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Hi I'm Paul-Marcel
So we're getting back to the vanity series. I took a little diversion there with doing the dovetail series
but I thought that was kinda
a good way for me get the dovetail drawers put together but also
hopefully you found something interesting in that series
so what we're going to do today... we're gonna get the guides setup and get all these ready to go so that we
can
get moving on doing the application
of the sculpted front
so i just spent a little bit of time
fitting all these drawers so I...
planed all the tops and bottoms. Planed the bottoms to get rid of all the machine marks that might have been on there
so they run really smoothly
and then of course cleaning up the tops and getting them to the right thickness. So I had made all these
taller than they needed to be for their opening so that I could get these down to being a really
nice tight fit.
Now when you're doing these you go and round these little backs here to make it easier to put in
because
what i have as drawer runners are a little higher than the rail so this makes it a little bit easier to put in
then
of course I rounded these pretty nicely so there wouldn't be any sharp edges on it
took care of rounding all the other parts that needed it. Now if you're doing drawers like this,
because there's an applied front, don't round this edge here or this edged down
here because you're going to be applying a front to it. In fact don't even do these outside edges
here
if you're tempted to do so
because you gonna want that to be a very clean edge
that glues up.
So the next step of this is to apply the drawer guides and then also some drawer stops.
Now I've started applying some finish to these drawers so they are
starting to look a little bit nicer although i need to uh... sand it down
and go for the final coat.
These drawers here, the problem is that without a guide, you can see that they are just going to slide side to side.
And also, of course, they can rack when they go in so
actually sometimes it is very difficult when it starts to rack, it will just bind up on you.
Now with the guides that are going to be on the inside... all a guide is...
I took some scraps of Mahogany
that are already thin enough to fit
underneath this drawer. So there's a little bit of clearance
underneath
where the panel will go
so these can be
fixed to our runners
in such a way that when this slides back, it is being guided exactly.
There's not going to be any chance for it to bind.
So that's what we're gonna be placing. Each one of these strips
uh... is basically going to be for one drawer when I cut it in half because I
don't need to be that long.
What we're also gonna want is we need something to stop the drawer.
Right now I could continue to push this in and it would go all the way in.
So what I did is I cut some little chicklets. These are just some chicklets of, again, some Mahogany scrap.
Now
what we're going to do...
These are going to be placed here on the inside so it's going to be attached right
there
in such a place that when we push this drawer in, it's going to butt up against this and stop.
Now it has two functions.
The one function is of course preventing this from going too far so it's going
to help set the depth of the drawer so that this thing can stop dead flush to the front
which is what we want when we do the application of the front.
But also we're going to be pushing this all the way to the outside.
So in a way, it's going to affix the position of this drawer so it can't slide
side to side.
Now normally that means it could be a
little tight side when you insert it or remove it
or even just plain use it, but you'll see that we're going to do some modifications to the
drawer after we do the guides and the stops that's gonna fix all that and make it really
nice to use.
Now the way I'm going to be attaching these is I'm actually just going to use
a nail gun.
I'm going to put first the chicklets in and then afterwards what we're going to do is, while I
have the drawer open without the bottom on it,
I'll slide one of these Mahogany strips up on each side
all the way up until it abuts against this chicklet that's used for the drawer
stop
and then I'll fire one nail
into the front
and then I'm going to take this drawer out, I'll put the plywood base into it so that we can make
sure that it doesn't change any dimensions after you put the ply in
sliding back in until it
hits these stops and then from the back
I can rotate this until it's touching the drawer.
At that point I can shoot a couple nails back here to lock it into place.
One thing I wanted to mention about these chicklets
is that the grain
in this chicklet is going vertically like this. So the way I'm going to want to put it in
here is that I want the grain to go
side to side
uh... the reason for that is
I want it so that when the drawer hits it
that it's pushing the nails... it's pushing against the nail so it's not going to split.
If I were to do it with the grain going front to back and I put the nail in,
then each time it gets hit
it's almost like it's gonna be prying the grain open
so it can actually break open this little chicklet. So it is a lot easier just to put
two nails in the front when we have it sideways.
It'll also tend to wear better because the side is the end grain. It's a heck of a lot
more description than it is to just plain do it so I'm going to do this and you can watch.
so at this point we can see
the guide is in there. There's the guide
So after I shot it with some nails just to hold while
the drawer was in place, then I took the drawer out
and shot a few more so this thing doesn't wiggle.
And of course these are in place up front and I added a few extra shots there just to make
sure since I had only put two to lock them into place.
Now the thing is is the drawer is really tight. Of course because I had it
right up to the edge so
sliding it in and out... this isn't waxed yet, but still, sliding it in and out
is a little bit on the tricky side.
So what we are going to do now
is now that that's been size perfectly this part here
up near the front
where the
little square
is located
and that stop is right up against the side so I'm going to take some swipes from about here over
with the plane
on both sides so what that's going to mean is that even though this was made snug
up to this edge, I'm allowing for a little bit of extra space
so it'll make it easier to slide in and out
but then up here just when you push that drawer in
and you have that last inch
it's going to snug up against the stop blocks.
It's going to center it and place it just perfectly.
This is a trick I picked up from
Charles Neil; it's fantastic. If you happen to be a member of his guild,
his very first guild build was a corner cabinet.
If you were to look at it's 12th episode...
just that
right there is a whole lesson in drawers.
So now that I planed away a little on the inside, now I also happened to have a little of a high spot here
so I took care of that.
I didn't notice it when I was first doing it.
Now this hasn't been waxed yet either.
When you push it all the way in
it's right where I want it for that front.