Redbourn Dovetail Co.

Commission 142Piccotts End, Hemel Hempstead

The hallway sideboard that opens like a watch.

A six-drawer walnut sideboard for a Victorian hall. Fourteen hand-cut dovetails, no screws in the carcass, and a top that was a single board until the day we cut it.

Timber
English walnut
Size
1800 × 480 × 820
Made in
9 weeks
Finish
Hard-wax oil

The brief

A hall that is seven feet of awkward.

The clients had a long, shallow hallway with a radiator at one end and a staircase at the other. They wanted storage that would not make the passage feel narrower, and drawers that did not stick in damp weather.

We kept the depth to 480 mm, raised it on tapered legs so the floor shows underneath, and hung the drawers on wooden runners rather than metal ones.

The finished walnut sideboard in a dark green hallway, with one drawer open to show its dovetails
Fitted on a Thursday
A hand-cut walnut dovetail corner in close view
Drawer corner, before oiling

The joint

Every drawer, the same corner.

Each drawer front is cut from the same board as the carcass above it, so the grain runs on across the gaps like a single sheet. The corners are half-blind at the front and through at the back, at 1:6.

Drag the corner on this page and you can see why they hold: the tails flare toward the end, so the harder a drawer is pulled, the tighter it locks.

“We opened the first drawer and it exhaled. I had not known a drawer could do that.”

The client, Piccotts End