Shower Room Vanity Unit - Part 6 - The Drawers

One of my favourite parts of wood working is cutting dovetails. I'm not going to do a tutorial on dovetailing as there are many on the internet. The cabinet has three drawers and I decided to cut blind dovetails on the front and through dovetails on the back of each drawer. This was 16 on each drawer. I broke out some cool jazz and set to making them.

Terry's dovetailing kit

I generally find a combination of the following tools make dovetailing a little easier.

• Wheel marker gauge - a traditional one is just as good.
• Engineers square
• 0.5 mm mechanical pencil
• Dovetail saw
• Rule - I love the Incra Precision T-rule as shown in the picture. If you want one have a look here
• LH and RH Skew chisels
• 1/4" to 3/4" bench chisels - if you have a fish tail chisel so much better
• Fret saw
• Mallet - a brass one is a luxury but not essential
• Good light source.
• A good bench with bench dogs, a vice and a bench-hook

I don't bother with the fret saw any more and use my bandsaw to cut out the waste.

Good light is essential.
Here are the two Ikea worklights I recently got
on a recommendation from
Chris Schwarz

I like cutting blind dovetails
using my deep bench-hook.

Cutting a knife wall by undercutting
with a chisel

Another knife wall

Finished front, rear and sides.
Only another 8 more to do!