Gary Ramsden recycles the wood from an old chest of drawers to make a brand new piece of furniture.
This sewing box is a lesson in how not to design furniture in the conventional way – the design was dictated by the size of timber from a chest of drawers. Starting with salvaged timber and a quick sketch isn’t the textbook approach, but I find the constraints imposed by designing for the materials to hand can lead to some interesting ideas. The orthodox approach would be to define your needs, sketch solutions, develop drawings and then source materials. Each step in the process is inextricably linked, so it is useful to take a holistic view and you should expect to go through numerous iterations.
In this case, the internal volume was limited by the width of the deepest drawer front, so I decided to make a separate top to maximise the working depth. The board lengths were limited by the distance between the bolt holes for the original hardware, so the box had to be designed with those disparate constraints in mind. I needed a relatively large box with a hinged top and an internal tray for fiddly bits like needles and thimbles. The finished piece would be heavy, so I also wanted a frame to raise it off the floor to aid man-handling, and to allow internal access while sitting at a sewing machine.

Materials





1. The timber from the sewing box came from this old chest of drawers which had reached its sell-by date.
2. The chest of drawers was broken down into this stock material. The chest had been finished in an insipid varnish, however the unfinished interior of the carcass revealed strong tones in nut brown, red and purple, with a little sapwood and strong black figure, which I speculated to be a species of walnut. My suspicion strengthened as I worked the timber, which released a distinctive mouth-watering caramel scent.
3. The base panel is veneered in American black walnut and the tray bottom is in English walnut, both salvaged from an offcuts bin. Jamie Ward, my tutor at Warwickshire College, picked up some fabulous rippled sycamore and was good enough to sell me some for the box top.
4. I had some leftover stringing from a cherry dressing screen and used it to deal with the joint between the solid walnut sides and sycamore veneer. The butt hinges were dug out of the bin and polished with emery paper, then finished with a clear urethane aerosol lacquer to prevent tarnishing.
5. A traditional box-stay would fold nicely into the space taken up by the tray, so I decided to buy a Brusso mechanism that nestles in the box side.
Veneering



6. Veneering the top, base and tray bottom was relatively straightforward. The tray bottom simply involved putting a sandwich of face veneer, plywood substrate and backing veneer into the screw press. I used standard PVA adhesive throughout, including when veneering. The forces generated by the expansion and contraction of the veneers as the water in the glue is absorbed, then dissipated, can be enormous. They can easily turn your substrate into a corrugated mess, so it’s important to balance those forces by using a balancing veneer and pressing it and the face veneer at the same time. I’ve made the mistake of overdoing the glue and pressure in the past, leading to heavy bleed through. Some open- grained veneers like ash and oak are more susceptible – a general rule is: less is more.
7. The downside of using reclaimed materials was evident when shooting the veneer. The sycamore was pliant and stable, the walnut was brittle and dry and tore with the slightest excuse. A light misting with water and a very sharp plane iron helped with the jointing but when I came to rout a rebate for the ebony string, it chipped badly, requiring remedial work in the guise of veneer darts. I used this jig to shoot the veneers, ensuring their edges were perfectly straight to get a perfect match.
8. After shooting, the veneers were taped together before glue-up.
Box Constructing
The base and top panels sit in rebates in the sides of the box and top. It’s useful to have your veneering completed at this stage so the panels can be used as accurate depth gauges for setting cut depth. A portable router, router table or a plough plane will produce similar results.
The grooves for the tray runners were worked into the box sides on the router table but could have been tackled with ease with a router and sliding fence. The box sides and top are mitred and reinforced with biscuit joints. When cutting the mitres, I was careful to cut the top and box components at the same time to make sure they were exactly the same length. The slightest discrepancy would prevent them from mating perfectly. The biscuits not only reinforce the joint but are also useful when it comes to locating the components during assembly.



9. I found the technique illustrated here to be accurate and efficient. Lay the components to be jointed together so that the mitres form a V when secured in a vice. If your mitres are accurate, it will form a right-angled foot to locate the base of the biscuit jointer.
10. Then it is just a case of locating the jointer in the V and cutting one side …
11. … then turning the jointer and cutting the other. Here you can see the slots that were accurately cut into the mitres. The box and its lid can then be glued and clamped together when ready. Once the lid has been glued up and has dried off, you can then cut the stringing into it.
Tray Construction




12. Securing small components can be tricky and if you can feel the draught of a spinning blade on your fingers, then it’s time to rethink your approach. Jigs are invaluable aids and essential if you want to remain largely intact. They will repay the time invested by offering accuracy, repeatability and safety. They don’t have to be pretty and can be cobbled together with available offcuts, but they must be accurate. I constructed a sled jig to cut the mitres. Safety is paramount when using machinery and all guards should be in place. In this photo, the guard has been raised temporarily to clearly show the sled and work.
13. I had access to a large overhead router to cut the mortise joints in the tray. In your workshop you will want to cut your joints with a router and appropriate jig.
14. A dry fit of the tray components ensured everything fitted together nicely.
15. I used a double-headed tenoner with a sliding carriage to cut the tenons. You may resort to some clever lateral thinking with a router. Alternatively, you could approach the job the old-fashioned way and cut your tenons with a handsaw.
Stand

16. The open frame of the stand takes advantage of the long narrow components yielded by the carcass of the dresser. The legs were ripped and mitred along their length and reinforced with biscuits. A slight taper from the rails to the feet softens the boxy feel and lightens the overall effect. The rails are dowelled into the legs and the whole assembly is stiffened by screws and glued corner blocks. The box sits in an oversize rebate in the rails, avoiding trapped fingers while trying to position the laden box in the frame.
Hardware
The butt hinges were next chopped in by hand, and the depth was fettled with a razor-sharp chisel until the top and base almost mated. The slightest offset in drilling the pilot holes for the screws can pull out your alignment, and it took two attempts to achieve an acceptable fit, opening and plugging the pilot holes from the first attempt before having another bash at it.



17. I had one chance to get the brass stay fitted accurately so I invested the time to make a jig. The rebate width only required selecting a router bit of the appropriate diameter.
18. A screw is a simple but effective adjustable stop and can be calibrated accurately by the slightest adjustment – a quarter turn can make a big difference. After a number of test runs the fence was adjusted to centre the rebate, the screw adjusted for length, and the plunge of the router adjusted for depth.
19. The result was a rebate into which the stay could be press-fitted with no discernible gaps.
Finishing

It will often take longer to finish a piece than make it, but it is worth sanding through the grades before applying your finish of choice. I’ve had some trouble applying Danish oil to walnut in the past – the finish remained tacky and refused to cure. This time I diluted the first coat with a 50:50 cut of white spirit, followed by 75:25, then a full coat with at least 24 hours’ drying time between each coat, and it worked well.