Tom Jones III
12-22-2005, 9:26 AM
I've just finished building 3 chests of drawers/changing tables. Two of the tables went to the crisis pregnancy center. The third was given to a young couple, expecting their first child, who work in the missions department of my church. This is by far the biggest and most complex project yet. I've got a lot to learn but I've come a long way during this project. Most of all I had a great time stretching my skills and working for other people at the same time.
When I started this project I had just finished reading the book Practicing the Presence of God and I attempted to put those ideas into practice during this project. I cannot recommend this book enough. It is very short, very readable, immensely practical and directly applicable to wood workers.
Each table cost between $170 and $200 complete with pulls and a cloth covered pad that goes in the tray on top. The tray detaches so that when the halfling is no longer in diapers it converts to a standard chest of drawers.
The wood is southern red oak with #1 common used for secondary wood. The back and sides are oak plywood. On two of them I used okoume plywood for the back, it is much cheaper and when stained is an excellent match for oak. Drawer sides are pine for table #3, I used baltic birch ply for the first two, but I just could not get the DT to work well in plywood. Drawer bottoms are oak ply.
Finish is golden oak stain followed by 2 coats of wipe on poly. Insides of the case and drawers is shellac.
The drawers are built in the NK style and that turned out really well. The first chest had drawers in a simple box style and it took a long time to get the drawers to fit well and slide nicely. When I made the NK style drawers I could not believe how much faster and easier it was.
I used this project as an excuse to buy the Leigh D4 dovetail jig for the 21 drawers I had to build. It took a while to figure out how to get it to work, but when I did it worked great. I also used this project as the excuse to but CutList Pro, and it saved me a lot of time and money, in fact, it paid for itself on this project alone.
When I started this project I had just finished reading the book Practicing the Presence of God and I attempted to put those ideas into practice during this project. I cannot recommend this book enough. It is very short, very readable, immensely practical and directly applicable to wood workers.
Each table cost between $170 and $200 complete with pulls and a cloth covered pad that goes in the tray on top. The tray detaches so that when the halfling is no longer in diapers it converts to a standard chest of drawers.
The wood is southern red oak with #1 common used for secondary wood. The back and sides are oak plywood. On two of them I used okoume plywood for the back, it is much cheaper and when stained is an excellent match for oak. Drawer sides are pine for table #3, I used baltic birch ply for the first two, but I just could not get the DT to work well in plywood. Drawer bottoms are oak ply.
Finish is golden oak stain followed by 2 coats of wipe on poly. Insides of the case and drawers is shellac.
The drawers are built in the NK style and that turned out really well. The first chest had drawers in a simple box style and it took a long time to get the drawers to fit well and slide nicely. When I made the NK style drawers I could not believe how much faster and easier it was.
I used this project as an excuse to buy the Leigh D4 dovetail jig for the 21 drawers I had to build. It took a while to figure out how to get it to work, but when I did it worked great. I also used this project as the excuse to but CutList Pro, and it saved me a lot of time and money, in fact, it paid for itself on this project alone.