G&G Inspired Chest of Drawers - Build Thread

got it, its a very attractive joint.

makes good sense given the thickness glenn,, maybe a t&G would have worked but this one is safer to do..

I prep a sample board from the material I am using and send it through the same smoothing protocol of the project parts. I mark off decent sized sections and use this for a finish sample board. The base is a 1:1:1 mix of BLO, mineral spirits and Cabot's Gloss varnish. All of these pics are in the shop so the variations are not real clear under my work lights. I take the board to the room where the piece will live to choose the color.

You can sort of see that from left to right I am moving from a more reddish brown, through 'no tint' at the center and then into a dark brown tint. The last sample appears very dark as it is still wet. I am going with either the 'no tint' on the right of the last pic or with just a bit of reddish brown (Transtint brown mahogany) added; on the left. I want to get the panels for the sides pre-finished before I go into work so I can continue moving along.



I went with no tint. Just the 1:1:1 mixture. The BLO and the Cabot's add plenty of color on their own.

You've got to love walnut with a little BLO splashed on it....
Really makes it come alive.
Nice job Glenn.

The walnut is looking real rich. This is going to be a fantastic piece of furniture. Charles Neil best watch out.

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk

Thanks for the kind words everybody. Unlike other phases of projects where a lot of work is done but little visual result can be show . . . Here, I do very little and it looks like things are zooming along

I have leveled the assembly table with Mother Earth and assured the top surface is reasonably flat. I use the blanks for the bottom wrap-around frame and stand the sides on them just as they will join once shaped and glued up. I have taken no small pains to assure the first web frame is square with the world and right where I want it. This becomes my reference surface for the other frames.



I cut a couple of spacers that equal the bottom drawer height plus an 1/8" (1/16" clearance top and bottom for the inset drawer). Wrap the top edge with tape to make any squeeze out easy to peel away.



The spacers stand on the bottom web frame and the next panel will go on top. All the usual precautions to assure things are square still come into play but, adjustments, if any, are usually minimal.



I tape the floating panel assemblies into position and glue/screw in the second frame. Cut the spacers down to the height of the next drawer plus 1/8" and repeat. Bar gauges or some similar rig help assure nice square drawer holes



In a bit I will be ready to make and fit the cloud-lift drawer divider so that should slow me down a bit.

1927

Oops! One more shot:

did i hear you right that you are glueing and screwing the dust dividers in place glenn? if so how do you get a tight fit and and room for glue too? or is there clearance???

Your chest of drawers is coming together beautifully, Glenn.

I am sooooooooo enjoying this thread!

larry merlau said:

did i hear you right that you are glueing and screwing the dust dividers in place glenn? if so how do you get a tight fit and and room for glue too? or is there clearance???

Click to expand...

It is a bit of a ballet. The top of each side is free and allows some flex. With the spacers in place I put glue along one edge of the frame and angle it into the general position. I apply glue to the other edge, flex the side open just enough to get by (a skinny 1/4") and position the frame. Assure square, clamp and drive the screws home. I use a card scraper to clean up the squeeze out while it is still soft. There is not enough "free" length of the sides left for this trick so the remaining frames and other internal supporting structure will be built into the carcass in pieces.

I'm into some of the fitted work so the effort remains high but, the progress shots don't show much. I spent most of my available shop time yesterday fitting these two templates. This is the top of the cloud-lift drawer divider (top of the lower template) and he bottom of the two top drawer fronts (bottom of the top template). Not real exciting to look at but they will help get me very close so that the hand fitting of the drawer fronts to rail is minimal when I get to that stage.

hey, whats the story dude.

Look at that arch piece youre working on.
You have some kind of pad on your bench, then brown wrapping paper over that, the neatness of it all.....youre killing me.....revel in some sawdust, its near impossible anyone could work that neat.
That is going to be one beautiful piece when youre finished.

Look carefully Allen, he missed a little sawdust on top of the drawers in picture 2&3

allen levine said:

hey, whats the story dude.

Look at that arch piece youre working on.
You have some kind of pad on your bench, then brown wrapping paper over that, the neatness of it all.....youre killing me.....revel in some sawdust, its near impossible anyone could work that neat.
That is going to be one beautiful piece when youre finished.

Click to expand...

See now? I've developed an unwarranted persona of a neat-nik The plastic is STILL on the worktable since I DIDN'T put it away after I pre-finished the floating panels days ago, the paper is what I drew the curves on and I am working on top of that because I DIDN'T pick it up either, Looks can be deceiving

The second set of templates went much faster. I think I've found my preferred method for this task.

Has it really only been a week since I have gotten any work done on this? Seems like much longer. I had a comp day coming for some recent "feels like I live here" hours at work. Thank goodness as the cloudlift drawer divider has proved a bit more fussy than I planned . It would have been frustrating to try to figure it out across several after-work sessions instead of all at once

This is a laminated pair of secondary wood backers that will be faced with walnut.



I had to build the framework into the carcass to get everything to assemble as desired. I used the templates shown earlier to make the front piece. I then laminated an oversized piece to the front piece and use the front piece as a template to final shape the back. I will use the same technique to final shape the walnut facing prior to the assembly of this section.



There is a front to back divider that supports the cloud lift divider and acts as a separator/drawer glide mounting area for the two top drawers that is not shown. I'm gonna grab a late lunch and then try to get that piece done before I quit for the day.

Glenn, quick question.
That top rail/ cloud lift for the drawer, how is it going to attached attached?
I think I missed something.

Gary Zimmel said:

Glenn, quick question.
That top rail/ cloud lift for the drawer, how is it going to attached attached?
I think I missed something.

Click to expand...

It is joined as if it were the front of a regular web-frame. That is why the laminated duplicates; to produce a depth I could work a solid joint into. It will also be supported at the top center in a modified version of this (just the guts shown no carcass):



The internals changed a bit when I conceded that I wanted full extension glides for a dresser that I would be using every day as opposed to the wood runners in my original design. The construction will be about the same.

Glenn and I went to the Woodworking Shows in Pomona Saturday. I drove from Oceanside up to Glenn's. Glenn drove on to the Fairplex and the Show.

Don't ask about the Show. You don't want to know.

Anyway, while at Glenn's, sandwiched between conversation, I got to see this chest of drawers. It is awesome. Glenn explained things to me. I heard what he said. I thought I understood what he said. However, when I saw the later posts, it all came together in my mind. Wow!

The wood that has the "color" really rocks. I cannot wait to see the finished product.

Enjoy,

JimB

With a little timeout for the woodworking show, a visit to mom and dad's and so forth, I finally got back out in the shop. I spent some time turning the inserts on my jointer's spiral head as it was due and I will start milling the drawer parts right after this step. These steps aren't real exciting but, I have to build out the parts for the internal skeleton that holds the drawer glides. I already confessed my concession to full extension metal glides. If that turns out to be a poor decision, I can make up for it on the low-boy or the pedestal bed .

These standoffs provide the mounts just as they might provide a mounting location for hardwood runners if I had gone through with that. Similar to traditional web frame construction these attach to the frames, are glued at the front but have oversized holes and are screwed at the rear to allow for wood movement in the sides. Building with this movement in mind will help keep the drawer-to-frame alignment at the front while still avoiding any rubbing or binding of the drawers throughout the year (yeah, like we have any real weather out here ).