I am slowly moving along on the chest of drawers project (aka Tom’s Dresser). Home and just-for-fun projects keep interrupting the workflow. Another issue is the much limited daylight time available for this driveway woodworker. Made even less by early morning condensation which delays my start times most mornings recently.

However, progress is being made. This post lags production by a few weeks. Here are some images from the half blind dovetail process for the drawer fronts. I wanted the front elevated from the sides very slightly (about 1/64), so I used scrap the thickness of bottom grooves to maintain alignment while marking the half blind dovetails (pins on front piece). See gallery images below.

For some of the material removal I made extra diagonal relief cuts to aid chisel work. For others, I used the bow saw to scoop out material. That seemed to yield a smoother process, at least in this small sampling.

Most of the chisel work was very slow going as this is the hardest Mahogany I recall working with. The nifty swirling grain may correspond to that property. Or not. The bottom drawer was from a different log and was more typical and easy to work.

I still have not made the drawer bottoms. I wanted to wait until I had glued up drawers to work with. However, at this point I realized I wanted to do all my processing (routed mortises on front side, pilot and counter-sunk holes for screws and buhl logo inlays inside some of the drawer fronts) prior to glue up. Which means I need to decide on drawer pull design.

Next up is the drawer pull adventure.