Furniture carcass construction question?

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Hi All, I'm trying very hard to get up to speed on making bedroom furniture like dressers etc. I've read a lot and know what I want to do but am not sure how to do it.

I want to use dovetailed horizontal and verticle drawer dividers at the front of the dresser. Is there a good way to do this and also use a dado to house the drawer runners? How do you line up the runner dado with the dovetail? Thanks.

[John Piwaron]

Norm's Highboy plans and show on NYW has exactly the detail you're looking for in a published plan.

[Ernie Hobbs]

You probably want to do your dado with the router, not the table saw. Then, you can stop just before you get to the front of the side panel and not get in the way of the divider's dovetail. You can add the runner after you have the case assembled by slipping it into the dado and gluing the first 1/3 of it (if you glue the whole way, you might get into trouble when the sides expand/contract, assuming you are using solid wood). Personally, I think a good mortise and tenon joint looks just fine here and not quite as difficult. Save your dovetails for the top and bottom of the case where it will benefit from the strength of the joint. Just my 2 cents. Good luck with your project.

By the way, I just built my first chest of drawers (posted on a thread yesterday) so this is fresh on my mind. I struggled with the same stuff.

[Daniel Fisher]

Question: Wouldn't it be better to run a shallow dado with a router all the way from front to back of the case side? This would create a shoulder for the front divider and then the dovetail could be cut in the middle of the dado.

[Alan Turner]

One way to do this is to dado the whole width of the carcase side, and then run the DT at the bottom of the shallow dado at the front. This is illustrated in Lonnie Bird's article on the Pennsylvania secretary several years ago in FWW.
Another way is to stop the dado, but I think the first way is a better way. If you set a guide for dado, and cut it in a single pass, you can use this same set up for the DT, which will automatically be centered in the dado.
This is less difficult than it sounds.
Another way is to cut the dado with a rounter, or the TS, cleaning the bottom to pure smooth, and then hand cut the DT socket. This is also somewhat easier than it sounds, and lets you use an angle on the DT that is visually correct, even if a DT router bit is not available.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

toward using one jig setting then cutting the dado first then doing the dovetail last. Thanks again.

[John Lucas]

One of my favorite jigs to review and use last year was a product called easy sliding dovetail jig. Instructions were really poor, but jig great. A bit pricey but worth it since it is a tool that will be used more and more as you get comfortable with it.http://www.woodshopdemos.com/flmnd-12.jpg and here is one of the how-to pages: www.woodshopdemos.com/ flmnd-2.htm

[Alan Turner]

Alan,
One possible problem is that the DT's will be different heights from the floor of the carcse floor if the glue up of the carcase DT's (or whatever) is not perfect. So, I glue up the carcase first, before cuttin in the drawer blades.

Looks like Dan and I were typinjg at the same time, but I was verbose. (:

An excellent jig is a piece of plywood, ripped to the needed width so that the ply, plus the offset between the router based edge and the bit, equals the location of the dado/DT. You can then cut all of the dados at once, using several of these "jigs" and then go back and cut the DT's using the same guides, without having to reset the router bit, which for the DT bit, is tough to get right on. You scrap a bit of ply, but for a good cause. Mark your router base with a sharpie as to where it bears on the guide so all of the offsets are the same; not all router bases are truly round, and the bit is not always centered.