You gotta have guts

While I felt like I was getting close to glue-up of the tool chest carcass, I almost forgot about all the guts of the project.  That's right, the web frames for the drawers.  While the double drawer blades creates a bit more work, the process is actually not that different from a regular chest.  The biggest challenge for me was just remembering that the web frames for each drawer have to be different sizes, since the drawers get gradually smaller from bottom to top.




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Doing the dovetail slide

Time to start doing the really fun joinery.  Ironically, some of the most challenging joinery on this case is likely never going to be seen.  The web frame, or internal guts are the old-school way to hold the drawers in place.  The web frames on this project get quite a bit more complicated with the stepped front, and require two different types of sliding dovetails.  This episode highlights the joinery for the top blades or drawer dividers.  They must account for the drawer runners and kickers that will slide along the case sides, so the dovetails need to be seated into the dados, adding a little additional level of complexity.




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A tale of two drawer sides

I think it's safe to say that cutting and fitting the dovetails for the drawers is the most challenging aspect of this entire project.  Not only is the drawer front curved, the curvature at each end of the drawer front is different, and the angles at which the drawer sides project back are completely different.  Oh yeah, and the drawer sides are also different lengths, since the inside of the case is narrower than the outside of the case due to the crescent front.  With all that going on, I would suggest this is a great example of where hand tool use is the much safer and more precise method of operation and that's exactly the route I took.  I think I used six different chisels, three different saws, and a shoulder plane for this operation (not to mention scores of measuring a marking tools).  even with all that, I'd challenge anyone to try to cut this drawer joinery with power tools and get joints this tight and square to the case.

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QuickTime Version (Right click to download)