Finally done! I’m pretty excited right now. This started in the summer when the previous occupants were kind enough to leave us some furniture. The only bad part was they were really cheap dressers, but good for a young couple with no money.
This dresser was a huge series of firsts for me.
So I bought from a sawyer close by some New Jersey cherry and ambrosia maple wood. And I made this dresser. The top is a giant piece of 20 inch wide ambrosia maple and ambrosia maple drawer fronts. The sides of the dresser are cherry. The insides of the drawers are poplar that Home Depot was selling as “hobby wood” for really cheap. I used Baltic birch ply for the bottoms of the drawers and back of the dresser. The handles are made from a spalted maple turning blank. (I don’t turn, I wish I did, but it sure worked for handles).
The finish is first a coat of 3:2 denatured alcohol to zinssers dewaxed shellac, then colonial maple min wax stain on the case of the dresser and the handles. The drawer insides is shellac only. The whole dresser and drawer fronts is three coats of waterlox (never used that before either). The waterlox is stunning! I can see why you guys like it so much. I can say that this is the first time that I am happy withy the finish.
I didn’t use drawer glides. They rest on a web frame that is made with12 mortise and tenons (another thing I really never did before). The tenons are glued in the front of the runners but not in the back for wood movement. The drawers are on that slippery tape and I can say from this that it works incredibly (another first).
The dovetails….....oh the dovetails. I cut a total of 96 hand cut dovetails in this dresser!!!!!!!! 30 of them are half blind (something of which I have never done before). The rest are through dovetails on the top and bottom and the back of the drawers. I started to get a little more confidant at around number 60 or so. I also have 8 sliding dovetails in the case for the front of the runners cut with my router (and another first).
Thanks to those of you who kindly answered my questions with your experienced responses and of course to the little beetles and fungus that make the lines in the different kinds of maple.
My beautiful little wife is very happy. By the way we are 5 months pregnant….......with twins! And the our first. So if your the praying kind, I could really use it.
Thanks for looking.