Installing the berries
Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
First, I don’t recommend scratching Line and Berry decoration on a finished drawer. Being able to rotate the panel easily gives one the ability to orient the scratcher for optimum ergonomics, to say nothing about the stress of scratching on a finished and fitted drawer. But, I wanted visiting granddaughter to assemble the drawers when she visited. The decoration is to be a surprise when I deliver the dresser. A practice panel relieved some of the stress. Like a lot of woodworking, practice makes doing this decoration easy.
I am proud of the invention shown in the picture. It is a template for making centers of the berry clusters. I prepared it by scratching 3 near tangent circles on clear plastic with a divider. It is used to orient the berry cluster and mark the centers for drilling.
Berries look best when their position relative to one another in the cluster is not rigidly uniform. On the other hand deciding where to locate the centers for drilling is difficult if done with no guidance. I invented the template to aid this step. The template is positioned at the end of the string segments to achieve an attractive orientation of the cluster and the centers pricked with the tool in the picture.
When it comes time to drill the holes with a spur bit I purposely locate the tip slightly off-center of the hole for some centers. Because of potential overlap one berry hole at a time is drilled and its berry installed before drilling the next hole
The berries are glued in and the whole affair planed smooth.