Dressing table

[KorDes]

My wife has asked me to make her a dressing table since the one she was borrowing belonged to my sister and she wanted it back for her exchange students. Please excuse me if I have missed some parts, I sometimes get carried away with making things that I forget to take picks.

The cabinet and drawers are going to be made of Pacific Rimu and the top and legs are going to be Pink Birch(maybe depending if they go together)

Division boards straight and squared and ready for gluing.

Division glued and clamped. I use some clamping jigs I made up so the boards line up and stay flat.

End boards straightened and prepared for jointing

Here are the 2 ends glued up after dressing the edges on the jointer

Thats all for today.

 

[Michael Kellough]

Nice start!

How about some pictures and info on that SPIDA SAW?

 

[KorDes]

Thanks Michael, I'll try to get some piks of the saw tomorrow, got carried away with working on the dresser, I forgot about the saw.

I cleaned up the panels and cut them to size

Rails all ready to roll, just needs sanding.

Drilled the domino holes in the panels. Domino holes go right through the division.

After that the ends are sanded and arised and sanded up the rails as well. Then the homemade dominos are glued into the end. ready for assembly

The carcase assembled. The 90mm rails are screwed onto the division.

All I got done for today.

 

[Bill Wyko]

Looks to be comming along nicely. I only see about an hour in domino work. Must be a short work day. JK ;D Gotta love that lil tool, huh.

 

[KorDes]

Day 3

Had to pay the bills so this ment taking the misses to get some money and then take her shopping before shes goes to work. Plus being friday, went and had a few cold ones at my mates shop. Managed to get some work in between things.

Made some hardwood runners for drawers and stapled those on. They should last a while. Using metal runners did cross my mind but decided to go with wooden runners to optimise drawer size. Using metal runners would have ment losing about 25mm in the length of the drawers. Dont sound like much, but its also personal choice.
Routered a 4mmx10mm rebate in the back of the carcase to accept the back. Silly me got so amped about the domino I forgot to machine the rebate before I marked out my holes for the dominos. I only realised my hastey mistake after i got to the last set of dominos i had to drill in the ends. Was originally going to use a 4mm thick hardwood ply, but decided to use some 6mm I had lying around and was just large enough to get the back out of.

Decided to go with pink birch for the top and legs, as I got a 250x25x5m and a 125x55x4m boards form a reject hardwood packet I scored of an online auction for $31. Had  nice selection of hardwoods of all sizes and varieties and these two boards came out really nice. Got lucky I guess. I only have an 8" jointer so had to flatten and straighten the boards for the tops the old fashioned way with my smoothing plane. I have 2 planes, the smoothing one and a block plane. When I did my apprenticeship we had nice big machines to do all the hardwork.

Got me a wixey digital angle box a while ago to set angles on my tablesaw. Read a thread a while ago about checking twist on a timber mill so you dont end up slabbing twisted slabs. The poster used such a device to check his chainsaw mill rails. So I used mine to check for twist all the way down the board. Worked like a charm and the boards came out flat and straight after i put it through the thicknesser.

Top glued up after skipping it through the thicknesser to get maximum thickness out of the board. Ended up with 23mm, not bad considering it was slightly bowed and rough sawn.

Also got the legs machined up too. Will hopefully get then shaped up tomorrow before I have to go to a wedding reception.

 

[Matthew Schenker]

KorDes,
This is great man!  Keep it going!
Matthew

 

[KorDes]

Thanks Mathew.

Days 4, 5 and 6

Didnt get alot done over the weekend, had a wedding on saturday and looked after my little girl on sunday. But I did manage to get the design of the legs just right with a little bit of help from the woodwork forums.

The final design of the legs. This leg and apron are just test pieces out of pine to see if they worked. Didnt want to stuff up the good legs.

Happy with my final design, I first drilled domino holes for the apron and then I routed the legs to shape with the template and a table mounted router.

For the drawer fronts I got some 100x50 rimu, resawed it in half on the bandsaw and bookmatched them and glued them together. This will get me 4 sets of matching drawers

.

While they were drying I cut out my drawer sides and backs. I'm just using some pine that I got for next to nothing and that they are 190mm wide so I dont have to go joining wood together to get the width I wanted for my drawer sides. Here they are ready for machining which I will do tomorrow because it was dark by then and didnt want to disturb the neighbours with the thicknesser going full bore.

So I thought I'd cut and shape my top. Routered a table top mould on the underside and ends of the top with the OF2000. Thats a beast of a router and ate through the timber like it was butter, even with such a big cutter. Next I cut a curve on the front with the jigsaw and cleaned it up with a block plane and sandpaper

I start my new job tomorrow, so I wont be able to get as much done. It was a good 8 month break of helping look after my daughter, and know trying to get back into the rythm of a daily grind is gona get abit of getting used to again. Should be fun.

 

[poto]

Hey Kordes - thanks for walking us through your project and your thinking/design. I'm looking forward to seeing how the story turns out.

And in particular, good luck in your new job. It'll be quite a change after 8 months off. I hope it goes really well for you.

Poto

 

[KorDes]

Sorry for the lack of updates, been busy with my new job and running around to sort stuff out for my baby girls first birthday in 2 weeks.

So far I have oiled the carcase and stained the top/legs with a jarrah stain. I will be spraying a couple of coats of lacquer once the whole unit is finished. Screwed in tops and legs ready for the drawers.

Also got the drawers machined up and dovetailed. Will put those together tomorrow after work (hopefully)

Need to finish this before the my baby girls bday to free up some room in the garage. I've also got to build the new deck ready for my baby girls bday too, so hopefully this weekend will be fine enough to concrete in the posts.

 

[robtonya]

Its turning out great! I know its hard to get stuff done watching after the little ones, but you seem to be moving along at a good pace. Keep up the good work.

 

[KorDes]

Okay its been a while, been very busy with ceremonies going on at the Cambodian temple, my Mums a devout buddhist and I have to drive her to the temple and back. And with work, bbqs, and doing things, has left me with very little time to work on the dresser.

So here is an update with what I've managed to do this week.

Here I am in the process of sanding up the drawers, sanding the oval recesses and wax the drawer sides for smoother sliding. The oval recess was made with a template, of2000 router and a big cove shaped router bit that I borrowed from work (lucky me, saved me from having to buy one)

After sanding the drawers gave them a coat of finishing oil, this brings out the grain before I spray lacquer on top. Because the drawerfronts are from 100x50 and bookmatched, the light reflecting of the grain orientation makes it look like theres a light and dark timber used. Kinda like when you cut a piece of timber, one way you look at its dark and turn it the other way its light.

I was wondering how I could do the handles, originally I thought a strip of wood say a  40x20 sized piece running through the oval, but couldnt figure a way to implement it in a pleasing way. Then had a thought of using contrasting timbers and decided to laminate 2mm strips, 3 light timbers sorrounded by 2 darker ones. Had to crank the living daylights out of my vice just to get the strips together in between the curved blocks. Now I just have to figure out a secure way of fixing them to the drawer fronts.

Its nearly finished, hopefully get a couple of coats of lacquer on it after work tomorrow.

 

[KorDes]

Its finally finished. The top and legs are stained a western red jarrah color and the carcase/drawers were coated with a finishing oil, and then the whole dresser was sprayed with 3 coats of lacquer. The handles were finished seperately with polyurethane and just screwed on.

 

[Overtime]

Wow that's beautiful, very nice design.

The handle / pulls look excellent and appear to be well worth the effort and time to create.

 

[nickao]

SWEEET!

 

[CharlesWilson]

Gorgeous!

 

[Nespresso]

Beautiful piece.  I'm starting on a key board stand.  Already feel like tossing in the towel after seeing your piece.  Outstanding work.

 

[EricL]

Absolutely awesome!  Beautiful craftsmanship.  I really like the handles and the recess behind them.

 

[KorDes]

Thanks everyone for your kind words. My wife loves it, so I must be doing something right

 

[jaegerhund]

Excellent!!

Justin

 

[hissatsu]

Beautiful dresser. I really like the pulls. Congrats.