Drawers -heads or tails

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Wiley Horne

Hi Bill,

Nailing is interesting! Is it practical to leave them nailed together for the chopping? (I like to leave them ganged and fretsaw the waste while they’re still in the vise.)

Wiley

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

They stay together for half chopping. Have to take apart and scribe the inside surface, then chop to this line. Too risky for me to not chop from both sides, though with practice it could be done.

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Wiley Horne

Do you leave the nails proud, so you can easily get them back out? I can’t see in the photos where they would be in the way of your operations.

Wiley

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

Personally, I do not fancy the idea of nails. Two reasons: firstly, I do not want to leave holes in surfaces; secondly, tapping a nail into our hardwoods will likely lead to a split. They first require drilling to do this!

Instead, I have suggested a clamp (or two), integrated into a Moxon vise. This works very well.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Sgian Dubh

Derek, how is your contribution relevant to the technique Bill described? Bill shows how he gangs together a pair of drawer sides to fit them into the hole they belong to, then marking and sawing the dovetails: what you show seems to be treating each drawer box side individually through (possibly) initial fitting of each side to its hole one at a time, executing the dovetails one side at a time, then transferring the dovetail profiles to the pin piece.

On the other hand, I've done similar to Bill, i.e., gang cutting of drawer box side dovetails, although I've never nailed them together to do so, but I have used G clamps and F clamps to lock them together. I think the maximum number of sides I've gang sawn is either six (three drawers) or eight (four drawers), I can't recall now, but once sawn I generally unclamped the sides and chopped the waste from between the dovetails one side at a time. I haven't had a need

or chosen to gang cut several drawer side parts (more than two sides) all of the same size for quite a number years now that I think about it, maybe close to twenty. Slainte.

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

nail flush. Slip putty knife between sides to separate after sawing and chiseling one side.

motovation

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

By the time I get to drawers my motivation is to get whatever done and out of the shop. This desk will have a total of 9 drawers.

The 9th is the same as the first. There is no challenge or variety except size. Why should anyone be bothered by a small nail hole in a drawer side? Who will ever notice it? Granddaughter will put this desk to use the day it gets delivered. These motivations lead me to take labor out of assembling a drawer where ever I can.

The Headley shop is driven by reducing cost to a customer to increase demand and keep the shop alive. I look to what they do to learn ways of making stuff efficiently.

Another motivation to post is for the silent watchers. I want to show there is another way of making stuff that is not so demanding as "Gallery Grade" that I call a place to store your socks or good enough grade.

Astonishingly little stuff gets posted on WC. Why? Either people are reticent to show what they make because the bar for posting has been set at Gallery Grade or they look at Gallery Grade and decide it is too hard to make a place to store your socks. Or? What is the purpose of the Forum if not a place to share making stuff?

Re: motovation

Oskar

good point Bill, will be sharing here as soon as something gets completed.

Maybe the very in depth discussions on everything from planing to tool steel to sharpening are intimidating, and unintended sets an imaginary bar that is high?

Not to me, I´m here (mostly silent) for those discussions.

Re: motovation

John in NM

The risk with fora like this is that it's about halfway to facebook. People start wanting to live vicariously through it and only desire to make popular posts.

Honestly, I take a lot more pictures of what I'm doing since I got a phone with a decent camera last year (and I recently figured out the easy way of transferring photos to my computer). But a lot of what I work on is of little interest to those here I think, its not furniture.

I like that method of ganging drawer sides for dovetailing, a really good idea. I missed that you were hammering in the air nails on the first read - I was on the other side and only caught the note about the side cutters here on the hand tool post. Should have twigged it from the hammer!

You are severely tempting me to attack my long put off workbench drawers this way - I had planned to use ball bearing guides though, due to the likely weight of the contents. Not exactly sock drawers

I'll make a bet....and a formative event

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I'll bet I can drive a nail used in a nail gun through a 7/16" drawer side of any wood you choose in the location where I drive the nail for fastening two drawer sides together, and not split it. For a piece of furniture where the drawer is to be used a lot one should not be using a hard piece of wood for the side anyway.

That said, I can not imagine you building anything to the standards I build to. You would get no personal satisfaction from the result. When I showed Mayberry (the desk in Gallery) the tip of nailing sides together he was as shocked as if I had suggested putting a knotty board in a table top. He eventually sheepishly asked if I filled the holes. No. He has numerous children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and not made sock storage for any of them. His house is bursting at the seams with Period Reproductions however. Different motivation for woodworking.

It may be that my standards were set by an incident when my daughter was in her teens. She wanted a bed. I was infused with the spirit of what circulates here and took this request to be an opportunity to strut my hand tool skills (which in retrospect were pedestrian). After some days of lumber preparation and chiseling mortises she dropped by the shop and leveled me with the comment that she would probably graduate and leave home before I ever got it done. It was then that I realized who the customer was for the bed, her not me.

I offer, not advocate, my way of doing things. If someone's granddaughter mails them a sketch of a desk they need, my standards of filling the need can be considered. Keep in mine that your granddaughter is going to judge the result not a buyer for a Gallery.

I would like to see what you do

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Who knows? What works to make a pistol grip might be just the trick for a hand made drawer pull.

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

Derek, how is your contribution relevant to the technique Bill described? Bill shows how he gangs together a pair of drawer sides to fit them into the hole they belong to, then marking and sawing the dovetails: what you show seems to be treating each drawer box side individually through (possibly) initial fitting of each side to its hole one at a time, executing the dovetails one side at a time, then transferring the dovetail profiles to the pin piece.

Richard, I missed that they were drawer sides! Oops. I'll climb back in my hole

Regards from Perth

Derek

ok...

John in NM

I'll take some pictures of the whole process on the next batch. It will be on the other side since there's a lot of machine work involved, but you participate in both so you'll see it.

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Jack Dover

tapping a nail into our hardwoods will likely lead to a split. They first require drilling to do this!

Pneumatic nailers use pins that work like cut nails, they tear fibers and make their own hole. Wire nails cause splits because they mostly push fibers to the side and work like a wedge, hence a little trick of hitting a point of a wire nail a few times to add a flat to it.

Also pneumatic pins are small diameter. There's enough pressure at a point to let them go through most US domestic hardwoods, provided other settings are right. I know Australia has some really dense timbers, but a pin would just bend. I don't know whether I'd use such a timber for drawers sides though.

If Bill uses the smallest pin that can hold sides together - you probably won't even notice a hole. And I think it used to be an acceptable technique, I've seen quite a number of older pieces with holes that can't be explained other than something was temporary nailed there during manufacturing.

Re: ok...

Clifton C

John, you should show the "Stippler"... Or at least the texture from it.

Which one?

John in NM

I've made 4 at this point

The first is actually a hand tool, I'll get a picture of it today when I get out of my comfortable chair and wade through the 2" of snow down to the shop. Yeah, a whole 2"

Here you go...

John in NM

Actually this was the second of these. The first had no handle and the cut nails were not as neatly welded (not that the welding is so great on this one either - didn't have a TIG).

Close up of the business end:

This one was the most time consuming to use, but really it produced the best results:

Later I made some that worked in a Dremel vibro-engraver and then a Foredom chisel handpiece - those are the ones I lent you of course. There were various iterations starting with the welded cut nails and then moved to the hardened pins held in compression fittings that you'll remember:

These days I do the bulk of it with a needle scaler but it is very hard to control. I then do the edges neatly with the Foredom version.

I'm thinking of making a piece to replace the needles in the pneumatic tool that the compression fitting head will screw onto. Best of both worlds - more aggressive tool yet more precise.

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

No problem, Jack. I misread Bill’s original post and in my twisted mind imagined that he was nailing the tail to the pin board!

Shooting a pin into a soft drawer side - even I am not that nutso to use hardwood for sides! - is doable. My current cabinet has 10 drawers, but I will size each one individually. I am on annual leave, cannot travel, and just chilling out in the shop (between visiting friends and small outings with my wife). I am not in a hurry. I try and enjoy my woodworking and, as much as I seek efficiency, I also avoid production mode or thinking.

Regards from Perth

Derek

annual leave?

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Is that what we call "vacation"? Except no "leaving"

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Sgian Dubh

"I missed that they were drawer sides! Oops. I'll climb back in my hole"

Brain farts happen to us all, Derek. In your case, I guess mid-summer in Perth, brain meltingly hot, hell on earth, all that kind of thing - no wonder your brain is foggy, ha, ha. I was puzzled, and just decided to say something rather than let it pass. Slainte.

Re: annual leave?

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

Bill, I could have called it "holiday", instead of "leave". That would have thrown you even more! Only the USA and Canada use "vacation".

It is also summer break for universities and schools. Traditionally, in Australia, many travel at this time of the year. Last year we were in Austria and Germany for the Christmas markets. No travelling at this time around. I am enjoying the quiet.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

Richard, 38-42 Celsius is hot hot hot. It requires cold lager to maintain sanity.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: Drawers -heads or tails

Sgian Dubh

Houston, Texas for ten years thwarted all desire in me to live in a hot climate. Never again. It was summer, generally pleasant and warm between about November to maybe March, early April. All the other months were best described as somewhere south of Hades, or summer+++. Slainte.

Its the term used in university HR here too...

John in NM

At least in the two I've worked for, I had assumed most large businesses had moved to the term in the last couple decades, along with very many more changes in HR terminology. In one case, the annual staff evaluations are now called "career conversations".