A Recycling Bonanza

Around 1978 Bob Wallace, the senior Biochemist at HSU allowed me to tear down a small out building in his backyard. It had been partially dismantled before, but the main structure remained with some siding, a solid 2x2 floor, doubled rough 2x2 studs (apparently there had been a special on rough 2x2's as they were used for everything except the joists, rafters and siding), rough redwood 2x10 floor joists and finished 2x6 rafters and valley rafters. Since our house required a new fence to separate us from the neighbors yard and a new retaining wall at the base of the hill in our backyard, I was able to justify buying a new 10" Craftsman table saw—the money saved on wood exceeded the cost of the saw (0n national sale, so same price in Eureka as on the other side of the "Redwood Curtain"). A flurry of projects resulted: I cut the siding into short (3" x 2–3') fence boards and used them along with some of the 2x2s to build a fence around our front yard and another "Zen" fence up one side of our backyard into the trees ending with a gate at right angles to the fence, and NO fence across the back. I used a significant fraction of the 2x2s to make a picnic table top and two matching bench tops, the X cross legs and braces were then made from 2x4s cut from a floor joist, all held together with nails. The remaining floor joists were used with redwood 4x6 beams from an old railroad trestle to build a retaining wall in our back yard and a mini-deck mounted on 20 year old redwoods  in a small grove on our back hill.

An Old-Growth Redwood Dresser*

The finished 2x6 redwood rafters were used to make a bedroom furniture set, starting with a large (66" x 21 1/2" x 37") dresser.

I first selected the best pieces of lumber to glue up to make the two ends and the top of the dresser. Since I was going to be planning the glued-up pieces both across the grain and with the grain I wanted clear, straight grain pieces with the grains aligned. After selection, the planks were run through my table saw to remove the rounded edges, then the edges were hand planed with my 1926  Stanley Jack plane to be flat and square.

I next used a Dowel-it jig to drill holes for 3/8" dowels to align the boards and add extra strength when they were glued together. Both the sides and the top consist of four parallel 2x6s. Once the boards were glued small irregularities were evident so the pieces were not completely flat. In order to create flat, even slabs I took a second Stanley Jack plane and rounded the cutting blade so I could plane across the slabs at a slight diagonal to create a flat, rough surface as can be seen in the illustration of the cabinet interior side below. The interior case walls were left rough, as was traditional in hidden surfaces of hand crafted antique American furniture. to match the 2x6 skirt around the base of the dresser, the sides were cut 1 1/2" narrower than the top to give a 1 1/2" lip on the top for both sides and the front. The exterior surfaces were followed with planing with the grain to remove the undulations of the rough cross-planing and create a smooth surface. The edge of the underside of the top was finished on the front and sides with a 1/4" Roman ogee router bit prior to assembly.

The main case, top, sides and front cross-pieces and uprights, were assembled with glue and 3/8" dowels. Through dowels were used on the ends (see the detail of the left end below, while hidden dowels were used to attach the top to the other frame elements. The drawer openings, corners, and upper edge of the top were rounded with a 1/4" rounding router bit. After the case was assembled additional lengths of 2x6 were used to make a 6" skirt around the sides and front of the dresser. The cutouts under the drawers in front and on the sides were cut by hand with a handheld electric jigsaw. Unlike the case, the skirt sides are held in butt-joints to the front skirt with screws. The screw-heads are counter sunk and covered with glued in redwood plugs. The skirt is attached via screws from the case into the skirt so no screws are visible from the outside. The top outer edge of the skirt was finished with a 1/4" Roman ogee router bit, while all other visble edges were finished with a 1/4" rounding bit.

Additional lengths of the finished 2x6 rafters were used to make the six upper drawer fronts, while glued-up '2x8's and '2x9's were used for the lower four drawers. The front edges of all drawer-fronts were finished with a 1/4" Roman ogee router bit. Because I was using 2x6 lumber and didn't want the drawer fronts to stick out too much, a 3/4" wide rabbet was cut all around the inside surface of all drawer fronts to a depth of 5/8" on the top and sides, and 3/8" on the bottom using a "wobble"  dado blade on my table saw (see images below). As seen in the first image below, an additional 3/4" rabbet was cut on the drawer front sides to accommodate the 3/4" pine drawer sides. The rear drawer panels were glued on using blind dovetails cut with a router and dovetailing jig. Because of the thickness of the lumber I couldn't use the dovetail jig to attach the drawer fronts, instead opting for 3/8" through dowels and glue. Fianally, the drawer bottoms consist of 1/4" Philippine mahogany plywood floating in 1/4" dadoed grooves in the front, back and both sides of each drawer. The various drawer slides and sliders were cut and shaped from Philippine mahogany purchased at Pierson's, local buioder's supply in Eureka, CA.  (In 1980 Philippine mahogany was the least expensive hardwood available to me, both as lumber and in plywood, it was also high quality matching the color and grain of true mahogany.)

After the entire piece was assembled, the exterior of the dresser was sanded with fine sanding paper to give the final surface, then finished with a walnut stain Watco™ oil.

Recently, I discovered some old notebooks stuck away in my garage, and in them I found my original drawings for this dresser and a proposed nightstand. I have added scans of them below. They were accompanied with the note "Dresser completed Easter 1980.  Modified to give 10 drawers." I did make one nightstand (out of an intended two, as I ran out of redwood), but it ended up without doors, since I had run out of good quality recovered redwood, and could not afford new wood at that time. I was able to make a redwood frame for a mirror to hang over the dresser.