THE DRESSER AND CHEST
The making of the night stands provided an excellent opportunity to prove the design, making and assembly process on a smaller scale before starting the larger dresser and chest pieces. Also, considering the limited size of my home workshop for such large pieces I had to make some decisions about the making and assembly that would be practical considering space, machine set-ups, repetitive processes, etc. Initially, I had intended to build the dresser first and then follow with the chest which would solve some of the space issues; however, it became clear that there were many common set-ups for the dresser and the chest and working them at the same time made more sense. For example, the drawer heights for the bottom and second rows of both the dresser and chest are the same therefore all the sides would have similar dimensions and joinery. There were other similar occurrences in the top row of dresser drawers and the third row chest drawer. The side rails of the carcass are also similar and could be made with the same set-ups and templates with minor differences in round-overs, peg locations, etc. All the drawer sides are the same length and the set-up for the back joinery is common to all. To solve the space issue and take advantage of the common set-ups I decided to make the pieces in two distinct phases, starting with the carcasses and tops and then moving on to the drawers.
I have split the detailed descriptions and photographs into four sub-sections for easier reference:
Phase I – Design, Templates and Part Identification
Phase II – Carcass construction
Phase III – Drawer construction
Phase IV – The finished Dresser and Chest
Please click on the section of interest for further details and thank you for visiting my website!
The making of the night stands provided an excellent opportunity to prove the design, making and assembly process on a smaller scale before starting the larger dresser and chest pieces. Also, considering the limited size of my home workshop for such large pieces I had to make some decisions about the making and assembly that would be practical considering space, machine set-ups, repetitive processes, etc. Initially, I had intended to build the dresser first and then follow with the chest which would solve some of the space issues; however, it became clear that there were many common set-ups for the dresser and the chest and working them at the same time made more sense. For example, the drawer heights for the bottom and second rows of both the dresser and chest are the same therefore all the sides would have similar dimensions and joinery. There were other similar occurrences in the top row of dresser drawers and the third row chest drawer. The side rails of the carcass are also similar and could be made with the same set-ups and templates with minor differences in round-overs, peg locations, etc. All the drawer sides are the same length and the set-up for the back joinery is common to all. To solve the space issue and take advantage of the common set-ups I decided to make the pieces in two distinct phases, starting with the carcasses and tops and then moving on to the drawers.
I have split the detailed descriptions and photographs into four sub-sections for easier reference:
Phase I – Design, Templates and Part Identification
Phase II – Carcass construction
Phase III – Drawer construction
Phase IV – The finished Dresser and Chest
Please click on the section of interest for further details and thank you for visiting my website!
