A chest of drawers.

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Mike.R

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Once the Architect's chest of drawers had left the workshop I gathered my thoughts. I'd enjoyed the process but in retrospect I felt the chest appeared heavy with rather solid proportions.

Fortunately the Architect too is rather heavy with solid proportions and thus very happy with his new chest of drawers... but on reflection I resolved to try something with a finer line.

I still have some of the neighbour's yew left and just enough Madrona burr veneer so I set too on the next commission.

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Looking forward to seeing this! I always say get the proportions right before anything else, just what I would have done with the mock up. Ian
 
There are a few ways of calculating how graduating drawers diminish and if all else fails then the Golden ratio might help. I did my best with the maths but in the end I cut some MDF rectangles and then cut some more MDF rectangles and just eyeballed it, working on the premise that when it looks right it probably is right.

The carcase was going to be fine so I've had to build in strength wherever I could. The back panel is oak veneered ply, glued into a yew frame. It's very likely the chest will sit against a wall but I added a bead around the frame in case somebody looked behind one day. The go bars hold the bead in place as the glue dries.

The bow shaped bottom stretchers are a nod to the yew war bows of yore... and they brace the frame nicely as well.


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Love the section of the frames, and the way they are swept in. very organic.
The go bars holding in the mouldings look a bit like glazing bars for curved glass, how cool would that be lol.
 
:) Thanks for the comments, I'll keep the curved glass back panel in mind for... sometime in the future. :)

For the drawer fronts I've veneered the Madrona burr onto quartered oak and balanced it with some quartered oak veneer.

I had a bit of an idea of how I wanted the finish be on the burr panels... I wanted them to be a particular type of shiny which is a bit of a departure for me, most of my work been either sprayed semi gloss or hand rubbed matt/satin.

The type of shiny I imagined was that shine you see on well cared for antique furniture that has been lovingly waxed for generations. On a lot of these old pieces, especially the oak pieces, the only finish ever used was wax with maybe a little oil here and there but mainly just bee's wax melted in turpentine with lots of rubbing over maybe two or three hundred years.

Well I don't have centuries so plan B is French polish. It's been many years since I dabbled in the secretions of the lac beetle and to say I'm rusty is an understatement but there are so many French polishing videos on Youtube now I thought I'd give it a go.

I've really enjoyed the process, from getting the rubber right (I'm running 4 rubbers at present, some better than others) through the grain filling stage with pumice powder to bodying up and then the spiriting off.

For the uninitiated French polishers ( like me :) ) It's a slow process and time consuming. You use a wrapped pad (the rubber) to leave a whisper of polish on the wood surface at each pass, slowly building up a high gloss nano film. The rubber is rubbed in a circular motion, a figure of eight and in straight lines up and down the piece leaving as even a coat as possible and then towards the end of the process the surface is rubbed hard with the rubber charged mainly with meths to 'melt' the finish into a smooth high gloss film. It doesn't half make yer arm ache.

Proper French polishing, the type you see on Bechsteins and Bosendorfers, is an incredibly high gloss finish applied over hundreds of hours by very skilled craftsmen/women and is unlike any sprayed finish. It's definitely in the ten thousand hour skill department.

It's a fast drying finish and fairly hardwearing but as the solvent is alcohol it is adversely affected by gin and tonics and generally not used for bar tops.

The shellac varnish has quite a short a shelf life (months, maybe weeks) and when it gets old it doesn't set hard. Commercially available French polish/button polish/sand sealer etc doesn't have a best before date on the tin so in general, french polishers mix fresh polish as and when they need by dissolving pure shellac flakes or buttons of shellac in denatured alcohol, (often meths). The thickness (viscosity) of the mixed polish is described as a pound cut, that is the number of pounds of shellac mixed in a gallon of alcohol. A two pound cut is a commonly used to French polish furniture.

Mixing fresh shellac like this is an art in itself, the raw shellac comes in many different forms from Garnet Buttons to Super Blonde Dewaxed flakes and then there's a discussion to be had about which alcohol is best to use....

Fortunately, for those who don't always want to immerse themselves in the dark arts, Zinsser make a product call Seal Coat which is basically a 2 pound cut shellac polish with a 3 year shelf life. It's perfect for for french polishing and is used by more professional polishers than would care to admit it.

The finish I was getting isn't at all like a spray finish, it's not uniform but has a flow to it a bit like the surface of a slow moving stream. I liked it but it was getting very glossy... think guitar finish, which I didn't really want so the next step was to try knocking it back and waxing to try and get near the old antique wax finish I have in my mind. I should say my term, knocking back just refers to taking the shine off with steel wool or the like. It's important that the finish is very cured before using steel wool or the surface will scar. 0000 grade is suitable but actually I like using the 3M pads as an alternative.

Here's some before and after photos. The first one is starting out and the second is the stage where I'm wondering whether this is the finish I actually want,

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Done quite a bit of it over the years and that was a very good description / breakdown of the process and the results speak for themselves, I find it quite therapeutic if a little sticky/messy- rubber gloves are a definite!
But I must say never mixed my own, and have kept the premixed stuff for years and it’s always been fine. I presume that was pale you used?
 
Hello Ian, the Zinsser Seal Coat is quite dark, similar to a button polish but it worked well with the Madrona.

With the 20 burr panels french polished to within an inch of their lives it became clear that this was not the finish I was after. Too glossy, too shiny... too much Rolls Royce Silver Spur dodgy dashboard. I didn't like the way the finish sat on top of the burr veneer so I rubbed one panel back with well worn pads of maroon and light grey Scotch Brite and waxed it over a few days.

The finish turned out fine... it was nice... but wax over French polish doesn't really work and it certainly wasn't giving me the dry old shine that I was after... so I stripped all 20 panels back to the wood and started all over again.

This time I used the same French polishing technique, but instead of shellac I filled the rubber with Danish oil.

It was the the slowest of slow processes. Whereas French polish dries in 15 minutes and you can apply many coats in a day, fresh Danish oil takes 24 hours to go off properly. Every morning before work I gave each of the 20 panels a pass with the rubber and put them aside for the day. After six weeks the panels had enough oil on them so they could be rubbed hard with a clean, soft cloth, creating a bit of heat and burnishing the surface to a lovely warm finish... More briar pipe than dodgy Roller dashboard.

I left the panels to cure properly for a couple of weeks before giving them a light waxing. and at last I had the finish I had wanted all those months ago.

With the frame taking shape and the panels all but finished It was time to consider the the top and the shape of the top at the corners. Round legs suggest round corners and square corners really didn't work but due to an oversight ( I made the chest of drawers too long ) The best boards I had were no more than an inch longer than the length of the chest.

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I have always said that a prerequisite for a Cabinetmaker is patience, well you definitely have it in spades- 6 weeks? Crikey.
Now I always thought wax on top of French polish was traditionally the way to do it. But I know what you mean about too shiny a finish. Ian
 
Here's why I needed to make the frame as rigid as possible... 25 kilos of soft close self close drawer runners.

I prefer to use Grass Dynapro runners, they are bulky but have a lovely action. The ten drawers were dovetailed in oak and everything started to come together.

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