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Cherry Dresser

March 8th, 2009 in The Gallery     
Michael666 Michael666, member
thumbs up 23 users recommend
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I just finished this cherry dresser.  The main unit is made from cherry with a lot of defects and character, probably why it cost about a dollar a board foot.  Its a lot of extra work but it yields a beautiful piece.  The internal structure is poplar.

The drawer sides are soft maple and the pins in the posts are ebony.  The knobs are cherry, turned on a metal lathe and ebonized with Solar lux NGR stain.  Finish on the knobs is 2 seal coats of 1 lb cut shellac and 2 coats of Minwax Wipe on Poly Satin.  Finish on the cherry case is 1 coat on Minwax Antique oil and 2-4 coats of Minwax Wipe on Poly Gloss which was buffed or scuffed to a satin finish.  The inner drawer surfaces are 1 coat of 2 lb cut ultra blond shellac.  Everything listed here got a coat of wax.

 

This dresser features my first hand cut dovetails! ... well sort of.  The pins were cut using a router and a homemade template, the tails were cut by hand and the pins were squared up with a chisel.  The through dovetails on the rear of the drawer(not shown) were cut using a commercial jig.

I cannot claim this as a totally independent design.  This dresser is inspired by a much larger commercial piece that I found on the internet.  I reduced its size, changed other dimensions and added some detail and changed the materials.  I used Sketchup 6 and 7 to flesh out the design.


Design or Plan used: My own design - Cherry dresser in Sketchup format
posted in: The Gallery, dovetails, frame and panel, chest of drawers, cherry, maple, tenons, arts and crafts, shellac, varnish, oil, ebony
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Comments (5)

Michael666 writes: If you download and install Google Sketchup (its free), you can load the file I've made available (in the link on this page) ... "Cherry dresser in Sketchup format" into the program and get all of the dimensions I used to build it.
Posted: 8:22 pm on May 23rd
John_Como writes: I like the proportions! Can you tell me the dimensions? Posted: 8:40 am on May 18th
ejstefl writes: That would be great! Thank you so much. Again, great job, I just love the design. Posted: 8:07 am on March 11th
Michael666 writes: Sure, NP. I just need to clean it up a bit. Give me a few days. Posted: 2:37 pm on March 10th
ejstefl writes: Very, very nice!! Any chance you would share your sketchup model? Posted: 8:39 am on March 10th
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