6-Drawer Dresser With Wing Mirror
This started off as a simple project and became one of the longest running projects I have done to date. Flat gables became 5-piece raised panel gables, square mirror became a cathedral wing mirror, machine cut drawer joinery became hand cut dovetails, the 3/8" ply back became a frame & panel back and the wooden runner & kickers for the drawers became these awesome Blum Tandem full extension under mount slides with the VERY cool Blum "Motion" brake system (More about that later).
In progress....
Here's the Carcass under construction. You can see the panel back being temporarily secured by a Bessy Clamp.
Below are the 6 drawer boxes completed sporting many hours of hand cutting dovetail joints.
Since this was my very first attempt at hand cutting doves it took a bit longer but in the end the results I believe are decent.
The little orange clips are the fastening/release mechanism for the under mount slides (more on those below).
Aug. 20 2004, Carcass complete save for final sanding/scraping
Porcelain hand painted pulls form Lee Valley.
A view of the hand dovetailed drawers installed. The top received a large thumbnail profile.
Close up of the doves, note the layout marks (sanding will take care of those:)
From the rear angle
Full extension slides with brakes!.... NICE!
Here's a shot of the little clips that hold the drawers to the slide rails. When assembled you just reach under the front corners of the drawer on each side and squeeze the orange handles and pull to take the drawers off the slides. Re-installing is easy, just pull out the slides, set the drawer on and grab the slide & engage it into the clip.
Here's the drawers installed on the slides
A shot of the slide with the brake assembly (the grey plastic thing)
When closing the little 'U' shaped gizmo on the side of the slide rail engages with the white dog you can see on the brake mechanism (about 2" out from closed) and slows the motion of the closing if it's going too fast. They also will physically pull the drawer SHUT and hold it also. The brakes are designed to keep a fully loaded drawer from slamming closed, possibly damaging components like the false fronts. These are a REALLY slick feature, I love 'em (thanks to Roman Mann for 'guilting' me into using them;)
Final stage... a 3-piece wing mirror with cathedral arched top then finishing the entire piece... Next update < 2 weeks:)
Mirror parts fabricated and partially assembled...
Chose M&T construction due to the size of the main mirror and weight of it's glass. A Rail & Stile bit set would have likely been fine but this one is guaranteed to never come apart;)
Arched top rails were cut close on the BS then routed flush to a the pair or patterns I made form MDF. Same for the large mirror.
Glue up. Using a pair of bar clamps as clamping cauls as running a pipe clamp across the curved rail (similar to the bottom) causes the stiles to splay opening up the joint...BAD! This worked very well.
Making square shoulder cuts ensures a square glue up, no adjustments needed, just clamp and they pull square!
Here's the main frame and the right wing. Forgot to shoot a pic of the tenon on the main mirror as it needed to be an odd shape to accommodate the curve.
All 3 pieces roughed out. You can see the barrel hinges on the right wing mirror (not fully inserted). They require some gap which I didn't think they would. May be the material is a bit thick. A slight bevel with a block plan on the front edge of each stile seems to help them open with less gap and without interference to just shy of 90°.
Here is the finished assembly with glass and a small ogee profile on the inner edges. A slight roundover on the outer edges to ease the edge. Glass is 5mm mirror glass, no beveled glass as was 4x the price!!! The huge cost was due to the cathedral tops. Square beveled would have been much less. The choice was $85 for flat glass of $400 for beveled. It looks fine with flat glass;)
The mirror backs with 1/4" ply backing and frame turns.
And a few views of the finished piece in satin pre-cat lacquer....
Thanks for looking :)