While my highboy’s appearance varies somewhat from its historical predecessor — my moldings are more bold, my hardware of a different style — both the builder of yesterday and I, myself, are, in essence, after the same goal.

One way to look at the upper case and the drawers is that they are a study in dovetailing. A dovetail joint is more than a mechanical union of two pieces of wood. The joint also has a strong aesthetic presence, adding detail and an appealing visual rhythm to a joined corner.

In addition, because it’s widely seen as one of the defining characteristics of fine craftsmanship in wood, the joint carries a symbolic significance of great weight in the woodworking world. (Is there any one of us who hasn’t pulled a drawer from a chest to look to see if there are dovetails?)

For these reasons, many craftsmen with long personal experience with dovetail joinery have spent at least some time reflecting on the subject, thinking about how dovetails might best be used to join, to add detail and rhythm, to speak about craftsmanship. I know I have, and the upper case of this highboy is a kind of three-dimensional essay in which I articulate the principles by which I now make use of the dovetail joint in my shop.

There is Strength in Size

High-style period casework features refined dovetail work, which is typically characterized by wide tails and little slivers of pins. Although the aesthetic appeal of these diminutive pins is unmistakable, their size offers little protection against the destructive force of, for example, a drawer being accidentally dropped onto its corner. Therefore, for the most practical of reasons, I prefer more robust pins and tails, which — if executed cleanly — can be attractive as well as resistant to shock.

The upper case of this highboy is held together with hand-cut through dovetails at each corner. Each pin and tail is thick enough in cross-section to individually provide resistance to shock. Plus there are enough pins and tails to provide extensive gluing surface. (Although it’s probably unnecessary, I laid out my tails on the top and bottom of the case, rather than the sides, so that the case could better resist separation force in the only direction in which it could occur: laterally.)

The rails separating the drawers in the upper case are fastened to the case sides with oversized dovetails, one of the very few locations on this highboy in which dovetails are visible to the viewer of the assembled piece. Here, too, the tails are robust in size to provide strong mechanical resistance to separation.

Authentic Hand-cut Dovetails

The drawers are constructed with through dovetails at the back and half-blind dovetails at the front. Hand-cut dovetails shouldn’t mimic machine-cut dovetails. So, I cut these and all the other dovetails on the case not only by hand but also freehand.

That is, I sawed them out without the aid of an angle jig or an angled reference line because, in an era in which handwork is becoming increasingly scarce, I want my joinery to be verifiably the result of the human hand.

Finally, the drawer dovetails — like the drawer dovetails on most of my recent casework — are laid out so that the tails get narrower as they ascend the side of a drawer. In fact, those tails at the bottom of a wide drawer side might be twice as wide as those at the top. Applied consistently, this approach adds a unifying element, not only to the drawers in a single case piece but also to all drawers made by my hand.

Starting with the Big Box

After gluing up and leveling the four panels that comprise the upper case shell, I cut through rabbets on the inside back edge of the top, bottom, and two sides. (Through rabbets were acceptable because the waist and cornice moldings would later conceal the ends of those rabbets.) I next cut and carefully fit the long rows of dovetails at the corners and glued up the case, pressing each dovetail home with a pipe clamp I moved back and forth across the joinery. After the dovetails were fully seated, I checked diagonals to verify that the case was square, and then I set it aside to cure.

After planing the surplus length from the ends of the upper case’s pins and tails, I prepped the drawer rails. First, I plowed grooves on the back side of each rail — grooves which would later accept a tongue on the ends of the drawer runners. I then cut dovetails on the ends of each rail. Finally, I marked and cut the dovetail sockets in the front edges of the case sides to receive each of the dovetails and glued the rails in place.

The drawer runners went in next. I installed them by sliding the tongue on the end of each into its groove on the back side of the drawer rail, fastening the back end of the runner to the case side with a single heavy screw. In the case of the two top drawers, I assembled the drawer runner/kicker strip unit before attaching the whole thing in place with two screws driven up into the top of the upper case, through the kicker strips. Additionally, tenons fit into the backs of the two uppermost drawer rails. When all those members were installed, I went ahead and fit the back.

Adding Various Moldings

Through the years, I’ve created moldings with a router, a table saw with molding heads, scratch stocks, bench planes, and so forth. But for the last five years, I’ve been making them primarily with molding planes because, first, I think antique molding planes offer modern makers the richest available variety of shapes. Second, these antique planes are so much fun to play with. But I don’t think it much matters how a craftsman arrives at appropriate shapes, as long as those shapes can be arranged into harmonious wholes.

My waist molding, which wraps around the bottom of the upper case, is simply a little bubble of ascending beads marking and smoothing the transition between the lower and upper cases. The cornice molding on top of the upper case is a bit more complicated, consisting of three parts: a narrow cluster of shadow lines at the bottom, a simple cove in the middle, with a thumbnail molding at the top.

Molding installation on a solid wood highboy is inherently tricky because the horizontal grain direction of the moldings is perpendicular to the vertical grain direction of the upper case side to which they must be fastened. Obviously, the moldings can’t simply be glued in place, because after six months in a home with forced-air heat, cross-grain shrinkage of the upper case side would cause the glue to fail, and the moldings would simply pop off. This is not a problem on the front of the highboy’s upper case, because there the grain in the case and the grain in the moldings run in the same direction. Here, I simply glued the moldings in place.

It is possible to circumvent the cross-grain problem by nailing the moldings to the case side, but that approach results in unsightly nail holes that must be filled. Plus, it puts the craftsman in the position of swinging a hammer at delicate molded shapes, something that should be avoided whenever possible.

I’ve developed a different approach that allows me to install my highboy moldings securely, without visible nail holes and without any risk of moldings popping off. I do it by combining glue and hidden nails.

Nailing works in a cross-grain application like this because nails are flexible. The shanks of thin nails can bend to accommodate movement, and the holes in the material through which those shanks pass can also enlarge to allow movement. In fact, it would be possible to fasten moldings to the sides of a highboy using a technique known as “blind nailing,” which is nailing under a lifted sliver of wood which is then glued back into place over the nail head. (In fact, Stanley once made a plane-like tool — the #96 — for this express purpose.)

But blind nailing alone wouldn’t work in this application because movement across the whole width of the highboy side would almost certainly destroy a tight molding miter at the front of the case. My method involves both blind nailing and gluing. Let me explain by detailing the installation of the waist molding.

The only element of the waist molding that contacts the case side is a strip of 1/4″-thick stock with a half bead cut onto the top edge. (That bead is the only part of this strip that is visible in the completed molding.) The front two inches of that strip are glued in place so that the inevitable cross-grain shrinkage will necessarily occur at the unglued back end of the strip, leaving the miter, at the front, tight. The rest of that strip is held in place by eight to 10 small nails, so the case side underneath the strip is free to move. The nails are placed below the visible half bead and are concealed by the next layer of molding which is glued, positioned, and press fitted for a 60 count. From there, the tackiness of the glue holds the molding in place on its own.

Successive layers of molding are then glued to the outside of this first strip.

I used the same attachment process to install the cornice molding around the top of the upper case.

Building the Drawers

The drawers on this case are constructed with (non-period) fitting strips glued to each side. These 3/8″ x 5/8″ hardwood strips are glued to both sides of the drawers for two reasons: First, they reduce the friction when the drawers are opened and closed, and second, their presence reduces the amount of material that must be planed to fit when installing the drawers. The presence of these strips means the rabbets on the back side of each end of each of the drawer fronts must be wide enough to accommodate both the drawer lip and the fitting strip.

The front side of each of the drawer fronts has a molded edge all around with a rabbet on the back side on only the top and each end. I assembled the drawers with half-blind dovetails in the front and through dovetails in the back.

The 9/16″-thick drawer bottoms are tapered to a 1/4″ thickness on the front and both sides. These 1/4″ edges are slid into matching grooves plowed on the inside of the drawer sides and the back of the drawer fronts. The bottoms are held in place with screws that pass through notches into the bottom edge of the drawer back.

Three of the drawers have locks with escutcheon plates integrated with their respective hardware. If you choose to include this detail, you must lay out the mortise for the lock on the back of the drawer face. The lock will have a mortise and escutcheon on the adjacent rail to accept the bolt.

When the drawers are complete and fitted, attach the ship-lap back pieces and move on to finishing.

Finishing

A successful finish depends on successful prep work…in other words, sanding. I think most unsatisfactory finishes are the result of insufficient sanding. Sanding doesn’t begin after the piece is assembled. It’s an ongoing process that begins — in the case of this highboy — with the creation of the cabriole legs. After surfacing those forms with a plane, a drawknife, a spokeshave, scrapers and rasps, I sanded them with 100-grit paper, followed by 150- and 220-grit papers, each grit removing the scratches left by the previous grit. Similarly, every other part of the highboy was sanded before installation, and sanding of assembled parts occurred periodically throughout the construction process to clean up the inevitable dings and scratches that occur as a piece is constructed.

Then, when the piece was officially done, every surface was resanded, beginning with whatever grit was necessary, and progressing up through a number of grits, ending with 400-grit paper on exterior surfaces and 220-grit paper on interior surfaces like drawer sides.

I then brushed on and wiped off a blended poly designed for that style of application. When the first coat had dried thoroughly — at least 24 hours in humid Ohio — I sanded again with 400- and then 600 grit paper on exterior surfaces, 220 on interior surfaces. A second coat of finish went on next, followed by more sanding. I then applied the last coat of finish.

Once the finish has cured, I think you have earned a moment or two of proud reflection on a job well done. Like your predecessors in woodworking, you have crafted a significant project.

Click Here to Download Drawings and Materials List.

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He pointed through the building’s overhead door at a stickered pile of wood tucked into a dark corner. He explained there was more out back. Then, with a rasping, expectorant-laden cough, he retreated to the house.

Moving aside battered hand tools, cases of motor oil, bits and pieces of machinery, I unearthed a stickered pile of rough-cut 5/4 cherry and walnut planks. The top layers were scattered with knots and splits and wane, but as I worked my way into the pile, the quality of the material improved. I dug deeper, and suddenly, I was face-to-face with some breathtaking material: boards 16″ wide, 10 to 12 feet long, composed entirely of clear, straight-grained walnut heartwood. In half an hour, I pulled out a dozen planks of the finest American hardwood I’ve ever seen.

I heard a door slam at the back of the house, and a woman approached the building in which I was working. She, too, was about my age. She was the sister, she explained. Her brother had cancer, and the material he’d cut some years ago with the intent of someday turning it into furniture for his home he now wished to turn into cash because he had no medical insurance. And that’s where the story of this highboy begins.

Arriving at a Design

I scaled up the measured drawing for this piece from a photo on page 185 of Albert Sack’s The New Fine Points of Furniture, but like the craftsmen who made the original American Queen Anne pieces, I varied from my source in order to suit the tastes of my customer — in this case, myself.

First, although I liked the informal grace of the original I was using as my model — a 1747 highboy built by Moses Bayley and Joshua Morss of Newbury, Massachusetts — I wanted my version to have a more stately posture, so when I drew the leg profile, I reduced the sweep in the leg’s cyma curve. I also changed the moldings at both the cornice and the waist. The waist molding on mine extends almost an inch beyond the surface of the lower case, whereas the waist-molding on the original has no overhang at all. Finally, the cornice molding on mine is different than the cornice molding on the original in two respects: First, like Bayley and Morss, I composed mine of elements that could be made with the tools I had on hand. Second, I gave my cornice molding an overall contour that leads down into the upper case in a curving line unlike the essentially straight line that leads the eye down into the piece on the original. I did this hoping to echo the curve in the cabriole legs at the bottom of the piece.

Since I didn’t have access to the original highboy, I don’t know any details about its internal parts, but I suspect it lacks some of the features I added to my version. For example, I installed two layers of sliding trays to the top drawer of the lower case. I also added three secret compartments to my edition. One of those will appear in the final installment of this project next week, and the other two are — well, secret.

Starting from the Ground Up

The fabrication of this highboy’s four cabriole legs demands a considerable investment of time. If you’re a first-timer, please don’t be disheartened if, after a week of hard work, you’re still working on them.

Begin by squaring up your leg stock. The blanks should finish out at a minimum of 2-7/8″ on a side with a length of 36-3/8″. This length includes the finished length of the leg (35-3/8″), plus one additional inch which is necessary if you decide to turn the foot on the lathe as I do. Once the leg has been squared up, trace your leg pattern on one face of your blank. Then place the pattern on a face adjacent to the one on which the pattern is marked, making sure the back corner of the post at the top of the leg meets the back corner of the post on the previously marked face.

Once the cabriole shapes have been marked on two adjacent faces, mark the locations of the various mortises each post will require. Remember that no two posts have exactly the same mortise arrangement. There is a right and left front post and a right and left back post, with each of these four requiring a different mortise layout.

Next, chop each of the mortises. While this can be done after the legs have been shaped, it is much easier to do when the stock is square in cross section. I used a Forstner bit in my drill press to rough in these mortises. I then squared them up with a paring chisel.

Careful work on the band saw will save you time when you later move to hand tools to fair the surfaces of the cabriole legs. (I would recommend that you not use a skip-tooth blade because you want the surfaces to be reasonably smooth.) Plan your cuts so that the pieces will fall from the band saw in large sections, because you’re going to need them when you make the next set of cuts.

After making all the cuts on the first face, tape the cut-offs back into place. This way you’ll have a square blank to maneuver under the band saw blade when you rotate that blank 90 degrees. (You can discard the very small pieces from under the foot.)

Lay the pattern back into place on the adjacent face, and re-mark any areas that have been concealed by the tape. Then begin sawing the adjacent face. You may need to re-tape some of the pieces as you make the second set of cuts — it’s essential that you maintain a square blank throughout the sawing process.

There are two ways to shape the round foot and the round pad beneath the foot. You can lay out the foot using a compass to delineate the pad on the end grain at the bottom of the leg and then — using the circle as a reference — shape the pad and foot with carving tools and rasps. This is an effective approach, although it is time-consuming.

I prefer to shape the foot and pad on the lathe because it’s quicker and produces feet and pads that are truly round. I should point out, however, that this is not a technique that should be attempted by anyone who lacks experience in lathe work, because it requires you to work against an asymmetrically mounted and unbalanced form in the lathe.

To perform this work on the lathe, you must mount the centered top of the post against the drive center of the lathe and the centered bottom of the pad below the foot against the tailstock of the lathe. Place a toolrest into position and manually turn the part through several rotations to ensure that this eccentric form misses the rest all the way around.

Then — very cautiously — begin to turn the pad and foot with a roughing gouge and scraping tools. I have found that this turning process works best if you periodically remove some of the excess material above the heel of the foot with a drawknife as the foot emerges.

When the pad and foot have been shaped, you’re ready to create the finished shape of your cabriole leg. I find this process to be among the most pleasurable of woodshop experiences, in part because it allows me an extended opportunity to put a variety of hand tools through their paces. I typically do this work with the leg still mounted in the lathe, although it can also be done with the leg mounted between V-blocks in a bench vise.

I shape the post at the top of the leg with a block plane, finishing the bottom section of the post (just above the knee) with a wide paring chisel and a scraper. The shaping of the leg itself requires a variety of hand tools: a block plane for the convex work and a drawknife and/or spokeshave for the concave work. Use rasps, card scrapers and sandpaper to clean up any areas of torn-out grain.

If you study Queen Anne legs on period originals, you’ll see that this form is articulated in many different ways. Some makers kept hard lines where the sides of the leg meet the front of the leg. Others softened these intersections, and some, in fact, rounded them. I tend to keep these intersections quite crisp up high beneath the knee, softening them as the lines descend to the floor.

Understanding the Jigsaw Puzzle

The back and sides of the highboy are simply glued-up panels tenoned into the posts. Each end of each of these wide panels is triple-tenoned into the post, and I always leave a little bit of shrinkage space on the bottom edge of the top tenon and the top edge of the bottom tenon in order to accommodate shrinkage across the grain. Sometimes I assemble the base with glue on only the middle tenon on each end of each part. At other times, I’ll glue all three tenons. It doesn’t seem to make much difference. Even though the highboys I’ve built are all living in homes with forced air heat, none — so far — have developed cracked side or back panels, something quite common in period originals.

The front of the base unit is composed of only five parts, in addition to the legs, but the fabrication of these five parts involves the cutting of quite a bit of complicated joinery, so please take some time to study the Drawings before cutting your stock. The rail beneath the top drawer of this section, for example, is double-tenoned on each end. It is cut on its back edge with mortises for two drawer runners and one kicker strip. Plus, its front edge is cut to receive the dovetail at the top of the stiles on either side of the center drawer. And the top rail has a fat dovetail cut on either end which is fit into a dovetail socket chopped into the end grain at the top of each of the two front posts. It’s complicated, but if you study the Drawings, the parts will begin to make sense.

The lower unit should be assembled in three stages. First, glue up the very simple back assembly, taking pains to ensure that the panel is square and that the posts at the top of the back legs lie in the same plane. You can check this by laying the back assembly on a flat surface, like a workbench — and it is essential that you make this check, because a back panel that is not truly flat will impart a twist to the unit of which it will later become a part. Then glue up the front of the lower unit, making the same flatness and squareness checks that you made in the case of the back panel. Gluing up these two subassemblies is a pretty straightforward process. The next one, however, is much more challenging.

Before you can join the front and back panels, you must lay out, cut, and fit all the mortises for the drawer runners because these must be glued into place at the same time you glue the end panels into place.

When you glue the two end panels into place, you must — at the same time — glue into place all the drawer runners, as well as the kicker strip for the top drawer. Although I accomplished this glue-up working alone, it was a harrowing process, and I recommend that you have help because there are so many parts to glue up and fit simultaneously.

Once you have glued the front and back panels to the end panels and installed the many drawer runners, carefully check the alignment of the lower case before you allow it to dry. First, check to see that the front panel is exactly perpendicular to each of the side panels. You can do this with a framing square or by measuring diagonals. Then check to see that the four feet all touch the floor at the same time. You can make some corrections by racking the uncured frame, but any racking correction you make will necessarily create some slight gaps in joinery.

Finishing Touches

The drawer guides and knee blocks are the final steps in the construction of the lower case.

The knee blocks — which allow you to complete the lines of the leg knees — are glued to both sides of each leg at the knees, with the exception of the back sides of the two back legs which are left without knee blocks.

Like the cabriole legs to which they’re joined, these blocks are bandsawn in two adjacent planes, then finished with hand tools. I do the preliminary hand tool work with the knee block screwed to a bit of vise-held scrap. I then glue and press-fit the knee block into place. After waiting for an hour, I go back to that knee block and fair it into the leg’s knee with a paring chisel and sandpaper.

The various drawer guides should be glued to the sides of the drawer runners at this time. Because it involves so many clamps, it looks much more complicated than it is.

Once you’ve got all that done, take a deep breath, because next issue we’ll move on to the drawers and the upper section of the highboy.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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The first tree I harvested from the woods—a black cherry– is now a ¾-sized Queen Anne highboy which stands in our bedroom. In one of the highboy’s drawers, we have a photo of our now-25-year-old daughter sitting at age 2 on one of the logs sawn up later to make lumber for that highboy.

My dad, who was then in his early fifties, had some experience cutting timber. As a home builder, he’d taken down trees on some of the lots on which he’d built. Plus, in the late 1940s, after graduating from high school, he’d worked for the Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest. Although I had never taken down any trees of noteworthy size, I had acquired some experience with a chainsaw, preparing firewood for the stove with which I heated my shop.

We were, I believed, reasonably accomplished woodsmen.

One warm spring morning, my dad and I carted our gear—chainsaw, gas, oil, axes, rope, safety glasses and ear muffs—into the woods to take down the cherry.

The tree had a diameter at breast height of about 24 inches, and the bottom 12 or 14 feet were straight and free of limbs: a perfect sawlog. Unfortunately, the cherry stood on a hillside surrounded by other trees and it had one enormous limb jutting out about 45 degrees from the face of the gentle slope above which the tree stood.

When I looked at the enormous limb, I saw more usable cherry. What I didn’t see was the seductive pull of gravity.

Before we started up the chainsaw, we surveyed the area to determine the best direction in which to down the tree. We drank coffee, chopped away small trees and limbs that might interfere with the cherry’s descent, and argued quietly about the best placement for the notch. We knew we wanted the tree to fall downhill—it was already leaning slightly in that direction—but it couldn’t fall straight downhill because that would entangle the cherry in a maple immediately below it, so we had to cut the notch so that the cherry fell either slightly left or right of straight downhill.

When we had cleaned a felling zone, we fired up the chainsaw and cut a generous notch angled just a bit to one side of straight downhill, a notch we hoped would drop the tree in the area we had just cleared.

My dad then started the back cut a bit above the notch on the side of the tree opposite the notch.

We thought our plan was a good one. The hinge he would leave when he’d finished the back cut would be perpendicular to the tree’s intended line of fall, guiding the tree into our felling zone.

At first things went according to plan. When the tree began to creak, my dad pulled out the saw, shut it off, and the two of us retreated to a safe distance and waited.

And waited.

After maybe five minutes, my dad fired up the chainsaw a second time and cautiously approach the tree which—as far as I could tell– had not yet moved so much as a millimeter in its direction of fall.  He worked the bar of the saw into the cut and removed another ½” of wood, then clicked off the saw and retreated again.

Nothing. A slight breeze rustled the leaves above us. Birds called to one another in the silence left behind after the chainsaw’s rattling growl.

We looked at one another. “Maybe if I got a rope up there,” I said pointing to the limbs of the cherry, “I could go downhill and pull enough to get it started.”

We thought about that and waited, hoping the tree would break free.

“I’ll try the chainsaw again,” my dad suggested. He started the saw, moved closer to the tree butt, nudged his saw into the cut, and nibbled away at the back side of the hinge.

Suddenly, the tree snapped and cracked and began to lean in the proper direction, guided by the notch and the hinge. But then gravity grabbed the heavy jutting limb and twisted the tree, altering the direction of fall so that the tree was perfectly aligned in the one direction in which we absolutely did not want it to fall.

It leaned, leaned, leaned and then—about 45 degrees from the vertical—it came to rest, its branches entangled with the branches of the maple standing directly downhill.

We approached the stump. The hinge we’d left to guide the fall was still intact but twisted now, and the tree—which had looked almost slight when it was standing straight up and down now appeared to weigh about as much as—say—the planet Jupiter.

Here’s what we did in the next two hours:

1. I tied a rock to the end of my rope and threw the rock up into the cherry’s branches where that end of the rope snagged. Then we went downhill and tugged on the other end of the rope. Nothing.

2. We climbed up into the partially fallen tree, bouncing up and down on the trunk. Nothing.

3. I shook my fist at the tree.

4. We nibbled away at the hinge with the chainsaw, and the butt did eventually break free, but even then the tree didn’t fall. It’s branches remained hung up on the branches of the maple.

Then we walked to the house and had lunch, which turned out to be the most productive thing we’d tried because when we returned to the woods, the cherry had freed itself from the nearby maple and had settled to the ground.

Or more accurately, gravity had freed it. Gravity, it seems, is a much more powerful force than a chainsaw, a rope (with rock), an angry fist, or a pair of inexperienced woodsmen with good intentions and little real experience.

-Kerry Pierce

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