Gerald’s Chest of Drawers and Doll Desk – Viewer Project
Filed under: Chest of Drawers, Childrens' Projects, Desks
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!
Oak Bookcase – Viewer Project
This project is from my buddy Ron Jones of RJonesWoodworks.com. Let’s see what Ron had to say:
Here’s a bookcase I designed as a Christmas present for my wife. While thinking over the design I needed to address a couple of things. First and foremost the design had to be basic and be quick to build. This couldn’t be another Christmas present project she wouldn’t see until June. Second, it needed to be cheap to build. Cheap build means I need to use whatever species of wood I had the most of in the shop. Unfortunately, it was oak, I hate oak but…
Anywho, the project is basically just casework using sheet goods with the exception of the ogee feet. It’s dimensions are approximately 60” high, 36” wide and 12” deep. With the exception of the face frame and ogee feet everything used trim screws, pocket screws or wood screws as a way to clamp the piece while the glue dried and everything received at least a domino or two. The face frame is attached primarily with dominos with a couple of pocket screws in the top, none of which you can see. The half round you see on the ends was used to cover the veneer I burned through on one side. It was one of those mistakes that when you try to fix you only make it worse… I should know better but…. The ogee feet, although looking very complex, probably took the least time of anything. Using my table saw, router and scraper I probably constructed the base in 3 hours or so. I will attach a Sketch Up file of the feet geometry if anyone is interested. It was imported from Auto Cad so please excuse any extra drawing garbage it may have brought along. The shelves will sag as they are only ¾” ply edge banded with ¼” oak but it’s all I had on hand so sometime in the future when I can’t take looking at sagging shelves any longer I’ll replace what we have with something solid.
In trying to keep the process quick I skipped any idea of color and simply shot three coats of precat lacquer on the entire project. This was done in pieces as it would have been virtually impossible to finish with the back attached!! So the unit was finished with the back unattached and when the lacquer dust had settled it was attached. All in all I have about 15-20 hours invested and maybe $50 for the sheet of Oak for the back and a couple board feet for the face frame.
Wright-Inspired Lamp – Viewer Project
This project comes from Randy. He writes:
Here’s a picture of a Frank Lloyd Wright style lamp I built. If you would consider it for project of the week, I have additional photos/close-ups of the joints, etc. It is made of oak and has many splined miter joints. I finished it with a natural danish oil. I made a second one of walnut (I’ll add a picture of it too) and I’m working on the second walnut one as a set for the living room.
Coffee Table – Viewer Project
This viewer project is submitted by Robby in Belgium. Let’s check it out:
“My brother and I made a coffee table and a side table out of Oak for his wife’s birthday.
It’s our first project in Oak, before we only used MDF. We’re really proud of it and its thanks to your show that we could do it. We’re definitely going to do some more “real” woodworking :o) Well my sister-in-law loves these tables. Many thanks and we love the show!!!”
Check it Out!
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