Another "no glue" project: a chest of drawers

Gary, 
Beautiful Chest.  Please post more regarding the details.
  Ron

Nice work Gary.  I too am curious about the details, and the no glue aspect.  This doesn't look like 'knockdown' furniture, so I am curious as to why the no glue.

Henry

Henry (Raleigh NC) wrote:

I am curious as to why the no glue.

Henry

I'm exploring using Japanese timber framing joinery for furniture, following in the footsteps of the late Chris Hall. For me it is mostly an intellectual exercise, but there are some practical advantages of joinery designed to work without glue. One is that it is potentially easier to repair a piece if all you need to do is remove a wedge or pin. I find that repairability is often not given as much consideration as I think it deserves. Another is that it is much less stressful to assemble if I don't have to worry about a glue up. A third is I don't have to clean up squeeze-out. A fourth is that wedged or keyed or pegged joints are (sometimes) more forgiving about proper fit. At the same time, I don't need to assume that the glue will fill gaps in my joinery and still be strong enough to hold together. Finally, all wood joinery provides more flex and ability to withstand changes in humidity.

And no, no glue does not mean the piece was intended to be a knock-down. It is very firmly connected without metal fasteners and meant to stay that way unless it needs to be repaired.

The mobile base is a good place to start. It is rigid rectangle built like a Japanese mud sill for a high end house. The corner joinery is mitered with an internal pegged dovetail to prevent twisting, and a smaller keyed dovetail locks the joint together. The larger rectangular mortise is there to accept a tenon from a corner post. After assembly I attached four antique cast iron swivel casters.

Wonderful joinery, Gary, and the tool chest is gorgeous. I'm having a hard time figuring out how you assembled those joints with dovetails in two different dimensions.

I agree Ellis. I could probably go through Hall's posts and find the joint detail--a fascinating journey in itself--but I know the solution is probably simple.

Gary, you are an inspiration!

Yes, everyone asks about that the first time they see it. The trick is that the wide end of the dovetail on the inside edge of the joint is the same width as the narrow end of its mortise. That allows it to slide in horizontally in the same direction as the internal dovetail rather than having to drop in from above. After insertion the gap is filled with a small parallelogram shaped key that locks the dovetail. You can see the space for the key here. The internal dovetail is locked by a separate key whose rectangular mortise you can also see. Both keys are later sawed flush and held in place by the post on top. There is a lot going on here, and none of it is visible in the assembled joint.

Next is the chest itself. Conceptually, I made it as a frame with a sill, posts, and top plates. I made the sill and top plates using the same joinery as for the mobile base modified for slightly smaller dimensions. I got pretty good at those corner joints after the twelfth one. Mobile base in the back, sill, and top plate. I added grooves for splines in the base and sill to keep them in register when I push the chest around.



And here are the tenons and stub tenons on the post on the sill and base end. The groove on the inside surface of the sill got a dust panel later.



Mobile base, sill, corner posts, intermediate posts (more about those later) and top plate assembly.



A key structural feature of this no-glue design is that the posts are captured by absolutely rigid sill and top plate assemblies. But the posts still might be subject to racking. I'll show how (I hope) dealt with that next.

That's a TOOL chest??  What does your FURNITURE look like??

Pics. We need pics.

Ha! As a friend once said about making a nice sawhorse, "I guess there's no reason it has to be ugly."

As far as furniture goes, there is this:
https://www.woodcentral.com/forkbb/topic/76002518/A%20Ming%20era%20table%20with%20Chinese%20and%20Japanese%20joinery

And a few other pieces. I'll trot them out by and by.

Added later 4 h 52 min 17 s:

The sides have a ladder of quarter sawn sycamore mortised and tenoned into the posts. The sycamore stiffens the sides against racking front to back and are side rails for the drawers.
The center posts get the same treatment.



Now comes the tricky part. The tenons on the side rails are draw bored to receive tenons on the front rails. Those front rail tenons act as draw bore pegs. It is a little hard to photograph but here you can see the front of a web frame and its tenon inserting into the post where it will engage a hole in the tenon of the side rail.

The web frame front rail also has a spear point tenon that shows on the front of the post.


And here is the side of the drawer web frame. It is tenoned into the front and back of the web frame and also tongued to fit into a groove on the side rail to prevent it sagging or bowing. There is similar joinery for attaching the web frames to the center posts.



I designed the chest to have one full width drawer. It rides on a web frame that is mortised to tenons on the tops of the center posts.



And maybe this pic with the side posts removed will give you a better idea of how the web frames work with the the posts.

temporary image upload

I'm not sure I have enough time left on this earth to build anything with that kind of joinery. I'd have used pocket hole screws.

Sides and back. The sides are hammer veneered cherry over birch ply and fit into grooves in the post, sill, and top plate. I friction fit them all around to add a bit more racking resistance. You can see that I also added an additional rail near the top. That was an esthetic choice to carry the dimension of the wide top drawer around to the sides.



The back is a separate frame and panel also made with veneered plywood. I keep the chest against a wall and can't see the back but maybe someday someone else will want it exposed so I wanted it to look nice. Also, a theme in this piece is that there are many details that are found only by close inspection by someone who knows woodworking. The corners are mitered with wedged through tenons. Those little cutouts around the inside perimeter are for loose floating tenon keepers that drop into mortises in the frame. They are easily pried out if someone wants to remove the back. I made them of contrasting sycamore to make them more noticeable.

This can't be called wood porn.

Outstanding work, Gary. I'm just trying to imagine assembling 48 drawbored tenons at one time. Not having to deal with glue is a blessing, but having all those tenons sized with just the right amount of interference had to have required a LOT of fitting, not to mention aligning all those spear-points on center with the tenons. My hat is off to you. Are the center rails also drawbored, presumably with stub tenons from both sides?

The little loose tenons holding the back are also very innovative; at least I've not seen that trick before.

Whom do you consider your primary influences? Did you study with masters, or are you self taught? May we assume you use mostly Japanese chisels and saws? Have you done layout with bamboo pens and sumi tsubo? 

Inquiring minds, y'know...

Ellis, those are good observations and questions. In order:

Yes, it was a bit slow going getting all of those tenons seated. It was a lot of fiddling to get them all started, then lots of clamps. The process went something like this.

-Fit all the tenons in the center posts first. Then wiggle that assembly into the post assembly on one side:



-Then add the other post assembly


-Then lots of clamps alternating the pressure on them slowly



I will say that I was not 100% successful. I made them a bit too thin and too long and I think I broke two or three of the tenon/pegs. But there is so much redundancy in the structure that they won't be missed. Really, I could probably have left those off completely.

The web frame connection to the center posts differs front and back. In the front I staggered the tenons on the web frames. I don't have good picture of that but in this one you can see the tenon of the drawer side rail, which will insert into the front center post. That tenon is itself mortised for two smaller tenons, one coming from the left side web frame and the other from the right side web frame. That worked pretty well.



The back center post isn't deep enough to receive a long tenon so I tried to overlap the tenons from the opposing web tenons in a single hole in the drawer rail tenon.


I think this worked out OK, too. It looks funny, though. There was probably a better way to solve this problem.

The loose tenon clips was an idea I stole from Chris Hall. He said he discovered it on an antique Chinese piece, loved the idea, and used it on a cabinet he made. It isn't that different from the way some window screens are attached.

-I'm almost entirely self taught, if you can say that about yourself when everything you know you learned from reading and watching others and asking question, then trying stuff. For this kind of work, my main influence is Chris Hall. I was an OK woodworker before I started reading his blog about 7 years ago. He had quite a following before he died, but as far as I know not many imitators willing to go this route. I decided to try. 

It takes a lot of time. I think the tool chest took me about a year from first designs to finished and filled with tools, working on it an average of five hours per day most days. But I'm retired and this is my fun. I'm perfectly OK spending a of time on one piece.

I use mostly Japanese hand tools now, except I do use Western planes. I haven't figured out using kanna, yet.

Gary, this is all quite overwhelming! I do not know whether I most admire the joinery or your tenacity and patience. I long admired Chris’ work, read his blog religiously, and was saddened by his loss. He would be proud to read your posts. 

Regards from Perth

Derek

Derek, to be honest, it is a little overwhelming to me now, reviewing the pictures from the build! Did I really do all that?

A friend of mine is making a reproduction of a David Roentgen desk originally built for Catherine the Great. Secret compartments, music box, mechanical gizmos that open drawers, marquetry—the works. He has been working on it for six years and has another year or two to go. He said that when people see it they are of course blown away and marvel that he could do all that work. He tells them that it does take a lot of planning but for the actual work, it mostly is just one stick of wood in front of him and one thing to do it. Then on to the next one. That's what I found, too. Just this saw cut, then another, and chisel to a line. Cut this mortise, then the next one. Keep at it and it adds up.



Whenever I show this piece and couple of others I made I make a point of crediting Chris. I am not the craftsman he was but I'm honored if I can keep his name out there and lead a few more to his work and the way he thought about woodworking.

His wife maintains the blog and access to all of his superb monographs on Japanese carpentry and joinery.

https://thecarpentryway.blog/

Gary, fabulous work.

I admire your brain processes to create this type of output.

And, yes, thank you for adding these pics.

Howard

Thanks, Howard. It has taken me 71 years to learn to be patient. It is still a struggle. I constantly have to tell myself to slow down. I believe in festina lente (make haste slowly) even though I don't always practice it.

And for pictures: there are more! We haven't even come to the drawers, yet.

The top presented an interesting design challenge. As you have seen I already picked the corner joinery and connection to the posts. That became non-negotiable since when set it place the top plate locks the entire cabinet together.

But I also wanted a flat top with no gaps that would collect dirt and that would be durable and repairable. I designed the completed tool cabinet to have an upper compartment set back from the front. I imagined removing a tool and setting it on the top of the lower chest. Here is the concept drawing.



That lead me to a solid wood cherry panel tongue and grooved into the top plate but sitting flush with the top of the top plate with no gaps around the edges. That created a problem with seasonal movement of the panel constrained by an immovable frame. To solve that, I left the panel narrower than the depth of the frame to allow a movement gap at the back of the panel. In the completed piece that will be covered by the upper cabinet so it won't be ugly and won't collect grit. I hide glued the leading edge of the panel to the front of the top plate so that all the movement would happen at the back.

Here is a picture of a test fit.



Gluing up the panel into the top sill. I added the back long arm of the top plate after glue up.



This next pic shows the other side of the base, sill, top corner joints that don't reveal the keys. I chose to do this with a through tenon that I wedged with cherry to keep the joinery exposed but subtle. Not perfect joinery. Maybe next time.



I like to take pictures of my builds as I go. I like to share them because I know several people who are interested, as a record of how I did it, and also because close up pictures reveal things that aren't visible at normal viewing distance or that I gloss over when I'm looking at the whole piece. The close-ups can be humbling. But, after I recover they inspire me to do better. Or at least accept that this was "as good as I could do."

Here's where it was after assembling the carcass and before I did the drawers. You can probably tell that all of these parts were finished before assembly. No other way to do it. Those curious mortises on the top plate are for attaching the future upper cabinet. More on those later.

Added later 1 d 17 h 35 min 44 s:

Drawers. The fronts are clear straight grained cherry from a single 8/4 board matched for color and figure.



The sides and backs are quarter sawn Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana). A friend who mills it for flooring provided some spectacular boards for the cause. Oregon white oak is the hardest of all the oaks and makes great drawer sides. But is hellish on plane blades.



I made slips and drawer bottoms of sycamore.



I wanted something different from standard dovetails. A friend sent me a picture of a poster with dozens of Japanese dovetail designs. I picked one of the simpler ones with a split pin. I had to  modify a chisel to get into the corners. The first drawer was kind of fun. By the thirteenth drawer the novelty had worn off. But I do like the surprise feature, hidden until someone opens a drawer.



The pulls are black coated brass from a tansu hardware maker in Japan. They weren't cheap but I wanted the Japanese look.



I also have some drop down drawer stops to keep me from dumping a drawer full of chisels on my feet. Easily lifted with a finger to remove a drawer completely.



Here is the chest in its natural habitat, convenient to my bench. And it really does store tools. I added rubberized cork mats to protect the drawer from the tools and the tools from the drawer.

Gary, I have no words for this latest group of pics - just truly heart-stopping beautiful. Thank you.

(in the third-last pic, you have tabs to stop the drawer from falling out - are they in place on that angle or are they on a spring-type device - how does one install those?)

Thanks, Howard. The drawer stops just drop down by gravity. The drawer back lifts them up briefly when the drawer is first inserted then they automatically drop into place. I faced them with leather to soften the sound of the stop. I got the design from an Australian woodworker, Neil Erasmus. The stop is assembled as a unit that pivots on a brass rod. The unit is then glued into a mortise in the web frame. Yes, I did use glue here, but only after trying to make a version that fit as a sliding dovetail. Couldn't get that one to work right).

To achieve uniformity in the shop, I see there's a lot of work ahead for you. 

BTW, one of the biggest questions I had when reading his blog was, will anyone actually follow Chris Hall's example of construction. I was so thrilled to know his widow is committed to preserve his work. That effort has helped inspire you and, hopefully, many more.

Bruce McCrory wrote:

That effort has helped inspire you and, hopefully, many more.

Thanks, Bruce. Maybe you'll be next?

And one last thing: here is the chest in action shortly after I finished it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXYANRAUt4s

If I showed that to my wife, she'd have one more lingerie chest and I'd have one fewer toolboxes.

Are there any wobbles because of the lack of glue? Seems to me you have tightened every joint with keys or wedges of some sort, but does it add up to rock solid? (or AS solid as a chest that has been glued? Is there an expectation of downstream maintenance, e.g., driving wedges tighter?

Thanks so much for posting such an inspiring build. 

Ellis