Sapele Nightstands with Claro Walnut Panels

[edwarmr]

Hello everyone!

I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on for quite some time. I made a couple nightstands to match a bed frame I made a few years back. This was my most challenging project to date as I decided to do full-extension sliding dovetail drawer slides taking advantage of the repeatability and accuracy of the Incra LS Positioner. This was very difficult since I couldn’t find a whole lot of info on how to do this online. With a lot of planning though it worked out

It is made of quartersawn sapele, with claro walnut panels. The front panel on the door is curly claro walnut. The drawer and door have claro walnut cock beading as do the panels on the side and back (overkill I know  [eek]).

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The sliding drawers consist of three parts: a maple runner  on the inside of the cabinet, a sapele slide, and the maple drawer sides. There are two stopped grooves on the inside of the sapele slide that act as stops for the catches. The first catch is a #8 screw attached to the drawer sides in a strategic location. The drawer pulls out about halfway and the catch hits the stop in the groove. Then the slides come out of the cabinet until the second catch, which is a #8 screw in the runner on the cabinet side, hits its stop. This brings the drawer to full extension.

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The doors of the cabinet have bullet catches from Brusso along with Brusso offset knife hinges. Brusso makes beautiful (but expensive) brass hardware. The claro walnut panels received a dye stain made by Behlen (I believe Mohawk bought them out now) so the walnut color does not fade.

The tops were coated with danish oil to bring out the ribbons on the quartersawn sapele. They were then coated with Minwax poly along with the rest of the cabinet parts. The walnut panels were finished with gloss to bring out the amazing figure in the wood. The rest of the nightstands were coated in satin and rubbed out with steel wool, white scotch brite pads, and paste wax.

This was a really fun project I nearly finished last year until the cold MN weather prevented me from spraying finish I procrastinated this year but just finished before it got too cold.

Thanks for looking!
Michael

(Some for the craziness with these pictures. I reposted some because they are coming through sideways and now I have duplicates. I’m not sure why )

 

[Lincoln]

Very, very nice - fantastic work. I have an old article saved, from Fine Woodworking, detailing runners very similar to yours. Don't remember if they used sliding dovetails though.

 

[edwarmr]

Thanks so much I think I have that article too! It really helped me understand the concept behind it.

(Moderators: Could you merge this thread with the new one I created with the images fixed? Thanks!)

 

[Lincoln]

Did you use the LS for the drawer dovetails as well?

 

[edwarmr]

Did you use the LS for the drawer dovetails as well?

Yes I did. It took a bit to get it set up but once it was calibrated it made quick work of them. The sliding dovetails were very difficult and time consuming. I used Incra’s templates but I had to adapt my cut positions to make it work. I wrote down all the numbers from the Incra templates to stop at for each portion of the dovetail slides so I wouldn’t mess anything up. The nice thing is once you get the sliding dovetails tight you can use the micro adjustment on the LS Positioner to create a consistent amount of clearance for the slides to ride smoothly but also not have too much slop.