Chest of drawers....The making of - Part 1

I am currently making a pair of chest of drawers. It is a long process making anything with drawers in, as the drawers themselves take a while to make.

Although the drawers are the last thing to make, getting the timber machined up for them at the start of the project is a good idea as it allows the wood to dry and settle.

So here is how I do this part of the process.

First of all, select the timber you are going to use for the drawers. In this case, I am using American cherry.  It is a good wood, as it has few defects, comes in good size planks, supplied dry, and is stable.

I got some big planks sent to me. Each was about 3.4m long, about 160mm wide and 50mm thick. For those who want to know, it was 7 cubic feet of timber.

The downsize of these long lengths was they didn't fit in the lift up to the workshop. They had to be carried up the stairs to the 3rd floor.

The planks laying down are the American cheery used to make the drawer boxes.

Next I work out how to cut these planks up to make the best usage of the wood. I worked out that from a 1.2m length, this wood give me a piece for the drawer side, and a piece for the front (or back) of the drawer.

I cut the large planks into these length, and machined them on four faces giving a final thickness ranging from 46mm to 51mm.

The cherry machined up into 1.2m lengths.

Now comes the hard slog.  These planks are then ripped (a woodworking term that means cutting along the length of the grain) into strips 15mm thick.

So each plank has two edges, that is two cuts on the band saw to give two pieces, and then the rough surfaces on the plank from the cut are then cleaned up (and squared) with a couple of passes on the jointer. Repeat until all the wood has been processed.

Here are all the strips of wood straight from the band saw

I got about 150 strips of wood from the planks.  These can now sit while I make the carcass of the chests. During this time the wood will dry more and become more stable.

Lucky all those pieces, when arranged nicely, fitted under my bench.

The timber neatly stacked up under my workbench

So what will I ultimately do with all these strips of wood? Yes stick them back together! Ha ha ha.......utter madness!


Next I will be starting to make the carcasses. Funny enough, this also starts with cutting more wood into smaller pieces.......



For more information please visit either my bespoke fine furniture website, or my handmade jewellery boxes website.
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A great bit of kit

I am lucky in the workshop to have access to a Plano clamp system. It is such a good method for the glue up of panels.

I often use it when making drawers.  I take a plank of timber, joint one side, then shove it through the thicknesser to flatten the other side.  Then I rip sections off a few mm thicker than the desired drawer side thickness (say 11mm for an 8mm finished side).

Then using the Plano clamp, I butt joint the pieces together to get the required width.  As the clamps really do keep the joint flush, it is only a simple task when the glue is dry to flatten and thickness to the required dimensions.

In this picture, I am jointing the timber I used when making a couple of jewellery chest of drawers.

Plano clamp being used to glue pieces of ash
to form drawer sides.

And here is a little montage of pictures taken in the workshop of the completed jewellery chest of drawers. The ash I glued up in the Plano clamps was used to make the drawer boxes.

A pair of jewellery chest of drawers.

You can see more pictures of this chest of drawers (not taken in the workshop) in the gallery page of my handmade boxes website.

I suppose a chest of drawers like these could make the ideal Mothers Day present for a mum who has a large collection of jewellery.........



For more information please visit either my bespoke fine furniture website, or my handmade jewellery boxes website.

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I forgot the pictures

In the dark and distant past, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth........

.....okay, not that long ago but in the summer last year, I did a blog post on the making of a chest of drawers. Remember?  Probably not.

Well, I forgot to post the pictures of the completed piece. So here they are.

Notice how the drawer fronts curve alternate left and right.

The drawers are made from maple, and use dovetails in
their construction.

The drawer fronts have fumed oak on their edges - it helps to
show the curve on the drawer fronts and adds a visual detail
to the finished piece.

Next time I promise I will post the pictures sooner.




To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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It takes time

When making something, I track the time taken to perform each task. I use an online product called Toggl. It works well and is simple to use.

Why I find it useful to track time, is that is shows which tasks and processes take the most time, and how long it actually takes to make something.

For the chest of drawers I have recently made, I was tracking how long it took me to make the five drawers. I was told a good while back to allow three days to make a drawer. That is starting from raw timber and ending up with the finished drawer.

And guess what? I did take me three days to make each drawers, and hence fifteen days to make all five.

That is why handmade bespoke furniture costs more.



To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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For the Gold Cup?

Mid summer has gone....the nights are now drawing in (of sorts, I am sure for a time the sun sets later than it did on the solstice)...soon be Xmas! 

But before then, there are a couple of shows I will be attending, so that means I am making a couple of new items.

One thing I am making is a chest of drawers. I know this as I have started it. If there is time, I may also make a coffee table. We shall see.

Five drawers in this one. Made of oak. Curved drawers fronts.  Fumed oak detail on the drawer fronts. Got the idea?  No?? Here are a couple of simple SketchUp images.

Made from oak. Curved drawer fronts, that curve alternate right-left.

A close-up showing how the curving drawer fronts will look.

So these images give an idea what I am making. Wanna see some 'work in progress' pictures? If you do, then scroll down. If you don't, then you are done for now.

A big pile of wood, rough cut to size, ready to machine.
I have another two piles as well. Takes a fair bit of timber
to make a chest of drawers.

The drawer boxes are made from smaller pieces of wood that have been
glue together. It makes the construction of the drawers more stable, which
is very important to stop them sticking and binding in the carcass.
The gadget being used is a special clamping system that helps keep the
pieces of wood flat while the glue dries.

Here I am doing a test fit of the components that make up the carcass - two sides,
a top, a bottom and five drawer frames. The test fit ensure all the joinery is correct.

Here is the final phase of carcass to drawer frame glue-up. It is a multi phase
process. First of all the frames are individually glued to one carcass side. Once this
is done, and in one big hit, the frames are then glues to the other side.

That is it for now.....check back later to see how I am getting on.

To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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Lights and glass

Apart from hand tools, there are loads of other tools that are useful for a cabinet maker.

I suppose a pencil, a pencil sharpener, a straight edge and paper could be classed as a collection of tools, as these are traditionally used to design work.

I sometimes still use the above, but more often than not, I use drawing applications on my computer.  There are a couple I use.

To produce engineering type drawings, I use a package called Visio. I first used this package sometime in the mid 90's while working for NatWest.  I was on a project and we were reverse engineering some code, and needed a tool that allowed us to produce flows that could be used to explain how the reverse engineered code worked - nobody actually knew.  Visio allowed flow diagrams to be made, which were the ideal pictorial representation of what we had found.  Basically Visio is a simple drawing package.  You drag shapes around, set their sizes etc. It is not technical type drawing package. It just uses shapes, but I have used it so much I find it easy and quick to produce plan/elevation type drawings.

This is an example of the type of drawing that I produce with Visio.  It give me all the information that I require for making a piece of furniture.

An engineering style diagram, giving dimensions etc.

Another good software package is Sketch-Up, which you can download for free from Google. Sketch-up is designed for producing 3D type drawings. These types of drawings are great to help people visualise something, as looking at a 3D render is a bit easier than looking at an engineering type drawing. Using Sketch-up is a bit strange at first, but there are plenty of on-line help type videos around, plus there is a useful book from Taunton Press which is aimed solely at woodworkers using Sketch-Up.

Here are a couple of images of the piece of furniture shown about in the Visio drawing.

A 3D image that gives a totally different view compared to the engineering drawing.

The cabinet placed in-situ in an alcove.

This display cabinet is the piece of furniture I am making at the moment.  It is designed to hold a collection of pottery and ceramics. It will be made from oak and sycamore (this wood being inside the cabinet to help keep the inside bright). The doors will be of glass, and there are two glass shelves.  In addition, there will be LED lights inside the cabinet to add even more illumination.

Real pictures will appear when I have finished, then a comparison can be made with my drawings. I hope they match, but I expect the real piece of furniture to be better.




To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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Follow the winding path.

There is nothing like making something extra tricky for yourself.

For example, take a hall table.  Better still, take a hall table I made. Better even still, take a hall table that I made from oak.

Now I wanted to make the table top more interesting than just a slab of wood. Don't get me wrong, a slab of wood can look very good, nice grain, nice timber, nice edge detail. But that wasn't what I was looking for.

I read something a while back about making a chopping board with solid wooden inlays. The result looked good, and the technique could be extended to other items. I gave the method a go and made myself a chopping board.  It worked out fine, and I already had in the back of my mind something to make on a larger scale...a hall console table.

I wanted the table itself to be simple with clean lines, but adding the inlays to the top would really add an eye catching detail.

"So what does the technique involve?", I hear you say.

Well before I spill the beans, let us first discuss inlays.

Most inlays are made by cutting a small groove in a surface, normally a couple of mm deep (if inlaying a veneer string, the groove could be only 0.6mm deep) and then sticking in the item to be inlayed. So the inlay is only just in the top surface.

What is different about the technique I used on this table, is that the inlay goes right through the table top.  So when viewed from the ends, the inlay can be seen 'wrapping' round the ends and continuing onto the under surface.

How is it done? Roughly like this. First of all, make your table top. Sand it nice and flat.  Cut it in half and stick it back together with the first inlay. When dry, flush that inlay back.  Cut the table top in half again and glue back together with the next inlay. When dry, flush back. Repeat until complete.

This table top has three inlays, so including the initial making of the top, that makes a total of four glue-ups for the top.  Oh, and did I say that because the inlays follow a curved path, when you stick the top back together, it slips and slides around like a bar of soap?

And did I say the inlays I used are different widths? 

And did I also say that making a table top is much harder than a chopping board because it is so much larger?

See, tricky. 

Anyway, enough words. On with the pictures.

It looks small, but it really is a full size table!

The three drawers have a hidden finger pull detail on the bottom edge. Saves having handles sticking out and getting caught on things as you walk by.

Here you can see how the inlays go completely through the table top. 

Overhead shot of the table showing the inlays - the 'Winding Paths'.

I like the effect you get doing this technique.  I have loads of other ideas in mind too.............


To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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The trials and tribulations of making things.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by someone who had seen a piece of my furniture on my website. They had been looking for a something like it for ages, and the one I had made fitted the bill exactly. Even the wood was perfect. They asked if I could give them a price for how much it would cost for me to make another. I said I would, and that I'd give them the low down within a couple of days.

I duly worked out the price. What I normally do is work out how long it will take to make, which gives the labour charge. On top of this I then add an estimate of the materials. I never know this amount exactly as the price of timber constantly changes, and I have to visit the timber merchant and select the boards before I can get an exact amount. So when I give an estimate, I normally say it will be X amount plus or minus Y depending on material costs. Y is normally only a couple of hundred pounds.

I passed on the estimate.

A couple of days later I got a reply. It was a out of their price range. They wondered if I could still make the piece, but out of cheaper wood.




We had water troubles in the workshop. The biggest was that we never had water for three months as the main into the building was crushed by all the lorries that deliver to a unit further down the road. As the road is private, there was an argument as to who would pay to get it fixed. Good news is that we didn't have to pay when it was fixed.

Anyway, one of the taps in the workshop was broken. You know how it is. Turn it for ages and nothing comes out, and then a big rush of water. So the bloke who runs the workshop called in a plumber to have a look.

The plumber came in, had a look, got his spanner out, fiddled around, and changed a washer. Tap fixed! 

When the bloke who runs the workshop saw the bill of £80 + VAT, he said “but you only changed a washer. Can’t you use a cheaper one?”




A stroll through the park across the road from the workshop takes you to a street with a few nice shops in.

One of these is a sandwich shop and they sell some really nice looking artisan bread. I went in the other day to have a look.

I couldn't believe the price of the bread. £4.95 for a loaf!

Now I know a bit about baking, and bread is only really flour and water and salt and yeast.  Water (if your main isn't broken) comes out the tap, yeast will grow by itself, and salt comes in very big bags for not much money. How much must the flour cost then?




A cabinet maker, a plumber and an artisan baker walk into a pub.

“Three pints of your finest real ale, please.” asks the plumber.

“No problem” says the landlord who pulls the pints. “That will be £11.55, please.”

“Hold on!” says the cabinet maker. “That’s a bit steep, isn't it?”

“Yes” says the plumber. “I know water comes out of the tap.”

“And I know that you can grow a yeast culture.” says the baker.

“And I know that hops and barley don’t cost much.” adds the cabinet maker.

“Ah yes gentleman” says the landlord. “It isn't the ingredients in the beer that make up the expense. Okay, there is a tax to pay to the government to be accounted for too. But what you are paying for is the skill and knowledge of the brewer who makes the beer.”

“Oh!” say the cabinet maker, plumber and baker in unison, with a look of enlightenment of their faces.



To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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Good enough to eat

Here are some pictures of the chest of drawers I mentioned a few posts ago, the one entitled 'January'.

It is made from steamed pear, walnut and maple.........custard anyone?

To see more of my furniture, have a look at my website and the pictures in the gallery section.

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January

Don't be fooled into thinking that the title of this blog means that I will do monthly updates on what I have been up to. Oh no.

January is an answer to a question. Not the answer to the ultimate question, but the question "How long did it take you to make?"  I can now answer by saying "January" rather than "blah blah number of hours".

What did I make in January? I made a chest of drawers in American walnut and steamed pear.  Here we go with the pictures.

These strips of timber will make the sides of the drawers.
They are the first wood machined for the project, as I want
it to stand and acclimatise for as long as possible.

This is a big plank of steamed pear. I did actually
cross cut it with a hand saw!

Four pieces of wood. These will become the cabinet legs.

I have five of these frames. They hold the sides of the carcass
together, and the drawers run on them.

The drawer frames being fixed to the carcass sides.

Here is the completed carcass (minus the top).

The last drawer box glue-up. This is the biggest of the five drawers.

Here the drawer boxes have been fitted into the cabinet carcass.

The handles for the drawers are handmade from pear.

Using yellow plastic shims while attaching the drawer fronts
to the drawer boxes.

And here is the finished piece.

 

This chest of drawers is currently on show at an exhibition called 21st Century Furniture IV, being held in The Millinery Works Gallery, London.

Please check my website if you want to find out more about my furniture, follow me on my Facebook pages, or see what I am talking about on Twitter.

 

Dark in the afternoons

I don't like these winter evenings. I don't even think it is really winter yet. I am never sure the exact months that make up the seasons. Are the solstices and equinoxes in the mid part of the season? That doesn't seem correct to me......

....is summer May-June-July or is it as I always believed June-July-August?  And the Christmas carol 'In the deep mid winter', are they implying the mid winter is around Christmas or the winter solstice? I always assumed winter was December-January-February.

Have the seasons slipped? Is it to do with the earths orbit or global warming? Is too much forest area being cut down to make way for dairy farming? The tress are the lungs of the planet and soak up carbon dioxide. Cut too many down and the planet can't breath.

And now in this country we might loose 90% of our ash trees.  Damn!  I like English ash. It is a great wood. I have made lots of pieces from it.

I just finished a big hall mirror where the frame is from ash. It is to go with the olive ash and ash sideboard I will be taking to the Handmade in Britain show this week in Chelsea Old Town Hall.

I also made a small jewellery chest of drawers. Something that sits on top of a dressing table. It is from olive ash and walnut. Here are some pictures of it.

Olive ash and walnut jewellery cabinet

Drawers have divider compartments

The jewellery gives the piece a sense of scale

Four of the drawers have dividers in them, the size of the divider compartment getting large in each drawer down, while the fifth drawer is just empty for large objects.

It will look good at the show sitting on the sideboard.

Please check my website if you want to find out more about my furniture, follow me on my Facebook pages, or see what I am talking about on Twitter.

Not so plain Jane

I am building a display cabinet at the moment, something open fronted with glass shelves.

The outside of the cabinet will be from American walnut, but for the inside faces I wanted something lighter and contrasting.

Something like sycamore could be used, as it has a minimal grain patter and is a 'white-with-a-hint-of-yellow' colour. But I thought this will be a bit dull and uninteresting.

A wood I have always wanted to use is something called lacewood. It has a lace or snake skin pattern and is a pinkish colour with brown flecks. A good contrast for the walnut.

Here is a picture of the lacewood I have for the cabinet inside. You should be able to get what I am talking about.

Lacewood showing the striking grain pattern

Lacewood has an interesting background.  Most woods with an unusual grain pattern or colour are exotic timbers, but not this one.  It is a tree that grows very well in this country and exceedingly well in cities.  I am sure you know the tree I am talking about - sometimes called 'lungs of the city'.  Want another clue?  Here is picture of the tree in question.

The source of lacewood

Still clueless?  A hint is in the blog title........yes it is a Jane tree!!

Alright, it isn't a Jane tree, but it is a London plane.  Yes, that tree you see in parks and streets everywhere (and not only in London or the UK, but global).  

The London plane tree is a bit of an odd one...there is some argument as to where it comes from.  It is a cross of two trees, the oriental plane and American sycamore but these are debated. It has been widely planted in England since the late 1600's.

Apparently the tallest London place tree is in Bryanston School, Blandford Forum, Dorset. In 2008 it measured over 48m tall. Maybe fresh air is good for them.....

So now you know all about lacewood and where it comes from.

I will post some more pictures of the cabinet in due course.

For more information about me or my furniture, the have a look at my website.

A good place to arrange your collection

Remember a post a few weeks ago where I was talking about the jewellery cabinet I was making.  Good news, it is all finished and actually delivered to the clients.


Normally I take photographs of pieces in the workshop, but as you can imagine it is a bit of a kerfuffle.  The floors are dusty, the walls dusty, everything is dusty. So sweep up, let the dust settle, sweep up again and then unroll a white photographic backdrop. Umm. Dust on that now. And don't even talk about light set-up! So that is why for this piece I had a change of tactic. I had pictures taken for me by a photographer.

I really like the pictures and I think the show the piece off really well. So a thank-you to Peter Hughes for taking them.


At the moment I haven't added this piece to the gallery on my website, as the whole site is going through a bit of a rethink.  But once it is done, I am sure I will post an update on this blog!