Heirloom Dresser

Some years ago, I had the good fortune of having a tall dresser I designed and built appear in Bill Hylton’s Chests of Drawers (Taunton Press 2002). Ever since, I’ve wanted to build a companion piece to complement it. Recently, after my wife hinted that her aging, hand-me-down dresser had seen better days, it seemed a good time to revisit that desire. The result is the piece you see here: a contemporary take on a classic design featuring two banks of drawers riding on internal web frames that also serve to hold the piece together. The front legs are tapered and set at an angle to give the piece some visual lift and depth. Solid joinery—mortise and tenon for the case, dovetails for the drawers—makes for a rugged build that should last for generations to come. But while the joinery has its roots in time-tested methods, the techniques I employed make good use of modern technology in the form of Festool’s Domino loose tenons, and variably-spaced dovetails courtesy of Leigh’s D4R Pro. I used cherry for the case sides, top and front drawer rails, quartersawn sycamore for the drawer fronts, soft maple for the drawer sides and interior frame components and a bit of dark mystery wood from my stash for the drawer pulls but feel free to use any suitable hardwoods.