This idea came from those who are always shouting "more storage"!
Just your basic chest of drawers with some flourishes.
Dimensions are 20"W x 8"D x 9"H, constructed with Russian olive and walnut (primary woods), maple as a secondary wood. Construction is frame & panel.
I have a bunch of the olive drying (local firewood trees) and a good portion of it has knots. Typically these pieces also have checking so they don't work well as a structural part. I was planning on where to use these and the thought came to veneers.
The drawer fronts, top, and side panels have a 1/8" skin of the olive over maple. I also decided to use full thickness panels so I could keep everything on the same plane and also add an accented black border. To avoid the inevitable expansion issues, I stabilized all these panels with "cactus juice" resin. This also helped fill some stray cracks in the olive. The back is simply plywood with walnut and maple veneers.
In my mind anything identified for jewelry storage needs plenty of compartments/trays. Each drawer has a divided lower half and two removable trays above. The top lidded section has two areas dedicated for rings. Previously I had made my own ring inserts since premade versions (Rockler, etal.) are very expensive. It's a lot of work! I recently found some online for a good price. They are well made and easy to size with the table saw. Two of the drawer trays have bracelet inserts for variety. The drawers themselves are dovetailed maple with simple maple runners. The handles are an evolution of some previous designs I've used, made with jatoba and walnut. All in all I'm happy how it all turned out. A few changes if I do it again, but fun and uncomplicated and a great way to use up some narrow cutoffs.
You can see some of the lines "borrowed" into my other projects, esp. the legs. I don't decode to do that, it just is the shape that comes to mind when I want something curved.
Another beauty. One minor design feature that jumped out is the runner for the drawers working perfectly with the dovetail. Your eye for those design details is amazing to me. Thanks for posting this.
There sure is a lot to like about this piece. The drawer runner is a display of craftsmanship. When I've tried them in the past the fitting has been very difficult. I also really like the design of the handles. Really nice!
I made a strip of wood to space the lower runner off the bottom and another strip to space the other two from that lower one after I installed it. I hate installing runners by calculating so I triple checked everything then used double side tape to test fit it all first. Since the drawers were not yet assembled, the tape was strong enough that I could place the drawer sides over the runners and measure the gaps. I suppose if I did this regularly, I could trust my initial guesses.
