Making the The Ceremony of Desires cabinet

Words and photos: Vasko Sotirov

When you were a little kid, did someone asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up? I’m guessing your answer is not what you do for a living today. If I got that wrong I’m very envious, but if I’m right, there is one thing we have in common.

The reality is we make a lot of choices throughout our lives and typically we rarely know what the right option is. Sometimes we make the wrong choice, then pick a different one, and before we know it, years have gone by. This is a story about a piece I made that symbolises exactly that.

1. Conceived to celebrate the fulfilment of desires, the author’s Ceremonia has a series of boxes, each unique but connected by means of routed channels and metal fixtures. The dovetailed boxes are made mostly of cherry with sycamore details.

Many paths

I’m 35 and have undertaken quite a few different paths that ended up being dead ends. Like a job, or personal relationships, or even hobbies that I didn’t enjoy so much. It sounds depressing, but not if you look at the broader picture.

The question here is, why should someone follow a path? In my case, I’m looking for something…happiness! Put simply, I’d say that my life is one very exciting pursuit of desires. Walking a path, chasing desires that at some point might turn into reality. Collecting them as if they were the treasures of life.

3. Design began with an idea, then sketches and a mock-up to work out a multitude of angles. Each box contains its own story in the form of a small painted ‘racconto’.

This is the very same conversation I was having with a friend and apparently our thoughts resonated so much that at some point he asked me to make him a piece that celebrates the fulfilment of desires. The idea of a little chest of drawers popped up in my head immediately. A particular one though, made up of many legs and disconnected drawers. The legs, all pointing in different directions to better represent the different paths in one’s life and a bunch of sparse drawers symbolising the desires that were fulfilled along the way. All intricately bonded together.

Clockwise from top right. 4: Each drawer is different, this one has a parquetry cover which slides open. 5. This drawer has a pull-to-open hinged drawer front. 6. The top of this ‘drawer’ has a front cover only 7. This drawer opens from the back when you push it inwards. 8. Open the drawer, and the racconto rises up. 9. The inlaid polka dot interior is a gentle surprise. 10. The ‘kumiko jail’ drawer was an opportunity to play with lattice work.

Stories within

As I worked on a small-scale mock-up, an unexpected visitor to my workshop made everything that much better. Primo Formenti is an artist friend of mine, who creates three-dimensional abstract paintings that he calls ‘racconti’, literally ‘tales’. A serendipitous encounter, the dream in the drawer, weird cabinet had its content. I asked him to recount some of his desires through a series of small paintings that I wanted to enshrine inside my creation.

For a mock-up, I used cardboard and superglue for the drawers and thin strips of wood for the legs. The actual legs would be made from steel, as they represent the indelible past, but also because I had envisioned slender and fairly long elements. Somehow, I couldn’t trust a 1500mm long leg that was 15 x 15mm thick made of wood.

Initially I decided to mitre solid cherry for the drawer cases and I did, until ironically, I felt it was not the best choice and changed path. Fulfilling a desire typically takes time and effort but a mitred construction is not exactly time consuming. Enter the dovetails. Eight exquisitely dovetailed cherry drawers hanging on eight seemingly unrelated steel legs.

11. When cutting the pins, I saw to just a tiny bit on the outside of the line.

12. I then pare with a chisel perfectly to the line.

Time to dovetail

I love dovetailing, as to me it’s not just about the structural function of the joint, but rather about how the dovetails ornament a piece. For a fairly fine and delicate piece, I was not concerned with structural integrity. Let me clarify this – I have conducted quite a few experiments trying to understand just how strong dovetails are and my conclusions were always extremely surprising. I even ran my car over a small, dovetailed corner and it didn’t break.

When I lay out the tails, all I’m concerned with is the way the joint looks. I sketch possible layout solutions to scale, varying the number of tails and their angle. Typically, I tend to prefer odd numbered tails, and in this case I wanted mitred corners for a more refined look as well.

13. I cut the tails first and clean the bulk of the waste out with a fretsaw.

After finishing the layout with a pencil, I cut the tails first and use a fretsaw to clean out the bulk of the waste. Then I use a chisel to perfectly remove the remaining waste down to the baseline. For the mitred look at the ends, you have to start and finish the row with half a tail. It’s important to transfer the tails on the pin boards before any mitring occurs.

When cutting the pins, I avoid taking my chance sawing on the line, so I stay away just a tiny bit to the outer side of it. After removing the bulk of the waste, yet again with the fretsaw, I use a sharp chisel to carefully pare everything to the line. Remember not to get rid of the material at the ends of the pin boards, as it is going to be cut at a 45° angle to meet the other half of the mitre.

14. A 45° jig with a sharp chisel helps to create a clean mitre.

You can pare from the top to the bottom, or from front to back depending on the specific pin. If the grain is straight and compliant, I might go from the top to the bottom using a chisel and a hammer, but if the grain leads to the wood cracking towards the inside of the pin, I stop immediately and clean the waste from the front to the back.

At this point it’s time to mitre the outside edges. I saw away most of the material and then use a sharp chisel with a 45° jig for a nice clean mitre.

15. Drawer carcase parts jointed and ready for assembly.

16. Careful work and it all comes together.

17. The ‘upside-down’ drawer has a playful rotating mechanism.

18–20. The drawer has two parts and allow the larger one to twist.

21. The kumiko drawer was an excuse to create an ornamental front using a simple sawing  jig.

22. The pattern is not traditional but has a ‘random’ look.

How paths meet

The cabinet legs are fixed directly to the drawer cases with M6 countersunk machine screws. Initially I was a bit overwhelmed by the number of parts to elegantly coordinate but used my mock-up as a guide.

23. Creating the 2mm dia ebony dowels with a drill and a pencil sharpener.

I used a bevel gauge to set the angle of each leg in relation to a drawer and then marked the corresponding spot on the actual drawer. A shallow 18mm wide groove was then routed to house the leg, and positions were marked for locating machine screws.

A through hole was then drilled and tapped with M6 threads. With the help of a couple of sharpened-to-a-point screws, I then transferred the position of the holes on to the drawer housing. Holes created with a brad point drill bit were later countersunk as I disassembled the dry fitted drawer boxes. The same steps were repeated as the whole cabinet was slowly but steadily assembled. It’s no accident that most of the drawer boxes are towards the top. Like a tree, the sweetest fruits are high up.

24. A polka dot pattern was first created by drilling 2mm blind holes.

Everything is now ready to be disassembled, prefinished and glued up. While the drawer cases are drying, the legs are being taken care of. A 5-minute metal epoxy was used to plug the outside of the holes, before sanding back carefully and painting with satin black paint.

The cabinet is then reassembled and it’s time to start making the actual drawers. The reason I drilled through holes in the metal legs that I then had to plug with epoxy is because it’s much easier to tap through holes, and it was also more convenient while test assembling the piece. Using sharpened screws for marking drilling positions would have been impossible with a blind hole.

25. Positions were marked before inlaying the ebony dowels.

The perfect fit

Each of the eight drawers is unique. They look the same on the outside but have a distinctive feature when opened. They are all piston fitted to their openings. Half blind dovetails for the drawer fronts were a must, five tails in this case looked more appealing to my eye compared to three, two and four were out of question, and six was way too cramped.

26. The surface was planed with a very sharp blade – sanding would have marked the sycamore with black ebony dust.

For piston fit drawers I size the front and the back elements to a squeaky fit to the opening. The sides are cut to the desired length and a brought to a gapless fit height-wise. A shooting board is very useful for this operation. I then dovetail the drawer such that the sides slightly protrude from the pinboards.

Basically, when I mark the side thicknesses on the drawer front, I purposefully set the marking gauge half a millimetre less than the actual thickness. After the structure of the drawer is done, I rout grooves for the drawer bottom on all pieces. The back of the drawer is then cut at the bottom just enough so the base can slide into the grooves.

27. The holes in the frame were threaded.

The drawers are then glued up checking for squareness, and after the glue has dried, it’s time to do the fitting. I hold the workpiece in my vice and use a cut-to-size backing piece that prevents the thin sides from bending under the load of the hand plane. I take full shavings from the front to the back until the side elements are flush with the pins front and back. Now the drawer should fit, remembering the squeaky fit at the beginning.

28. Screws sharpened to a point were used to mark locations for the drawer cases to the frame.

29. Shallow grooves were routed to house the leg, and holes drill to accept screws.

30. The piece was assembled and disassembled several times to fit all the components.

I like to use a 0.05mm feeler gauge to help me determine where I need to plane more material off. Take a few very thin shavings, check, measure with the feeler gauge and repeat until the drawer slides in effortlessly. The goal is to have it fit with pretty much no side-to-side movement.

Height-wise, you want a little gap to allow for wood movement. The amount depends on the type of wood, and on the initial and expected humidity conditions. Afterwards I slide in the base and fix it in place with a dash of glue into the groove located in in the drawer front. For small stuff like this, I find it pointless adding any sort of mechanical fasteners at the back.

Inside stories

Each drawer has a different interior. One has a dot pattern created by drilling 2mm blind holes at the drill press and inlaying them with ebony dowels. Sanding these panels would make a mess as the black dust created would stain the sycamore. Instead, I use a nicely tuned handplane that produces a mirror finish surface with no cross contamination whatsoever.

Another drawer has a playful rotating mechanism. It looks upside-down when you open it, however it rotates 180° on its axis to reveal the racconto hiding inside. Hidden magnets stop it falling out when the drawer is upside down. For a seamless look in the drawer base, I resawed it in half, drilled a blind hole from the inside to house a thin magnet and then laminated the bottom back up again.

Probably my favourite drawer has a clever mechanism inside that elevates its ‘tale’ as the drawer opens. I made it using some brass stock and my router table. Some of the drawers were just an excuse to experiment with a few ideas such as kumiko and parquetry patterns. Others are just playfully designed to intrigue the user. There’s one that won’t open if you pull but must instead be pushed from the back. For all the drawers I made delicate cylindrical brass pulls and to retain the overall bi-tone look, cold-blued the brass elements.

Sometimes you have to take a few different directions in life, before you discover how it all comes together.

Vasko Sotirov @vaskosotirov is a wood artisan in Bergamo, Italy. Vasko Sotirov has previously written about his Lockdown cabinet (AWR#108), profiled The Brothers Levaggi (AWR#110) and Giordano Viganó (AWR#112).