I'm working on a Pennsylvania spice box that has 11 very small drawers, half blind dovetails in the front, through dovetails in the back.
Here are some pictures and a few thoughts from the drawer building that might be helpful for my fellow Neander's.
I'm certainly no expert but these are a few things that work for me that I wish someone would've told me when I was getting started building drawers. Certainly there are lots of different ways to skin a cat, but FWIW:
I am horrible at laying out dovetails -- something about the perfectly corresponding positive/negative space -- I always lose track if I'm laying out the tales or the pins.
* I am a tails first guy, -- not saying it's the “right” way, just the way I learned. I try and avoid math whenever possible -- a sector and dividers work for me to get even spacing with no dividing.
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* Once I've laid out the first set of tales and pins, I make up a note card that I use as a template to layout the rest of the tails - goodness knows I don't want to recalculate the dimensions for every drawer – my odds of screw up are near 100%.
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* After I've layed out one drawer, I build it all the way through, because odds are I screwed something up -- just like this one! The drawer back should be narrower and above the rabbits on the drawer sides so that the drawer bottom will fit under it. Better to learn I screwed up the layout on the first drawer, rather than after drawer 11 and end up doing them all over.
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* I always gang cut the tails no matter how thick the stock. Although I’m a big western saw fan for everything else, In stock this thin (1/4”), I like a Japanese dozuki rip filed saw. Very small kerf- fast and very accurate.
* For marking the pins from the tails,I use this set up;
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the square is just for illustration purposes- you can eyeball the drawer front/back to make sure it’s vertical in the vice. The benchmark 90 degree to the vice face is a security blanket to ensure I layout all the joints in a single plane. I know lining up the layout lines should be enough to maintain a straight drawer, but with small drawers like this all done neander sometimes all the components aren’t exactly straight, square and consistent thickness.
* Once the pins are marked I always shade the waste area to make sure I’m cutting to the correct side of the line. I don’t draw vertical lines for the pins- you might be surprised how accurate your eye is at determining straight up and down. I do darken with a pencil the baseline made by the cutting gauge to make it easier to stop the cut on the baseline ( IMHO better too short here than too long).
Here are some pics of the drawer components all cut out and what I'm going for. Note the drawer front is tapered front to back on all four sides so it fits the drawer pocket -- for me, that's step one in the drawer building process -- (I guess I forgot to mention that).
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continued below
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pics from the "drawer factory"- continued
