Hand Carved Drawer Handles

 There is a nice old dresser in our shop for restoration right now which has beautiful hand carved handles.  Unfortunately one of those handles is missing.  That means it is part of our job to re-create that handle.

We started out by cutting two pieces of  wood,  one the basic shape of  the handle, and one the basic shape of the decorative fruit. Stacked on top of each other, you can get an idea of how the handle will turn out.  We now need to carve and contour the cut out shapes.

The curve of the handle was cut with a chisel before being sanded smooth,  then the accent lines were cut with carving knives.  The fruit turned out to be a greater challenge,  each handle was just slightly different, so our goal was to make it blend without being exactly like any of the others.

While the 'fruit' has yet to be permanently connected to the handle,  you can see that the project has really turned out pretty well!  it still needs to be stained, but we are going to wait until the rest of the dresser has been stripped, repaired and sanded.  That way we can stain the entire piece at once.   I will be sure to post more pictures so you can all see the progress.