Apothecary chest - shaping the drawer fronts (2)

[Derek Cohen]

Shaping the curved faces of the drawers was a lot of work, and I was very pleased to see it done. Dusty and dirty.Not fun. Now the inside faces need to be done, and this will complete the the third stage of building the drawers (the first stage was to fit parallelogram-shaped drawer fronts into their recesses, and the second stage was dovetailing the fronts).


The drawer front shaped on the outside only ...





Blue tape (what else! ) is added to upper and lower edges ...





The inside curve is scribed ...








Pulled apart, the rear of the drawer front is chamfered with a round bottomed spokeshave to prevent spelching ...





The waste is removed with rasps - this is an Auriou 10 grain ...





Three rasps in all are used to remove and smooth, ending with this 15 grain ..





The surface is refined and finished with a scraper ..





Final shots of the completed drawer front ...








Regards from Perth


Derek

[David Bassett]

Derek, I've been reading along. Stunning work!

Looking at your first photo the curve is subtle enough the flat back didn't look worth changing to me, but it really does look better in the last photo once you've finished. Clearly chasing the little details does make a difference.

[Derek Cohen]

Thanks David. I should have pointed out that this is one of the drawers situated in the centre section of the chest, and it has less curvature than the drawers along the outside sections.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[John Kananis]

Derek, looks fantastic! Curious, what type of depth is left on the groove for the drawer bottom? Thanks again for sharing.

[Derek Cohen]

Hi John

mmmm .. I don't recall posting a picture of making the grooves. The sides are 3mm deep (into 6.5mm sides). The fronts were made about 9-10mm deep since about half that would be removed when shaping. The depth remaining is about 5-6mm. This will enable me to not have to shape a curve into the front of the drawer bottom (which is something I've had to do the past).

Regards from Perth

Derek

[John Kananis]

This will enable me to not have to shape a curve into the front of the drawer bottom...

Derek, this is what I was curious of, thanks.