It’s time to get started with the actual building of Madison’s tall dresser, and the first steps in the process is making the sides for the body.



These consist of two wide, solid-wood panels just over 49 inches in length and 19 inches in width.

In order for us to attach the drawer frames (which not only support the drawers but are an important part of the overall structural framework of the dresser,) we need to plow out a few dados across the width of the sides and cut rabbets at the top/bottom and also on the back edge to eventually receive the back panel.

For the side panels I got really lucky and chose two extra-wide boards (approximately 12+ inches in width each) to make up the majority of the width, and then eventually glued them together with some not so extra-wide 8 inch boards to give me a rough dimension I could start working with.

To mill the extra-wide boards I decided against ripping them to widths that would fit on my 8 inch jointer, and instead built a very simple thickness planer sled that would allow me to flatten one face as if I had ran it over the cutter head of a monster-sized jointer.

Then after the glue-up was completed it was over to the table saw to crosscut and rip the panels to size, followed by installing my dado blade and getting to work on those dados and rabbets.

I’d love to tell you there weren’t any complications along the way…but that would be a lie! So we’ll discuss what happened and how I fixed those mistakes in today’s episode.

A full set of detailed plans are available for sale on my website, thanks to Brian Benham of Benham Design Concepts.

You can find them by visiting our new "Digital Downloads Store" by clicking here.

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