Dovetail Drawer Project

[Brad Shipton]

I thought I would share a few pics of my current project. I have been building drawers and boxes for a couple of weeks now.

For the dovetail drawer parts to work out correctly the stock needs to be prepped very well, and it must be perfectly level. Any minor stock bow or other imperfections leads to problems achieving full vacuum and then the parts do not come out correctly. Originally I was using my vacuum pods for this, but I found I would have need to make quite a few more pods for various drawer sizes. Instead of using my pods I made a simple flat vacuum jig and I used 1/8" thick puck board to elevate the parts off the table (did not want to cut endless grooves in my $300 sheet of plastic). This worked quite well after some testing. Machine time for a drawer is 8-12min per drawer. Machine time is inconsequential compared to stock prep, sanding and clamping.

DTailJig.jpg

DTailParts.jpg

Here is the stack of drawers.
Drawer-stack.jpg

Revashelf would not build their utensil cabinet or tray slideouts in cherry, so I built those as well. There is no real reason to make these out of 1" thick material, but I had 5/4 stock in the shed and I did not want to waste so much of it. I wanted them to have dovetails as well, but the width of the parts would not fit under my gantry. I cheated, and made the dovetail pins out of thin stock. The pin stock was attached to the slideout ends using dominos. They are not real dovetails per say, but I was able to crank out all the parts for each of these in about 20 - 30min per unit. The joints are not quite as perfect as I would like, because I did not check the bit for wear before cutting. A bit of fixing and they are good enough considering they will be inside a box for 95% of their life.

SlideOuts.jpg

[James Biddle]

Brad, those look really good...are you using the Vortex dovetail bits or some other setup?

[Brad Shipton]

Thanks James. I am using the Vortex dovetail bit and their 3115 mortise bit. I had a few fixes here and there when the stock did not sit down tight to the table. This setup is easier with baltic birch boxes where you can use a vacuum table. To get this to work so I could mill out a complete drawer with one tool path took some practice.

[Jim Becker]

Those look really nice...may we see a closeup of a glued-up joint? I'm curious about the tails since they are being cut flat. Is it a very tiny radius bit?

[Brad Shipton]

Sure can Jim.

Here is a picture from the model showing the joint after assembly. The front of the drawer is shown as an outline.

DTail-MDL.JPG
Here is one drawer example near the end of the run. I have not done any joint cleanup at this point beyond sanding off the glue squeeze out.
DTailJoint-01.jpg
Here is another example. In the one pin you can see a small amount of tearout that I will fix.
DTailJoint-02.jpg
A third example. Here you can see how a small variation in the stock elevation led to a small gap. I can tell now how flat my stock is by watching the gauge on my vacuum pump. The closer the reading is to 25in Hg the flatter it is. You may see screws in the drawer below this one. That was the very first drawer in the run, and the stock turned out so poorly I almost threw it away. I felt guilty about being so wasteful (maybe cheap), so I opted to put it together. With some screws as an added measure the drawer will be fine.
DTailJoint-03.jpg
Here is a closeup of the drawer for the mixer.
DTail-04.jpg

I have been fixing small errors with the Rangate Knot filler (https://rangate.com/products/knot-filler) It is not perfect, but this is not furniture so I think it fits the bill. The advantage of this is I can apply the filler, clean it up, and move on in minutes rather than waiting for things to dry.

[Jim Becker]

Thanks. Those are excellent for this method. Bravo!!!!

[James Biddle]

Thanks James. I am using the Vortex dovetail bit and their 3115 mortise bit. I had a few fixes here and there when the stock did not sit down tight to the table. This setup is easier with baltic birch boxes where you can use a vacuum table. To get this to work so I could mill out a complete drawer with one tool path took some practice.

That's the bits I've been looking at...is there any reason you chose the 9101 profile over the 9282? Are you using Mozaik or some other program to make them?

[Brad Shipton]

James, I like the look of the 9282 because it looks more like a real dovetail, but I also have the 9101. The body of the cutter is the same for both, and the inserts are not all that expensive. From a cutting perspective it does not matter a lot. I had to slow my machine down quite a bit from what is suggested to make the tail cuts. Vortex suggests 220ipm for the tails, but I am more like 100ipm for those because my machine is not as stiff. They also suggest using a 1/2" diameter bit and their 1/4" mortise bit for the other cuts. I fiddled with using both 1/4" and 1/2" for some of the cuts for a while, but you really need to be able to mic your cutters to avoid small differences when it cuts the tail pocket and the tails. I gave up on that and the 1/4" mortise for everything but the pins. It is a tad slower, but I am not a big production guy, so a couple extra minutes is just fine.

I use solidworks and camworks for all the modeling and cutting. The toolpaths are not complex. I make these with a pocket toolpath, engrave or curve, and perimeter cuts. I am sure I could make this in VCarve by importing the simply linework they provide.

[James Biddle]

I like that the inserts are interchangeable in the body. If I understand correctly, the dovetail bit is used only on the tails only and the 1/4" cuts the pins and the remaing hogging out of material above the pins is whet you're using the 1/4" mortise bit to cut instead of the 1/2" that Vortex recommends?

[Brad Shipton]

Yes, the dovetail cutter is only used to make the tail sockets. They suggest the perimeter of the parts and the tail pockets be cut with the 1/2". Only the tails need to be cut with the 1/4" bit so the radius of the tails fit the sockets. The tails must also be done in a single pass with a mortise bit. If you cut the tails without a mortise bit in a single pass you will get stock lifting on the top of the tails and the little bits make it a nuisance to assemble the parts. The problem I found using different cutters was getting the cuts to match exactly. I would notice little cut errors maybe 5 - 10thou. Not terrible, but I noticed it. Vortex wants to promote you can cut a drawer out in 4min, so that is why they want the bigger cutter. I cannot cut anything at 1500ipm like they show in their video with my machine, so it made no difference to me. Maybe you can? If so, I am sure you probably can figure that out. I know most on the woodweb using this tool set have.

[Mark Bolton]

I would be complaining about any of those small gaps in dovetail cab drawers unless I was hoping for a furniture grade piece (and as you say, for that, the CNC probably wouldnt be the route). We are still running drawers on a router jig and dont get much in the way of gaps but it sure would be nice to be able to chuck up parts and have them running while we were doing something else.

Im endlessly in awe of your effort with pods and fixturing. I have to get more in tune with building pod/vac fixtures. Really great work.

Not to throw you under the bus but it would be great to see some really in-depth or even video deals of your pod process and so on, gasketing, and the like. Call me lazy but for whatever reason I have a hard time getting into building the fixtures though for many multiples we do it. I have to get over that laziness.

Great work as always. The tooling expenses making cab components just get utterly ridiculous. Our shaper set is brutal and I just looked up the vortex setup and about fell out of my chair.

[Brad Shipton]

Thanks Mark. I am not really a video guy, but I can elaborate a bit more when I dig out some photos and model screenshots. Except for the plastic and gasket material my oddball parts comes from McMaster Carr. I don't mind sharing as I have gained a lot of knowledge from many of the posters in this section.

I have bought quite a few Garniga insert shaper heads, so I was not overly shocked at the pricetag. That said, I see the set has went up in price by about $100 or so since I bought mine.

The dovetail drawer system for baltic birch drawers is a good option for a smaller production shop, but I am not so sure it is a great solution for solid wood if you have a good supplier nearby. With baltic birch you can vac down a whole sheet and cut out multiple drawers. That makes it very easy to produce these because the stock is always very flat and there is no extra setup time. I never gave the toolpathing a lot of thought when I making BB drawers and they have always come out very good. With solid wood I found some problems cutting the tails and sometimes I had to deal with a bit of stock tearout. The flatness of the stock was the biggest headache. That is only a problem when you cut the tail sockets. I tuned my jointer/planer and that helped a lot, but there was still the odd piece that would give me grief. That is overcome with the Leigh type jig with that clamp that cannot be replicated without multiple toolpaths and more jigs to watch out for. Gary's method cutting off the end of the table would make that easier, but I cannot do that nor do I like having to flip the stock and deal with multiple routines for each drawer.

[Mark Bolton]

Thanks for the input. I dont think other than in commercial cabs we will ever be doing ply drawers and BB in my area is priced like gold bars (to me at least). In the commercial world they would likely be Melamine. Its one crappy area in my mindset where regardless I will likely make Hard or Soft Maple solid wood drawers with true dovetails forever. More than likely a complete and total money waster for the bottom line. I dont think I would tolerate the CNC process well but if we were willing to stock hard AND soft maple it would be a no brainer. Unfortunately we run a good bit of commercial units for schools that are solid hard maple clear coat (other than ply backs for the bookshelves are 1/2" domestic ply) so there are always units of Hard Maple here. Its also a decent source of residual income in that we buy #1 common and often cull TONS of figured material out of the packs that are sold on the hobby market.

We process parts for a shop that does ply boxes exclusively but they are blind dado/lock rabbet. I dont think we could ever swing the Vortex price tag unless we were getting a true dovetail. Regardless I love seeing the fixturing and as said, I really need to get over this stupid resistance to building vac fixtures.

Im on it.