Jared MacDonald Woodworking

I finally finished my first commissioned piece, and my largest project yet — a mid-century modern dresser.

The case is mitered cherry veneer plywood, and the drawers are solid cherry and poplar. The finish is “Candlelight” gel stain and satin Arm-R-Seal . The knobs are from North Woods Hardware.

It is mitered both on the case joints, for a seamless edge, and on the face frame. Mitering these large pieces accurately was a challenge. I built a large crosscut sled for the table saw just for these miters:

Which produced nice results (here, you can see the edge banding applied to the face miters, while the to-be-joined miters are raw):

I joined them with dowels – yes, dowels – using the DowelMax jig, six on each joint:

The case has two trim pieces: one horizontal piece separating the upper small drawers from the rest, and one vertical piece. These were challenging also in that they are curved, and meet at a curve. I cut this joint by hand:

Here’s where that joint appears:

The drawers are made of poplar. I decided to do these using box joints. Here’s the end result:

And here’s a rather dramatic picture of the unfinished drawer:

I finished the outside of the drawers with amber shellac. I would not choose amber shellac again; perhaps unsurprisingly, it gave the drawers too yellowish a tint.

Side note: I went ahead and uploaded the following picture of the drawer onto the Wikipedia page for “finger joint“:

All in all, I’m pleased with the result: