Greene & Greene End Table - #17 Drawer Part 1

Making the drawer is next and here I decided to make a change in the plans.  Originally the drawer was to have ridden on the guides I had just finished.  That version is shown in the drawing below.

However, in thinking about the amount of use it would get I changed the wooden guides to full extension steel guides.  The revised drawing is below and the only change is the drawer is an inch narrower to allow for the slides.  Other than the dovetail joint where the front and the sides come together the construction is pretty straightforward.  I am using dovetails at the front for a couple of reasons.  Since the front to side joint gets the most stress when the drawer is opened and closed a strong joint is needed.  Because of the way a dovetail joint is shaped it has a mechanical strength and does not rely on glue alone to hold it together.  The other reason is I like the way they look.  Since the back to side joint is not really stressed it will be a simple dado.

Selecting the wood is next.  The selection got narrowed down to three choices.  In the photo below the left two pieces are red oak and the right one is maple.  The maple got eliminated as this is a pretty good size board and I wanted to save it for something larger than a single drawer.  That left the two oak pieces.  I decided on the far-left piece since it is the lighter of the two and I wanted the drawer to be light in color.

The process starts by cutting the front, back and sides to rough length and width.  From there the pieces are run through the thickness sander to remove planer scallops, flatten and get a smooth working face.  Here one of the pieces has just come out of the sander ready for the next step.

Since the drawer frame is ½” thick and the oak is 13/16” thick it has to be brought down.  There are three possible ways to do that.  Running it through the planer or sander converts over ¼” of the boards to chips and in my opinion is just a waste.  I prefer to cut close to final thickness and save the thinner pieces for something else.  Here is the bandsaw setup used to rip the oak down to about 3/32” oversize.

After ripping it's back to the thickness sander now loaded with 36 grit paper.  This photo shows the bandsawn faces ready to be smoothed out in the sander.  A couple of passes with the 36 grit gets rid of 90% of the roughness. 

Finer grits are used to quickly smooth the pieces ending up with ½” thick blanks.  The ½” is not absolutely critical but having it accurate will make things simpler when sizing the length and width of the drawer.  As you can see there are six pieces of wood here.  Four oak pieces for the drawer frame plus two others the same thicknessbut are pine.  They will be used as test subjects when I do machine setups.  Last, the pieces are ripped to width.  Cutting to length comes a bit later after the first set of dovetails are made.

This is the jig I use to cut dovetails.  The thing that sold me on this jig is the spacing of the dovetails is variable.  They can be adjusted for just about any height drawer and their spacing can vary within the joint’s width.  On the left set vertically into the jig is the test drawer side. 

Using this jig produces really good results but it does take some time to set up and adjust to make good fitting tight joints.  I will hit the high points of the setup to give an idea of how it operates.  Because of the close tolerances when making the joint the router bits need to be dead center in the router's bushing.  The bushing is centered using a steel rod which is ¼” on one end and ½” on the other with a taper where the two meet.  The router base is loosened the rod mounted in the router collet and the base adjusted so the taper is snug against the brass bushing centering it in line with the router shaft.  The base is tightened down and the rod removed.  The left photo shows the whole router and the right one shows a close-up of the centering rod.

The correct sized dovetail bit is installed in the router followed by setting the router on the jig between its guide fingers.  The depth of cut is adjusted to just remove a line that’s the thickness of the drawer frame plus just a smidge, here that’s a fat ½”.

Here the router is set on the jig, the test side piece clamped in place with everything ready to cut the dovetail tails.

This is a close-up of after the tails have been cut and the test side removed from the jig to show how the tails look.  Their depth is checked to see that they are just a little deep and adjusted as necessary.  That little extra allows for the tails to be sanded flush with the front since it’s easier to sand the tails down to the front versus sanding the whole front down to the tails.

Making the pins starts the same as the tails by centering the base on the router and installing the appropriate bit.  In my case it’s in a second router so if adjustments need to be made, I can make them independent of each other without having to go through the whole setup process.  Below is the setup for the second cut or the pins.

This is underside view after the cut is made.  There are a couple of differences from the tails.  The bit is straight cut and the jig guiding the router has been rotated 180 degrees to a different shape.  That shows up a little better in the bottom photo.

After a few tiny adjustments to the jig position and cutter depth here is what the finished assembled joint looks like.  A nice snug fit with the board ends just barely long.  The time required to do the setup to make just two joints for the front of the drawer is not a really efficient use of time.  If I were doing a whole set of drawers then that would be a different story as once it is set up the actual cutting goes really quick.  However, I made the joints with the jig because the results are better than if I hand cut them and I have plenty of time to work on the project.

Next Up – Drawer Part 2