Pulls and Drawer Pockets

This week on the mahogany buffet, I'll be showing how I made the pulls for the doors and drawers, as well as the glue-up of the drawer pockets. Like last time with the shelf support consoles, most of this work was done in-between other tasks with the cabinet top as well as the drawer pocket assembly, but I'll show it here in one go. I started with two strips of sapele and milled them to size. Then, I went to the slot mortiser to cut the mortises for floating tenons that will secure the pulls. That was followed, below, with a few passes on the shaper over a 3/4" diameter core box bit to form the shape of the underside of the pulls.

I laid out the shape of the pulls with pencil and rough cut the pulls on the bandsaw. The concave curve on the end grain was shaped using the front end of my belt sander. The convex curve was rough shaped on the disk sander.

Just like with the Black Walnut Armchair, I used curved templates derived in my SketchUp model of the piece to lay out reference lines for some of the more complex curves; like the one below on the asymmetrical door pull.

Here's the final layout.

I made a quick jig with a floating tenon that supported the door pulls vertically, below, and shaped the outside curve on the disk sander.

While I was on a jig kick, I made another to rough-out the main curve of each pull on the disk sander. The jig fits into the mortise of the pull and the arm pivots to give the drawer pulls a circular shape.

Here is it at work. The door pulls were a bit trickier. I needed to manually slide the jig toward and away from the jig as I pivoted the pull to form the non circular curve.

After some hand sanding the pulls were ready for a coat of oil, followed the next day by a coat of beeswax polish.

Meanwhile, back at the cabinet, I used a hand plane to level the bottom of the drawer pocket assembly and prepared it for the glue-up.

Seventy-five dowels, if I counted correctly, are now ready.

I again was able to secure the expert services of my freelance glue-up buddy, who stopped by the studio mid week for this glue-up. This is the third large glue-up on this piece, with one more to go for the top.

I've also been working on rough fitting of the doors and shaping of the top. The top should be ready for finish by tomorrow night.

Hej då!

Craig