Building Cabinet Drawers

Building drawers are almost like a rite of passage going from beginner woodworker to more intermediate woodworker.

Building cabinet drawers.

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. 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. Wider shelves and drawers tend to bind or rack as you slide them in and out.

Face frames cover plywood edges. Sliding dovetails aren t just for building bookcases. Discover the secrets to making strong drawers by cutting locking rabbet joints on the tablesaw as taught by wood magazine design editor jeff mertz. This technique works extremely well for constructing drawers that will be mounted with mechanical drawer slides.

My journey learning to build drawers the very first time i built a drawer was for this x leg accent. Also i make all my drawers using plywood for the box and plywood for the bottom. 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. We ll be using 1 2 cabinet grade plywood for all parts of these drawers including the bottoms.

This means some extra building work and buying more slides but the smaller rollouts will operate more smoothly and easily. A whole lot of making installing and building drawers is making sure things are lined up and square. Wide consider installing two narrower rollouts side by side rather than a single wide one. Building drawers still stress me out every single time.

Begin with the right cabinet dimensions. 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. In wood magazine torture tests this drawer joint proved stronger than even dovetails. Most traditional side mounted drawer slides require 1 2 clearance on each side of the drawer.

But i don t try to stay away from them anymore. To assemble the drawer box first apply a small amount of glue to each of the dovetail joints. Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation. How to build a cabinet drawer choose your drawer material.