'Fine Curved Front Drawers Without Dovetails' 12/2007

Curved front drawers

After picking up my December (DECEMBER ???) 2009 Fine Woodworking today, I was inspired to go back to the DCF Blog archives to revisit what appears to be one of my first actual posts in December 2007, Curved Drawer Front Joinery. Our method was pretty much the same as the FWW cover story that starts on page 34 of the current issue. I agree with pretty much all that Mr Varju says and I particularly liked his dowel sizing jig ... We, on the other hand, had the added complications of curved drawer fronts, drawer fronts overlapping the case sides, and undermount runners. We got through it all ok though Mark's last day working here (the closing on the sale of his house) was about a couple days short of finishing this project and I had to final fit the fronts, make the side appliques and mount the hardware my own self personally ... Mark did a great job on the parts and he definitely completed all the hard work on this piece, and he is now making furniture on his own in southern New York State. He's got a website and you can see his work here. Click the photos below to enlarge them ...

We started this piece with a sketch which I can't find, and a CAD drawing

And then we made a mockup

Once Mark got the case together and put the runners in, then we had our drawer sizes.

Mark did his typical dovetailed backs and then cut the laminated curved fronts to fit inside the drawer sides with a jig he made for the tablesaw. He next determind his drilling angle and set up the jig below on the drill press with a 1/4" brad point.

The piece on the right is just a stop; the holes appear to be a test piece for some Euro hinges

Next he clamped the drawer to the bench, clamped the front in place, extended the holes and glued and pinned them.

'All' that was left for me was to hang the boxes and fronts on the undermount runners,

fabricate and install the diamonds appliques for the sides, finish the piece and

take the photograph. The feet look a little strange in the photo above because I had to cut the image from the dingy,dark, background paper using photoshop ...