After the drawer blades have been prepared, we then need to perform a fair amount of jointery on the case sides. Here is a quick overview of the jointery involved:
- bottom of the case is half blind dovetailed to the bottom of the case sides (completed in case bottom)
- bottom drawer blade is dovetailed separately to the bottom of the case (completed in case bottom)
- the case sides are dado’ed to received the web frame for each of the three upper drawers
- upper three drawer blades are sliding dovetailed into the case front
- rear drawer blades are sliding dovetailed to the rear of the case side (not shown)
- front rail is half blind dovetailed to the top of the case
- two upper case stretcher are half blind dovetailed to the top of the case
Since there is so much going on with the case jointery we will divide this post into three parts
- case bottom – previous article
- case middle – this article
- case top – next article
3) We see the case sides receiving a 1/2″ wide dado, this dado will house the web frame that contains the drawer runners, center drawer runner, dust panels and the front sub-blade.
Completed dado’s
4) A router is used to cut the sliding dovetail sockets for the three drawer blades, first we use a smaller straight bit to cut clearance for the dovetail bit..
Finally the dovetail socket is cut with a dovetail bit
The drawer blades have been machined with the same dovetail bit used to cut the dovetail socket, here we see one of the four miter’s being cut on the case drawer blades. The miter’s are cut with a 45 degree block and a very sharp chisel.
A chisel and the 45 degree block is used to cut the miter’s on each side of the front case drawer blade sliding dovetails..
