Low Cherry Tansu – Finale

At long last here is the final post on the Low Cherry Tansu. After completing the door in the last post, the remaining items to finish were the drawers and base.

Pegged Drawers

For the drawers I used kiri (paulownia) for the sides, back and bottom panels, and cherry for the fronts to match the rest of the cabinet. The sides are rabbeted and pegged to the drawer fronts and backs using wooden pegs. I’ve used this construction method in the past and it has proven to be really strong. However for the drawer bottoms, I decided to mimic some of my old tansu and simply glued the bottoms on.

After my criticism of this same type of construction method in a previous post, why did I do this you ask? As foolish as it sounds, mainly out of curiosity. The fact is people continue to build this way here in Japan. Even on new cabinets, drawers, and boxes. So it made me wonder, how long will something like this last? And when it comes to assembly, is there some benefit in terms of speed? Maybe it’s much faster and easier to simply glue the drawer bottoms on vs other methods like fitting the bottom in a groove?

I can say now, that after assembling these drawers, I don’t feel like it saved a lot of time to do in this way, and I don’t think I’ll attempt this method again. In many ways fitting the drawer bottom into a groove cut into the sides/front, is less finicky that actually gluing the bottom on. When you glue the bottom on you have glue squeeze out issues, and also have to worry about making sure the drawer is square before the glue starts to set.

As for wood movement, I have a feeling that it may survive for quite a while before developing any splits. For one Japan’s climate is relatively stable compared to other parts of the world (though we do use an air conditioner in the summer so we shall see what kind of effect that has). Also I have a theory that kiri, being a very soft flexible wood, will tolerate being fixed in place better than harder woods.

In any case this is a cabinet that I built for personal use, and as such I felt like experimenting a bit. It may prove to be a foolish experiment, but I’m willing to see how it goes. If nothing else it will be a good learning experience.

Anyways back to pegging the drawers. In the past I have made my own dowels for pegging drawers. But the other day I came across these tapered beech pegs at a craft store, so I picked up a few packs. I like these tapered pegs much more than standard dowels. They are easier to install and in theory ensure that more glue will adequately contact both the peg and surrounding hole. With you install standard dowels, driving the dowel in has a tendency to force the glue down into the bottom of the hole, essentially removing the glue from the sides of the holes where you want it. In theory the dowel can then get loose over time. I can’t say I’ve ever had that problem, but it’s the reason some people swear by tapered pegs.

When installing tapered pegs ideally you want to drill a hole with a matching taper for a really snug fit. In this case I didn’t have a decent taper bit on hand, so I just used a standard drill bit. And I chose a bit with a slightly tighter diameter than the major diameter of the peg. That ensured a really solid compression fit when driving the pegs in.

For the back of the drawers I drove the pegs in straight.

But angled them for the drawer fronts. That way I could ensure that the pegs wouldn’t be too close to the end-grain of the drawer sides, where there is a possiblity of cracking or splitting away the weak area between the peg and end-grain.

Here’s one of the drawers after trimming the pegs. You can also clearly see the drawer bottom, and how it is simply glued on to the bottom of the drawer sides.

Base

As I mentioned in the first post of this series, I have been somewhat unclear on what type of base to use for this cabinet. I’ve made up my mind to go with a base with legs giving the cabinet a more modern look than traditional tansu. But I continue to contemplate round vs square legs. I still haven’t made up my mind 100% so I decided to forge ahead building a quick and simple base using square legs. I figure I will live with this base for a while and see how I feel about it in time.

I kept the construction of the base pretty simple. Basically a series of rails that I joined together using dominoes. I then fit the legs to the long rails using bridle joints.

With the base done I packed up the cabinet and brought it home. Here it is after one coat of oil and with our old tabi-dansu stacked on top.

A few final details that I have yet to do are applying one or two more coats of oil, and adding a patina to the drawer hardware. I have yet to find a good source of tansu hardware that is reasonably priced and also well made/designed. In this case I ended up buying a bit of a mix and match set, because I was unable to find drawer and door pulls that matched. The dangling handles on the door are painted, but the silver ring pulls are not. When I ordered the ring pulls I thought they would be iron, as I wanted to try out applying my own black patina. But what came turns out to be some type of cast zinc hardware. So I’ve got to rethink how I’m going to go about doing the patina. Ultimately I want all of the hardware to be black, so worst case scenario I will just paint them.

Here are some detail shots of the ken-don door. You can see the details I was trying to match with the old tansu on top; the mitered frame and flush panel. I really like the look of the flush frame and panel. It’s very minimal in design but the change in grain direction still adds a lot of interest.

Lastly here’s a side-by-side with my original concept that I rendered in Blender. The size of the two tabi-dansu in the rendering are a bit off, and the tone of the wood is very different, but overall the concept came through. I’m definitely going to keep playing around with Blender for designing and visualizing projects like this. It’s become a really helpful tool to work out designs and to see them as they will more or less be in real life.

Thanks for following along, and stay tuned for some chair work coming up next.

-Jon