Walnut Joining or Source

[Trent Flemming]

Hello Creekers,

I am building 17 drawers with walnut sides and poplar front and backs with dovetail joints. I'm using blum tandem slides so I thought the contrast would look really nice when the drawers are fully extended. 11 of them will have 7" sides and the other 6 will have 4" sides.

The problem is my local source doesn't have any walnut wide enough for the 7" drawers. I'm concerned that joining (sp) the walnut and then cutting dovetails ends will cause a problem and the overall strength of the sides may be an issues. I'm still a newbie so this may be an incorrect assumption.

I was thinking it may be just be easier to purchase from an online source in this instance since all the pieces could be cut down to about 2 feet for shipping. If you like this idea better please point me in the right direction for Walnut online.

Thanks and have a great weekend.

Trent

[Lance Norris]

If I understand you correctly... There will be no problem joining 2 pieces together with glue to make a wider board. As long as you get good tight joints and clamp well and use plenty of glue, the glue joints are stronger than the surrounding wood. If you dont believe this, glue up some scraps, long grain to long grain, like you are saying, to make a wider board, and after the glue is dry, break them apart. The wood always fails before the glue joint does.
After you have your wider boards glued up, cut your dovetails and everything will be fine.

[Steve Clardy]

If I understand you correctly... There will be no problem joining 2 pieces together with glue to make a wider board. As long as you get good tight joints and clamp well and use plenty of glue, the glue joints are stronger than the surrounding wood. If you dont believe this, glue up some scraps, long grain to long grain, like you are saying, to make a wider board, and after the glue is dry, break them apart. The wood always fails before the glue joint does.
After you have your wider boards glued up, cut your dovetails and everything will be fine.

Ditto.......

[Lee Schierer]

Yep, I agree. Even half inch wood will not break at the glue line. I've done this many times and never had a joint fail and all my drawers are dovetailed on four sides.

Glue up the pieces slightly longer than the desired finished length then trim each end after glue up to keep the ends perfectly even. Trying to hold glue ups in place to have the ends even is pretty hard to do.

[Dave MacArthur]

What they all said.
But.... Did you mis-speak up there? Are you seriously making walnut sides (hidden usually) and poplar fronts (visible)? I've never heard anyone do such... isn't that kind of like making some jewelry out of gold, and zinc plating it? The walnut is by far the more expensive, prettier wood--most folks use poplar where it's not visible or for drawer sides.

Now, if you just happen to love poplar and want it for the front, and like walnut sides for the contrast, I understand ;)

[Trent Flemming]

Thank you for the great responses.

Dave,
I may be confused, but I'm thinking Walnut on each side, when the drawer is pulled out the Walnut will be visible from the side and the Dovetail joints will pop. The poplar front will pretty much be hidden because I will mount the drawer front to it and the back is well the back.

I guess I was thinking about the appealing look of the drawer from the side (specifically outside) rather than the inside where the back and front would be more noticeable.

As far as price goes, I ran across what I think was a good deal on Walnut at 2.19 bd ft, but nothing in the wider widths. The original plan was to use poplar all the way around, but I hated the thought of spending all that time on the dovetail joints for them to not really pop.

Thanks again for the great comments. I will start edge gluing tomorrow. Hope to have kitchen finished in another month or so and then I will post pictures. I couldn't have done it without all the members of SMC.

Trent