Finished the Drawers for the Pantry

The Pantry is close to finished, the frame is painted, the drawers are together and just need a finish, and I need to mount the slides. The pulls were backordered so it may be awhile before I can install the face plates on the drawers. Oh well that's life.

The drawers are large, figuring out a way to hold them for finish planing of the edges took a little butt scratching but a couple of holdfasts with battens and a couple of stops did the job with no muss and no fuss.

Another view:

Last one:

I did my kitchen a couple or three years ago, because of the number of drawers I chose to use a dovetail jig. I wish I hadn't. I should have taken the time to hand cut the dovetails, I think the boxes are much stronger and truer than those made by machine and they look much better. That said, ain't no way, no how I'm going to redo all the kitchen drawers by hand.

A couple more thoughts: I no longer "test" fit my dovetails, once the tails and pins are cleaned up I put a little liquid hide glue on the pins and drive the tails home. The hide glue acts as a lubricant and I get fewer "splits" doing it that way. Before I got most of my split boards when separating the boards after a test fit. My guess is the combination of lubrication and no stress from pulling the joints apart has stopped the splits. As always YMMV.