Monday 21 October 2013

Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 6 - The Drawers

One of my favourite parts of wood working is cutting dovetails. I'm not going to do a tutorial on dovetailing as there are many on the internet. The cabinet has three drawers and I decided to cut blind dovetails on the front and through dovetails on the back of each drawer. This was 16 on each drawer. I broke out some cool jazz and set to making them.
Terry's dovetailing kit

I generally find a combination of the following tools make dovetailing a little easier.
  • Wheel marker gauge - a traditional one is just as good.
  • Engineers square
  • 0.5 mm mechanical pencil
  • Dovetail saw
  • Rule - I love the Incra Precision T-rule as shown in the picture. If you want one have a look here
  • LH and RH Skew chisels
  • 1/4" to 3/4" bench chisels - if you have a fish tail chisel so much better
  • Fret saw
  • Mallet - a brass one is a luxury but not essential
  • Good light source.
  • A good bench with bench dogs, a vice and a bench-hook
I don't bother with the fret saw any more and use my bandsaw to cut out the waste.

Good light is essential.
Here are the two Ikea worklights I recently got
on a recommendation from
Chris Schwarz


I like cutting blind dovetails
using my deep bench-hook.

Cutting a knife wall by undercutting
with a chisel

Another knife wall

Finished front, rear and sides.
Only another 8 more to do!


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