Sycamore Drawer Box Build Process

Return to main project page

A decision has been made: they're going to be equal size and I'll make the drawers when I get back home.

With that decided, I marked up the position of the central housing:

I flipped the vice over so it could act as a stop (when pulling the router plane towards the vice) and taped the two side pieces down. The tape was mostly there to protect the surface of the wood from any bits that might get caught under the router plane base (or any cast iron dust coming from the router plane), but I figured it wouldn't hurt to extend the tape a bit further and help stop the pieces sliding around.

I started each pocket at the front end with some chisels to give the router plane easier access:

Then started taking cuts with a 4 mm cutter (in the 5 mm slot) in the router plane:

It didn't take long to get down to the bottom. Once there, I cleaned up the front end (for which I'd left a little bit of wood for final clean up, just in case) with a 3 mm chisel.

With the housings done, I could plonk the shelf in the pocket and mark the finished depth, ready for trimming:

With that, it felt like everything was probably ready to be assembled, so I gave the inner surfaces a final light pass with a smoothing plane...

... assembled everything for gluing...

... and then squeezed it all together:

It was a bit tight (this is the first time I've ever glued a dovetail together without a full trial fit first), but went together with some persuasion. Hopefully that won't mean that the wood cracks later, but I'll jump off that bridge when I get to it! We'll be off out exploring tomorrow so I probably won't get to do any more on the box until Monday, but the next thing will be to plane the outer faces and see what it looks like. If all is well, it'll then get stored somewhere to wait for drawers to be made when I'm back in Blighty.

I am a hobbyist metalworker and woodworker. I work as an electronic design engineer and spend most of my working days in front of a computer so I enjoy having the opportunity to use my hands and make things in my spare time. I particularly enjoy making tools as I can then use them on other projects. This website showcases some of the things I've made.

This website is free and ad-free, but costs me money to run. If you'd like to support this site, please consider making a small donation or sending me a message to let me know what you liked or found useful.

Please do get in touch if you notice any issues on the site or can think of anything that would be a helpful addition or improvement.