Building Cabinet Drawers

To assemble the drawer box first apply a small amount of glue to each of the dovetail joints.

Building cabinet drawers.

Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation. Sliding dovetails aren t just for building bookcases. 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. Building drawers are almost like a rite of passage going from beginner woodworker to more intermediate woodworker.

Building drawers still stress me out every single time. 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. This means some extra building work and buying more slides but the smaller rollouts will operate more smoothly and easily.

How to build a cabinet drawer choose your drawer material. The sample base and wall cabinets shown below have these features to make building them as simple as possible. Let s stick with those since it makes sizing your drawer super. Face frames cover plywood edges.

If the cabinet is more than 30 in. But i don t try to stay away from them anymore. 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.

Wide consider installing two narrower rollouts side by side rather than a single wide one. Wider shelves and drawers tend to bind or rack as you slide them in and out. Also i make all my drawers using plywood for the box and plywood for the bottom. This technique works extremely well for constructing drawers that will be mounted with mechanical drawer slides.

Discover the secrets to making strong drawers by cutting locking rabbet joints on the tablesaw as taught by wood magazine design editor jeff mertz. A whole lot of making installing and building drawers is making sure things are lined up and square. 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.