The Woodshop Shed

More Cheating

Furnished content.
(from WoodNet.net)


A friend is just starting the build of a Thorsen sideboard, shown in FWW 125, 126, and 127. It's quite a project. The author used classic drawer and guide/glide construction, but my friend is planning to use Blum undermounts. The author makes it pretty hard to ferret out the dimensions of all the parts, but my friend and I managed to figure it all out, and I drew it up in SketchUp for him.




The darker color represents plum pudding mahogany, of which he has a single large plank. Some will be cut into veneer, and some will be the parts that have to solid, like the breadboard ends of the top and doors. The lighter color is plain grained Africanmahogany.

The drawers have half blind dovetails to join the sides to the front. When I looked at them,I thought it would be a nice challenge to see if I can do them on my CNC.So yesterday I gave it a try with a generic design. Using the undermount slides adds another element to the joint. There needs to be a 5/16" rabbett on the back of the drawer front for the required clearance of the slides, when using 1/2" thick stock.

You can go about this a couple of ways on a CNC. If you want sharp corners then you use a DT bit. The problem with that is you are limited to the bits that are available, and not many can produce the look of a handcut one. If you can accept rounded corners then you can create any size and shape DT you want. I showed some through DT's I did on this little project a few months ago, from a project by Michael Pekovitch in FWW.



I was able to use a 1/16" bit in the corners of the tails,so the DT's are about as close as you can get to what Pekovitch did by hand. I had hoped to do the same with the drawers on the Thorsen cabinet, but the need for that rabbett complicates it because of how deep the cuts need to be to make the pins. A 5/16" deep rabbett plus a 1/2" drawer side means the bit has to be able to reach 13/16". That's no problem for a 1/8" bit but I don't have any 1/16" or similar sized bits that have that much reach. They may exist, however, so I'm still looking. But for this test I used a 1/8" bit, so the corners look machine made. There are a lot of mistakes in this, but it's still not bad for the first attempt. This isn't glued, just fit together.



The V's are out of place, but easily fixed. They are inlays and represent my friend's last name. I forgot to round over the outside corners of the pins when I did the CNC drawing, so I did those by hand.

If I can't find a small diameter endmill to get really sharp corners then I may consider using a different shape altogether, like the dog bone type, or another that purposely hasrounded corners.

John

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