Stickley Style Chest of Drawers

[Ray]

The Stickley style chest of drawers is finished. This completes a program of projects to make a five-piece bedroom suit (Sassafras Collection) using quarter sawed white oak. The chest has eight drawers, and each is joined with dovetails. I used half-blind dovetails for the front of the drawer and through dovetails for the rear. All dovetails were milled using the RB. The seventh drawer (counting from the top) is lined with cedar that was harvested from a dead tree in our backyard. The top has the sassafras inlays on both right and left sides. The date of completion is burned on the rear of the chest.

I have learned much while working on these projects. The RB is a very versatile machine and, as you can see, capable of producing tight tolerances on dovetails, mortises, etc. This was my first time to tackle inlays as well, and that takes a lot of patience!

 

[Marty]

Thanks Ray for sharing your project with us. VERY NICE, well done. Quarter sawn white oak has a very appealing look and your craftsmanship made it just extraordinary.

Marty

 

[Ray]

Very kind words, Marty, and thank you. Love the grain versatility of quarter sawed white oak!

 

[larry.thomson]

wholeheartedly echo Marty's comments -- beautiful work, ray -- the fit on the dovetails is perfect -- and the inlay is fantastic --
a heirloom quality bedroom suite --

and your rec on the bandsaw was spot on -- thank you --

larry

 

[Ray]

Thank you, Larry! Glad the bandsaw rec worked for you, too!!

 

[Bkelley]

Hi Ray,
I’m a new RB owner, recently retired and hoping to build furniture for my kids. Do you have plans or anything on the totally awesome and very impressive oak furniture that you describe above?
Brian

 

[Ray]

Brian,

Thank you for the kind words!

For the queen bed I used basic plans of Harvey Ellis, with measurement modifications to fit the bedroom. Also, I chose to use a different inlay pattern. I must have watched the you tube videos of Kevin Rodel a dozen times. For the remaining pieces my wife and I found pieces of Stickley/Harvey Ellis furniture on the internet, or in books, and again I modified dimensions to suit our needs. The infrastructure of those pieces with dovetailed drawers was designed by myself. I used all mortise tenon jointing for the infrastructure. Sorry, I do not have detailed plans but willing to answer questions.

Ray