Curved Dresser – Part 3
Painted and Glazed Curved Dresser with a Stained Alder Top
With the carcass of the dresser completed, it was time to focus our energies on the curved drawers. We began by gluing up three layers of 1/4″ MDF, which would form the 3/4″ drawer fronts, to a jig we made. The bend on the jig was just a bit sharper than the actual curve of the drawer fronts, because, no matter how thoroughly you glue the layers, they always seem to bow back towards straight just a slight amount. If you over bend them, when they spring back just slightly, they will be the perfect curve! By the way, don’t unclamp the gluing layers to early, or all your work will be for naught. We left ours glue for at least 12 hours each!
With the glue dry and the clamps removed, we cut each drawer front to the correct height and to the correct width. The ends are not cut 90 degrees to the drawer front, but rather parallel to the drawer box side, which makes them somewhere closer to 120 degrees or so.
We then used a 1/2″ straight cutting router bit, our trim router, and a straightedge to route the three vertical dados and the one horizontal dado in the four drawer fronts.
The drawer boxes came next. We used the clamping jig from the drawer front glue-ups to trace the curve for the bottom of the drawers. We also sketched the drawer box in Google SketchUp, which allowed us to dimension every part of the drawer, giving us piece of mind that everything would go together as planned once they were cut out and dadoed.
Since these drawers were going to be painted, we opted to use a polyurethane glue to hold the drawer fronts onto the drawer boxes, and remove any excess glue before the priming stage.
With the glue dry and any excess glue removed, all four drawers were sanded, caulked, spackled, primed, and painted, and all ready for the final glazing process.
April 17th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
This dresser is turning out so awesome… How much longer before it wraps up? Can’t wait to see it!
April 20th, 2010 at 7:35 am
Well, the dresser was actually delivered weeks ago, but we are a little behind the game and have not posted it yet. Should have it done in the next day or so. Thanks!