the drawer sides from bland looking lumber, for the reasons of appearance, workability, and stability. Re-sawing thick stock into thin stock can do funny things; nice flat lumber can be turned to spaghetti. Much of this has to do with how straight the grain is, which you can of course see, but unseen forces also play a part. How the lumber was dried can have a significant impact on stability, and I know of no way to “see” it or predict which boards will have problems. In the case of this lumber, it was well sawn and dried, and it remained true after re-sawing. Still, I stickered it for a day just to be sure any distortion took place, before planing to thickness.
When it comes to structural elements, I’m kind of a fanatic about stock preparation. Well flattened and squared stock sets the tone for the rest of the project, making for a hassle free, faster build. I flattened the stock in the same way as detailed here.
Much has been written about dovetails, so it seems almost redundant to add more. I was somewhat influenced by the Frank Klausz video, I say somewhat, because for me cutting the pins first, seemed unnatural. Cutting the tails first reduces the amount of layout and cutting, by allowing stacking alike sides and cutting them at once.
To me, the real heart of dovetailing, isn’t cutting a single dovetail joint well, but cutting multiples in a timely manner. Stock preparation is the start of this, and having a system of marking the pieces, so it is immediately clear which part is which, is the other. After that, it becomes rather tedious repetition. I start by plowing the groove so what was the outside of the tree, is the inside of the drawer. This, I believe is a minor point, but the concept is, if the drawer sides were to cup, the top and bottom would be forced in, at the half pins, where the joint is the weakest.
Despite very careful construction, there are inevitably minor variations in the drawer openings. The actual building of the drawers begin with sizing the drawer front to fit its opening. To keep things straight each drawer is given a number, as is the drawer blade below the opening. The openings were quite square, but to ensure a prefect fit, they were carefully sized with planes. With the bottom edge of the drawer front resting on its drawer blade, one end is planed to fit the vertical side of the cabinet. With that fit, the other vertical end is marked in place with a pencil from the inside, and sawn at the bandsaw, cutting away the line.
When the saw marks are planed away, the resulting side gaps will be very small but uniform. Now the drawer front can be planed for width, which at the same time will remove any minor chipping left from planing the ends. At this point, you will have a drawer front with the very small gaps at the sides and a heavy 1/32” clearance at the top, but no gap at the bottom. For now, you want to maintain consistency with the position of the groove for the drawer bottom between the drawer sides and front.
Sort the sides so you have matched pairs. It is surprisingly easy to make all lefts or all rights. I mark the front ends of the sides with the number of drawer it will become. Now the sides which were ripped about 1/16” over size, can be planed to match the drawer front. I like to clamp the jointer plane upside down in the vise and use this to plane the sides to width. Mounted this way, the planing goes very quickly and accurately.
The drawer back was ripped to width at the same setting as the rest of the stock, and when the grooves were ploughed the blade was raised to cut completely through backs. This leaves the back slightly too wide, but this can be addressed after the glue up. So that the backs perfectly match the fronts, the back is laid inside face to inside face with the front and the bottom edge of the back aligned with the groove in the front. Scribe, around the front, transferring its “shape” to the drawer back. Carefully saw and plane to that scribed line. I like to leave the back, ever so slightly bigger than the front. so after assembly I can plane for a precise fit. To keep track of its place and orientation, the back is numbered on its outside face.
Even masterpieces of period furniture can have dovetails of variable quality, but the Seymour’s were experts at fabricating elegant and precise dovetails, so I carefully laid out the dovetails to match their best work, but before any layout can begin, the inside faces of all the components are planed with a finely set smooth plane. The dovetails were sawn with an inexpensive Stanley dovetail saw.
Stacked, the sawing goes very quickly, and at this stage precision isn’t terribly critical except in one important area; here as durning the entire process, the base line has to be maintained. Lately, I have been using a fret saw to remove most of the waste between the tails, but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. I came to this after seeing a video on the Popular Woodworking blog, on speed dovetailing. I even tried my hand at speed cutting half blind dovetails, which you can see here. In a way this speed cutting is kind of useless, but it can point out areas where your technique could use improvement at normal speed.
The sides are stacked in a stair step fashion, and the waste is chopped out, working half way from each side. To preserve that all important baseline, a knife is used to deepen the line left by the cutting gauge and a small chip is raised with a chisel. Raising that chip, creates a shoulder to rest the chisel against and prevents the wedging action of the chisel from setting it back. I find the fairly inexpensive Japanese dovetail chisels, to be indispensable for this. Their sharply tapered sides can reach into the corners and clean out the waste, without marring the edges of the dovetail. Care has to be taken not to stab the drawer side below when the waste is freed, but I have seen evidence of this happening on period pieces.
Now is where having a clear, almost foolproof system to differentiate the components, pays off. With the drawer front clamped vertically in the vise, the proper side is laid in place and carefully scribed to transfer the tails to the drawer front. I’ve been using a scalpel for this but care has to be taken, because of its highly flexible blade. Here is the one place I can see the advantage of sawing the pins first. The very narrow necks of the pins makes it somewhat difficult to get in there and scribe. The dovetails at the rear are wider and present no problem with scribing.
When sawing this time, not only must the base line be maintained, but the sawing has to be perfect. Not following the angle will result in gaps. When working with certain combinations of woods, you can saw a tiny fraction of an inch outside the scribe lines to ensure a tight fit. In this case with a cherry to pine joint, that amount of offset can be fairly generous, but less so at the half pins, for fear of splitting them off. On many pieces of period furniture, the saw cuts extend well past the baseline on the inside face of the drawer, which eases chopping out the waste. Apparently this was not the case with Seymour furniture, so I stopped the cuts on the base lines. This leaves a lot of material uncut, but using a card scraper as a blunt chisel will carry the cuts down to the base line, making the chiseling much easier.
Chiseling the waste from the drawer front is kind of brutal. Here again the chip is raised to provide a shoulder to work against. From here until you are about 1/16” away from the baseline, the chopping can be quite aggressive. That 1/1/6” is removed with the widest possible chisel, using only hand pressure, placing the chisel carefully in the scribed line. Most of the waste between the pins on the drawer back was sawn away with a coping saw, and the rest chiseled away as before. At this time the drawer front had a small amount planed off its bottom edge, so the gap around the front will be uniform all around its perimeter.
The inside faces of the components were lightly sanded with 320 grit paper to remove handling marks and two coats of de-waxed dark shellac were padded on with a paper towel. I took care to keep the shellac away from the glue surfaces. When dry, the shellac was scuff sanded. The last step before glue up was to cut small chamfers on the inside faces of the tails.
I don’t like to test fit the dovetails before assembly, instead I rely on careful scribing and sawing to ensure a proper fit. I use an interior hollow care door as the work surface when gluing, because they are very flat and it is important to have a flat assembly surface. To allow for more working time the hide glue has urea added. Even with the urea additive, time is of the essence, so have everything needed close at hand. I apply the glue to the front dovetails and tap in a side. You have to drive the side home evenly and stop at the slightest resistance and correct any problems. The back goes in more easily, and then the drawer is positioned on the bench and the glue is applied to the other two joints. Here, since you are working on two joints at once you have to work with particular speed. I like to quickly place a clamp across the front and back to drive the sides fully home, these clamps can be immediately removed. In theory clamping shouldn’t be necessary, but in practice it helps to close any gaps between the front end of the side and the half blind recess in the front. To prevent the clamping force from distorting the thin drawer backs, a piece of scrap is cut to span across the back. I begin the clamping by squaring the drawer and then place the clamps on, keeping the bars parallel with the sides. More often than not, applying the clamping pressure racks the drawer out of square, requiring you to reposition the clamps to force the drawer into square. I left the drawers in the clamps for several hours and out of the clamps over night before planing and fitting.
As the drawer came from the clamps it is just barely able to fit in its opening, so the sides have to be planed. To plane the sides the drawer is hooked over a padded board cantilevered off the bench. Despite not cutting softwoods as cleanly, I like to use the smooth plane with the high angle frog, because it can handle changing grain well. Of course you have to plane in from the ends so at some point you’re going to be planing against the grain and the high angle frog helps here too. The back is more difficult, because it can’t be planed on the hook, due to the dovetails not having any strength in the side to side direction. I have to clamp it in the vise and I use a low angle plane to place as little stress on drawer as possible. It took a few tests to get the drawer to slide properly in its opening, because the back prevented me from seeing where it was rubbing and I had to proceed cautiously. Don't worry if at this stage the drawer seems to bind. When the outside of the drawer and the inside of the case are finished and waxed, the drawer will glide like it is on ball bearings.
The drawer bottom was made from re-sawn pine which was planed to about 7/16” thick. I never use more than two boards in a glue up for drawer bottoms. I picked the boards for appearance, but most important I wanted the growth rings going in the same direction. Having the growth rings so oriented results in a uniform cup, whereas alternating them would have a wave like cross section, which is more difficult to plane. I like to use a rub joint for drawer bottoms, because applying clamps to thin stock, tends to cause it to fold up, plus there is just something kind of magical about creating a strong joint just by rubbing two glue coated edges together. Rub joints do require perfection when it comes to planing. After the glue cured the inside face of the drawer is planed with a smooth plane and the underside is planed with a scrub plane, which leaves behind the period accurate tool marks. It is easier to smooth plane the convex side if the bottom develops a cup.
Lacking any kind of beaded edge and featuring a veneered front, it is essential that the drawer sit perfectly flush in the opening. A minor amount of projection can be planed away, but anything more than a 1/32” will require altering the shape of the drawer. Only one of the four drawers did not sit flush, and it was out by around 1/16”. My standard practice is to lay a drawer that is known to fit properly, on its bottom board and trace around the inside transferring its size and shape onto the drawer bottom. Then I measure over the depth of the groove from that line and saw out the drawer bottom. Working this way ensures the drawer bottom won’t distort a properly fitting drawer. In the case of the ill-fitting drawer, the same procedure is used, only this time the cut lines are skewed to alter the shape of the drawer. The sides and front of the bottom are beveled to fit into the groove. I set the marking gauge to about 1/64th less than the width of the groove and strike a line with it. From there it is a matter of planing to that line using a well sharpened fore plane and skewing it, to get a smooth cut. It usually takes at least 2 test fits. It is this test fitting the presents the greatest danger to the drawer. Getting the drawer bottom skewed or jammed will almost certainly split the drawer sides, which are quite fragile due to the groove.
I once again test the drawer in the opening, but this time with the bottom in place to be sure it still fits flush at the front. If it passes muster then the bottom can be nailed in place. Minor adjustments can be made by placing a block behind the end of the drawer that goes in too far, and firmly striking the protruding end. This will rack the drawer so it will fit flush.
The next step is one that isn’t in line with the best modern practices, that is to apply glue blocks to lock the bottom in place. Locking the bottom in place with glue blocks can lead to the bottom cracking, but it does provide extra bearing surface and adds considerable stiffness to the drawer. I used a sliding T-Bevel to establish the cutting angle, and the glue block was bevel ripped on the band saw, so it stands proud of the drawer side by a strong 1/16”. The saw marks were planed away to provide the best glue surface, and the glue block is checked to see that it fits tightly, to both the beveled bottom and the drawer side. The glue blocks that run along the sides are kerfed at approximately 4” intervals. These kerfs stop just short of cutting completely through the glue block. The front end of the glue block is mitered. With plain hot hide glue, the side glue blocks are rubbed into place. When dry the blocks are planed flush with the sides making the one glue block into a segmented block. The rear of side glue block are sawn off with an angled cut at the rear. The front is handled differently; here the blocks are individual pieces rubbed in place with rather large gaps between blocks. The front blocks are mitered where they meet the side blocks. They too are planed flush.
The last step is to install the drawer stops, which are small blocks glued and screwed to the drawer runner.
The next installment will feature the inlaying of the doors and drawers.
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