Results 1 to 5 of 5

Thread: Hardwood Dovetail Drawers on a CNC

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    Dawson Creek, BC
    Posts
    1,033

    Hardwood Dovetail Drawers on a CNC

    I thought I would share the setup I am using to make hardwood dovetail drawers on my cnc. I know they are not technically correct, but I do not have a $10k aggregate, c-axis, gantry height nor the dedicated equipment for proper dovetails. I could buy the drawers from one supplier, but I decided to make them. It only took 12minute to cut out the parts, and I hope to reduce that yet. I think they are a reasonable facsimile of a dovetail drawer and do not take an 1hr a piece to make by hand. It is more common to use this tooling set to make the drawers with baltic birch, but here I needed to make the drawers using cherry.

    Here is the table setup. I use 8 pods for narrow drawers and I can add 4 to 8 more pods to make drawers that are 7"+ tall. It took a while to track down a few of past errors and fix them, but it is finally working well now.
    TABLE-01.jpg

    Here are the pieces after they are cut and the deck is cleaned off.
    DTail-Parts-01.jpg

    Assembled.
    Drawer-ASSEM.jpg

    Closeup of one joint. I will work on a few settings a bit more now that I see a couple small gaps.
    DTail-Joint.jpg
    Last edited by Brad Shipton; 01-26-2018 at 11:24 AM.

  2. #2
    Looks good, nice to be able to do in-house and any material you want without a lead time. What stops the sides from going too deep into the front and back, given the tops of the tails aren't round to match the radius in the grooves?
    Brian Lamb
    Lamb Tool Works, Custom tools for woodworkers
    Equipment: Felder KF700 and AD741, Milltronics CNC Mill, Universal Laser X-600

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    Dawson Creek, BC
    Posts
    1,033
    Thanks Brian. They recommend starting the tails thickness as 1/2 the depth of the stock. When I look at the geometry of the curve, it should equal the depth where the curve starts, but that turned out to be too shallow because of machine tolerances. Basically, you have to fine tune the tail thickness so it jambs against the radius of the curve. In this one I had the tail a little too thick and I had to use my rubber mallet to correct the attitude of the wood. This is a pretty popular cutter set for Vortex, but most just use BB. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEi5xU3-mbk

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    Dawson Creek, BC
    Posts
    1,033
    Stack of drawers completed in around 1hr on Saturday. I was down to 9min per drawer, and with a real machine that should be less than 4.5min. I did have to turn almost a full sheet of scrap baltic birch into test boxes to work out the kinks. The 1/4" mortise bit is moving far too slow when cutting the tails, and I get too much resin buildup in the cherry. I was trying to figure out the best options to fix that. The tails are fairly difficult to cut with my stepper motors due to the accel/decel required if I want to make them as fast as I should. One of the drawers in the stack must have been jostled when I was handling it. The joints turned very well, and the one that looks to be poorly joined is just not fit properly. I compared the quality of my drawers to some Kraft Maid dovetail drawers I installed last year and my drawers look just as good if not a bit better.

    STACK-OF-DRAWERS.jpg

    Here is another small task I had been dreading. These cabinets were too large to install all the face frames before the cabinets were screwed in, so I decided to install in place using Lamello Tenso connectors. If you have not used these, they are a plastic clip on connector where the male and female snap together when joined. This creates a clamping force and there are no exposed holes when complete. I created two templates on the CNC and then drilled the reference holes in both the cabinet, and the face frames for the handheld cutter. There are 28 connectors and if any had went wrong it would have taken a hammer or careful sawing to remove them.
    FF-GLUE-UP-BEFORE.jpg

    They all clipped into place perfectly. I have one location where the cabinet frame does not perfectly align with the face frame, but that was an error in the cabinet where the stop blind mortise tolerance was too tight. That piece did not quite fully engage into its mate. That type of problem is solved by the new connections going forward.
    FF-GLUEUP-AFTER.jpg
    Last edited by Brad Shipton; 01-29-2018 at 5:40 PM.

  5. #5
    Nicely done! A bit of wasted material to get set up, but you know how now....
    Brian Lamb
    Lamb Tool Works, Custom tools for woodworkers
    Equipment: Felder KF700 and AD741, Milltronics CNC Mill, Universal Laser X-600

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •