How to build a chest of drawers

welcome back to the boardroom I'm Mike Farrington I built this overarmed dust collection from my table saw a while back I have a video on my Channel showing that process if and you're interested I mention it because this thing works really well and you may want one for your shop in this video I'll show How I build a chest of drawers with a flip down front I start by cutting larger chunks of wood into smaller chunks of wood here is the latest addition to my shop it's a bronze number four smoothing plane from Lee Nielsen this is such a nice tool this was actually forged in the fires of Mount Doom alongside the ring of power because Sauron actually had a few Furniture projects he wanted to complete but let's not let my dad jokes get in the way of a good Pro tip it's always a good idea to clean up edges before glue up here's another Pro tip that I picked up from a great Furniture maker named Tim Russo he's up in Maine but we won't hold that against him there's a little technique involved and I don't demonstrate it very well here but you get the idea so my local supplier was all out of three quarter inch white oak plywood which is totally whack but they did have half inch so I went with the half inch and to make up the difference I glued on some spacers this was to give me some more thickness for joinery and drawer slide screws after trimming the edges flush it was time to add the legs which are to be attached with the mighty biscuit I had to use a few spacers to keep everything in line it was a bit of a pain but it worked pretty well in the end with the biscuit slots cut I clean up the inside edges with the plane of power and then glue everything together next I'm going to add a small detail to both side panels This is a little faux piece to give the appearance of two floating panels I think fitting small pieces like this is best done by hand I find it easier to be super accurate versus using a chopper a table saw I add a little bit of glue and a few 23 gauge pins to hold it in place with the side panels ready to go I move on to the web frames for this task I bring in some help the shop Apprentice was bumming around so I thought I'd teach him a thing or two about a thing or two we started off by marking and then cutting a few biscuit slots and of course the slots needed to be thoroughly inspected and of course we have to dry fit everything just to make sure we're on the right track thank you I don't think this quite qualifies as a pro tip but I like to sight down my marked line and make sure that the size 20 stamp on the biscuit is centered on that line while biscuits have a fair amount of side to side slop too far off and the biscuit will actually prevent the two pieces from coming together at this point the shop Apprentice has become bored with dad's boring work so it's off to play with the tail Vise then at some point he becomes curious about the origin of all these wooden things and that interaction is as follows yes sir yes [Music] literally everything everything pretty much everything yeah hey man everything in the shop I don't know for how long I'll be cool in my son's eyes but for now I'll take it this is a shelf for the flip down door this will make more sense as the video goes on all right shaper time I marked start and stop points on the fence I'm cutting stop rabbits on both side panels to accept the back that means one cut will be stopped and pulled away and the other I'll Plunge in and complete the cut a round cutter means I'll need to do a little chisel work to square things up I'm often asked why I use a biscuit joiner when I have a domino the answer is I just like using the biscuit joiner better it's a nicer faster process and it's plenty strong for most uses however the Domino joint is stronger in certain situations in a freestanding case piece like this one in my opinion will benefit from the use of dominoes at this point it's starting to look like a proper chest of drawers epoxy is a great glue for complex assemblies because of the long working time however it pays to read the labels the t88 has a 60 Minute gel time the total boat of 40 minute gel time I would have picked the t88 but it's been sitting in a cabinet for like 10 years and as I poured it out it looked kind of crusty and chunky so I went with the total boat thank goodness 40 minutes was enough time to get things put together I always I'd like to have the back in place whenever possible this will help ensure that the case dries Square once dry it was time to permanently attach the back and I did this with some trim head screws next up was to install some dividers to attach the drawer slides to if it looks like these are cut a little short they are when I cut and installed these I wasn't quite sure how far I wanted the drawers to be in set into the case after playing around a little bit with the inset I realized I could have used a slightly longer divider when pre-drilling these five millimeter holes I always make sure to vac out any detritus these slides have some wacky super sticky Lube on them and they'll run rough if any chunks or crunks get in there with the slides in I could measure and calculate the drawer box sizes and anytime I'm building drawer boxes I always start by cutting strips at the table saw and then I move on to cross cutting to length I use the super smooth cutting Delta 16 inch radial arm saw to cross cut to length I have a restoration video of this very tool on my channel if you're interested I'm always cautious when using this tool not only could it cut off a finger but it could cut a hole in the space-time Continuum if given a chance now I know I've shown this trick in a previous video but it's a great tip so I'll flog this dolphin one more time this is a gauge of all the different combinations of chippers that my dado stack will cut I find the one that doesn't fit then I measure the width of the groove and the thickness of the work piece and I find the difference this is the thickness shim I need to add to the stack to get a good fit I add five thousands for a pretty tight fit and I add ten thousandths for a fit that will slide and there it is I nail it on the first try [Music] back to the biscuit joiner for super strong drawer box joinery all right here's a sneaky Pro tip under the cover of darkness when your whole house is sleeping go into your kitchen and steal the anti-slip mats out of the drawers these are great to help with grip when using any of the handheld joinery tools [Music] these notches create the needed clearance for the under mount slides before gluing the drawer boxes together I think it's a good idea to sand the top edges for this tedious task there is no better tool than the double taper sanding disc if you'd like one of these for your shop check the link below or visit my website here's a look at how I set the width with the saw off I bumped the fence over until the work piece just drags a little on the disc when it's pushed by it at that point I locked the fence down turn the saw on and get to sanding and here's a quick look at the Glorious results next up I need to drill some specifically placed holes in the drawer box this hole on the back registers a pin on the drawer slide and it keeps the drawer box aligned on the slide these two teeny tiny pilot holes are to hold the clickers in place and the clickers allow for quick installation removal of the drawer box they also have some left right adjustability built into them all right now that the drawers are in and sliding smoothly it's time to deal with these flap hinges these are pretty easy to install there's really only two key details the first is to draw locator lines across both pieces and then drill to those lines the second is figuring out how far in from the edge of the work piece the center of the hole needs to be for that I always just make a quick mock-up the instructions give us back but I still feel the need to make sure that it works in the real world on a positive note there is some up down and left right adjustment built into the hinge here's why I made this shelf removable it allows me to drill it at the drill press accurately and then install it this works great just at this point the front's a little too wide but that's easy enough to cut down after cutting the drawer fronts to size it's time to attach them to the boxes and I've built this little kit for this very process it has all the needed accoutrement I used these little Bloom drawer box adjusters the steel piece can slide around within the plastic to offer some adjustability and then once adjusted appropriately tighten up the screws so let's see how this works I start by drilling a few 20 millimeter holes then I use these Center punches these fit Loosely in the holes I just drilled but they're designed to leave marks on the drawer boxes so I know where to drill the needed screw holes so I get the drawer front in place and give it a little tappy tap tap taparoo foreign these little guys are directional they have some barbs to help hold them in place once oriented I smack them into the back of the drawer front from there I screw the drawer fronts onto the box and I lightly snug everything up then I spend as much time as needed scooting the drawer fronts around until I get nice consistent reveals all the way around the blue tape is just for style points I glued this piece of blocking on it was designed to be a mounting point for a down stay However the first one I bought didn't quite work right so I switched to this one which was easier to install and has an adjustment knob on the back so you can dial in the fall speed to your liking it's actually a pretty nice piece of kit at this point the project is built I start breaking everything down so I can sand and then add the stain but it's now time for some never-ending self-promotion or nesp as I like to call it I once again use the double taper sanding disc to clean up all the edges of the drawer fronts but here's a fun little trick I use a miter gauge to clean up the ends of a work piece I just tap the piece over until the wispiest little cut is taken otherwise I risk burning but this just Sands the ends perfectly oh yeah one more quick feature I add some adjustable feet this piece is going in an old home and if I had to guess the floors may be just a little off the stain is a reddish brown color to match a bunch of other stuff within the home I won't show that process but I will offer one pro tip I always start with the bottom of the top it's a low risk spot where I can get a feel for what the stain is going to be doing on that particular piece of wood and that's what I've done here now through the magic of editing let's jump forward to installing the kanabs and if you've seen any of my videos you know that if there's a tool out there to make my life easier I already have it that's what this thing is it just grabs the outside edges of a drawer front and then centers automatically making knob installation so easy even a caveman can do it and while not cheap this tool is totally worth every penny because if you drill one drawer box wrong it's just a ton of work to go back and fix it so there it is a nice little chest of drawers with a drop front I love building this type of furniture hopefully you enjoyed watching and as always thank you very much for following along until next time

Channel: Mike Farrington

Views: 107,707

Keywords: woodworking, home improvement, furniture making, maker, carpentry, fine woodworking

Id: vKT7rKh-RH4

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2023