tailieunhanh - Design furniture for beds and bedroom: Part 2

Continued part 1, part 2 of the document Design furniture for beds and bedroom present the content: curly cherry highboy, visible joinery makes a chest, blanket chest provides simple stylish storage, a small bureau built to last, drawer fronts that fit flush, curvaceous carcase construction, acherry clothes tree, making and end table, a Queen Anne dressing table, an inconspicuous vanity table. | Earlier in my career I built kitchen cabinets. At that time dovetailing meant using a jig and router. I dovetailed more than a thousand drawers that way. But when I decided to become a period furnituremaker I knew those days were over only hand-cut dovetails would do. Abandoning the speed of a jig for tedious handwork seemed crazy at first but with my first hand-cut joint I learned it wasn t as hard as I thought. Dovetail joinery is a large part of what goes into constructing the upper case of this highboy. With its bonnet top and graceful moldings this chest of drawers appears to be a formidable project. But stripped of embellishment it s simply a large dovetailed box containing smaller dovetailed boxes. Finding high-quality wide stock was my biggest challenge. I was fortunate to find outstanding curly cherry. I used poplar for all the secondary wood except the drawer bottoms where I used aromatic cedar. Using cedar is more work because it involves joining narrow stock but the wonderful smell that escapes as you open a drawer makes the effort worthwhile. I described my approach for building the base unit in the article on pp. 52-57. Now I ll detail constriction of the upper case see the photo at left . That involves making the carcase framing the bonnet top making the drawers and carving the curved crown or gooseneck molding. Building the basic box It s virtually impossible to find a single board of figured wood wide enough for the sides. But two well-matched boards glued together look fine. The first step is to glue up stock for the case top bottom and sides. A piece of furniture like this needs stock that s slightly thicker than what s usu- An American classic The dovetailed upper case of this bonnet-top highboy is capped by a sweeping gooseneck molding which is made with hand and power tools. Construction of the lower case including its cabriole legs was covered in the article on pp. 52-57. ally used on case pieces. 1 use 7 stock for the entire case