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Woodworking in America at Valley Forge: Making and fitting drawers, with Mario Rodriguez

October 23, 2009 By Al Navas

Download this episode in Quicktime format
(In Windows, right-click on link above, then | Save Link As…)
Duration: 19:34 minutes

You can read a short description of the work by Mario Rodriguez at the Philadelphia Furniture Workshop web page, and at FineWoodworking.com.

Making drawers, and fitting them well, separates a good piece from a great workpiece. As a result, it behooves the craftsman to learn how make drawers properly. Mario used a case containing two drawers to illustrate differences in fitting options.

Included in this session you will the following: milling the wood, letting it “rest” to acclimate to the shop environment, milling to final dimensions for a perfect drawer front fit, suitable material thickness, layout of the dovetails, fitting the bottoms, hardwood bottoms and grain orientation, drawer slips to beef up the thickness of the sides, drawer web with dust cover, and installation and sizing of drawer stops.

Mario ended the session with a verbal description of the technique he uses to cut and fit the dovetails by hand.

Although I edited the 90-minute session to less than 20 minutes, I hope you will find all the critical information to properly make and fit drawers in your next masterpiece.

If you ever have a chance, make the time to attend one of the Woodworking in America conferences. I know you will likely learn something new, will meet new people, and will enjoy the Marketplace and the terrific tool makers!

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——  Al Navas

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Related posts:
More Woodworking in America posts on this blog.

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Filed Under: Blog, Conference, Dovetails, Joinery, Layout, Valley Forge, Video, Woodworking in America, furniture Tagged With: Conference, Design, drawer, drawers, fitting, furniture, Mario Rodriguez, Valley Forge, Woodworking in America

A very old drawer, in a very old chest of drawers

October 11, 2009 By Al Navas

We are finally home, after 3,600 miles on the road in two weeks. Sandy and I traveled to Valley Forge, PA, to attend the Woodworking in America conference. Following the conference we drove into the Western part of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, a region commonly referred to as New England, for all readers not in the United States.

And now the job of cataloging photos of our trip begins, to make some order of the conference, the miles, the gorgeous views, and the wonderful people along the way.

As I started the job of cataloging the photos, I came across this photo of a drawer in an old cabinet from the 1800s. It is one of 8 drawers in an old cabinet at the Old Woodshed, in Intercourse, PA – I avoided flash, and used only very dim available light:

drawer-old-woodshed-3

I cannot find any reference to a similar drawer – I don’t have the resources, or the knowledge to find the information quickly, as I would like to try this look in some test drawers. And searching the Internet has netted exactly zero results.

I love the look of this joinery, but I am having trouble deciding whether this is just a variation of a rabetted side on the drawer front. Also, since every part of the joint is pinned/pegged, are the pegs likely the main fasteners, or are they mostly decoration? Are the pegs likely to be glued in place? And how is this joint made? I can see myself today making the half-rounds using a Forstner bit on the edge of the drawer front, but how would you make the perfectly-matching contour on the sides? Was this all made by hand?

I look forward to some enlightenment from readers who might know the answers to my questions.

Update, and acknowledgments:
I received input from Glen Huey at Popular Woodworking, and from Asa Christiana at FineWoodworking.com. The bottom line: This joint is called a “scalloped dovetail” or, more precisely, the Knapp joint. You will find additional information on this joint here and here. I also thank Chuck Bender, of Acanthus Workshop, LLC, for additional information; you can read his feedback in the Comments to this article. Once I had the name of the joint, I searched and found the following jig to make this joint (the image is from the Woodworkers Supply web site; note that Woodworkers Supply calls this by a different name, the “pin and crescent joint”):


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Filed Under: Blog, Dovetails, Joinery, furniture Tagged With: chest, Dovetails, drawer, old

SketchUp 7 to design furniture, and TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio 6 for screen capture

September 8, 2009 By Al Navas

Download this episode in Quicktime format
Duration: 3 mins., 4 sec.

Baby steps.

As I write this I am reminded of Zoe Maria, our #6 granddaughter. She will have her first birthday in two weeks. But two weeks ago she started walking, one step at a time, then two, and now will go all the way across the living room before throwing herself on the floor; or rushing to catch my leg before she throws herself on the floor. And so it is for me with both SketchUp and Camtasia Studio.

What I show in this video is old hat to those of you who use SketchUp. However, every now and then I share with you something new in the shop – this time I show off what I did with SketchUp 7, and a short screen capture I did with TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio version 6. I am a newbie with both of these programs, but I feel like I have accomplished a lot, just by getting this far.

I owe thanks to Bob Lang for convincing me to give give SketchUp a try one more time. I attended his SketchUp session during Woodworking in America in St Charles, Ill. a few weeks ago. In 90 minutes Bob showed me – no, he proved to me – that I really must use this nifty program to design furniture. Bob did magic on the screen when he showed the audience how to make a little table, complete with all the joinery! Those of you who have read my blog for a while might remember I have used eCabinet Systems software to design cabinets. But that program mainly uses plywood, using nesting and CNC machines; designing with solid woods requires a little harder work.

As I found a little time to relax over the weekend, I fired up SketchUp and launched Bob’s 21st century workbench model, which I downloaded from the Popular Woodworking area of Google’s 3D Warehouse. And, while playing with the 3D model, it struck me that I should also try my brand-new Camtasia Studio, version 6.

Although I made several mistakes in this video, I share with you two things: First, even though I know very little about both SketchUp and Camtasia Studio, I was still able to produce a short video! And second, it is OK to make errors, for we all learn from the experience of others. The best thing to come out of this: In a few weeks I will chuckle when I watch this video again, for I will realize I probably should have waited until I had more experience under my belt.

I will use this particular video as a reminder of two things:

  1. Where I was on the learning curve with both program on September 2009, and;
  2. That, no matter what, using the programs on a regular basis will make me better. Practice makes better, or something like that. I will be able to see my own progress!

Enough, then, and on with the show. Please let me have your feedback and let me know what you think, either via regular e-mail to sandal_woods@bbwi.net, or via the e-mail tab on the menu for the blog. It is OK if you think I should just give up on this effort. But I won’t reject nice, kind words of encouragement.

My special thanks to Betsy Weber, TechSmith’s Chief Evangelist, for her generous support aimed at furthering the video enhancement of my blog entries. If you are interested in screen capture for your computer, I suggest you read her wonderful blog, The Visual Lounge, and also the TechSmith web page, to learn about their terrific products.

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Filed Under: 3D, Blog, Camtasia Studio, SketchUp, furniture Tagged With: 3D, Bob Lang, Camtasia Studio, Design, furniture, screen capture, SketchUp