Building Cabinet Drawers

In wood magazine torture tests this drawer joint proved stronger than even dovetails.

Building cabinet drawers.

How to build a cabinet drawer choose your drawer material. Building drawers still stress me out every single time. When you follow these instructions you ll end up with an inset drawer that has a perfect 1 2 wide space for a drawer slide. To assemble the drawer box first apply a small amount of glue to each of the dovetail joints.

This means some extra building work and buying more slides but the smaller rollouts will operate more smoothly and easily. We ll be using 1 2 cabinet grade plywood for all parts of these drawers including the bottoms. Discover the secrets to making strong drawers by cutting locking rabbet joints on the tablesaw as taught by wood magazine design editor jeff mertz. Also i make all my drawers using plywood for the box and plywood for the bottom.

Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation. Avoid getting glue into the dado grooves position the first two pieces with the dovetails aligned and tap the dovetail joints together at the corners of one side image 1. Wider shelves and drawers tend to bind or rack as you slide them in and out. Sliding dovetails aren t just for building bookcases.

The 3 4 plywood case eliminates panel jointing planing and glue ups. The sample base and wall cabinets shown below have these features to make building them as simple as possible. Building drawers are almost like a rite of passage going from beginner woodworker to more intermediate woodworker. A whole lot of making installing and building drawers is making sure things are lined up and square.

I like to use plywood to build my drawers because then i don t have to worry about twisted or warped boards causing me issues with alignment. Best of all this technique allows you to cut all parts of the joint with just a dado blade and a single setup on the tablesaw. Face frames cover plywood edges. But i don t try to stay away from them anymore.

Most traditional side mounted drawer slides require 1 2 clearance on each side of the drawer. This technique works extremely well for constructing drawers that will be mounted with mechanical drawer slides. If the cabinet is more than 30 in. Wide consider installing two narrower rollouts side by side rather than a single wide one.