Gerald’s Chest of Drawers and Doll Desk – Viewer Project
This Viewer Project post is a two-fer. Gerald sent us pics of a beautiful chest of drawers as well as a doll desk for his daughter. Check it out:
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!
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Beautiful chest/dresser. I like its simplicity. I have one question though. I’m new to woodworking so I’m asking all sorts of questions of folks. Did you stop the grooves for the side panels or did you make them through? I ask because that seems to be something to consider by some, structurally speaking.
Very nice. The finish on the chest is beautiful. I also like what you did with the drawers.
Wow, I love the finish you put on the chest of drawers. I’m in the process of building a sofa table (you can check out my blog for a skecthup image) and I just sent Mark and Matt a voicemail asking about how to finish cherry. I was concerned about blotching but wasn’t sure if this was an issue if the wood wasn’t going to be stained. I watched TWW video on fighting blotching and during the Q&A session at the end someone asked this exact question and Mark said it was a personal choice w.r.t. if you thought the finish imparted some chatoyance to the cherry. I figured I’d do a 1 lb cut of sealcoat just in case. So it’s encouraging to see you did the same thing. I see though that you did add an oil based gel stain to speed up the darkening of the cherry. This probably helped even out the colouration between different boards too. I think I’ll do the same. The one thing I can’t do though is spray the lacquer since I don’t have a sprayer (my shop is in a basement so it’s not conducive to spraying) I think a few coats of wiping varnish on the body and maybe a thicker coat of varnish on the top would do nicely if sanded adequately between coats. Agree? I was wondering what (if any) finish you used on the inside of the drawers? (shellac maybe)
Hey Jason. I just posted a quick video of my new keepsake boxes and I realized you might want to get a close look at the cherry I used. Even without stain, cherry will show “blotches” just with a simple oil-based varnish. The question is whether or not you like that look. The boxes in this video have only one quick coat of varnish but already you can see the darker areas developing. So if you don’t like that, then you made a good move with the sealcoat.
http://community.thewoodwhispe.....sake-boxes
The gel stain made it very easy to control the color and to not hide the beautuful grain of the Cherry. The 1lb washcoat of shellac was weel worth the effort in prventing the dreaded blotch.
I just had another thought about the chest of drawers. Did you completely finish the side panels before assembly? Is the back of your case frame and panel as well?
This piece was hand finished after assembly. The back is 1/8″ hardboard installed with screws just in case I need to get back in do any alterations or repairs.
I see exactly what you mean Marc, thanks for posting the video.
Two very nice pieces. The chest of drawers is well executed and I really like the proportions.
While I like the chest of drawers, that doll’s desk is simply outstanding. Excellent work. While I can’t really “feel” the chest of drawers other than appreciating a job well done, that’s doll’s desk just pops. Kudos to you sir.
Chris
A most excellent dresser project! The top turned out especially nice.
FYI, I recently built a large shadow box from cherry. I applied one coat of shellac then topped it off with a few coats of Arm-R-Seal. It turned out very nice. And I’m sure it would have also looked nice without the shellace. But I wanted to ensure the color was even. You might consider this option as an alternative to using spray equipment.
With Arm-R-Seal, you just wipe it on with a rag, then knock it down with 0000 steel wool between coats. (Be sure to vaccuum and wipe it down before applying another coat of finish. You don’t want any bits of steel wool in there.)
When it comes to finishing, I think the proverbial, “Different strokes for different folks” definitely applies. Personally, I’m a very big fan of Arm-R-Seal. Whenever I try something else, I’m just disappointed.
Both are awesome, However I love utility so for me I like the chest of drawers best! Nice Work, I hope that some day I am able to something like this!
You should give a project of this scale a shot. You will learn lots during the process that can be applied to future projects.
After moving some furniture for my mother in law this weekend that she paid for. Mind you it was not top of the line. But I would love to make her some furniture to replace that stuff she just got and after seeing that chest of drawers. Boy I need to finish making room in the garage and buy some more tools to start a project like that. – LOOKS GREAT!!!