Covering up the dovetails
Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
There was a time, a long time ago, that revealing how something was put together was not a fashion statement. Bending to current fashion I took more than normal care and planned on drawer divider "show dovetails" for the son-in-law chest of drawers. Nothing else I have built for the family had exposed drawer divider dovetails. Their appearance on this piece was met with disapproval. I was asked to cover them up.
Covering is accomplished with some rift grain facing pieces, about 1/8" thick. I plan on the front edge of case sides to be rift grain. Careful selection of the facing pieces results in a near invisible glue joint at the case side for I am gluing rift grain to rift grain. Rift grain on the front face makes an attractive border for a more or less figured drawer front.
The facing pieces are sized to overhang some. The overhang is quickly trimmed with a block plane, except for the part next to the intersections. For these remains I employed an impulse purchase I made some time ago when I could not resist the allure of Lee Valley Free Shipping (Evil Marketing!). One could trim these parts with a chisel but the chisel plane makes much shorter work of it.
Then I got in trouble. With two trimmings left to go on the inside overhangs I was called away from the work. When I returned some weeks later I forgot that one side of the bottom two drawer openings was not trimmed. I resumed fitting drawers, specifically the first drawer to be fit into an opening made 1/16" smaller by the untrimmed overhang of the facing piece on one side of the drawer opening. I'll spare the details but I spiraled into a terrible mess and faced building another drawer.
This episode points out a challenge that part time woodworkers face- loss of continuity. This is not the first serious screw up I have gotten into by forgetting where I left off on a project. I presume others may have faced similar situations, or maybe not if you suffer less distractions or have better memory.