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Thread: Underbench cabinet: Dovetailing for Blood (Part 2)

  1. #1
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    Underbench cabinet: Dovetailing for Blood (Part 2)

    Perhaps I need to explain the title, "Dovetailing for Blood". In part, the description comes from a book, "Backgammon for Blood", by Peter Becker I read about 4 decades ago. It's about taking the game to the most competitive level. This series of articles is not a how-to about dovetailing; it is about the strategies I use when building drawers. I offer them for discussion and your interest.



    This is the drawer in question.

    In the previous article, the focus was on strategies for connecting the drawer front and drawer sides via half-blind dovetails. The aim there - and continued here - is to complete the dovetailing in such as way that the drawer may be glued up, and dry inside the drawer case. The advantage of drying inside the drawer case is that a good fit is assured.

    Today the drawer back needs to be attached with through dovetails.



    For interest, here are the chisels I used: Kiyohisa slicks and Koyamaichi dovetail.



    Noticeable in the drawer above is that there are no grooves for the drawer bottom. These will now be added using a plough plane and a sticking board to hold the work...





    The drawer sides are around 7mm at this stage, with the expectation that they will end up at 6mm. The inside and outside faces have been planed. The groove is 3mm deep ...



    The groove in the 18mm thick drawer front is 6mm deep ...



    The drawer back receives a shallow groove ...



    Reason?

    The drawers are designed for a tool cabinet. Unlike drawers for the home, where the backs are lowered, these drawers will have a full rear, in height, ending at the drawer bottom. We start with drawer backs exactly the same dimensions as the drawer front. The lower section needs to be removed. The top of the groove marks this position.

    The waste is removed on the table saw, a smidgeon grace ...



    ... and the machine marks then planed away.

    It needs to be stated that drawers are not the same as boxes. While they may both be dovetailed, the drawer width is determined by width of the drawer case. It cannot be larger or be smaller. The drawer front and back are made as a pair, and their dimensions are not permitted to be altered.

    With boxes, one can leave dovetails proud, and then level them to the sides. Or one may level the sides to the dovetails. You cannot do this with drawers, especially if the game plan is to aim for the glued up drawer drying in the drawer case. Consequently, the dovetails must end up flush with the surface ....



    We move over to dovetailing the rear:

    The first step, with 6 drawers of the same height and width, is to make a template for the spacing of the dovetails.



    While the template stretches across the board, the area of importance is above the drawer bottom.

    Mark out the tails, as usual, but then flip the board so that you are sawing from the inside of the drawer ...



    Again, this is not a box. The inside of a drawer is seen, and it is important to keep the baseline as clean as possible, that is, no over-sawing.

    Similarly, when removing the waste with a chisel, start with the outside face of the drawer, and finish with the inside. That way there is less danger of inadvertently chiseling over the baseline.


  2. #2
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    Now ... the interesting part comes with transferring tails to pins. This can make-or-break the drawer.



    Here we see the tail and pin boards aligned. But are they?



    A square shows that the side is out at least 1-2mm at 300mm (12").



    Left like this, the drawer will not sit flat. It will act as if it has a twist. Significant efforts will need to be made to align the drawer in the case. It becomes essential that the side is aligned accurately. This can be a little fiddly, but a long square helps considerably ...



    At some point, someone will mention the side-alignment fixture designed by David Barron. This is a wonderful concept, however it excels at making boxes and not drawers. Look here ...

    The tail and pin boards are not aligned at the square ends (which would enable David's fixture to be used). They are aligned on the reference side, which is the lower edge of the drawer sides. You are aligning from the left side of these boards ...



    Having transferred and sawn the tails, the bulk of the waste is removed with a fretsaw (as detailed before). Here is a reminder - first chop out the waste from the outside face, half way down ...



    ... and then complete from the show-inside face.

    My preference is to angle the chisel slightly away and create a "tent" ...



    This is then removed with a slicing paring action, again form each side to the centre ...



    Use a narrow chisel to pare the ends: having first sawn these away, the remnants for paring lie above the chisel walls (again discussed in a previous article) ..



    This is what we are after: flat ...



    Dry fit ...



    The drawer must fit the drawer case ...







    It does, but we are not finished. More in a while ..

    Regards from Perth

    Derek

  3. #3
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    Derek,

    That's a sweet looking vacuum set up you have there in the background!

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pete Taran View Post
    Derek,

    That's a sweet looking vacuum set up you have there in the background!


    And you know all about it, Pete!

    Regards from Perth

    Derek

  5. #5
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    The big takeaways for me:

    1. I like the sticking board with an adjustable fence. I’ll definitely make one like it.
    2. Sawing the backs from inside makes perfect sense too. I’ve always just automatically cut from the outside.
    3. It seems like this approach demands that the stock be very consistent in thickness. After I get my reference face, I’ll mark the thickness with a gauge and plane down to my lines, but I don’t fuss with getting it exact since I shoot to make the drawer slightly oversize then plane down after glue-up. If you aim for it to fit immediately, it seems like the sides have to be dead-on their final thickness before you cut the joints.
    4. It also seems like sizing the drawer faces has to be dead-on. I usually stop once I can just barely fit the faces tight in the opening. It seems like you’d need to be able to get the faces smoothly in the opening (without any gaps!) for the whole drawer to go in fir glue-up.

    this seems like a fun challenge!

  6. #6
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    Sawing the backs from inside makes perfect sense too. I’ve always just automatically cut from the outside.
    Maybe instead of thinking of sawing from the inside or outside the thinking could be about sawing from the 'show' side or the side others will see. In many cases it may not matter. Many times my tails are cut on two pieces at a time. One side will be sawn from the outside and the other from the inside. A knife line will avoid almost all of the tear out.

    One takeaway for me is having the glue dry inside the drawer's opening. One has to be careful about any glue squeeze out.

    Another is:

    It needs to be stated that drawers are not the same as boxes. While they may both be dovetailed, the drawer width is determined by width of the drawer case. It cannot be larger or be smaller. The drawer front and back are made as a pair, and their dimensions are not permitted to be altered.

    With boxes, one can leave dovetails proud, and then level them to the sides. Or one may level the sides to the dovetails. You cannot do this with drawers, especially if the game plan is to aim for the glued up drawer drying in the drawer case. Consequently, the dovetails must end up flush with the surface ....
    My feeling is drawers are a specialized box.

    A Ferrari is a car, it is different from other cars.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  7. #7
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    Derek, two questions relating to marking the pins:
    1) Are you in favor of using a shallow rabbet on the tail board to help with alignment?
    2) Can David Barron’s alignment fixture just be flipped around to line up either the right or left side?

    And one more regarding the sawing of the pins: could you apply your prodigious photography skills to show us precisely where you saw compared to the knife line, or in your case to the edge of the blue tape?

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bob Jones 5443 View Post
    Derek, two questions relating to marking the pins:
    1) Are you in favor of using a shallow rabbet on the tail board to help with alignment?
    2) Can David Barron’s alignment fixture just be flipped around to line up either the right or left side?

    And one more regarding the sawing of the pins: could you apply your prodigious photography skills to show us precisely where you saw compared to the knife line, or in your case to the edge of the blue tape?
    Bob, I do not like using a rebate on the tail board. I just do not want to alter the thickness: it complicates measurements, and some of the drawer sides I make are thin enough as it is. A few years ago I came up with a fence made from blue tape that replaces the rebate - even Rob Cosman, who has popularised the rebate, likes the tape method now: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furnitu...ickisDead.html

    Regarding DB's fixture, it is for boxes, as I mentioned before. What it cannot do is (1) square up the ends of a drawer, which are different widths. The reference sides are on the "wrong" side for the DB board. (2) it can only align boards which are joined at 90 degrees. I make many drawers with angled sides. It cannot do these.

    Lastly, this where I saw - right against the line ...







    More details here: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furnitu...ovetails3.html

    Incidentally, my "prodigious photography skills" (you are VERY kind! ) are courtesy of an iPhone 11. Point-and-shoot.

    Regards from Perth

    Derek

  9. #9
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    Three layers of blue tape! Love it. Big time saver. Thanks. As always.

    For the marking step, I’m trying to master the left-right kerf-width offset to mark the pin board with the saw-kerf marking knife. But I’ve tucked your photos into my library as a reference.

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