Location: Australia

Hobbyist or Pro: Hobbyist

Project Name: Chest of Drawers

Project Description:
I finally finished my Wood Whisperer Guild-inspired chest of drawers and have it in place so thought I’d send a few pics. Doing this project as part of the Guild was a fantastic experience and I wanted to extend my thanks for the guidance and support I received from Marc. While I didn’t build exactly to the plan, (I had slightly different needs, i.e. something that would store clothing but also house a TV, DVD unit etc.) the Guild plans, sketch-up files and videos, plus of course, Marc’s advice was invaluable. This is by far the most challenging project I’ve attempted (I’m just a weekend warrior) – without the Guild I simply wouldn’t have known where to start and probably wouldn’t have even attempted such a challenging project. Receiving such extensive and tailored support from the other side of the world (I live in Australia) was outstanding and shows the value of the internet and online guilds such as this one. My cabinet is now in place and we love it! I plan to replace the drawer knobs with something a bit more unique – but otherwise I couldn’t be happier. Thanks again Marc, for all your support on this project. I look forward to starting the hanging wall cabinet soon. Thanks again mate!

Location: Byron Center, Michigan

Hobbyist or Pro: Hobbyist

Finish Used: The top has 5 coats of shellac; the base has 6 wiped on coats of thinned down poly and BLO

Wood Species: Cherry, Curly Maple

Project Description:
Inspiration for this project came from many hours of searching the internet for ideas for my next project. I took ideas from many different projects. I liked parts from one design but also parts from another and combined them all together.

The main case is made of glued up cherry boards joined with through dovetails. The inner frames are attached to the case with sliding dovetails and all of the drawers are constructed with half-blind dovetails. For the base I had to construct many jigs for routing the mortises for the aprons, tapering the legs in the planer and trimming each leg to size at the router table. The legs are attached to the aprons with loose tenons cut with the router. This project took many hours to complete but was worth it in the end.

From: Yaakov Bar Am

Website: FurnitureByYaakov.com

Location: Baltimore, MD

Amateur or Pro: Pro

Finish Used: This was one of those projects that needed to be finished before it was assembled. Each piece received a coat of boiled linseed oil, then a shellac top coat. I used a thin cut shellac then worked through the grits all the up to rotten stone. And the project was topped off with briwax.

Wood Species: Birdseye Maple, Walnut, Ebony

Project Description:
L’Chaim! To Life! As you may or may not know, “Chai” means life in Hebrew. And upon seeing that word one day, it created a spark of an idea which was brought to life with this project; “The Chai-Boy.” The Chai-Boy is a truly Judaic project, from the way it is shaped, to the deeper meaning in the dimensions. The two Hebrew letters that make up the word “Chai” are Ches (the big letter) and Yud. In gematria (the numerical value of Hebrew letters), the Ches is equivalent to 8 and the Yud is equivalent to 10. So Ches and Yud together equals 18. If you add 18 plus 18 you get double “life” or double happiness.

The Chai-Boy not only looks like “Chai”, but it is 18” wide and 36” tall. It has seven drawers for the seven days of the week that G_d created, and it is eight inches deep, which symbolizes the 8th day of life when a boy receives his circumcision and receives his Hebrew name. The piece itself has a walnut top and legs. The sides and the drawer fronts are made of birdseye maple with ebony drawer pulls. The drawers themselves are made of poplar and have been flocked a lovely shade of blue. The “Yud” is attached to the main body of the piece via rare earth magnets. The “Yud” itself is what is known as a bandsaw box, and the drawer has been flocked to match the other drawers.

Many of you are already familiar with the premium section of our Wood Whisperer site, The Wood Whisperer Guild. I try not to push the Guild too hard here on the free site since I realize that a paid membership immediately rules some folks out. But for those of you on the fence, I want to show you exactly what can be accomplished with the help of the Guild, even for a new woodworker. Marilyn Guthrie, a new woodworker from Seattle, took on a behemoth of a project: the Chest of Drawers. And frankly, she knocked it out of the park! It wasn’t all smooth sailing, but she took full advantage of our services to work through the problems and come out with a beautiful new dresser.

This summer, we finally finished our remodel and our attached garage. I had a shiny new space and a shiny new table saw to set up shop. Now, I just needed a project and some help figuring out how to do it. That’s when I found the Wood Whisperer Guild. Perfect!

So the project for the summer was to be a Chest of Drawers. Gulp! That’s a big project. I made a small cabinet and a tool box in a wood working class, but this was a lot more complicated. I looked over some of the videos on the Shaker Table (the previous build) and decided it looked like there was enough instruction that I could figure out how to do it, so I signed up.

Not surprisingly, as I worked along I started to encounter a few “issues”. When I cut the mortises in my legs, they were a little bit off. Uh oh, how do I fix that? With Marc’s help, I was able to pair up the legs and make adjustments. I continued to use the pairing suggestion even when the sides were completed and I had to cut my side guides. I was able to adjust the dado in the guides by a 32nd here and a 16th there. When it came time to install the web frames, my drawer openings were within a 16th end to end and square enough to make for smooth running drawers. Whew!

Then, oh phooey, my back dados weren’t lining up with the web frames. How am I going to make that work? One of the more important things that Marc helped me with was what to worry about and what NOT to worry about. Turned out this was a problem I could fix with some spacers. Easy pea-zzy! No worries.

Next, after running my pieces through the joiner to be glued up for drawer fronts, I couldn’t get a flat edge. My technique must be messed up, right? Nope, after some consultation, I was able to figure out that my joiner needed some fine tuning. I went to the Video Tool Set Up section on the TWW site, watched the Jointer Setup video and viola! Straight edges!

My last “issue” came when I was finishing up the drawers. Instead of putting the dado for the drawer bottom panel at ½” so that the center drawer guide would fit underneath, I put all of them at ¼” deep. Big bummer! What to do? So after some back and forth, we decided to abandon the center guide and go with the more conventional drawer installation approach. I fit some small pieces in at the sides and one in the middle between the small drawers. I made them really tight and then hand planed the contact points to fit snuggly. Then I added some wax and had a pretty nice-fitting set of drawers.

Then, using some local expertise at Daly’s Paint, I finished with their water based Early American stain and Crystalfin. Now I’m starting work on two end tables that will use a lot of the same techniques (story stick, tenon and mortises, etc.) And guess what, I already know how to do almost all of it. Then it’s on to the Wall Cabinet guild build. I can’t wait!

Not sure if this qualifies as a Viewer Project but I have a different twist on woodworking. Instead of going to the lumber yard, about 80% of my projects are from recycled wood. I live in Plano Texas and I drive around on country roads looking for old vacant homes that where built in the early 1900’s. Once I find one, I start knocking on doors until I find who owns the land and home and get their permission to take some wood. Most of the wood is old growth southern pine. It’s a lot of work cleaning up the boards because in the early days, they used small tacks to hang the cheesecloth wallpaper, but it adds that distressed look that looks pretty cool.

The bed and end tables where made about 10 years ago. The dresser/entertainment/bookshelf I just now completed to match the other bedroom furniture. The cool thing about this wood is the tight grain pattern and patina (because of the large amount of rosin) for pine. You just can’t find pine like this today.

Now here is the interesting thing about the piece I just completed. I designed it for the bookshelves to be on each side of the large piece, as you can see in the photo. When I put it in the room, my wife said “it looks great…but, I want the center piece angled in the corner and put the two bookshelves together”. I told her that is not the way I designed it and she said, “I know but that is the way I like it”. Now I did what any successfully married man of 23 years would do. I stood up tall, bowed out my chest, folded my arms and said, “Yes Dear!” I hope you enjoy.

The Chest of Drawers

My wife’s sister asked that I build her son a chest of drawers similar to one that she had seen in a furniture store near her house. It was a painted item of poor quality. This would be my first opportunity to design and create a piece from start to finish.

I started with the overall dimensions and began creating the shop drawings for the piece. I am a Professional Land Surveyor by trade so I was able to utilize Autocad for the drawings. I went through every piece in my home to get different ideas on how to design the case for the piece. The design I ended up using seems pretty simple once I broke it down into the components. The sides are a frame and panel between the two legs. The supports for the drawers are a simple frame design and really worked well. The top is an edge glued panel of the best stock I had on hand.

The drawers are constructed using a type of locking rabbet joint in front and dado in the rear. As can be seen on the photos I reinforced all interior corners with small mitered pieces just to add more strength to the joints. This piece is going to a small child and I wanted to be sure he could not pull the drawers apart. The drawer slides are full extension glides. A little unusual for a furniture piece but again I wanted to make sure that if he was to lean down on the drawers or to climb on them that they would support the load and not give way.

The drawer fronts for the top three drawers and the middle two were cut from one piece of stock to insure grain continuity across the piece. Really makes the piece stand out when completed. All joinery on this project are Domino’s from Festool. Thanks again to Dennis Kent of Woodcraft for suggesting this tool for my shop. It is an awesome tool that makes quick, strong and accurate joinery.

The finish was lots of fun to watch come together. The cherry really comes to life during the finishing process. I started by sealing the raw cherry with a wash coat of shellac to help control blotching. This was followed by two coats of Minwax “Cherrywood” gel stain. The gel stain was easy to work with and ended up being very transparent. It really allowed the grain to show through on the completed project. The second coat was when the character of the cherry began to show. The top coat is lacquer sprayed on with my Earlex HVLP system. Multiple coats were applied to allow wet sanding and hand polishing up to the desired sheen. I think the top came out nicely once the sanding and polishing were completed. Antique brass hardware completed the look and matched nicely with the cherry.

The Doll Desk

My daughter Sarah has several American Girl dolls and loves to play school with them. She asked daddy for a desk for “Julie” and I set out to see what I could come up with.

This project was built pretty much on the fly. Sarah had seen an old type desk at our church and wanted Julie’s to be like it. I decided that since I had some nice Red Oak left from from another project I would use it. The desk compartment is a simple box with a slant top that opens to storage below. A pencil groove was routed in the flat area near the top. Corners are simple rabbets and the bottom is tempered hard board floating in a groove milled into the sides.

The chair is sized to fit Julie and utilized some thin stock that was left over from another project where I had resawn some oak for another use. The sides utilize a half lap joint and are surprisingly strong. The seat and back stretchers are the thin resawn stack that I mentioned earlier. The chair support and desk support is again built from some scrap pieces I had around the shop from larger pieces. The original thought was to have the vertical support for the desk and chair be the only pieces under each. Once the pieces were assembled it became obvious that more support was needed laterally to prevent each from racking. I added the mitered braces to help with the flex of the thin stock. I finished the piece with two coats of satin polyurethane.

Now Sarah and Julie can play school in style!

“Dresser is primarily Honduras Mahogany with Beech internals, Philippine Mahogany drawers and Walnut pulls. A mongrel design (I mean hybrid?)
Sources of design: Began with a Will Neptune article, Anatomy of a Chest of Drawers (2003 May/June Fine Woodworking). From the Summer 2008 Woodwork Magazine I loved Christopher Schwarz article, A Better Blanket Chest Design. That supplied inspiration for the plinth. I used dovetails rather than finger joints. Mark Edmundson wrote about NK-style drawer construction in A Better Way to Build Drawers (The New Best of Fine Woodworking). I decided to give it a try. I havent seen them mentioned in any other articles, on-line or in print. After making these I still havent decided if I like them functionally or from a construction standpoint better than others Ive used. Any thoughts on this from Wood Whisperer fans?

The November/December 2008 issue of Fine Woodworking arrived just as it was time to figure out the door pull treatment. One of the Four Custom Pulls that Please the Eye by Michael Fortune struck me as perfect. Lastly, the top molding. Trying to decide on basic size/proportions, I held a scrap of drawer runner against the case, below the top. Eureka. I modified the drawer runner with chamfer and round over and was very pleased.

Two disasters: Just as the plinth was completed it fell and bounced on the rough concrete of my driveway. Ouch! The structure survived nicely. Thank you, Christopher. But a corner had nasty gouges and tears as well as a few other bashings. At that point I knew this would be a “country” piece. Later, as I foolishly stacked drawers on a rolling cart, one of them fell on that same nasty concrete. Direct hit to a drawer front corner. More sanding and acceptance of “the process being more important than the product.”

Problems?: Of course! When selecting the Mahogany, I liked the look of the 8/4 offerings much better than the 4/4. So this seemed like a good time to try resawing. I used a 3/4-inch Wood Slicer. As soon as the blade exited the wood, that lovely wood sprung to open up huge cups (and/or bows) in each half. Of course I proceeded to cut all of my stock with similar results. By the time I milled the material true it was 5/8-ish rather than the 3/4 I had planned on. On the positive side this saves weight if I ever have to ship it by air. Just doing my part to lessen the carbon footprint.”

Construction Details: The plinth is a dovetailed box with two horizontal supports that are glued into rabbets. Case is screwed into those pieces (no glue). The half-blind dovetailed case has a full top and bottom allowing the show top and plinth to be created without considering case integrity. Case has dadoes for horizontal and vertical dividers with exposed dovetails the three front most inches. Horizontal dividers are mortise and tenon frames, Mahogany for front stile and Beech for other pieces. Vertical dividers, same depth as horizontal stiles on top row are separate pieces, glued in place. Beech dividers float in dadoes since the grain runs opposite of other case members. Bottom molding is simple bevel with small lips at top and bottom. Top molding, mentioned earlier, is a bit more detailed but still rather clean. Finished with five coats of 1:1:1, semi-gloss poly:linseed oil: mineral spirits and then waxed.

You can view more of Tom’s work on his website.

I wanted to send you a quick note and some pics of my latest project. I built a dresser for my son’s Christmas present this year and hopefully one that will last him for many years. Looking back at the things I have built in this past year, I can immediately notice that the quality of my work has tremendously improved. I actually built this dresser out of maple baseboard trim. I have a friend who ran across about a truckload of baseboards that someone wanted to sell real cheap and one side of them was primed white, but I could see what was underneath…beautiful hard maple. Why a company would make baseboards like this, I will never understand.

Back in 1999, my wife wanted a nice bedroom suite. I happily looked into it for her, and was shocked at the cost of a full bedroom suite. Anywhere from $3,000 to $4,500. And surely none of them were actually solid wood. I had just started my hobby of woodworking, and so I asked my wife if she was willing to have a piece made one at a time. She said she would be. I designed the first piece, the armoire, and then asked her what type of wood she wanted. She said knotty pine. Sweet, I thought, that is the cheapest wood in the world. First I made the armoire, then we moved. I then made the dresser and a few months later, I made the end tables. All of this within about 2 years. (hey, I was in the Army, and I was busy defending my country.)

Anyhow, I never made the bed because I had bought a nice and inexpensive wrought iron bed, picked up at a garage sale. Earlier this year though, I decided it was about time to finish the bedroom suite. I designed the bed to be very simple, but with the same raised panel styling I had used in the other pieces. It took me many nights and weekends, but in the end, I think it turned out pretty good. All of the lumber was purchased at Lowes or Home Depot. Each piece had three staining layers of Minwax Golden Oak. With three layers of polyurethane, semi-gloss.

Needless to say, my wife is very pleased, and I am happy to have the whole suite completed. As a side note, my wife told me a few years ago that the only reason she agreed to let me build the suite way back when was because, as she says, “I didn’t really think you could do it, so I said yes so that I didn’t hurt your feelings.” I guess it’s easy to please someone with low expectations!

This jewelry armoire was a graduation gift for my niece. It is made out of Bubinga, Birds Eye Maple veneer (door panels), figured maple veneer (top), and Birds Eye maple (drawer fronts). Each drawer is dovetailed and the bottom drawer has a hidden compartment accessible from the back. The base is from a David Marks project Open Bookcase. The finish is Seal-A-Cell with several coats of Gel Stain on top. I was in way over my head on this project which means I got to learn many new things.