Veneering Drawer Faces for an Oval Chest

Advice on vacuum and form setup and adhesive choices for making an oval chest with curved drawer faces.November 16, 2011

Question
I have been commissioned to make an oval chest of drawer. I’m wondering if any one of you guys have tackled similar projects (oval cabinet with drawers ) and would share the veneering approach. I need to veneer this and I’m thinking using a vacuum press bag system? Any experience and suggestions would be much appreciated.

Forum Responses
(Furniture Making Forum)
From contributor J:
I did this once. My pieces were nightstands that were elliptical and tapered with a drawer.

---

From contributor K:
Yes, I have done similar work. I used epoxy for the adhesive, which I like for this kind of work, because it gives plenty of open time after mixing, and acts as a lubricant between the parts as I am bending the parts around the form.

I would suggest that you shorten the drawer width, to lengthen the front to back dimension. I would like to see more support for the drawer than you are showing. I think I used three layers of 3/8" bending ply on several of these pieces, with some veneer cross banding between. Rather than trying to bend around a form in the bag, I like to just have the veneer and plys in the bag, and then bend it around the form before drawing the vacuum. The form can be pretty easy to build this way, since it only needs to be strong enough to resist the spring-back of the combination of those limber plys.