Afixing Trim to A Solid Wood Chest

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11-23-2014, 5:12 PM
Peter Keen

Afixing Trim to A Solid Wood Chest

Hi,

My next build is a copy of Glen Huey's "Line and Berry Chest of Drawers" that was featured in Popular Woodworking November 2010. Here is a photo of Glen Huey's finished product. Glen Huey's was reproduction of an 18th Century Chest. While I want to reproduce the exterior, I prefer to change things that have proven to be weak. so I'll be making a couple of changes internally (web-frame instead of nailed runners), and a plywood reinforced panel in the middle to add rigidity and strength, to resist warping of the solid wood end panels). I can re-design these without difficulty, but I'm stuck on one change.

The sides and bottom are dovetailed to each other (a strength feature I want to reproduce). The dovetails are covered by a glued and pin-nailed trim, which is directly above the base shown in the photograph below. That trim is duplicated at the top of the chest, immediately below the top.

Other furniture from that era has shown a variety of splits or problems: with the trip pieces visibly cracking near their joins at the front, or gaps opening up, or falling off over the years as the glue and nail bond between the trim and case sides. The reason for these problems is the grain on the side of the case runs vertically - with expansion going from front to back of the case. The trim piece grain runs horizontally, so really won't expand. The result is tension between the trim and case side.

I want to stay true to this design (so don't want exposed dovetails), as I like the design. So what ideas are there for attaching the trim, while avoiding the problems?

http://cdn.fwmedia.com/media/catalog...rawers_500.jpg
11-23-2014, 6:03 PM
Sam Murdoch

I would think that the bottom trim would be best attached to the base not the case. The top trim detail has bedeviled me too and my solution was to completely pre finish it - attach the sides pieces to the front before attaching to the cabinet to be certain that the front miters are securely glued and pinned to each other - then the trim assembly fastened to the cabinet with the front piece carrying most of the load while the 2 side pieces are pinned once (at the most twice) to the cabinet sides.

I will watch this post for better and likely, more correct answers.
11-23-2014, 6:52 PM
Kent A Bathurst

Two words:

Sliding dovetails.
11-23-2014, 6:56 PM
Peter Keen

Quote:

I would think that the bottom trim would be best attached to the base not the case.

That could work, but the trim has to cover the dovetails on the sides.

Quote:

Sliding dovetails.

How small can sliding dovetails be made?
11-23-2014, 10:37 PM
Sam Murdoch

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Keen

That could work, but the trim has to cover the dovetails on the sides.

How small can sliding dovetails be made?

I was saying that the trim should be attached on top of the base not to the face of the base and in this way would hide the carcass dovetails.

Without a few closeups I can only surmise. It appears in the photo that the base is a separate structure on which the cabinet sits and that it projects past the sides and face of the cabinetry above.

Hard to know what if any joinery is possible for attaching the trim without having a better idea of the dimensions involved. I'm not familiar with the actual piece. Trying to be helpful without all the info and as we know one should not assume...
11-24-2014, 11:01 AM
Jamie Buxton

Like you, I'm willing to abandon period construction approaches to get better structure. I use dowels to join a lumber side to a lumber top. I made my own simple doweling template. It looks like a shelf-pin jig: a line of holes in a piece of plywood. If you keep one end of the jig to the rear of the furniture, you can flip the template so that any inaccuracies in the hole spacing are identical in the top and the side. I bore 3/8" diameter holes with a plunge router equipped with a 1/2" diameter template guide. My template can put a dowel every 1 1/2", which is a lot of glue surface area.

The big reason to use this method of attaching the side and the top is that the whole end of the top is available to do anything you want. You can cut the molding profile right on the end of the top. As a bonus, you get a seamless top, not one with a cross-grain seam where the molding attaches (somehow) to the rest of the top.