You put the drawer runner and kicker in parallel to each other and the same distance apart, where possible.
You cut the drawer front to neatly (no discernable gap) fit in the opening.
You cut the drawer back identical to the drawer front.
You cut the drawer sides, originally about 1 inch long and plane them to accurately fit the gap between the runner and the kicker
Then cut the front end dovetail - the 1 inch extra length is in case you make a mistake in the tails.
You then trim the drawer sides to length and cut the rear dovetails.
Glue the drawer together, dry it in place within the carcase, just leaving the front about proud so that you don't glue the drawer front into the carcase with the excess glue.
Fit the drawer, and then the bottom. Remove the minimum amount of wood.
>What is the advantage again to making drawers that are so tight? I have furniture that is over 150 years old and they never had drawers made like this and the drawers still work fine.....
Have to confess it sounds like a sales gimick either to sell furniture...or more likely instructional CDs .....Todd
>I am going to buy your drawer DVD, but I also want to buy the M/T and Peters DVD's. When will Tom LN carry the other new DVD's? I would like to order them all at once, but I don't see them on Tom's website. Hmmm, maybe I should call Maine, but I thought I'd ask you first.
>Since you're here, I have a couple of questions for you:
1) If it's so important to have perfectly flat carcase sides, why not do that before glue up? Sure is a lot easier than planing/sanding inside the drawer mounts/dust panels. Or is there something about the M&T attachment that tends to pull the carcase out of flat?
2) Why use a huge plane like the LN 10-1/4 rebate to flatten the carcase side? Seems like more trouble than it's worth inside such a constrained space, even with the adjustable tote and knob.
>No, each piece would need to be shipped with a master cabinetmaker. Of course, a real master cabinetmaker, as opposed to someone hyping his "artistic" abilities and performing parlor tricks, would be skilled enough to know the humidity in his shop at the time he built the piece, the expected worst case humidity in his client's home or museum, the coefficients of expansion and equilibrium moisture content of the woods he used to build the piece, and would measure the tolerences to the thousandth of an inch and be prepared to defend his parameters against the absurd critiques of the stuffed shirts.
In general, as skilled cabinetmakers, every time we hear someone mention a "piston fit drawer", we can just laugh out loud at the ignorance and impracticality of their methods. Ask them, in front of their audience, why they would use anything other than quartersawn teak for their construction, or ask them Alternately, we can just ask them if they have guaranteed that the climate of the piece's ultimate resting place will be completely controlled and the humidity will never rise above the conditions under which the piece was constructed.
Note also that the "piston fit" effect is at least as dependent on how airtight the cabinet is made, on the volume of the drawer and on how quickly you open and close it, as it is on the tolerences of the drawer fit. It also depends on what you are selling and to whom you are trying to sell it.
>Very well fitted drawers are a sales gimmick? Why, next, they will be making the surfaces smooth just to sell those bits of silly furniture! After all, it doesn't add to the function.
>You probably didn't mean it but I actually see the two things as being very simular , attempting to have your work "perfect" instead of having your work looking like what it is....hand made. Personaly to me the attraction of hand made work is that it is...well hand made and I think should look so. If I wanted "perfection" with air tight "piston fit Drawers" and perfectly smooth finishes I think machine made plastics would probably be a better choice .
....and again what is the advantages of a "piston fit drawer"?.....Todd
>In the midst of the fitting part of this CD, the drawer to be fitted was near perfect and two swipes with the plane made it so. It was mentioned that the plane was taking 0.001 shavings. Hence, a reasonable estimate of the size tolerance is 0.002", or there abouts. Whatever, the tolerences are in the neighborhood of 0.00X" not 1/32 like I have observed on the very limited number of antique pieces I have studied. So my question is whether this tighter tolerance is practical, not just for a season of humidity variance, but 100+ years of stress that will deform the case and/or drawer, more or less.
Antiques provide 100+ year data on what is practical. So, the answer to this question can be found in the study of antiques, something that I have little opportunity to do, living where I do on the cultural frontier.
For our furniture to survive ( by "our" I mean those of us that will never be famous furniture makers), for the most part it must be and remain functional. It will be in the 3rd generation where it will likely become cherished or tossed. You all know how difficult it is to find people to properly repair antiques today; imagine the situation 100 years from now. By the 3rd generation the new owners will not have a sentimental attachments to its maker and they will decide a piece's fate based on its utility to them.
18th century cabinet makers certainly had the skill to make piston fit drawers. But, did they? If people with the resources to study old pieces find that the best furniture of that day was made with drawers of such tolerances, then today's best cabinet makers should strive for this fit. I hope these posts inspire someone to get the answer.
>I've been wondering if anyone would point out that the air-tightness of the case is probably more important than the drawer clearance, though perhaps I'm pushing the point further than you did. My kitchen cabinets in Tucson had this effect as they were full boxes with inset doors rather than overlay. Impossible to slam, but with a 10cent reveal (don't know the thickness of a dime offhand), necessary to keep them from swelling shut in the summer. Though I've never tried the same with a drawer, I'd suggest that ensuring the only escape path for the displaced air is through the reveal would be more successful than an impractically tight drawer (not to take anything away from the skill required to produce such a drawer- its certainly beyond what I can do).
>Hi Pam, I finish plane the insides before I assemble. However stress from clamping while glue sets up and just the pcs all going together "may" make some slight changes to the flatness of the pcs. Alan would set a case aside for a couple of weeks after it was assembled but before he would start on the drawers. As he would say, "when everything has had a chance to settle down" then he would go to work on it. I have seen him use his number 7 to plane out a slight hump before using a long sanding block. I know it may be a bit over the edge but with the full width blade and tilting handles I think this plane is better suited for the job. It sure saves the knuckles especially when your using drawer frames instead of solid panels. I use to use a large shoulder plane or a rabbet plane before Tom started making the 10 1/4. Your right about the cramped space, it can be difficult but even starting with flat and smooth panels I can't recall ever not having to touch up an inside. The horizontal running surfaces because of the dado they are housed in are usually fine. They just get a bit of final smoothing. Cheers
>Sigh, it is just a term for a well fitted drawer. If you watch the video, he doesn't go on about it or anything, barely mentions the piston bit in passing. It is also not in the title.
There is no tempest and no teapot. It is simply a title. The level of cynicism here saddens me sometimes; you would think every guy who produces anything for money is some kind of horrid money grubbing slimeball one step removed from the CEO of Enron. You know, it could just be that they believe in what they do.
As to hand made; Well, I have very very rarely seen any commercial furniture with drawers there were even in the same universe as fitting well, so I can't say that well fitted drawers are some kind of sign of machine-made furniture goodness. I can't see you you can equate this at all with the drive to perfection. For god's sake, it is just planing and tweaking a drawer for a bit till it fits really nice, that's all. Why do y'all have to be nasty about it?
>I re-read the section last night, and it seemed to be talking about an appropriate level of mechanical interference. I'm sure he has something specific in mind, but from the instructions it doesn't seem specific. His pieces are small enough with fully housed drawers that they might well be piston like.
At the wear tracks on the lower edge I can just barely insert a .027" feeler gauge. The drawer still works well but the 'finger pushing on the end' test requires some effort. Still, not bad for 200 years and with 30% relative humidity and loose rail-to-leg joints.
My point in posting the image is to show that, after seasonal movement is allowed for, any further changes in the drawer or opening happen gradually and the drawer sort of 'laps in'.
Just for fun I measured a few of my own drawer clearances. The cases measured are 6 to 8 years old. The best is .004" and I won't embarrass myself by revealing the worst. Again, this is with 30% rh.
To restate my earlier post in light of questions from other posters, the reason to strive for tight clearances on a drawer is to provide the best operation. Folks have tested drawers I've made, looked underneath to see where the metal glides are hidden, and found none. They have then tried a drawer with a metal glide, noted the noise and resistance, and stated they preferred the wooden drawer. I do too. If someone has a wooden drawer that binds and operates poorly, please don't condemn all wooden drawers. The well-made wooden drawer, while very expensive or time-consuming to make, is quite functional.
>to hear the advantage to a drawer done like this....
Is kind of funny that a "Piston fit drawer" which I took to being a drawer that is tight enough to be air tight has now been defined as a drawer that is just made so that it "fits really nice". If that is the case then in an attempt to get along I certainly agree all furniture should have drawers that "fit really nice"....Todd
>Hi Bill. I have limited experience having only ever piston fit three drawers in my life, but I'll pass on what I have seen.
In a few other posts people question why one would piston fit a drawer. The answer, to me, is that the extremely smooth operation of a piston fit drawer is very pleasing, almost sensuous. When closing a drawer, it's almost like the carcasse is reaching out and pulling in a long lost friend :-) A piston fit drawer is way smoother than any commercial drawer slide or commercial wood slider I've ever seen.
People who visit my house and try out a piston fit drawer invariably comment on how smooth the operation is.
One piece I made with two piston fit drawers was shipped from an arid climate in Calgary to a fairly humid climate which experiences wild humidity changes summer to winter, near Winnipeg (the table was a gift to my Grandmother). I was worried that the drawers would bind, but have had no problems in the past three years. Every time I visit Grandma, I sit in the big rocker in the living room where I can sit and fondle those drawers. In and out, in and out, I never tire of how "good" that piston fit drawer action feels.
The key to fitting the drawer is to allow sufficient room top to bottom for expansion and contraction but to allow almost no room side to side. Expansion/contraction only accurs to any significant amount across the grain, so no allowance along the length of the drawer front is required.
The drawer in the table in Calgary is fit a wee bit looser than the table near Winnipeg - one or two shavings two many :-( A while back there was another discussion on piston fitting and for curiosity's sake I measured the side to side gap on this drawer using some feeler gauges. I can't find the old thread, but from memory I think there was 8 thousandth's total gap at the drawer front. The problem with the drawer is that I took a couple of extra shavings off the back, so the back is a bit looser than the front, leading to less satisfactory fit as the drawer is opened.
On a third point regarding the practice of piston fitting in the past, my experience is pretty well limited to a high quality antique shop that I used to visit in Rockhampton, Australia. About half of their inventory was furniture imported from England, the remainder was "Made in Australia by English Trained Craftsmen". Most of the stuff was built around 1850 to 1890. The fit of the drawers in some of these pieces I would call very close to piston fit. There was no rush of air, but side to side clearances were definetly much less than 1/32" - perhaps less than 1/64". Very narrow dovetail pins were also very much evident in these pieces. Many of the drawers were quite wide (over 24" wide and 6 to 8" high). These drawers fit very well and could be pulled in and out without binding. As an aside, I think a well fit drawer increases longevity because no racking forces are imposed on the corner dovetail joints.
>The practical advantage of well fitted draws would be smooth operation, no racking or side-to-side movement which would require more effort to operate the drawer. A well fitted drawer will move smoothly even if the force to close it is applied off-center. Ofcourse, there is also the added satisfaction of having achieved that level of precision yourself, by hand. That, to me, is the greater advantage.
Anyway, do it or not, that's each person's choice. Rob has merely presented the technique so others could learn something of the craft that may be hard to come by otherwise. Even if one chooses not to make drawers in that manner, there is much to learn from observing his way of working - surface preperation, measuring, marking, cutting, trimming, sequencing of steps ... For me, at least, watching a craftsman work helps me pick up little things that make the craft more enjoyable. Well, I do regard Rob's craftsmanship very highly and think this probably is his best DVD to date.