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After I glued up the tables, I installed the doublers/runners/kickers. I used some leftover hard maple for these parts. Once these were in place, I was finally able to fit each drawer side to its opening. Once all the parts were trimmed to a snug but free-moving fit, I did the dovetail joinery and finally glued up the drawers.

The panels for the drawer bottoms were hand-planed to form the edge bevels, and secured with a slotted screw in the middle of the bottom which allows for wood movement.

So, I’m now to the point of final sanding and finish. First, I had some color matching problems to deal with. I used a light dye to fix some lighter colored boards in my top panels. The fist picture shows one of my top panels – you can see that the bottom board is darker than the rest. The second picture shows how it looks after an inital application of dye – better, but the bottom board still stands out. So I masked off that board and sprayed the rest of the panel one more time, and the result was a much better color match… not perfect, but better.

I had the same problem to deal with on the other panel… except this time the darker board was in the middle.

I also had to touch up a small strip of sapwood in both panels, using an artist’s brush to apply the dye to these areas. The end result is pretty good I think.

I realize that the color will darken and even up more with time, so I was VERY sparing with the dye. After the dye dried and I was happy with the color match, I applied a liberal dose of BLO and let it cure for a week. Then over a period of about three days, I applied several coats of a wipe-on varnish mix.

For the finish I mixed equal parts BLO, spar varnish, and mineral spirits, applying a coat about every 24 hrs. As I progressed I added more spar varnish/MS to the mix, and rubbed lightly with steel wool. Finally, a coat of wax finished it off.

A couple of things to mention – I was surprised at how much the oil darkened the cherry. It’s hard to tell in this pic, but the tables are already significantly darker than the cherry vise cover on the end of the work bench. I also didn’t expect the cherry to look as “blotchy” as this with the oil (you can see it most prominently in the drawer front of the left table and the side of the right table). I think this will even up with time – we’ll see.

I turned a couple of simple knobs out of cherry to complete the drawers. I figure if I don’t like the knobs, I can always make some more…

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